The crime of earning $10k

The arbitrary $10k ceiling for the combined income of young couples is looking like a crime. It has been elevated to a sacred status that it is almost untouchable, like a commandment carved in stone. Young couples who have a combined income of $10k are disqualified from public housing. They are deemed too well paid, and able to pay more for private properties. They should go and buy a smaller but more expensive private property, or go for the big owns and take a bigger loan to service. The value of thrift and savings and financial prudence is thrown to the wind. If after taking a big loan and something untoward happens to their income that is their problem. And the private developers and speculators are all rubbing their hands eagerly waiting for these young couples to commit, after being forced out by the system. They have no choice but to take the plunge. What kind of philosophy is this? Forcing young people to go into big debt because they earn a little more than others? What is $10k anyway? Any decently qualified young couple that failed to get hitch within 3 to 5 years will see their income exceeding this arbitrary ceiling pronounced by god. Is it wise or decent to force young couples, just starting to work and with a full list of commitments ahead of them, to plunge in with a half a million or one million dollar loan? I think it is a crazy idea and very irresponsible. The crap about some of these young couples adding to the queue is another hogwash. Just like the spurious building acitivity today, it is all about building to meet the needs and demands of the people. The crime is for not building, not the young people wanting to join the queue. And not many would join the queue as those with lesser commitments would risk taking a bigger loan for private properties. It is no crime or shame to want to buy a cheaper home and save for tomorrow. The principle of thrift and prudence is age old wisdom. Punishing the young people for your own inept, poor planning and farcical beliefs is shameful. No one must be forced to eat sharksfins and force to pay for it. The $10k ceiling is another mean testing that is wicked to the core, like its parallel in healthcare. It only serves to fatten the pockets of speculators and developers at the expense of the young people. Just go and build the flats that the people need, and stop the silly reasoning. Every able young man must be given a chance to buy his first public housing. This is only equitable, just and fair. They also do their bid to serve the country like everyone else.

The housing mess or housing achievement?

25,000 BTO flats will be built this year. And now Boon Wan is saying tens of thousands of rental flats are needed and building of rental flats must also be ramped up. Are these happy problems or manifestation of infested problems in public housing that are surfacing today? With 25,000 being built and the demand is still growing, and a shortfall of tens of thousands of rental flats! What’s happening? Didn’t MND know the problem or they did know the problem but not building because the policy maker decided otherwise? Or is it that the information on supply and demand was misleading that led to the current mess? MND data quoted in today’s ST said that there were 3,700 and 2,300 rental flat applicants for year 2008 and 2009 respectively. If these were the data that MND was working on, not more than 5,000 rental flats need to be built. How could the numbers balloon to tens of thousands of flats needed as mentioned by Boon Wan? Whatever, policy failure or information failure, something is wrong with the housing needs of the people. They can’t say they did not know or did not see it coming. Boon Wan is only in the job for a couple of weeks and he is in a big hurry to clear the mess. The media also reported some views that the ramping up of rental flats would have little impact on the price of private properties. Could this kind of thinking be the main determinant in the supply of public housing, both rental and purchase? There must be many big speculators out there hoarding 10 or 20 units of properties each and fearing that the prices will fall. So are the property developers, all fearing that their profits will fall. It is thus important that the supply of public housing be carefully managed to ensure that the speculators and property developers are happily sitting on huge profits. Yep, must not remove the $8k/$10k ceiling so that these young people have no choice but to support the private property market and help the speculators and developers to make handsome profits. Tell them there are cheap loans, low interest rates, just borrow, half a million, one million, just borrow, no problem. Hope the ramping up of BTO flats will not affect the price of private properties, or else speculators, big investors and developers will be hurt.

Boiling the daft brains

After a long period of gradual abuses, the human beans would have adjusted and adapted to a higher level of pain and absurdity. Subsequently any lowering of suffering would be greeted with relief and gratitude. The high housing price is a living example that the people are getting used to it and paying a little less is cause for celebration. The people are now jubilant over the announcement by Boon Wan of the release of more public housing and a change in policy to build in advance of demand instead of waiting for demand to build up. Great man, compassionate man, with people centric policies, compare to his predecessor. Now this is a caring govt for the people and will look after the needs of the people. They have forgotten how they have ended in the shit hole in the first place. The history of lack of housing in the founding years need not be retold. The story of govt building public housing for the people, where people can go and choose their flats like choosing to buy a car or private properties must be repeated to remind the beans that it should be that way. But after getting used to waiting for 4 or 5 years, the beans are so happy if they can get it in 3. Now they will go down on their knees if they can get it in 2 years. Even the expectation for 5 rm, executive or private properties is forgotten. They no longer aspire for them and are contented with a 4 rm public flats for young professionals. Boiling daft brains are not much different from boiling frogs. The daft Singaporeans deserved to be treated that way, easily conned, easily appeased, easily contented, in their unthinking way. They will take it lying down when told to plan their marriages 4 or 5 years in advance or they will have to suffer the brilliant BTO housing policy. It is their fault for not planning ahead. Dumbos.

Michael - King of Pops

This is what Master Nature painted of Michael. And Master Nature says, beneath the cosmetics, he is Afro American. More pics at Art of RAR Gallery at top right.

The irrelevance of KPIs

Amid the hoohaas for change and the thrills of a Ministers’ Salary Review Committee, many well meaning experts have offered their views and suggestions on how to assess the performance of ministers and the appropriate rewards due to them. KPIs have been booted around as the panacea of all the ills that have surfaced. KPIs are widely used as a HR tool and also seen as a better and more objective tool for performance appraisal. It also has many drawbacks and easily misused by management to serve the wrong objectives with very adverse consequences for the organisation. The recent political developments have provided many interesting aspects on the misuse or misinterpretation of KPIs as a management tool. Kan Seng was promoted to Coordinating Minister earlier, Mah Bow Tan openly announced how great and successful were his housing policies and programmes. He would probably write a memoir on his great contributions to public housing and expecting the people to thank him profusely. These incidents were evidence that they were doing well, or their superior must be telling them so, for a job well done. How well they have done, in the eyes of their superior, using whatever KPIs, can easily be deduced by the amount of performance bonuses and growth bonuses they received over the years. Check it out. From their confidence and the high positions they held in cabinet, there were no doubts that their performances were rated very highly. What about the people’s assessment of their performances? Though the people did not have access to their KPIs, from the reactions and feedback in the media, it is quite clear that both must be ranked at the bottom of the people’s assessment. Here lies the first fault, what their superior think is good may not be good to the people. Both the ministers and their superior could be congratulating themselves for achieving all the goals in their KPIs. But to the people these are not the goals that are good for the people. So we have conflicting expectations and KPIs to start with. How then could KPIs be used to be both relevant to the superior of the ministers and the expectation of the people, if the KPIs are in conflict? Who then shall set the KPIs, the superior, the ministers or the people? If only the three can agree on the same set of KPIs, perhaps that will be a good reason to use KPIs to appraise ministers for their performance. It is a non starter in the first place.