Fifth straight hikes in Electricity prices

'Electricity prices will rise by an average of 2.4 per cent this quarter – from 1 July to 30 September. The new rate for households will be 24.13 cents per kWh, up from last quarter’s 23.56 cents per kWh. This is the fifth straight quarterly rise in electricity rates. Compared to Apr 2009, electricity tariff for households has increased by 33.8 per cent.' The above was copied from Temasek Review.

To celebrate or to kick asses?

HDB resale prices up another 3.8% for the second quarter. Private housing up 5.2% for the same period. Analysts are revising the annual increase to 12-15%. This means that HDB owners will have a paper gain of more than 10%. A $500k property will appreciate by $50k, $400k property by $40k. Correspondingly the property tax next year will be up. To keep pace with the rapid rise in price of HDB flats, buyers must have pay increases of the same percentage just to stay even. Those who have lower pay increases will find the price running away faster. For existing HDB owners, getting paper windfalls, shall they celebrate or cry? For those who have to buy resale flats, there is only one option, pay more. So, shall the Minister in charge of housing be given a big bonus or a big kick in his ass? It all depends on whether one is benefitting from this glorious rise in prices or having to pay more.

Affordable Sultan Fish

'...a 35-year-old diner, Mr Liu, and four friends who feasted on a steamed fish dish called the white sultan fish at the high-end Feng Shui Inn restaurant on June 12 at Resorts World Sentosa (RWS). ' This is quoted from Yahoo News. Wow, Singaporeans are truly one of the richest people in the world. A 1.8kg fish, called Sultan Fish and reputed to have silky white meat that tasted like fruits cost S$1,224! The fish is noted to be vegetarian as it eats fruits fallen from trees. That is why it is so exquisite in taste and price. Each mouthful will cost $100! Must be more expensive than the best caviar.

Getting carried away with delirium

A housing agent, Vincent Kang, was so piss off with the way the policy on public housing is heading that he wrong a personal letter to the Today forum to vent his anger. To him, and I agree with him, public housing is to provide a roof over the heads of the average citizens that could not speculate on properties to get rich. That was the original objective which people were generally happy with though there were a few of grouses for not being able to speculate with public housing. Now, when the policy has changed, anger is coming out instead of grouses. For every dollar someone speculates on and profits, someone is gonna pay for it. And that someone is also a Singaporean. The down spiralling of a good policy started when things got to go wrong, when CPF savings was not enough, high cost of housing and high cost of living. This led to finding new ways to squeeze money from nowhere. So the most precious item, the HDB flats, become a commodity, to be traded, to be used to generate income, to keep up with the high cost of living. Some thought it was clever. And clever it was indeed. Those who profitted were laughing, for a short while. Then when the little windfall was not enough, they could end up living in the beaches or the parks High public housing prices and high cost of living are never good. They put stresses and demands for higher income to sustain the useless and unproductive assets appreciation. The people must not be misled into thinking that they are wealthy when in fact they got poorer instead.

When god did the darnest thing

More than 20 years had passed since the Marxist Conspiracy gang were arrested. They were mostly young professionals in their late twenties and thirties. I think all have been released with a few abandoning this shore for good. And it is quite unbelieveable that Teo Soh Lung was allowed to write a book, 'Beyond the Blue Gate', about the whole sordid affair, got it printed and published here. There was also a book launching ceremony where some of her previous conspirators and well wishers were present. This must be a sign of civility, maturity. With age and growing confidence, people tend to become more comfortable and less reactionary, and less hysterical over schemes and conspiracies. Wisdom or trying to bury the hatchet? The Marxist Conspirators are now given a chance to tell their side of the story. Maybe the authority should also tell its side of the full story, on why this group of young conspirators were so dangerous and needed to be put away at the prime of their lives. Were they so dangerous that leaving them to conspire in the open could destroy the country or a threat to national security? The book was launched and the reaction from the public was a mute nonchalance disquiet, or disinterest. There was no revolution, no public outcry, no street demonstration. Hardly anyone care a dime of what actually happened. The open wound is up for dressing and will heal. But will there be forgiveness and reconcilation? Can the human beans forgive if god had done the darnest thing?

What kind of stupid values do we want to impart?

The advert on the abusive and unreasonable grandmother is getting praises daily in the media. The part on filial piety and looking after the parents is reasonable. But shall we encourage the oldies to be abusive, unreasonable, difficult and be a bully? In the early days of ignorance and feudal values, many suffered very badly under very harsh and authoritative oldies. Being abused, ill treated, beaten, starved, ostracised etc were very common. The oldies saw it as their right. Can modern society continue to accept such abuses and cruelties inflicted by the oldies and to accept them meekly as filial piety? Only a feudal mind, unemancipated mind, a sick mind, could sing praises on such bad practices. To respect and care for the oldies are good things. But they cannot be taken for granted as a given. Oldies that are suffering from dementia or mental illnesses are exceptions. But oldies that are still vivid in their mind processes have to behave reasonably. It is not a right to abuse the children or grandchildren. And it is not their damn right to abuse daughter in laws. Such oldies need to be bungled and sent to some desolate homes to throw their tantrums and be difficult with whoever they want. It is oppression and mental torture to the victims of such abuses.

No more joblessness

The most happy piece of news today is that job applicants are turning down job offers and waiting for jobs that are paying more and with better benefits. It is now an employee's market and organisations looking for employees would have to pay more if they want to get a worker. This shall be good news for the oldies as well. Those oldies who are still unemployed can go job hunting again. Just tell the employers that they don't mind being paid a little lesser than the yuppies. I am going to find my resumes and try sending them out. Maybe I can land a job paying half a million if the incumbent is getting $1m. I can survive with half of that. Gilbert Goh's blog on unemployment in Singapore is going to be history. Happy times are here again.

So long never heard of CPIB

It has been quite a long while since we last heard of CPIB. Today there is a report involving a police officer taking bribes of $300 a month for facilitating the operation of a massage parlour. Actually it is not like that. The police officer was paying rather than receiving. He paid someone to stand in for him in getting a massage parlour licence. The lack of CPIB in the news is good news. It is the best statement that corruption has been totally wiped out, or nearly wiped out from this place. We are very clean. No more corruption, especially in high places. Another feather in our cap.

The Australians are dumb for sure

This is what the new PM Gillard said. "I think we want an Australia that is sustainable. This place is our sanctuary, our home." And this is what Labor politician Kelvin Thomson said. "Australians have expressed their concern about the impact of rising population on food and water supplies, on rising housing affordability, on traffic congestion, on the quality of life in our cities, on carbon emissions and on our endangered wildlife." I don't believe that the Australians could not cope with doubling their population with a continent that they have. It is not an island like the place called Singapore. They are worried about rising cost of living, food, water supplies, housing affordability, traffic congestion, quality of life, endangering wildlife? Come on, please come to Singapore and we will show you how to do it. We have solved all these problems and are going to keep on increasing our population. You see, rising population means economic growth. Stop the population growth is stopping economic growth, which is a nightmare. After 6 million, we will be talking about 10 million. And housing is a piece of cake. Our public flats are so affordable. Now they are talking about capping it at $1,000 psf or it will go higher. But no worry. The people are rich and will be able to pay for them. The Australians must send their govt officials here to study how we did it. Maybe we can loan them some of our super talents. But they must be able to afford to pay for them. Nothing is for free.

Selling in bits or all in one go

What is the difference in selling our land to foreigners in bits and pieces or all at one go? At the rate we are selling them, it is just a matter of time before we hit 20%, 30% or 50% of what we have, if the process is not stopped. I don't think any Singaporean will think that it is acceptable if someone is to announce that we sell 30% or 50% of our land away. Unthinkable. But if the selling is in bits and pieces, 500 sq m here and 1000 sq m there every other day, no one will notice or feel a thing. How much of our freehold residential land is now foreign own? This shall include the high rise freehold properties that can be sold to foreigners as well.

The Americans got it all wrong again

They said big banks that are too big to fail are bad. They are not going to have anything that is too big to fail. Now they have passed another bill of historical proportion since the Great Depression to rein in the free wheeling of Wall Street. They are not going to let their supertalents do as they pleased, to make millions and billions for their organizations and for themselves. This is going to be disastrous as their supertalents will be head hunted to use their talents elsewhere. How stupid can the Americans be? Two wrongs don’t make a right. All their funds will flock to enlightened city like Singapore to do their businesses. Their supertalents will set up bases here. In fact many have already came to this free wheeling financial centre of the East that will soon rival New York and London. And some of the bright financial engineers will do a big merger and acquisition just like Prudential trying to take over AIA. Now, if they do something like this, to create the biggest global bank in the world, they are likely to succeed. Our govt is likely to give them the full blessing. And we will join in the fornication for having the biggest global bank in the world, with no more DBS, UOB or OCBC, maybe no Standard Chartered and HSBC as well. All is one. And it will be a roaring success, a role model bank for the world to salivate. Of course the bankers will be the best paid employees in the world, and be allowed to continue with their free wheeling and dealing operations. It will be so impressive that all the big banks in the world will be dwarfed. Imagine, I am already wet at the thought of it, the biggest global bank operating from here, and the major shareholders are Singaporean entities. We will indeed become the freest and biggest financial centre in the world, the centre of the world. A fleeting dream in Alice's Wonderland.

No property bubble yet!

'Even if we cap our excess, people in Hong Kong, Indonesia, will say, compared to what I have to pay, Singapore is cheap, let's buy it,' he added. 'And apart from landed properties, they can buy into any condos.' Mr Lee, who was speaking at a dinner hosted by the Association of Banks in Singapore, said that the Government is convinced that there is real underlying demand for residential property. 'So it's probably not a bubble yet,' he added. The above comments by MM was reported in the ST. So foreigners want to buy even at much higher prices and we sell. They can buy into landed properties and condos. Would their buying raise the prices of other properties and in turn raise the cost of living here? Just because they want to buy, must we sell? Who sets the rules to allow them to buy condos and landed properties? Are these rules good for Singaporeans? For sure, it is good for developers and taxes. My gut feel is that one day we will regret this thoughtless selling of our precious land to foreigners. By then it will be too late to unwind the clock. And we can't do it like Mahathir, introduce laws to be effective retrospectively. Once the land is sold, freehold land, it is gone forever.

Britain and Australia curbing entry of new citizens

They cannot afford to keep growing their populations. Both are little islands and have limited space and they fear that land will run out on them. The Australians are particularly worried that the people in the Gold Coast got no where to go if more new citizens are minted. And the Big Australia policy of Kevin Rudd was his down fall, for wanting to bring in more migrants. Maybe we shall offer our supertalents as their consultants on how to squeeze more people into every inch of their precious little islands. Australia, if under our management, could easily take in another 1 billion new citizens quite easily. Another revelation is that the majority of the migrants are Europeans. Asians are still restricted. And Britain is taking one step further to only allow Europeans into their little island. Africans and Asians got to wait long long now. We can capitalise on the restrictions in Britain and Australia and open our door wider. Immigrants that can't go to them can apply to come here. Our island has more space for them and we welcome them with open arms.

Brace up for more floods

Floods are unavoidable. We had three real big ones recently starting from the Bukit Timah flood to Orchard Road and last Friday's across the island. Why should we be looking for more floods? First it is unavoidable. Two, as we keep building up infrastructure, to provide for 6 million population, more land will be needed. But land for big canals is expensive and not productive. So if we will plan for a city of 6m million or more but skimp on drainage, flood will happen and more will happen. Can we really cope with 6 million people if we can't provide land for drainage? Or that is something that we have to live with, big floods to become our daily routine?

HDB cleared PAP activist

Sinha Shekhar, an outspoken PAP activist and one of the good catch from the new citizen pool, has been cleared by HDB for subletting his HDB flat. He has asked for HDB's permission and has qualified under the number of years of occupation to sublet his flat. He is now living in his private property and let out his HDB flat. I also read somewhere that HDB's ruling requires the owner of both a private property and a HDB flat to physically live in the HDB flat. If this is the condition, Sinha must live in his HDB flat and rent out his private property and not the other way round. Can someone confirm on this as it means he is either contravening HDB rulings or he is not.

Something is not working

I was not working, took a little break and just came back. Heard that there was a heavy downpour this morning, and a pleasant surprise, no flooding. Is the system working or the amount of rainfall fell short of the 100mm in less than 3 hours? It seems that we have had two of such 100mm rain within 2 hours and flooding occurred. I still remember someone saying that the Marina Barrage is not only a reservoir but a flood control system and that there would be no more floods. It is a very expensive piece of equipment and it better works. And I think it is supposed to work in auto mode, or is it? Maybe the parameters were wrongly set and thus it did not trigger to release water from the Marina Bay Reservoir fast enough, or enough in volume to avoid the flood. or maybe there have reset it right now and this morning's rain would be easily taken care of by the system. Or maybe we have an expensive piece of equipment but failed by the minor blockages of culverts and drains here and there. Let's hope that another 100mm rainfall within a few hours will not do the same damage again. I was shocked by the picture of Bishan Park.

A better advert

This one is about filial piety. The mother was curt, aloof, insensitive, rude, abusive, arrogant etc etc. The son was so filial and pampered her with tender loving care despite her ill treating and bullying his wife, the daughter in law, in front of his son. The daughter in law suffered in silence like all good and suffering daughters in law were supposed to be. The grandson could not take the bullying and abusing thrown at her mother but were convinced by his father that the grandmother took very good care of him when she was his mother. There were gratitude and filial piety all thrown together. The moral of the story is that grandmother can be abusive and disgusting as long as she had taken good care of her son. Daughter in law must take the abuses and ill treatments and suffer in silence to be exemplary. And grandson should not be thoughtless and must appreciate that the grandmother was once good. Oldies can be arrogant, rude, abusive and must be tolerated. My moral of the story, don't ever marry a filial son unless you want to suffer in silence.

Where is the next flood?

There is a heavy down pour going on now. Are we going to see another flash flood in some corners of town? Haha, not in a million years.

City of the World

Take one step further, as suggested by Matilah, do away with citizenship and race. We should seriously consider taking a dramatic leap to the future, of Citizens of the World, where nationality no longer exists, and racial differences be erased. We shall be the innovator of the new world and show the world what it should be. How people of different races can live and co exist peacefully and happily. Since we have come this far to open up our country to everyone, why not make our city the City of the World and our citizens the Citizens of the World, in short, COW? In such a city, everyone is a citizen, equal, no nationality, but a world citizen. All the ablest can come and reside here. They can even stand for election to be part of the govt as long as they are good enough to be elected. No protection for any group, no quotas or restrictions. And no need for citizen soldiers or NS. We just employ mercenaries to guard this place, and pay them well as deserving mercenaries. The economy will be completely open and free, the ideal laissez faire for the entrepreneurs and biz people to be at their best. No govt intervention. The govt shall leave the people alone to do what they are good at and those not able to shall find their own means to support themselves. They are free to go anywhere else, and the able and clever ones can come and replace them. This will be the best experiment for this island, to show the countries of the world what the new world can be. No petty differences to quarrel about, no race and no nationality. And no social welfare. The only guarantee is one's ability to look after oneself. The COWs will be the richest and happiest people in the world. A role model of free enterprise, a role model for living happily together regardless of race and nationality. I don't think religion can be erased, so the COWs can practise their religions freely. I admit this last one is hard to please and may be disturbing with more religious conflicts. But let our mercenary soldiers and police deal with them. Welcome to the city of Cows.

Best advert on TV

Lately there is a very exciting advertisement on TV. I think it is in Channel 8. It goes something like this. A celebrity asking a young girl if it was her boy friend's birthday and whether she needed a birthday gift. Then she recommended her to go to a pawn shop to get some loan for the gift. Given that we are in the midst of the Big Singapore Sale, it sure fits into the spending mood of the shoppers nicely. Now not only they can shop with credit cards, there is also the pawn shops available. Good for the economy. And an attestment to our shopping culture.