Amos the born loser cont’d

His cont’d detention and US immigration appeal against the granting of asylum by a judge shows how cock Amos is. He should have tried Europe. But then he not RI boy. He from neighbourhood school.

Opps I forgot TJS, THL and Kee Chiu also RI boys.

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So what if we are tops in start-up talent?

What has this to do with the price of eggs?

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In case any TRE cybernut reading this wonders about the term, it means

When we get told “What’s that got to do with [anything, the price of eggs in China, the sun and the moon and the stars, etc]?” the speaker is saying (or telling us) thatwhatever we said beforehand was irrelevant or has no bearing to the discussion.

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Great response to the constructive, nation-building media’s attempt to play up finding that S’pore is tops in world for start-up talent.

 

In comparing Amos to JBJ, does s/o JBJ have a point?

As a Facebook acquaintance said

Quite weird to see KJ equating Amos’s “persecution” with JBJ’s….kinda insulting to the memory of his father…

After all one was a lion of a man, the other a foul mouth brat. Ok both were full of themselves and LKY and the PAPpies would agree that both were nutty weirdos and subversives.

Still that doesn’t mean that Amos is like JBJ.

This is what KJ actually said (it’s a longish extract from a really long post (https://kenjeyaretnam.com/2017/03/26/my-first-hand-experience-of-amos-yees-asylum-hearing/) which is really worth a read.

My Personal Motivation

… there was something about Yee’s case in particular that struck a chord with me. Maybe it is because I also had a 16 year old son and I used to be a 16 year old boy myself. It was hard to see a child maltreated so horribly. Mostly though it was that his plight and the persecution he suffered, the way the Gvernment was unwilling to tolerate even a sliver of dissent and came down hard with spurious charges reminded me of the way they could not tolerate my father being in parliament. Again the vindictive and personal nature of the persecution stemming from anger at criticism of LKY reminded me of LKY’s vow to see JBJ on bended knee. Of course Amos Yee’s stubborn refusal to be bowed, to bend that knee in front of the altar of LKY, reinforced the link to JBJ in my mind.

I had already laughed my head off when Yee’s lawyer had said by video link that he was sure Amos would be grateful for my efforts. “No he won’t”, I replied when I stopped laughing. There is no point helping Amos if you are doing it for thanks or gratitude. Do I regret helping him? No, I am also elated but at the same time saddened that Amos had to flee to have a chance at a life and I am aware of how hard life is for an exile or a refugee. I do feel though that the judgement has vindicated my father and the political persecution he suffered all cleverly packaged and disguised as either civil suits brought by private persons or even trumped up fake charges of fraud. Even now Singapore refers to my father’s “criminal” conviction even though that conviction was found to be a grievous miscarriage of justice and a non-existent offence and was overturned by a higher court. Amos Yee like JBJ will forever be branded a criminal in his home country.

What do you think? Is s/o JBJ wrong in comparing dad to Amos? Or does he have a point?

Amos’ case again shows how cock S’poreans are

(Breaking news at 111.00am: Amos is really a born loser. US immigration is detaining Boy Fantastic necause it’s appealing. S/o JBJ is KPKBing. See below.

The anti-PAP cybernuts are using the immigration judge’s decision to gloat and sneer at the system that 70% of S’poreans voted for in free but unfair elections.

They should sit down and shut up.

Let’s wait and see if the US immigration appeals, and if so the final judgement.

Something for them to think about at least for those with brains: What if the final judgment is that he isn’t being persecuted? Will all the anti-PAPpies gloating change their minds about what they think about life in S’pore?

I doubt it. They’ll find another excuse to diss what 70% (and more) of S’poreans are comfortable with.

Likewise the whities should sit down and shut up about dissing the US. If the US decides not to give him asylum, will they return to fawning on the US?

S/o of JBJ’s KPKBing on FB:

Breaking news: Amos Yee is still being held in detention. This is highly unusual and dubious in the extreme. For those of you not familiar with how asylum works let me explain.

Before the hearing Amos was an asylum seeker. Asylum seekers can lawfully be kept in detention. Amos Yee’s asylum bid was successful was successful and the minute Judge Coles ruled that Asylum was granted, Amos Yee’s legal status changed from asylum seeker to “Refugee”.

Amos-the-stateless-asylum-seeker become Amos-the-American-refugee awarded protections under domestic US as well as International law. As a refugee he is immediately granted those rights under US Law as well as being granted rights under the UN Convention on Refugees. Those rights accorded him mean he shouldn’t be detained.

You may have heard that ICE plan to appeal the asylum decision and that this is being used as a pretext to keep Amos in detention. I use the word pretext because there is no provision in the Nationality and Immigration Act for ICE to detain anyone already granted asylum, even pending an appeal.

Amos now has rights and these rights are clearly being breached. As such the detention is arbitrary without basis and unlawful.

I will update you further when I hear from his lawyers. Mary Toh must be extremely concerned.

Upon release there is a good network in place in Chicago of friends and activists to support Amos with a place to live and so on. He would also be able to apply for some limited refugee financial relief. Let’s hope they release him soon and that there is not any underhand political plot behind the continued detention.

Ang moh tua kee mentality of Pink Dot Organisers

What a bunch of wanking buggers who only saw ang mohs as their only sponsors. Ang moh tua kee isit? Sad.

Although I’m very happy  that the movement has local supporters that are happy to sponsor the event (so unlike the cheapskates that populate TRELand always claiming poverty when TRE asks for donations).

With four months to go before its annual rally to support the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, Pink Dot has raised 70 per cent of the total sponsorship dollars it got last year.

This is even though foreign companies – the majority of its sponsors in the past – can no longer fund events at the Speakers’ Corner unless they have a permit.

I feel sad after reading the SunT article entitled “Local firms throw weight, dollars behind Pink Dot”. This makes it clear that the organisers didn’t think they could get local money to replace ang moh *.

Pink Dot spokesman Paerin Choa told SunT

“We were a bit worried whether there would be enough support from local companies to fill the vacuum left by the MNCs.”**

Pink Dot, now in its ninth year, had intended to run this year’s event “bare bones”, like its first one in 2009.

This showed that the organisers didn’t think the movement had local roots? Or more likely that the LGBT community was full of freeloaders (like the TRE community) who valued it only as a free and easy way of picking up sexual partners (in the case of TRE cybernuts, TRE gives them a platform to KPKB about the PAP administration free of charge).

Whatever, it took an outsider to show that locals could raise money for the LGBT movement.

Mr Darius Cheung, 36, founder of property start-up 99.co, who sent Pink Dot a message saying: “We are a small start-up but we want to help.”

Mr Cheung, a Singaporean, then rounded up tech entrepreneurs he knew to reach out to local firms. He also volunteered to front the Red Dot for Pink Dot campaign and build its website through which companies can sponsor.

The campaign hopes to rope in 100 corporate sponsors, and to raise $150,000 in all.

Good for him and the other sponsors. But the LGBT community should not be taking their pants off and treating themselves to a sexual orgy as a pat on the back. There’s trouble ahead. I’ll talk cock about this some other day.

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*Last October, the Ministry of Home Affairs made clear that only local entities can sponsor, promote or get its employees to participate in events at the Speakers’ Corner. To be considered local, companies need to be incorporated or registered here, and be majority-controlled by Singaporeans.

**My take on this last year.

More on Alibaba in KL

Further to this, last week, as part of a digital free trade zone launched by M’sia’s PM and Jack Ma. Alibaba announced it would set up a regional logistics hub near Kuala Lumpur airport.

Funny S’pore Inc missed this deal. Wonder why?

Revisited: Why we don’t buy the “explanations” of S’pore Inc

In 2010 (before the double blow to the PAP of GE and PE of 2011), I posted a piece that I reproduce below.

I repost Why we don’t buy the “explanations” of S’pore Inc below because recently

— The police and prison service confirmed (double confirmed?) that a 74-yr old woman was handcuffed and restrained when she was moved from the police post to the police division and to the courts. They said it was “part of standard procedure lar”.

— AVA’s culling of fowl asserting are not junglefowl, refusing to do genetic testing. We have to accept its word despite discrepancies in its explanations that the public pointed out.

And last year we had the Benjamin’s death and in Dec 2o13 the Little India riot. Again everything was done by the book: hence no need to explain further. No need even to rethink or learn lessons. (I don’t think the changes introduced after Benjamin’s death and the riots amount to anything other than cosmetic changes to appease its supporters who were troubled by what happened.

In short, the PAP administration has not changed its spots when it comes to accepting responsibility or explaining when mistakes or cock-ups happen.

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Why we don’t buy the “explanations” of S’pore Inc (first posted in 2010)

The ex-head of the civil service and now chairman of the Public Service Commission showed he “got it” when he said at a recent speech in the US to S’pore  scholars: If we strive to be world-class, we will be judged by world-class standards. If we say that we have one of the best governments in the world, the public will expect it to solve virtually any problem Singapore faces.

Taz correct.

But he showed he didn’t “get it” when he went on: Some of our citizens are now beginning to expect the government to do the impossible. Many citizens are now less prepared to give the government room to make mistakes and are less forgiving and more demanding. They tend to regard explanations as excuses. Take the recent floods. To some Singaporeans, saying that floods are natural disasters and Singapore cannot be flood-free, sounds like a cop out. Every time something goes wrong in Singapore, citizens ask: “If our public servants and Ministers are so smart and paid so well, why can’t they prevent the problem from occurring, or solve it for good after it occurs?”

He is assuming that the “explanations” given explained what had happened. He should relook this assumption.

Juz look at some of the recent “explanations” that have been given for goof-ups or incidents that caused public inconvenience. Are we wrong in thinking sume people were trying to avoid responsibility?

When MPs asked why the flat of Mas Selamat’s brother was not watched, they were told by the Home Affairs minister that that Mas Selamat could go undetected in the flat “was not a security lapse’ and that hundreds were probed . Err how abt answering the question, “Why wasn’t the flat watched?”

As to the floods, I could not understand the minister’s and senior officials’ explanations. I only “got it” when, on an inside page of ST, it was reported that more rain had fallen in a few hours than it had for days on end i.e. it was very, very heavy rainfall in a very short space of time. Point taken. But this explanation by a junior official was buried deep inside ST, and I’m sure many would have missed reading it. The front page “explanations” failed to give this fact, or where they did, this fact was lost in the smoke of hot air.

The problem is that the “explanations” given often ignore the question, assume that S’poreans are morons or that we are educated, and refuse to admit that mistakes were made. Perhaps PSC should run courses to train scholars to be less arrogant; to admit to making mistakes; and to write in simple, believable prose? One gets the impression that ministers and civil servants attend courses where they are taught not to ever admit making a mistake; and to avoid answering questions.

It wasn’t always like this. When one LKY was PM, mistakes were admitted; and explanations were given in simple and understandable English. I wonder how GCT or LHL would have explained why and how we were kicked out of M’sia, and what was the future of S’pore post-demerger?

And on economical and financial matters, no minister post-1991 has matched the simplicity of Dr Goh’s radio talks and articles.

And asses were kicked and faces shamed. (Admittedly, sometimes the wrong people were punished.)

But let’s be fair: MoE did admit that a scholarship was given to a peeping-tom because the boy’s teachers got some things wrong. He was recently convicted in England for possession of child pornography. But what if the balls-up had been made by officers higher up the food chain? I mean teachers are the lowest of the low in the education food chain, or so I’ve been assured by teachers.

https://atans1.wordpress.com/2010/11/27/why-we-dont-buy-the-explanations-of-spore-inc/

A good word for “populism”

In S’pore the ang moh tua kees like Kitsten Han and Mad Dog Chee share something in common with the PAP: “populism” is a dirty word. Read the link as it shows why a “populist” policy can be the “right” policy.

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Update at 1.30 pm: Defining “Populism” http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2016/12/economist-explains-18

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From NYT Dealbook (thru I’m sure gritted teeth as they are Hilary-lovers) another example where “populism” is good:

“We believe that populism’s role in shaping economic conditions will probably be more powerful than classic monetary and fiscal policies (as well as a big influence on fiscal policies).”

— A Bridgewater report on populism, by Ray Dalio, Steven Kryger, Jason Rogers and Gardner Davis.

Interesting Jack Ma signs this with M’sia, not S’pore

A common comment on social media and blogshere when not dissing the PAP is that our SMEs serve locals. Even the PAP administration grumbles that SMEs not going abroad.

So it’s interesting to read that Alibaba’s Jack Ma took a step on his plan for an electronic trade platform to ease the cross border exports and imports of goods for SMEs by announcing in M’sia that M’sia is the first country outside China to sign up to Alibaba’s electronic world trade platform.

Ban Muslims from driving?

The kind of jihadist attack in London that happened in London two days ago is called the “marauding” method of terror attack was similar to attacks carried out by Islamists last year in France and Germany. It involves using a vehicle to mow people down in a crowded area.

And the BBC reported on 23 March that a French national of North African origin has been arrested in the Belgian city of Antwerp on suspicion of driving at a crowd, officials say.

Seriously, since SAF is careful on where Muslims are deployed with the SAF, it follows that our bus operators and owners of trucks and other heavy eqpt should be careful about employing Muslims to drive these vehicles.

Of course people like Kirsten Han and other ang moh tua kees will scream discrimination but better safe than sorry. And anyway, the next president is going to be Muslim. So discrimination? What discrimination?

OK, OK, the next president will be a Malay because under our constitution there is no requirement a Malay must be Muslim (unlike in M’sia). Hey but none of the probable candidates are non-Muslim Malays. And anyway, whatever the con says, the Malay community sees Islam as the religion of the Malays.

Sad, S’pore can’t adopt this practice of combating fake news

I couldn’t help but snigger when I read

a new initiative by journalists from Le Monde, the French daily that has developed a readers’ tool to weed out fake news. A few weeks ago, they started volunteering at schools, teaching teenagers how to distinguish between responsible journalism and fabricated news. Other newsrooms in France are doing the same. Alexandre Pouchard, one of the Le Monde journalists involved, tells me the objective is to raise awareness about sourcing and promote simple tools (such as Google reverse image search) to check the origin of photographs or memes. “It’s about getting some reflexes, like wondering where a story or image is from,” he says. “On the one hand, young people are more vulnerable to this phenomenon and less used to identifying unreliable sources and, on the other hand, they are not our usual readers, so we have to get in touch with them.” FT

I mean can you imagine Sumiko Tan and other editors, and journalists going to schools and telling students with a straight face that they (the reporters and editors) rely on media briefings, phone calls and email messages from the PAP administration, and self censorship to make sure they and hence us the readers get the right facts and perspectives?

Have a good weekend.

Be “scouts”, not “soldiers”

Here the term “scouts” means

soldiers or other persons sent out ahead of a main force so as to gather information about the enemy’s position, strength, or movements.

Men like Kit Carson and Buffalo Bill. Google them if u’ve not heard of these white legends who helped make “America Great” by helping exterminate the Amerindians.

Our education system must teach us to be “scouts” not “soldiers” to make S’pore Great again.

At present it’s the other way round: http://ideas.ted.com/why-you-think-youre-right-even-when-youre-wrong/?

“scout mindset,” the drive not to make one idea win or another lose, but to see what’s there as honestly and accurately as you can even if it’s not pretty, convenient or pleasant. I’ve spent the last few years examining scout mindset and figuring out why some people, at least sometimes, seem able to cut through their own prejudices, biases and motivations and attempt to see the facts and the evidence as objectively as they can. The answer, I’ve found, is emotional.

Just as soldier mindset is rooted in emotional responses, scout mindset is, too — but it’s simply rooted in different emotions. For example, scouts are curious. They’re more likely to say they feel pleasure when they learn new information or solve a puzzle. They’re more likely to feel intrigued when they encounter something that contradicts their expectations.

Scouts also have different values. They’re more likely to say they think it’s virtuous to test their own beliefs, and they’re less likely to say that someone who changes her mind seems weak. And, above all, scouts are grounded, which means their self-worth as a person isn’t tied to how right or wrong they are about any particular topic. For example, they can believe that capital punishment works and if studies come out that show it doesn’t, they can say, “Looks like I might be wrong. Doesn’t mean I’m bad or stupid.” This cluster of traits is what researchers have found — and I’ve found anecdotally — predicts good judgment.

The key takeaway about the traits associated with scout mindset is they have little to do with how smart you are or how much you know. They don’t correlate very closely to IQ at all; they’re about how you feel. I keep coming back to a particular quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince. “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up your men to collect wood and give orders and distribute the work,” he said. “Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

In other words, if we really want to improve our judgment as individuals and as societies, what we need most is not more instruction in logic, rhetoric, probability or economics, even though those things are all valuable. What we most need to use those principles well is scout mindset. We need to change the way we feel — to learn how to feel proud instead of ashamed when we notice we might have been wrong about something, or to learn how to feel intrigued instead of defensive when we encounter some information that contradicts our beliefs. So the question you need to consider is: What do you most yearn for — to defend your own beliefs or to see the world as clearly as you possibly can?

As evidence for this thesis look at all the paper generals we’ve had from one Lee to Kee Chui, Tan and Desmond Kwek thru Teo and Yeo.

 

S’pore: Not “Animal Farm” but “Brave New World”

The cybernuts from Tan Jee Say and Tan Kin Lian (I’m ashamed that they are RI boys) downwards make allusions or analogies to Animal Farm to tell us how bad life is here under the pigs PAP. But these references show how stupid and ignorant they are, because in Animal Farm, the animals (sans pigs) live miserable, oppressed lives.

But S’poreans live pretty decent lives even if housing is expensive, cars unaffordable for most S’poreans, and the price of water is going up by 30%. Look at all those travelling overseas for hols during the recent school holidays. And all the tech gadgets S’poreans buy: I mean even the TRE cybernuts are not criticising the end of 2G next month (Buffett uses a 2G handset and so did I until Monday). No wonder the Pay and Party administration keeps raising prices. The money is there and the people are not unhappy to be fleeced.

We are more like this

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

Set in 2540, Brave New World depicts a world where the people are willing slaves to a totalitarian government, kept docile and compliant by drugs, constant entertainment, technology and a surfeit of material goods.

This dystopian novel written in 1931 was in January in Amazon’s top 10 list, where it was below 1984 – George Orwell ( number one) and It Can’t Happen Here – Sinclair Lewis (number eight).

The white Hilary-loving liberals working in the publishers should be thanking Trump, but don’t hold your breath. They’ve always been biting the hand that feeds them: the US corporate state.

 

M’sian defence policy sounds like a bad joke

Malaysia is buying naval vessels from China in order to better defend its islands in the South China Sea from China?

Malaysia is gunning for a revamp of its ageing naval fleet, as countries in the region prepare to face threats from the influx of Islamic State (IS) militants fleeing Mosul, and from rising tensions in the South China Sea.

Malaysia’s navy aims to replace all 50 vessels in its ageing fleet as the country cut its total defence budget by 12.7 per cent to RM15.1 billion (S$4.76 billion) this year.

That will be led by the procurement of four littoral mission ships (LMS) built in collaboration with China.

“The LMS are designed for many aspects of maritime security such as dealing with cross-border crime, piracy, anti-terrorism, and search and rescue operations,” Malaysian navy chief Admiral Ahmad Kamarulzaman Ahmad Badaruddin …

“These ships would be very capable of dealing with the threat posed by [IS] and other maritime security concerns,” …

Defence spending in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to hit US$250 billion (S$349.2 billion) from 2016-20, IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly said in December, and Malaysia intends to improve on its capabilities alongside other states in the hotly contested South China Sea even as its defence budget narrows.

Malaysia is expected to formalise the LMS deal with China at the Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace Exhibition (LIMA) this week to build four LMS and acquire the technology to build more of the ships at home.

Today

Not afraid that the Chinese will embed malware to cause problems when RMN ships attack Chinese vassals?

M’sia boleh. So trusting.

Time for Super M to make a loud noise.

“We are not paying taxes. We are investing in our society. We are purchasing quality of life,”

SDP’s Dr Paul, and Chris K would agree with the above sentiment.

Danes, for example, pay very high rates of tax – anything up to 51.5% of their income for a high earner.

But that cash is reinvested in society through a range of social programmes – such as free university education, free healthcare, generous maternity leave and unemployment benefits.

“We are not paying taxes. We are investing in our society. We are purchasing quality of life,” wrote Meik Wiking, CEO of the Happiness Research Institute, in 2016.

From “Can we be as happy as Scandinavians?” http://www.bbc.com/news/world-39331314

Me? I’m happy with the low tax regime. And if anyone tells me that CPF is a tax, I’ll ask him to pls recompute govt expeniture (remember for every credit, must have debit) to reflect the spending me make from our CPF accounts as govt expenditure on health etc.

Fowl play: Juz tell us what the genetic tests say

Another fowl culling has ruffled feathers. This time it is the killing of free-roaming chickens in the Sungei Api Api area in Pasir Ris.

It comes barely a month after the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) took similar action in Sin Ming estate in Thomson, sparking a heated public debate.

…..

The AVA, however, said it was “highly unlikely” the birds are the red junglefowl, usually found on Pulau Ubin and in the western catchment area near Lim Chu Kang.

ST

 

Why don’t AVA test the fowls killed in Pasir Ris and give us the results. After all, after the first cull

Mr Ng said he had seen photos of the chickens at the Sin Ming area and at least some of them were red junglefowl.

In answer to this, Dr Koh acknowledged that AVA would need to conduct genetic studies to ascertain whether the chickens found in the area were red junglefowl or other breeds.

AVA is continuing to undertake research with academics, wildlife experts, and other public agencies to find the best ways to manage the population of free-ranging chickens and other birds, according to Dr Koh.

Btw, the ang moh director of the film shoot of Sin Ming chooks said of genetic testing:

I would dispute the assertion that they are “chickens, not jungle fowl” – They are exactly the same species (only genetic testing would be able to differentiate wild type fowl from domesticated birds, and even then the difference is debatable).

To end, a FB pal summed up the situation pretty well:

PAP MP, Grassroots leaders, Residents all pissed off by the lack of consultation and transparency in AVA culling operations.

Is AVA trying very hard not hearing the public outcry?

Err where are the Wankering MPs from the Worthless Party? Answer, they are running around like headless chickens over irregular payments. 

A man of principle: Ahmad Mohamed Ibrahim

These LKY remarks reminded me about someone history has forgotten

the Minister of Law who is a lawyer had to fight a tremendous duel with the Attorney-General’s office to formulate this law …  And you know, we have a lot of liberal lawyers in the Attorney General’s Chambers. They would not put up a draft. They literally refused. They wrote long screeds why this was against the best traditions of penology.”

https://article14blog.wordpress.com/2017/02/11/lky-and-the-lawyers-who-would-not-draft-a-law/

The AG of the time (and S’pore’s first) was Ahmad Mohamed Ibrahim He was AG from 9 Aug 1965 – 31 Jan 1967. Before that he was State Advocate-General of the State of Singapore from 25 Jun 1959 – 8 Aug 1965.

He was from RI and a Queen’s scholar (like Mrs Lee, LKY was not one.) In the late 1930s, he received from Cambridge first class honours in economics and law

Because of the row with the government*, he opted for retirement. He moved to Malaya in 1969. In 1972, he became the dean of the law faculty of the University of Malaya. There he established the first law faculty in Malaysia.

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*Update at 8.00am: A friend who knew him personally told me that he personally objected to the law (and others) that the govt were passing.

 

What are “the other things”?

Last month, investment associate Terence Nunis posted a video online of an imam at Jamae Mosque who, after a sermon, reportedly recited a prayer in Arabic that said “God grant us victory over Jews and Christians”, among other things.

ST

Due to the vagaries of Facebook’s algos, a friend got on his news feed a post*  containing a thread that had Muslims dissing Terence Nunis. One even sneered that Nunis learnt his Islam from his wife (he’s a convert) who only had 10 years of a Madrasah education.

My friend tot this comment hilarious as the sermon in question wasn’t conducted in a university mosque for those with doctorates in Islamic studies but in a neighbourhood mosque for ordinary Muslims**. And anyway, ten years of learning the Koran in a religious school sounded a pretty good basis for understanding the Koran. But maybe, he tot, the commenter tot only Muslim men are allowed to teach the Koran?

But as he didn’t want his flat to be burnt by mobs of upset Muslims, he kept quiet.

But he couldn’t help quoting the above from ST and asking ever so politely (he didn’t want his flat to be pillaged):

What are “the other things”?

The Muslims vanished from the thread and he was left alone. Talk of vanishing genies.

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*The post was by Nunis’ dad who defended his son’s actions. But Muslim cynerwarriors hijacked the discussion thread like the PLO hijacked aircraft in the 1980s.

**ST reported last week in a heritage article that the mosque was named “Tamil milkmen’s mosque” in the vernacular.

 

 

Double confirm, PM has no class

What with the second anniversary of LKY’s next week, below is the condolence letter that our PM sent to the widow of Fong Swee Suan earlier this year. It was a badly written letter.

PM should have not made the negative comments about how things would have been different (and implicitly, worse) if the Barisan Socialis had won: “Singapore’s history would have been utterly different if Mr Lim and Mr Fong had prevailed. Fortunately, they did not, as several of those who took their path recognised later, after the dust had settled.”

The PM should also have used the term “leftists” not “”pro-communists” in describing Fong and Lim Chin Seong etc. (But at least he didn’t call them “communists”.)

The letter then would have shown PM to be gracious, and a gentleman.

Still it’s a lot better than the letter he sent to the sons of JBJ on JBJ’s death (see below also).

The letter was extremely negative. Among other things it said JBJ “sought all means to demolish the PAP and our system of government”.

The letter was best not sent. While no fan of KJ, I can understand the anger he felt about it. He blogged on his anger.

Both letters show that PM has no sense of occasion. Blame his father (Mum was a lady, he was an educated thug)? After all his sister never lost her sense of entitlement (Example).

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Dear Mdm Chen,

I am sorry to learn of the passing of your husband, Mr Fong Swee Suan. Mr Fong Swee Suan was a convenor of the People’s Action Party when it was formed in November 1954 and a member of its first Central Executive Committee. He and Mr Lim Chin Siong had joined Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s “Oxley Road” group earlier in the year to discuss the formation of a political party. Almost wholly English-educated, the non-communist group led by Mr Lee found in Mr Lim and Mr Fong a bridge to the Chinese-educated world – “a world teeming with vitality, dynamism and revolution,” as Mr Lee put it in his Battle for Merger talks, “a world in which the Communists had been working for decades with considerable success.”

The two sides, the non-communists and the pro-communists, joined forces to rid Singapore of the British colonialists, knowing full well that the real battle would come after the British left and Singaporeans had to decide who was to govern them.

Mr Fong and his pro-communist colleagues were arrested by the colonial authorities in October 1956 after a series of strikes and riots paralysed the island.

Mr Lee had to act as the detainees’ lawyer, and would visit them at St John’s Island every three or four weeks. I remember regularly taking a police boat together with my parents from the Master Attendant’s Pier at Collyer Quay to St John’s Island. My mother would bring along a pot of chicken curry and freshly baked bread for the detainees. It was a long walk from the jetty on the island to the house where they lived. I knew them by name, having met them when they came to Oxley Road, probably during election campaigns.

For me the trips to St John’s Island were Sunday outings. But for my father there was a serious purpose. My father spent hours trying to persuade the detainees of the folly of the Communist Party of Malaya’s policy. In the end, all the detainees signed a document, The Ends and Means of Socialism, which they themselves had drafted, setting out their support for the non-communist objectives of the PAP.

In 1959, Singapore attained self-government. The PAP won the general election, and formed the government. Mr Lim, Mr Fong and six other detainees were released from prison. Mr Lee and his senior colleagues were hopeful that all but Mr Lim were sincere in their declarations of support. He appointed the detainees as Political Secretaries in various ministries. Mr Fong went to the sensitive Ministry of Labour. In the end only one detainee, Mr Devan Nair, remained true in his pledge.

The inevitable parting of ways came in June 1961, over the question of Merger with Malaya to form the new Federation of Malaysia. The split was precipitated by the decision of the “Big Six” trade union leaders, including Mr Lim and Mr Fong, to oppose the PAP at a by-election in Anson. The pro-communists formed the Barisan Sosialis, with Mr Lim as its Secretary-General, and the Singapore Association of Trade Unions, with Mr Fong as its Secretary-General.

A ferocious battle for hearts and minds ensued. In the Referendum of September 1962, the option for merger recommended by the PAP won 70 per cent of the vote. Later in the general election of September 1963, the PAP was re-elected to office with 37 out of 51 seats, with the Barisan winning 13.

It is difficult for Singaporeans who did not live through the events to appreciate the passion of those times. This was a serious battle of ideas between two groups of people with diametrically opposed visions of our society. Singapore’s history would have been utterly different if Mr Lim and Mr Fong had prevailed. Fortunately, they did not, as several of those who took their path recognised later, after the dust had settled.

But it is important to realise that this was not a battle between good men and women on one side, and crooks and charlatans on the other. There were dedicated, disciplined, deeply courageous people on both sides. Indeed, Mr Lee and his colleagues liked and respected their opponents, admiring them for their simple lifestyles, selflessness and commitment. Mr Lee recalled in his obituary note on Mr Lim Chin Siong in February 1996 that his differences with Mr Lim were ideological and deep, but never personal. He would have said the same of Mr Fong.

Mr Fong and Mr Lee met for the last time in September 2009, in the chamber of the old Parliament House, where the PAP and Barisan Sosialis had crossed swords in those tumultuous years half a century earlier. The occasion was the book launch of “Men in White”, a history of the PAP. They shook hands warmly, and stood next to each other for a photograph.

As Mr Lee wrote, it was precisely because the PAP had such opponents, that he and his colleagues learnt “the meaning of dedication to a cause”:

“They were prepared to sacrifice everything for their cause, and many did. Some lost their lives in the jungle, many were banished to China. Because of the standards of dedication they set, we, the English-educated PAP leaders, had to set high standards of personal integrity and spartan lifestyles to withstand their political attacks. They were ruthless and thorough. We became as dedicated as they were in pursuing our political objectives.”

Please accept my sincere condolences.

Yours sincerely

Lee Hsien Loong

And

30 September 2008

Mr Kenneth Jeyaretnam
Mr Philip Jeyaretnam

Dear Kenneth and Philip Jeyaretnam

I was sad to learn that your father, Mr Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam, has passed away. Mr JB Jeyaretnam was a Member of Parliament for Anson constituency from 1981 till 1986, and a Non-Constituency Member of Parliament from 1997 till 2001. He used to engage in heated debates in the House. Perhaps it was because he and the PAP never saw eye to eye on any major political issue and he sought by all means to demolish the PAP and our system of government. Unfortunately, this helped neither to build up a constructive opposition nor our Parliamentary tradition. Nevertheless, one had to respect Mr JB Jeyaretnam’s dogged tenacity to be active in politics at his age.

However, our differences were not personal. In 1993, one of you (Kenneth) wrote to Mr Goh Chok Tong, who was then Prime Minister, to say that you found employers in Singapore reluctant to offer you a job, and your only explanation was that the employers felt the authorities would not welcome your employment because of your name. Mr Goh replied with a letter which could be shown to prospective employers, to say that the government did not hold anything against you, and that employers should evaluate you fairly on your own merits, like any other candidate, because Singapore needed every talented person that it could find. Mr Goh had previously made the same point to your brother Philip, whom he had invited to lunch. I am therefore happy that both of you have established yourselves in Singapore.

Please accept my deepest condolences.

Yours sincerely
Lee Hsien Loong

 

HSBC makes history

An outsider is appointed chairman for the first time ever. We shareholders hope he will bring the fresh ideas needed to solve the bank’s problems. The share price has done no where in the tenure of CEO that’s going to leave next year. Though to be fair, dividend yield of around 6% is not to be sneered at. From NYT Dealbook HSBC Looks to an Outsider

HSBC may be based in London, but it generates much of its profit in Asia.

And so, in a nod to that, it has named Mark Tucker, the chief executive of the Asian life insurer AIA Group, as its next chairman.

Mr. Tucker will replace Douglas Flint, who has been chairman since 2010, in October.

Although Mr. Tucker has spent much of his career in the insurance industry, he was group finance director for a year at HBOS, a British bank that nearly collapsed during the financial crisis and is now part of Lloyds Banking Group.

He has also been a director at Goldman Sachs since 2012, a position he will leave when he joins HSBC.

Mr. Tucker’s first task will be to find a replacement for Stuart Gulliver, who has said he will quit as chief executive next year.

But there are other challenges: The bank has missed a string of financial targets and is in the midst of a restructuring.

What has this to do with the price of eggs?

NUS tops Asia university ranking for second year running

CNA

Given

Jobless graduates hightset since 2004

TNP

And

Irony of irony: “NUS rated tops in world rankings” scream the headlines. But NUS graduates are glorified in the MSM as carving a career driving Uber and Crab car! Well done. Meanwhile employers, including GLCs, are merrily recruiting Pinoys, PRC and Indians from dodgy 3rd rate Universities. Why? Because it’s so EASY!

FB comment

And FT PMETs keep coming in (Only rate of growth is slowing: from cattle truck loads to A380 load) . And plenty of unemployed, underemployed S’poreans looking for jobs.

Repented that u helped PAP get 70% of the popular vote?

 

Will Harry’s daughter throw a tantrum this year?

Last year around this time, the princess of Oxley Rise, threw a tantrum over ST’s refusal to publish a piece written by a ST reporter channeling her tots*. The piece was on her tots on how Harry was being commemorated on the first anniversary of his death.

Well with the second anniversary of his death fast approaching, I’m sure she’d find an excuse to throw another tantrum to show her grief for her dad (and mum). Better I tot if the estate of her parents, or the state paid for a few professional wailers from Taiwan or HK. I’ve been told there are no more professional wailers here, so we need some FTs where the “T” stands for “Talent”.

Well some stamps were issued recently. The Defence Minister said:

 “I’m sure the stamps will be well received – they feature founding Prime Minister Mr Lee Kuan Yew, as well as the late former Minister for Defence Dr Goh Keng Swee, both key figures in the introduction of National Service.”

Whatever, this is the first time LKY has appeared on a stamp. It’s also a first for Dr Goh.

But I’m sure the princess will be throwing a tantrum. She should get some professional wailers from Taiwan or HK to express her very genuine grief. I mean her parents (especially Harry) deserve to be better remembered than through her tantrums.

---

*We learnt she would say a few words and a ST staffer did the rest. 

Water price hike included meh?

INFLATION FORECAST AT 1% FOR 2017

Inflation for the year is expected to come in at 1 per cent, unchanged from the analysts’ forecast in the previous survey. For the first quarter of this year, inflation is expected to be 0.8 per cent.

Core inflation – which excludes accommodation and car prices – is expected to be 1.5 per cent for the whole year, slightly above the 1.3 per cent predicted in the previous survey. It is also predicted to come in at 1.3 per cent for the first quarter.

For 2018, headline inflation is expected to be 1.3 per cent while MAS core inflation is forecast at 1.7 per cent.

CNA

So economists don’t think that that the hike will cause inflation, something the cybernuts are screaming their heads out over.

Maybe the economists are relying on the assurance of a junior minister that

the cost of goods, such as coffee and tea, “should not and ought not go up” when participants addressed the trickle-down effect that the water price increase.

TOC

But then we had the assurance of a cabinet minister that water was priced correctly in 2015, juz before the elections.

 

Intimidated by police for attending rally?

I reference: A police statement was quoted by Channel NewsAsia as claiming that the article “was clearly an attempt to stoke fears about the use of the Speakers’ Corner and sow distrust of the police.”

Tan Tee Seng, a real-life friend, and a social activist shared on Facebook

https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2017/03/13/singapore-police-regrettable-that-reuters-decided-to-carry-unsubstantiated-allegations-from-organisers-of-water-price-hike-protest/

and his experiences after attending a rally at Hong Lim Green.

Police has poor memory. I cannot help but to obliged with the details of what they forgot…

The scene: Hong Lim Park after the Yellow Sit-in on 12 November 2016.
I had already left Hong Lim Park after Yellow Sit-In: Singapore in solidarity with Malaysia. Four police officers showed up at my home and questioned [me] for about 20 minutes. They had apparently identified me from a photo taken at the event. Identifying me, looking up my address and sending four police officers to question me in corridor of my flat and in front of my family for attending a small, peaceful gathering in what is meant to be a free speech park – it was not a regular friendly visit. Was it intimidation? You judge. I did not attend the protest last Saturday, although I want very much my unhappiness of water bill hike announced in the parliament recently. The police investigation is still ongoing as I had not received any closure on the matter – a policy of leaving you hanging or hang you?

I pulled the record from my FB post on 14 November of the incident:
Police officer: Are you aware that holding in public Malaysian flag is an offence?
Me: No (looking incredulous)
Police officer: Under National Emblems Act Chapter 196, shall I read it to you.
Me: no need, i trust Google more
After a while,
Me: Looks like a stupid law to me. Got to change it.
Police officer: we are just investigating accordingly.
Me: I was hoping MPs and Ministers got the chance to read police reports and the statement. Anyway why are athletes allow to display the country flags and run round the stadium when they win?
Police officer: Those are sanctioned events.
Me: You mean events at Hong Lim park is not sanction by the law?
Police officer: we are just investigating
Me: Law must have basis, right? To disallow the display of state flags maybe is to prevent abusing the symbol of the country. We were very respectful of the flags, I was holding it gingerly.
(Finally, the statement go something like this. Not aware of the offence but treated the flags respectfully)

What do you think? Was what happened to Tan Tee Seng meant to “attempt to stoke fears about the use of the Speakers’ Corner”? If so, typical of an ang moh publication to use thr wrong example. LOL

 

Proof that LKY was right to despise media freedom

Sometime back the UK PM made a major speech on Brexit. How the UK papers covered it shows the views of the papers in Brexit:

A brief glance at this week’s headlines gives ample evidence of what psychologists call confirmation bias – the tendency to interpret events in a way that accords with pre-existing prejudices.

…

Wednesday’s front pages alone provide ample evidence of the way the same events are interpreted in wildly different ways by different newspapers – always and without fail in accordance with their prejudices.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-38666066

And how readers are manipulated:

The Telegraph and the Guardian use similar pictures but by using a much tighter crop, a blue background and a positive headline, the Telegraph seem to endorse the prime minister; whereas the Guardian seem to issue scepticism about her chances of success. Interestingly, the Financial Times, which like the Guardian backed Remain, also uses exactly the same picture, albeit with a different crop. Their headline, being longer than most of the others, equivocates.

 

Police’s feelings very easily bruised LOL

What a bunch of wiltering flowers. No wonder kanna whacked by FTs in Little India a few yrs ago. Shortly after a scathing commission of enquiry (headed by a retired judge) report, the Police Commissioner (a scholar) retired.

Police were upset over a Reuters report that said, “The organizers of Saturday’s protest said more people would have turned up if they had not feared a police crackdown.” (My take on that protest.)

A police statement was quoted by Channel NewsAsia as claiming that the article “was clearly an attempt to stoke fears about the use of the Speakers’ Corner and sow distrust of the police.”

I don’t often agree with ang moh tua kee Kirsten Han but she is absolutely correct to say (on FB) that

If a couple of short paragraphs in a news article can damage public trust in the police force then we have much bigger problems than a Reuters report.

She also attached this report: https://sg.news.yahoo.com/singapore-says-reuters-report-water-price-protest-misleading-201625008–business.html

My Facebook avatar’s take of the police sensitivity was:

Juz feeling sensitive after this in this week’s E http://www.economist.com/…/21718571-three-protesters…? Will be calling E’s office later today to report that I did not receive it last Friday. lol

I’ll leave the last word to Melvin Chong who pointedly pointed out

There is no need for anyone to sow distrust of the police when they are fully capable of doing it on their own.

 LOL. Sad

The real size of the water protest rally/ Where are the cybernuts?

More than 100 people gathered in Singapore’s Speakers’ Corner on Saturday for a rare protest against a government plan to hike water prices that has stirred discontent over sluggish economic growth and rising unemployment in the city-state.

Reuters

I hope Dr Paul, one of the speakers at the rally, and a numbers man is not disappointed at the size of the crowd.

Relative to our population, the crowd size is more than 12,000.

(The reasoning for this)

Still too bad that none of the KPKBing cybernuts screaming and ranting at the price hike didn’t bother to turn up. They could have made a difference. Gibert Goh’s first two immigration protests each drew a crowd of 5000. This worked out to be about 58,000 S’poreans at each protest. That got the PAP administration to wake up its ideas a little.

AI are us

Dr Yasseri says he has discovered bots behave differently in different environments. He reckons, for instance, that an AI that makes a driverless car work on a German autobahn could struggle on Italian roads where the cars are driven by Italian bots with rather different cultural norms.

BBC report

Tragedy shows up the BS that S’pore moving beyond grades

This tragedy reported on Friday:

The death of an 11-year-old boy, who fell 17 floors from his bedroom window on the day he was to show his parents his mid-year examination results, was found to be “a deliberate act of suicide” on Friday (Oct 21).

In his findings, State Coroner Marvin Bay urged parents and educators to remind children that “their efforts in study may not always yield a commensurate result, and also that such failures are transient or temporary events”.

He added: “Parents and educators should also constantly reassure them that they will always be there to help the child through each stumble, winding turn and setback in their education journey.”

ST

shows up the BS by Dr Lim Lai Cheng*

that

Government policies are moving away from parents and students’ unhealthy obsession with grades and entry to top schools and want to put more emphasis on the importance of values.

Schools have been encouraged, especially for the early elementary years, to scrap standardised examinations and focus on the development of the whole child.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39142030

 

---

*She is executive director of SMU Academy, Singapore Management University, former head of the Raffles Institution in Singapore and consultant on the board of Winter’s International School Finder.

Assistance what assistance?

Lawyers will soon get support from the Government to adopt technology in their law practices, under a new $2.8m scheme launched on Monday (Feb27).

The Tech Start for Law programme will fund up to 70 per cent of the first-year’s cost for technology products in practice management, online research and online marketing for Singapore law firms.

It was jointly announced by the Ministry of Law, the Law Society of Singapore (LawSoc) and Spring Singapore.

ST

LawSoc president Gregory Vijayendran said a recent study commissioned by LawSoc found that only 9% of the small- and medium-sized firms here used technology-enabled productivity tools. He said that cost was key reason for the low adoption rate. (lawyers prefer spending their money on Ferarris isit?

The programme targets the 850 smaller law firms here.

The five technology products identified under the scheme include practice management systems CoreMatter, Lexis Affinity and Clio; online legal research tool Intelllex; and online marketing tool Asia Law Network. These products typically cost firms between $3,000 and $30,000 to adopt.

$2.8 mil to help targeted 850 smaller law firms: so average of $3,294 per law firm. Even if only 774 firms (9% of small firms have spent on IT, see above), each firm gets $3,618. Each can only only one low end product.

Call that help? What a load of BS.

Might as well don’t bother.

But to be fair, lawyers are bad at maths. Juz ask the three lawyer MPs on AHTC who could be on the hook for damages, together with other TC members.

PAPpy upset he kanna called a 30%er

Someone sent me this FB thread from CPF page. Hedeleted his details and that of third parties but left that of PAPpy running dog. PAPpy dog kanna trolled and went bananas. PAppy guy is in SAF it seems

XXX Hey 37% is not “small”. It’s more than a third of salary.

 

RayWing Ng 17% is not exactly your salary. It’s your employer’s contribution to your CPF.

And yes, it is a lot of savings to help you in your retirement.

 XXX Employers take account of employers’ contribution when offering pay packages. Total package.

RayWing Ng See if your foreigner colleague working the same job is drawing 17% higher than you.

 

 XXX What has that to do with the price of eggs?

RayWing Ng XXX

Try to stay relevant.

XXX U are the one that strayed off topic. I ask what relevance has yr foreigner comment has? And u tell me to stay relevant. Please leh. I don’t know where u worked or are working but I worked in an MNC (stopped working yrs ago) where the employer took account of what he paid out to me versus what I brought in as revenue when it came to pay package. Same as my FT counterparts.

 XXX And when I worked overseas, excluding housing allowances etc, my overseas salary reflected my total pay package here.

RayWing Ng And in any case, that savings goes nowhere else; it goes to yourself. So there’s no reason to whine.

YYYY 69.9% don’t know how to manage their cpf the rest suffer.

ZZZZZ Take watever they gve n enjoy life we donno can we wake tmmro moning

XXX RayWing Ng So why govt includes Employers’ CPF pay rise as part of rise in real wages in its economic data if not part of salaries? Wages not salaries isit? Just to point out a fact isn’t whining.

 

XXX Pls go read what I said, not u think I said. But I guess u price taker like retrenched PMETs and rental flat dwellers: real 30% people, not 70% like me. Get yr maths right. And Google Department of Stats + real wages + CPF increase. LOL

[facebook

XXX RayWing Ng BTW, if u price taker (got to take waz offered), then u belong among the 30%. PLs don’t associate yrself with us. Discrace us 70%ers only. LOL.

RayWing Ng

And the rest of my comments about your comment being a whine still stands.

 

 XXX I stand by my comments. Btw, maths skills enabled me to stop work at 50. Maybe u should join the price takers, the 30% losers of retrenched PMETs and HDB rent dwellers. U’ll be happier than with us 70%ers. LOL.

 XXX RE The website specifically says, “including employer contribution”. Once upon a time it gave two numbers, one without employers’ CPF and one without. As I said yr natural nome is with the 30% losers. Don’t associate with us 70%ers.

Don’t be like XXXX

 XXX Don’t be like RayWing Ng a 30% loser readers. He started off by insulting me when I said “37% is not “small”. I made a general comment not on my salary. It’s more than a third of salary”. So he misrepresents from the very beginning. Then when I retaliated he cried foul: real 30%. He’s no 70%er.

 XXX Ray U’ll get F 9 when I report u to your controllers. Ever heard of MAS mystery buyer? I’m Mystery Buyer for the PAP IB. Don’t believe me, wait and see. LOL. Btw, how come u so free? I’m sixty. And retired. And I’ve not even bothered to withdraw from my CPF my surpluses. Because when I was yr age, I was trying and managing to earn serious money. At yr age U still price taker, not a 70%er Anyway, as u are a failed troll. U’ll hear no more from me. Your bosses will be in touch. HeheheHe.

 

Write a reply…

Got to Pay and Pay for personal safety

It’s seldom that I get to know a anti-PAP cybernut in the flesh. But there are exceptions.

Recently I read a headline in ST:

Woman shot 6 times while driving in Penang: 5 other deadly incidents in Malaysia.

---

12.20 pm: I juz read that yesterday, two men tried to swim from  Johor,  and earlier a number of monkeys ran across the Causeway into Johor.

Only monkeys don’t want to live here.

————————————————————————————————-

It reminded me know a real cybernut who only feels safe here.

Three years ago, he told me he was moving to Malaya. Since then he sounded uncomfortable whenever I asked him when he was moving. In December, I met his wife and she told me that they didn;t move because he didn’t feel safe in Malaya. So he decided to stay here.

Btw, she was laughing at him getting all worked up and ranting about the PAP on social media. She said why get worked up but not bother to try to do anything?

He has complained before that she votes for the PAP.

Well with a hubbie like that, God be praised. He’s so bad that when she came into some money recently and I told my mum the fact, my mum said “Hope she keeps the money from him.He’ll squander it.”

She is.

 

The Real Masters of the Universe

Money talks, BS walks: where the real money is made in banking.

In 2016, banks made $209bn from transaction banking, compared with the $172bn made by their trading arms, according to the data, which cover global, regional and local banks. This is almost three times the $77bn that banks made from advising clients on M&A and helping them raise finance. Transaction services also eclipsed lending revenues for every year since 2011.

FT

It was and still is very labour intensive. Fintech will change this. Too bad for the bank staff especially in a hub like S’pore.

 

What the cybenuts don’t tell us about thre F-35/ What about F-22?

This piece https://www.quora.com/What-would-happen-if-the-F-22-were-to-go-up-against-the-F-15 ( Answer: Like killing baby seals) reminded me that a few months ago the cybernuts were KPKBing about S’pore’s “decision” to buy the F-35.

The cybernuts bitched about this plane that S’pore is supposedly interested in buying. They KPKB about the price of close to US$100m a plane, cost over-runs and teething problems. Their day was made recently when president-elect Donald Trump tweeted “The F-35 program and cost is out of control. Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th,” causing shares of its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, to fall.

What they don’t tell us is that the Israelis think it’s a game-changer:

That Trumpian indignation was not shared by Israeli dignitaries at Nevatim. For many days Israeli media and the government alike have been stoking excitement at the imminent arrival of the F-35, known in Israel as the Adir, or “mighty one”. Newspapers have suggested that its range and stealthy design make it a potent weapon should Israel feel the need to strike Iran, for instance in a pre-emptive strike against a nuclear weapons programme. The Jerusalem Post put the arrival of the fighters on its front page, and quoted the commander of the squadron, identified only as Lieutenant Colonel Yotam, saying that the planes were bought “in order to attack places that we are not always able to attack.” The Post added that Israeli Air Force (IAF) pilots had volunteered in interviews in recent weeks that those places include Iran, and noted that the low radar signature of the plane should allow it to evade sophisticated Russian made surface-to-air missile batteries in such countries as Syria and Iran. Some in Israel note that it might rather suit America to learn how the plane copes with Russian missile systems deployed in Syria.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2016/12/mighty-one

As I’ve always said, the PAP is really lucky in people who hate it.

Seriously, what really puzzles me is why don’t we buy the F-22 given that it’s miles ahead of anything the neignbours have or will have: don’t see US selling F-35s to our neighbours. And they’ll be cheaper as the F-35s replace the F-22s in the US armoury.

Minister “keeping a close eye” or “closed eye”?

If Uncle Leong is right there were at least price increases for 10 things in the last nine months or so*.

And taking a dig at Lim Hng Kiang who said “the Government will keep a close eye on business costs to ensure they do not rise excessively”, Uncle Leong asked

“Keeping a close eye” or “closed eye”?

Uncle Leong trying to audition for the PAP comedy stand-up club where Hng Kiang and Tharman are founder members?

Whatever, my take is that the PAP is trying to regain the “Pay And Pay” tag that it tried to shake between 2011 and 2015.

Still want to give them 70% mandate? Keep it at 60% or lower. And it’s easy to do this. All those that voted for Oppo in 2011, but voted for the PAP in 2o15 ingratitude for the goodies that the PAP gave S’poreans using S’poreans’ money should vote for the Oppo again in 2019. Even if that means voting for Goh Meng Seng and TJS.  

———————————————-

*

Here are some recent articles and analysis of these “price increase” issues:

Water – “PUB: $1.1b profits last 7 years – how much last 53 years? (Feb 24, 2017)

Service & Conservancy Charges – “S & CC: A truly caring Govt?” (Feb 17, 2017)

Gas – “City Gas prices to rise by 4.5 per cent from Feb 1” (Jan 31, 2017)

Electricity – “Electricity: One of the highest in the world? (Jan 1, 2017)

Childcare fees – “Fee hikes at 200 childcare centres this year” (Jan 1, 2017)

Parking – “HDB car park rates increase 60%? (Dec 16, 2016)

Rubbish fees – “Rubbish fees up: NEA surplus up 32.9%? (Nov 8, 2016)

University hostel fees – “University hostel fees up 6.8% p.a. despite $1b surplus?” (Jun 28, 2016)

Taxis licensing – “Taxi drivers hit by triple whammy?” (Jun 24, 2016)

Hawkers’ misc fees – “Hawkers’ misc fees increased by ? %? (Jun 22, 2016)

 

Muslims don’t kill Muslims in SE Asia?

The above crossed my mind when I read:

Recent Islamist terrorist attacks in Southeast Asia have been less deadly than in Europe and high-profile strikes against urban targets have become rare,

FT

 

Comfort doesn’t know how to cut costs

Dr Ho calculates that if the firm changed the colour of its entire fleet to yellow, it would, over the course of a year, have to deal with 917 fewer accidents and would save around S$2m ($1.4m).

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21718319-avoid-accidents-flag-down-bananamobile-yellow-cabs-are-less-likely-crash

Yellow cabs are less likely to crash than blue ones, says an NUS study.

Let’s give this PAPpy academic the Hitler salute

No not because Ng Yew-Kwang, Winsemius Professor in Economics, Nanyang Technological University defends the water price hike of 30%, and implies that it should be a lot more.

We should give him the Nazi salute and shout “Heil Hitler” because like Hitler he equates compassion towards animals with compassion to human beings.

The reported parts of my interviews may give the misleading idea that I do not care for the low-income groups. I am certainly not unfeeling. I feel even for animals, not to mention fellow human beings, especially the lower income groups. As a student, I was a left-wing activist.

Over the last 12 months alone, I donated S$50,000 to animal welfare causes, despite being not tax-deductible in Singapore; receipts available upon request. For more evidence of my concern for animals, please read my following articles* (links provided below) on animal welfare.

Well Hitler loved animals, so much so that he was a vegetarian. His deputy and designated successor, Hermann Goring, was an environmentalist and conservationist, and passed anti-vivisection laws.

—————————————————–

Lab animals giving the Nazi salute to Hermann Göring for his order to ban vivisection. Caricature from Kladderadatsch, a satirical journal, September 1933. Göring prohibited vivisection and said that those who “still think they can continue to treat animals as inanimate property” would be sent to concentration camps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_welfare_in_Nazi_Germany

——————————

Now this love of animals didn’t prevent the Nazis from sending six million people to the gas chambers did it?

Am I being a bit unfair to said professor? He later did say

I mentioned that ‘I donated S$50,000 to animal welfare causes’ over the last 12 months alone, in response to the accusation of being ‘unfeeling’. But then I received a message accusing me of ‘care more for animal welfare than the welfare of your fellow [human]beings’. Though I did not mention it, actually I donated much more to human causes; just in last October, I (together with my wife) donated $100,000 to the Chinese Heritage Centre alone (again receipt available upon request; I emailed it to the accuser). I could be accused of human-biased (or homocentric to some extent), not of caring less for humans.

I didn’t know that the Chinese Heritage Centre helped “the lower income groups”. Did you?

Sieg Hail to the professor. Hitler and Goering would be proud to have him on their team. They too, like him, loved heritage.

Rich kids ALWAYs get into better schools

In England, state secondary schools cannot select their pupils on the basis of academic prowess (and no such thing as PSLE even though our PSLE is based on an ancient English exam, “eleven plus” to separate the clever kids from the not so clever) and must follow strict rules to ensure fair access to school places.

Yet

On the day that families in England and Wales are allocated secondary school places, research shows that the richest children dominate top state schools.

Analysis of data shows 43% of pupils at England’s outstanding secondaries are from the wealthiest 20% of families.

The study from education charity Teach First also shows poorer pupils are half as likely as the richest to be heading to an outstanding secondary school.

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-39076204

So want to give your kids an edge? Make money, serious money or inherit it.

LOL.

 

Watergate: PUB got consumption figures all wrong?

Maybe it’s not all politics when contrasting the 30% hike with what VivianB said in 2015 about water being priced correctly: there was no need to change the price because PUB has improvements in membrane tech and productivity and that the water tariff and WCT reflected the scarcity of water.

I just remembered that for several years our water bill halved and then dropped to almost zero. We didn’t notice at first because we pay via giro. What we did notice was that the metre man coming more regularly. So we started looking at the bills. And found that we were really conserving water although we couldn’t think where we reduced our usage.

One day in 2015 (I think), the metre man took a photo of our metre and told my mum that technically that we had consumed no water since his last visit several months previously. He asked if we had moved out and then returned. We hadn’t.

Shortly thereafter we got a new metre. And our bills doubled or tripled.

Now if it happened to one metre, it could have happened to tens of thousands. My mum tells me she didn’t think PUB ever replaced the metre since we moved in in the early 60s.

Look at this chart that shows water usage showed a rise in per capita terms in 2015 after declining for many a year.

https://data.gov.sg/dataset/water-demand-domestic-water-consumption-per-capita

Now what if part of the decline prior to 2014 had been caused not by falling consumption per capita but by metres failing to record the “right” amounts of water consumed, and the jump in consumption post 2014 was due to new metres working properly?

Remember that problems the public transport system is facing because the SMRT tracks were not properly maintained? Could bad metre replacement maintenance have caused the PUB to get our water consumption figures wrong?

 

Eat yr heart out PAP ministers and MPs

The really rich

Chinese Lawmakers’ Wallets Give Sweden’s G.D.P. a Run for Its Money

By SUI-LEE WEE

The combined fortune of the wealthiest members of China’s Parliament, or the National People’s Congress, and its advisory body amounts to $500 billion.

NYT Dealbook

 

 

Watergate: All about fleecing the sheep

Because even efficient users of water face 30% increase.

---

If God did not want them sheared, He would not have made them sheep.

PAP Bandit leader talking about why his gang takes advantage of peasants  (From The Magnificent 7). A bit like natural aristocrats having serfs to serve them.

———————————————————–

“The consumer must feel the price of water, realise how valuable water is in Singapore, every time he or she turns on the tap, right from the first drop,” says water minister Masagos Zulkifli.

So taz why even thrifty users of water kanna whacked. They too are sheep to be sheared in the eyes of Masagos Zulkifli.

Let me explain.

Someone showed me his water bill. His household’s water consumption is only 44% of the national average (water bill says so). But the household too will be hit by the 30% increase, and will get no rebate cause they live in a terrace house. Admittedly it’s “peanuts” ($9 a month), and their life-styles will not be crimped. Juz means no subscription i.e. donation ($36 a year) to Terry’s Online Channel and donation to SPCA ($120 a year), he laughed.

But still getting a household that uses water so efficiently (44% of national average) to pay so much more in absolute terms is ridiculous because the householders don’t waste water and one major justification of the 30% hike is to make users of water realise how much they are wasting.

Why whack efficient users of water in that case also?

Why must they “feel the price of water, realise how valuable water is in Singapore, every time he or she turns on the tap, right from the first drop.”

So that ministeras can be paid a million dollars each isit?

If God did not want them sheared, He would not have made them sheep.

is what Masagos Zulkifli should have said.

 

 

Hilary’s newspaper trying hard to talk market down

And failing.

Sad ))

From NYT’s Dealbook

the stock market surged to another high, helped by expectations of tax cuts, looser regulations and higher interest rates under the Trump administration. The optimism on Wall Street has also been helped by sunnier economic data.

But there are some things to keep in mind about the rally and the so-called Trump bump, Neil Irwin notes. The economy is closing in on its full productive capacity. And if the government tries to increase deficits at a time of full employment, it could lead to higher inflation and higher interest rates, crowding out investment.

The signs point to the increasing likelihood of higher interest rates.

William C. Dudley, the president of the New York Fed, said in a CNN interview that it would be fair to assume that the central bank would raise interest rates sooner rather than later because the economy was improving. The Wall Street Journal reported that Lael Brainard, a Fed governor, had said in a speech at Harvard University that, “We are closing in on full employment, inflation is moving gradually toward our target, foreign growth is on more solid footing and risks to the outlook are as close to balanced as they have been in some time.”

Otters, Watergate: What’s worth of ministers’ parly statements?

I recently wrote that I was afraid for our Bishan otters because

a population of five in mid 2015, has expanded to 14 in about two years. By the end of 2018, there’ll be 10 sexually mature otters. They won’t be stopping at two for sure.

And

what happened at Sing Ming can happen to the Bishan otters because based on what happened to wild pigs and the fowl, the default mode at AVA to any animal problem is “Cull first, ask questions and BS later”.

So it was really nice that on Tuesday, a junior minister made it clear that

The culling of animals is only a “very small part” of the overall work of the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA), and it does not track the expenditure it incurs on doing so, said Senior Minister of State for National Development Desmond Lee.

Answering a question in Parliament on Tuesday (Feb 28), Mr Lee said AVA takes a multi-pronged approach to manage the animal population and mitigate health and safety concerns. It first undertakes a professional assessment of potential threats that animals might pose to public health and safety, he explained, and AVA will have to act if there “significant health and safety concerns”.

“Where feasible, it will work with stakeholders, including the animal welfare groups and organisations like Wildlife Reserves Singapore, to relocate and rehome these animals,” said Mr Lee. “Culling is used only as a last resort.”

In response to a clarification from Member of Parliament Louis Ng, Mr Lee added that AVA’s total budget for animal management operations for 2016 was S$800,000.

CNA

But then I learnt that VivianB had said in parly in 2015 (juz before GE) that there was no need to change the price of water because of PUB’s improvements in membrane tech and productivity and that the water tariff and WCT reflected the scarcity of water.

But we now know 18 months later than that isn’t true any more (Wah facts change so fast? Can tell us what changed? Or cock-up somewhere? Or 2015 statement was “political”?) and that the price of water will be 30% more because of the cost of producing water and to reflect the scarcity of water.

———————————

“The consumer must feel the price of water, realise how valuable water is in Singapore, every time he or she turns on the tap, right from the first drop,” says Water minister Masagos Zulkifli.

————————————————-

So we can’t trust the word of a PAP minister even when he makes a statement in parly.

Sad.

Watergate: MIW caught with pants down

PAPpies and their running dogs in the constructive, nation-building media and academia and on social media say that the price of water hasn’t been changed for years, so we shouldn’t be getting worked up about the 30% hike (peanuts, really).

But 18 months ago, VivianB said (see below) there was no need to change the price because PUB has improvements in membrane tech and productivity and that the water tariff and WCT reflect the scarcity of water.

So what has changed in 18 months?

Either in 2015 (before GE) the PAP administration didn’t do their homework leading a minster to mislead S’poreans and parly, or in 2017 the cabinet didn’t read what the then minister said in 2015 when making the decision to raise prices.

But then maybe before GE 2015, PAP wanted to get rid of its “Pay and Pay” tag?

Kudos to whoever originally dug this up. I think it is Chen Jiaxi Bernard, a WP man. Well done.

Oz is the place if u got money

Egalitarianism is dead in Oz.

From NYT Dealbook

INSIDE WEALTH

For Millionaire Immigrants, a Global Welcome Mat

By ROBERT FRANK

There is one category of migrants that countries embrace: the very rich. And more of them are moving than ever. Their top destination? Australia.

One Indian enough leh

Not enough Malays.

Taz what I tot when I read some pretentious BS from TMG

Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean emphasised the need to be “forward-looking”.

Much was made of the composition of his team members, younger ministers whom he brought along to build ties with their generational counterparts in China. In the old fold were Ministers Lim Hng Kiang and Dr Vivian Balakrishnan. Cabinet ministers in the young set were Ms Grace Fu, Mr Chan Chun Sing, Mr Lawrence Wong, Mr Ng Chee Meng and Mr Ong Ye Kung. The second liners or junior ministers were Dr Amy Khor (although she can be considered as part of the old fold), Mrs Josephine Teo, Ms Sim Ann and Dr Koh Poh Koon.

Perhaps, he should have brought along a young non-Chinese as well, to make the point that Singapore is multi-racial society that won’t dance to the Chinese tune, now as well as in the future.

http://themiddleground.sg/2017/02/28/was-justice-done/