is cess still relevant?

CESS With the GST going to 7 %, is CESS still relevant? CESS is a taxed levied on the customer in tourist related establishment eg hotels and restaurants. This is 1%, and GST is going 7% and service charge another 10%, giving a total of 18% to the total bill.

citizen lee firing away

Choktong supports the debate between Citizen Lee and Philip Yeo. It is an intellectual debate just like when Catherine Lim did once but unfortunately that was not the right time for debate. At that time she talked about the 'affective divide' between govt and the people. Maybe this time Citizen Lee could bridge this divide and bring the govt closer to the people. One thing for sure, she is not going to get a dressing down. Nor would she take is lightly should anyone tries to do so. I am looking forward for more of such intellectual debates especially from the luminaries, the academics from the world best institutions in this island. Would we here from them about the 6.5 million population?

myth 111

Singaporeans need GPS to get around Global Positioning System using satellite and leading edge technology is now a standard feature in Singapore cars. And handphones and smartphones are also increasingly incorporating this feature in them. Singaporeans will be lost in the streets of Singapore. And the situation will be more critical when we are fully built with a 6.5 million population. Getting around Singapore will need the assistance of a GPS. Let me see, how do I get to Orchard Road or Raffles Place? Which button to press? Oops, I have overshot. Now which road to take to return to Orchard Road? But it is a very powerful and handy tool. At least it allows the Singaporeans to save some space in their overused brains for more important things like calculating the odds of a football match or figurine the next Toto numbers. Now there is no need to remember anything, or at least the location of the supermarket or the HDB block of their in laws. Just switch on the GPS and it will take them there. And getting lost in MacRitchie Reservoir or Sengkang will be a problem of the past. Hail the new technology. Hail the GPS.

dual citizenship

What about amending our laws and allowed dual citizenship? This topic was raised by countdown in the YPAP forum. And looking at it again, there are many merits with such a proposition. We can become Singaporean/Malaysian, Singaporean/Indonesian, Singaporean/Indian, Singaporean/Chinese, and the more popular alternatives like Singaporean/American, Singaporean/British or Singaporean/Australian. The immediate result is that we can have 10 million or 20 million population instantly. No need to wait for another 20 years to hit 6.5 million. And all the Singaporeans longing to be international citizens too will have their wishes granted. Singaporeans with dual citizenship can live and play and work anywhere we want. We will be truly International. The world will be our playground. And we will no longer be short of foreign talents. Provided other countries want us. Otherwise the Malaysians, Indonesians, Chinese and Indians will be here as our citizens but we cannot go over as their citizens. They can come here and work and play and return home. But we cannot do likewise in their countries.

A cram HDB flat or a spacious landed property

Greed is a very powerful motivating force to drive individual enterprise, for the good of self, and if lucky, a little sharing for others. Up to a point, greed is good and necessary for progress, for the accumulation of wealth and knowledge, and wisdom, and everything else. It only becomes a danger when it loses its focus and becomes an end in itself. It is like being choke to death by a mouthful of rice, or a bridge too far, over reached, and all came tumbling down. A nation is just like an individual. It is good to grow and grow and grow. But when growth is blindly pursued, it becomes like greed. It is going to cross a threshold when it will destroy everything that is being built. We have grown and prosper over the years, done very well in many things. But the last few years have seen the cracks appearing. In spite of the rapid growth and wealth all around us, why is it that there are so many miseries and pain? Are we pursuing growth for the sake of growth or for the wellbeing of the people? Now this new target of 6.5 million population. I believe the thinkers and planners have done their homework well and statistically and theoretically proven that this is the idea number for this island. The optimum level as the economic model will show. But economic models and optimum points are all dependent on a certain set of variables. When new variables appear, the whole model may collapse. Big is good. So is small. So is medium. Each has its strength and weaknesses. Every size has a place in this world, just like the animal kingdom, there is a place for all sizes. We should tread this new goal of 6.5 millions carefully. Is there a need to push our limited resources to breaking point? Our limited land and natural resources and geography will be a natural and physical barrier to how far we can stretch ourselves. Once over extended through our own greed, it is like digging our own grave. The financial crisis over the last decade has brought us down to earth and many prices, especially properties, down to earth as well. There must be a real reassessment of not pushing the limits and consolidate on building better quality life for more of our people. Should we continue to strive to push further so that our rich can be richer than the rich of the world while our lower and middle income groups are gasping for air to survive? Shall we stretch our limited physical and human resources to exhaust all our reserves in our frantic drive to hit the 6.5 million population which I can imagine must be the ideal paradise, and then call it a day. That’s it, we have hit the 6.5 million population and that is the end of life, and this nation will go on auto pilot and we can rest on our laurels? In the past, we had followed the wisdom of driving as fast as we could when relations with our neighbours were good and the world economy was good. But those building of infrastructure and reserves are very different from trying to almost doubling our population and stress our little piece of poor mother earth. I can hear mother earth crying. Say when we build and hit the 6.5 million and then the economy was revisited by another financial crisis with job losses everywhere. How are we going to cope with 6.5 million people and the properties that come with them, the high cost of super structures to be maintained? All the property prices will collapse with many left vacant, many unemployed, many unable to service their daily living cost. It is not simply asking the foreigners to go home or the locals to keep on paying. We should let our population grow naturally instead of grabbing everything that comes along just to be 6.5 million as fast as we can.