Step aside SIA, DBS, Temasek!

You are all small boys in the big league. You have tried so hard, think so hard, employed the best money can buy from the world. You have the best super talents to do the sums. How much are you making together? $5b, $10b? Petronas made $24.4b just simply pumping oil from the ground. No need to work so hard, think so much, hair all turning white, and taking great risks. And they are raising petrol pump prices by 41%! They cannot afford to subsidise their people because everyone is not subsidising. Err, not exactly. Everyone is the non oil producing countries or net oil importers. For the oil producers, some are selling oil to their people for less than US 30c per gallon. No wonder the Malaysians are protesting. What a lucky country! Only unfortunate thing is that the leaders are not thinking. People cut subsidies they also must cut subsidies.

Please exploit me, please!

Exploiting the poor if organ trading is allowed is the most popular reason so far to ban such trades. The poor will not know what they are doing and the rich, the middle men, the thugs, all will target them for their organs. They will be hunted down, cheated, kidnapped, murdered etc just for their organs. Here this poor guy is pleading to be exploited. He has two aged parents, an uneducated wife and 4 young children. He does odd jobs and tends to a small patch of land for vegetables, and a small chicken coop for eggs and meat. Their home is a broken wooden shed that barely shields them from the elements. Having 3 meals a day is a problem. And the children are unlikely to go to school. He is willing to exchange his kidney for $30k which he could build a nice decent house for his family. He could put food on the table for the next 20 years. He could clothe them and send his children to school, buy a bigger piece of land to farm. He is pleading for someone who is kind enough to buy his kidney. He is pleading to be exploited to give his family a better life. Please help him. Or don't help him. Tell him selling his kidney is bad for him. Tell him that the govt is protecting him and his family from being exploited. Tell him to keep his organ. It is good for him. He goes down on his knees, crying, 'Please, please exploit me, do a good deed to help my family. My children are hungry. I want to send them to school. I want to buy them new clothes to wear, shoes etc.'

Another fake exposed!

After Joakim Kang and Durai, now Shi Ming Yi. And we have the names of the Catholic Church, the NKF and Ren Ci all dragged into the mud. How many more fakes are there waiting to be exposed? Are we really what we are, pristine, clean and incorruptible? Or are we waiting for time to tell the ugly truth? I hope this will be the last of the fakes. But I know that this will not be the last. What is happening in paradise? Or should we take it as part and parcel of the tooth in paradise and move on?

Workers' right to ask for more pay

Hong Wai Leng wrote to ST forum saying that it is the right of workers to ask for more pay. This is only natural and it is the right of management to decide to give or not depending on the business and their ability to pay. To tell management not to give pay rise to workers because it will lead to inflation is pure nonsense. And she went on further. Why didn't the minister tell the oil companies not to raise petrol prices, the govt not to have more ERPs, govt services not to raise their fees, as all these must lead to inflation? Good questions. Very good questions. The govt is elected by the people for the people. Obviously someone has forgotten this.

After debating, murder also can...

We should encourage more debate on the organ trading issues. And after the debate, whatever the decisions we take, at least we can claim that we have discussed it thoroughly and not based on gut feel. Then we can close the topic, satisfied that we have done what was needed. Is this good enough? If the decision is not to allow organ trading, many kidney failure patients will continue to die, will continue to wait to die. Have we done justice to them? Then the very desperate poor who want to sacrifice to better their families' lives, are we closing the little window that can give them a better life and be happy about it? We have decided, the not involved party, distinterested party, the neutral party with no vested interest in the process, must be the best people to make the decision. Is this so? There is a saying, if you have not lived in the other person's shoe, you do not know what you are talking about.