BTO is anti family

A forum writer, Sim Siew Chien, wrote to the ST a few months back, complaining that the BTO scheme is detrimental to young people getting married and having children. She said many young people were forced to live separately after getting married as they have to wait for BTO to complete building their flats. Now whose fault is this? It is definitely not the govt or HDB’s fault. The young people must plan their marriages ahead. Why do they wait till they want to shit then look for jamban? So the wise men say or think. Getting hitch is so easy. With so many matchmaking agency, I also think so. Just place an order. The BTO scheme is the most intelligent, brilliant, and farsighted scheme thought out by the most brilliant supertalents we have. And they are not paid millions for coming out with stupid schemes. This is the best scheme they can think of. How could the low thinking public complain that it is bad? The public just does not have the brain to appreciate the beauty and brilliance of this scheme. It is unfair to complain about it. Just live with it. Just remember that it is the best scheme. It is the most efficient scheme for HDB. As for the people who needs a flat urgently, is it a good scheme? “My brother got engaged, but lost his engagement because he could not afford an HDB flat,” said Lim Zi Rui, the engineering student from NTU during Chok Tong’s dialogue with the students. For people like Zi Rui’s brother, very likely they would not even apply for a flat as they could not afford it. And they will not form part of the statistics to create a demand for BTO flats. No flats will be built for such losers. I am not sure how big is this pool of unable to afford to apply for HDB flats? Anyway, they are irrelevant and HDB need not sweat to build flats for them. Only those who can afford HDB flats need apply. This is the beauty of the BTO. No waste and everyone who applies will say the flats are affordable.

A little disorder is good

We have seen the loan sharks upgrading their skills and tactics in chasing after their debtors. From pouring paints onto doors and letter boxes, they have upped their ante by burning cars. I am wondering what kind of training they would get next to make themselves more efficient and effective. Burning houses? Then Downtown East, a Halloween style bloodied body turned out to be real. Our youngsters are having too good a time, and couldn't find any purpose in life but to form gangs and patrol shopping centres looking and staring at one another. And if the staring gets too intense, they will be fumed to want to gorge out the other's eyes. More and more fights between the young and their gangs are appearing in the news. Maybe this is a welcome change that we need, to throw the country into a little disorder for the new generations to appreciate what orderliness is all about. Or maybe this is the new fun that the new generations want. More blood and gore in the streets. And gangsterism is a new way of life, a return to the stylo 60s. How did these happen and grow unrestrained? Just like loan sharks, a soft pair of hands will be seen as incompetence and weakness and nothing to fear. And with a law enforcing force that is so well educated and well mannered, it is tough to face up with the toughies, a kind of mismatch. And there will be the goody and kind hearted who would want to protect the waywards and the criminals as pityful people that need help and protection, need to be saved. Welcome a little lawlessness.

Asean in Transformation

A gathering of small and medium countries, and wanted to be left alone, in peace, to develop their own economies and the lives of their people. That was what Asean used to be, avoiding big power conflicts and staying away from becoming proxies in big power rivalries. That was how ZOPFAN, zone and peace, freedom and neutrality came about. Today, Asean has grown bigger, economically, structurally and militarily. It starts to have wild ambitions, to start bickering with each other’s internal affairs and to challenge bigger powers, and ganging up with big powers to achieve its aims. Consciously or unconsciously, it has accepted the US as the de facto leader of Asean, doing away with its neutral status. Non alignment is no longer its mission. During its days of neutrality, Asean was able to grow peacefully, and also stayed out of big power conflicts. Today, it is inviting big power rivalry into the organization. It courts big power influence and protection to compete with other big powers. For that, it is willing to surrender its own leadership to a big power and become subservient or proxy states of big powers. Would this transformation of Asean lead the region into a state of turmoil and warfare? Has Asean really believe that engaging in big power politics and struggle of power and influence a desired development for the small and medium states? Has Asean grown a head that is too big for itself and wanted to play a bigger role in international affairs which it thinks it deserves? While Asean is being seduced by big power attention and bathing in the limelight, let Asean not forgotten what happened in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Dancing with the big bad wolf has a disastrous price to pay.

China involved in largest number of conflicts???!!!

‘China, significantly, has been involved in the largest number of military conflicts in Asia. A recent Pentagon report is unsparing: “The history of modern Chinese warfare provides numerous case studies in which China’s leaders have claimed military preemption as a strategically defensive act.’ It then went on to quote the Korean War, (the world knew who brought the war to China’s border), the border war with India in 1962, ( and yes, who started it?), with the Soviet Union, to reclaim lost Chinese territories, and the war with Vietnam, (again, who started it?). China involved in the largest number of military conflicts in Asia? What about the Americans? The professor never heard of the USA? Matilah has this to say, ‘Meanwhile since the 18th century, America has been involved in 200 or so "armed conflicts" all of them overseas -- in "OPC" - Other Peoples' Cuntries.’ Anyone bother to count? Starting from the Korean War, Vietnam War, the Middle East, Europe, not counting Latin America and Europe… And the claim that China is involved in the largest conflict came from a Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. What kind of academic integrity does he have when he can’t even count or refuses to acknowledge the great involvement of the Americans in military conflicts. The scale of the wars waged by the Americans, in any one of them is thousands of times more severe and destructive than all the conflicts the Chinese were involved. And this foolish article titled The Chinese conundrum, appears in today’s Straits Times. By the way, how many military adventures have India been involved since it became independent? How many times had India fought with its neighbours and the little islands in the Indian Ocean?

What’s so great about the Singapore Spirit?

"When I was younger, I was very proud of being a Singaporean. But that was about five, 10 years ago. Five years later, with all the changes in policies and the influx of foreign talent, I don't know what I'm defending anymore. I feel that there is a dilution of the Singapore spirit in youth... We don't really feel comfortable in our country anymore." By Lim Zi Rui, a final year Engineering student of NTU The Singapore Spirit is something that we can vaguely remember as the thing that helped to build this city state. There are still fond memories being cherished by the young and old. Is it still there or it is gone? Or it is no longer good enough, that we need the new hungrier spirit of the new immigrants to save us, to give us a kick in the back to wake us up? The official wisdom today is as good as saying that the Singapore Spirit no longer living in the young Singaporeans. We need more vibrant and enthusiastic and smarter foreigners if we are to move ahead. If this is the mentality, then many European countries will end up like the dinosaurs. The truth is that the well managed European countries are those that stay close to their own spirits and not those that are flooded with foreigners and with foreign spirits. The latter are seeing a decline in their quality of life, and chaos and social disorders are becoming a norm, threatening the very system that the foreigners came to benefit. If the fad of new and new spirits is anything to go by, there is no need to visit Finland to learn from them. The Finns don’t hunger nor pander for more hungrier immigrants to lift up their lives and economy. Simply, they don’t need new immigrants. They can make do with themselves and their own spirit of survival and do very well with their own people. They are confident of themselves and their own people. So, what is this Singapore Spirit? Is this something great or something that is best forgotten and replace with a new migrant spirit? Or is this a Spirit that runs down its own people as helpless and goners, and there is an urgent need to find a new Spirit to replace it? Shouldn't the Singapore Spirit be like the matured European countries, believe in themselves and their own people and continuously improving their own standard of living without having to hope or beg the hopeless and nothing to lose dare devils from the lost countries to mess up their systems and lives? When I referred to matures European countries, count England, France and Spain out. They will be destroyed by the foreigners they foolishly brought in.