9/19/2008

The pathetic being of politicians

The politicians are the leaders of the people. The honourable and righteous role model to be respected by the people. And rightly so, they shall not be objects of ridicules. They have big missions and noble roles to play in any society. And when they play their roles well, they will be held in high esteem, to be remembered in perpetuity in the history books. Why is it that politicians can become pathetic and lose the respect of the people? How could they land in a situation when they become a mockery or jokes in private parties? They will if they allow personal or non national interests to rule their thinking and policies. A good case is the arrest of journalists and parliamentarians in Malaysia. When they could not find any good reasons to arrest the opposition or critics, they threw the ISA at them. And what have these people done to be arrested? And the most ridiculous of all is for the Home Minister to turn around and said the arrest was to protect the journalist from harm. And Anwar Ibrahim is now pronounced as a threat to national security. This means that he can be arrested under ISA. For what? For having the majority of MPs to qualify to form the govt and replace the current govt? It is so easy to call anyone names or hang a security threat placard on anyone's neck and put that person in prison. A dog is a fish. Yes, a fish got two eyes. A dog also got two eyes. A fish got a tail, a dog too got a tail. You still don't believe that at dog is a fish? A fish can swim. Yes a dog can swim too. So a dog must be a fish. This kind of cock talk can only come from arrogant politicians. When politicians speak in this kind of logic, they deserve to be put into a gossip corner. People may politely smile at their cock explanations, but there is no running away that they have made a fool of themselves in the eyes of the people. And when that happens, all respectability, honour, moral authority etc is gone. Habis. That is how pathetic politicians can be when they take a wrong stand for the wrong reason.

No change in Dictation Culture

The CPF ruling on sale of property for those above 55 has changed again without any discussion with the public. The rulers think that it is good or their right to keep the people's money. So when you sell your property, your money must go back to make up for the shortfall in the minimum sum. Now they did not even go through the motion of letting people know of the impending change, no need for feedback. Just dictate it. And it's done. No need to put up a farce of consulting the people. The rulers shall rule and the people shall be ruled. It is our money!

9/18/2008

More hugging and embracing may do the trick

MP Lim Wee Kiak, who sits on the Government Parliamentary Committee for National Development and Environment, suggested that employers work with grassroots leaders to organise dorm visits for residents, to foster mutual understanding. Quoted from TodayOnline. This is a good suggestion. We should organise more social activities, visit the foreign workers more, have more parties with them to get to know them better. Then they will understand the locals and the locals will understand them. And with such understanding, they can live happily together. Problem solved.

Foreign workers due to poor planning

Mr Mah, meanwhile, admitted to possibly “poor planning” on the authorities’ part when it came to accommodating foreign workers. . “We plan for a certain level of increase (in the influx) but we never expected the demand to go up so high,” he said. In 2006, the increase in foreign workers numbers was 55,000, compared to 102,000 last year. . So is Singapore planning adequately, going forward? “If we get more people to accept the trade-offs, I am confident we can meet demand,” said Mr Mah....Quoted from TodayOnline Lin Yanqin yanqin@mediacorp.com.sg Oh, can we accept poor planning as an excuse?

The Loot Chain

The trouble financial institutions in the US did not happen yesterday. It did not happen last year. It happened many years back. But all these institutions were reporting glorious profits all these years. And the top management were paying themselves crazy for turning in profits after profits. And they all looked so real. These are high profile public companies and are audited annually by the top auditing firms. Cannot be wrong. And there are top notched regulators regulating them. Everything is above board. Now they have turned out to be cans of worms. Why nobody knows? Why no whistleblowers? Yes, there were. Read a Bloomberg article posted in http://www.littlespeck.com/ for the full story. Whistleblowers were threatened inspite the laws to protect them, and threatened by the regulators who were supposed to look at these companies carefully. The moral of the story is to check who are behind these looters before you blow the whistle. US$900b have been pumped in so far to save all the fallen blue chip companies. Would the investors be able to take a single cent back from the management who have been looting the companies? Would the auditors and regulators be hanged? Unlikely. They are all in the loot chain. Would this happen here? Unlikely. We have the best brains administering the system and watching over them like a hawk. Even people who bought a single lot of 20c share and recorded the date wrongly will be caught. This is how meticulous and detailed we are. We have the resources. And there will be more resources to watch over the big boys. Then we have the best auditing firms, and top notched management team. If they play around with the accounting system they will be caught. No way will it happen here. But if 'sway sway' that it happens to some of the big companies, just pray hard that they are not managed by foreign talents. For most foreign talents will come in with a golden parachute. Anything wrong, company goes bust, they will still bail out safely with a soft landing and a big bag of loot to retire happily.