7/25/2011

Vote PAP for more FT Policy?

Would this be the election slogan of PAP in 2016? The praises heaped by LKY on the great contributions of the foreigners and how Singapore owed them for being what we are today is a clear message that this country, or is it a country, must continue to depend on more foreigners to bring a better life to the daft Singaporeans. During his speech, and Hsien Loong’s, the immigration door is fully thrown open, an open invitation for more foreigners to come ashore. 900,000 may now be an under estimation.

We are going to celebrate our National Day in another few weeks. 46 years of independence and nation building and economic progress. We owe it all to the foreigners. Without the foreigners, we would not be punching above our weight. I think I saw a rat standing on the head of a lion and thinking it is roaring like a lion. That is beside the point. The truth is that for 46 years, the daft Singaporeans were sleeping. Or they were lazy and not contributing anything useful to the progress of this place.

Today, they woke up to enjoy all the good stuffs, and have the foreigners to thank for. I fear the day the foreigners leave or stop coming, the island will sink, and yes, all the women folks will end up as foreign maids. And everything will ground to a halt. The daft Singaporeans will not be able to do anything to maintain the prosperity and growth of this island. And all will become the poor coolies like their forefathers one more time.

And by then, regrets will be too late. Without the foreigners and their talents, we will be finished. Quickly change the National Day message to make sure the foreigners get it, that they are indispensable to our well being and we will kneel down to beg them to come and stay with us, and have our jobs, the jobs that we are unable to do for the lack of talents. Majulah, the Singapore Spirit? Or Majulah, the FT Spirit!

I am convinced by the powerful arguments. I am a new convert. I will join the 60%. It may be a bit too late to change the theme of this year’s National Day Parade of the Singapore Spirit. I hope the foreign talents will not be offended. The theme for the next NDP is obvious. We shall celebrate the Foreign Spirit. Our FTs will be honoured and be invited to be the VIPs. Dick Lee and his gang, please step aside. We will bring in some FTs to write a FT song for the parade. After so many years of praising our coolie spirit and how a fishing village became a modern city, it is time to honour the true contributors to our progress, so that we can punch above our weight.

I am getting excited about the thoughts of NDP 2012. It is so refreshing.

7/24/2011

The bankrupt hijacking ARF agenda

The Asean Regional Forum in Indonesia came to a peaceful closed but not before the world’s biggest bankrupt nation tried to hijack its agenda. Last year it tried to take over the leadership by nominating itself as the arbiter of the South China Sea disputes between China and its southern neighbours. This failed.

This year it tried a different methodology, insisting that all parties must show legal proof for their territorial claims, which Hillary Clinton forgot, would only weaken the claims of Vietnam, the Philippines and the rest of the Asean states involved. The Chinese have written records long before these states became countries and nations and have their own written languages. The Chinese were sailing the South China Seas long before these states built a boat that was more than 10m long and could sail the high seas.

Hillary still declared that ‘These incidents endanger the safety of life at sea, escalate tensions, undermine freedom of navigation and pose risks to lawful, unimpeded commerce and economic development.’ This was poof poofed by Yang Jie Chi, Chinese Foreign Minister who said China guaranteed freedom of navigation in the region and the proof was that no one had its freedom to sail in the seas impeded.

What Hillary wanted was the American’s version of peace and stability, without endangering safety of life, escalating tension, like in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, with American’s military might in full play. Fortunately the Asean states and China would not be drawn into a conflict dictated by the Americans and turn the region into another Afghanistan or the Middle East.

A bankrupt country, with US$14 trillion in debt, and expending US$4 trillion in the Afghan and Middle East Wars, is trying to start another war in East Asia. Now how much is US$14 trillion? The combined economy of Asean and Australia is only US$3 trillion. That is how big the American debt. And the Americans could not see the bleeding. They are running out of American dollars and could only resort to printing and printing. It is only a matter of time before they bleed to death. They just have no money to continue with their wars and war mongering. Every conflict, every day of wars is going to be every costly, and the clock is running before they end up like the former Soviet Union. The Americans would soon join the ranks of beggar countries.

The Americans again left the ARF empty handed, banging and pulling their hair with no one listening to their nonsense and war mongering.

The Govt’s responsibility in Education

The top and foremost responsibility of the Govt is to provide good and affordable education for the people. Tsk, my first sentence is already flawed when people argued that with so many loans, financial assistance schemes and bursaries available, our students need not come out with any cash outlay to study in our universities. It would be better to say that they can study for free, like my mother used to say, govt hospitals are free, can pay by CPF, no need money.

Back to my first principle, the Govt’s responsibility to its people, the tax payers, the people that will defend this country in the event of war or crisis. It is very painful and disgusting to hear of Singaporeans, fully qualified, with distinctions, with very good grades but unable to find places in our local universities. And the parents, some are able financially, some have to sell their homes or take loans, to send their children overseas. And the sickening cause of this, many university places were given to foreign students.

What is our govt’s responsibility to these foreign students that ended with our children being pushed aside, our citizens being discriminated and have to suffer financial obligations when they don’t have to? Does our Govt owe an obligation or duty to educate the foreign students? Is the Govt doing an international social duty to provide some places to foreign students? Or is provision of university places for foreign students a way to up the rankings of our universities? Or is it a revenue generating source? This is unlikely as many were here on full scholarships, fees and lodging and allowances.

Look at the practices of the European countries, the countries that we always used as our role models. Why are they accepting foreign students? Are they doing so at the expense of their own people? If I am not wrong, many are doing so to generate revenue. And they have spare capacities to do so without compromising the interests of their citizens. The least thing in their mind in accepting foreign students is for their rankings to look good. If this is the reason, it is plain silly.

If we want to take in more foreign students, by all means, go ahead, to make money, to provide more vibrancy and diversity, but never do it at the expense of our own people. If the foreign intake is going to be big, increase the capacities. If this cannot be done, then don’t do it. There is no greater reason to take in more foreign students only to force our own to study elsewhere. For those who have the means and wanted to study overseas, as a matter of choice is irrelevant.

Let’s treat our people well. Our people are deserving of a good education at home, first. Foreigners must be second. If need be, build another university for the foreign students, and funded by the tuition fees. And whatever ‘subsidies’ the Govt chooses to provide.

Singaporeans first must be real and seen to be real. Talk is cheap and the Govt will have to pay the price for neglecting the interests of its own people and for frolicking with foreigners. The Singaporeans are not daft. They know what is good and what is bad for them, especially when their pockets are hurt real bad.

7/23/2011

Distorting an argument

Argue for argument’s sake. Argue just to win. Argue just to insist that one is right despite all the evidences proving against it. This seems to be the position many have taken in the issue of foreign talents in Singapore. We need foreign talents or else we will not be where we are today. Yes and no.

In a way, practically every Singaporean is a foreign talent. Our forefathers were migrants, so we are migrants. Up to a point, I may say yes, our forefathers were migrants. But we Singaporeans born and bred here are not migrants. We were the original people here on first principles just like the aborigines of every country were the first people. There were some locals but not many. Our forefathers built this place and we inherited from them as the first owners of this land. Subsequently the Johnnys come lately are the migrants, the foreigners. This is where the line I like to draw. We are not migrants in this sense. So for those who still want to push the argument that since our forefathers were migrants, there is nothing wrong with welcoming more migrants. I say bull. Our forefathers maybe migrants but we are not.

And neither are Singaporeans anti foreign talents. Which clown still harping on this point that Singaporeans are anti foreigners? No one is anti foreign talents. So anyone accusing Singaporeans for being anti foreign talents is talking through his arsehole. The crux of the matter, of why this foreign talent issue becomes such a pain, is that many were not really talents vis a vis Singaporeans. And worst, they were made to look better than Singaporeans and given plump jobs which otherwise would have been given to Singaporeans. The other issue is the over crowding which I am not addressing here.

Singaporeans would have no difficulty accepting real foreign talents. Singaporeans would have not difficulty if a position has to be filled by a foreign talent because of job specific needs or because no Singaporean is good enough for it. We need an angmoh face to look good. Ok, get an angmoh. The good examples are the CEOs of SMRT, DBS, SGX, OCBC, and even some positions in the academia. These are talents that are much superior to Singaporeans, or jobs that no Singaporean is good enough to do. I read in the paper that it took SATS 37 years before they were able to find a Singaporean good enough to fill the job of a CEO. Now he has just left, and very likely a foreigner will replaced him as Singaporeans talented in airline food is hard to come by.

And Mediacorp finally got a Singaporean to be its CEO, a President scholar, when they could not find a more talented man than him after months of search. If they could, this President Scholar Singaporean too will have to play second fiddle. Oh, I forgot, even MPs and Ministers, when they can’t find Singaporeans good enough, they can find foreign substitutes.

When and which Singaporean is against genuine and real foreign talents? Please lah, don’t talk nonsense and argue for the sake of arguing. Singaporeans will continue to be pissed off with ‘foreign talents’ when the foreign talents are not really talents or anything better than Singaporean talents. Singaporeans will continue to be pissed off when jobs that Singaporeans can easily filled but given to foreigners who are no better than them, which is a great insult to our own people.

Seriously, how many of the top jobs given to foreigners cannot be filled by Singaporeans? Seriously, do we need foreigner, or new citizens to be MPs? Oh, we have many great ministers that were foreigners. This was due to a different stage in our history when we were a new nation. Even Boon Wan has been living here and a citizen for many years and not really new. Now what is new? No need silly reasons to win this argument.

Can Singapore do better without the average ‘foreign talents’ or the many fake talents with fake papers? Having said all this, I am sure all Singaporeans will agree with me in showing our appreciation to all the real foreign talents that really make a difference to our economy and well being. No one will deny their great contributions. But please lah, nothing great about the average foreigners that are here to contribute to be the bread and butter in our society and to deprive jobs and university places that should rightly go to Singaporeans. This is like being sold out, betrayed.

I can only say one thing. They refused to listen to what the Singaporeans are saying and refused to understand them.

7/22/2011

Can the President speak?

Elgin Toh talks about the right of free speech by the Elected President in his article in the ST today. Apparently, the official position is that the EP has no right to speak independently as a President. This is what the Prime Minister’s Office said, ‘It is not the president’s role to support or oppose the govt of the day or to advance his own agenda or policies’. Shanmugam was also quoted as saying, ‘National policies and running of the Govt are the responsibility of the prime minister and Cabinet…’

So, if the governing of the country is none of the EP’s concern, does he have a right to speak for or against govt policies? It is not his role to support or oppose? What does this mean? He cannot talk about them except speaking neutrally or no comments?

He is not allowed to have his own agenda or policies. It is as good as saying, please shut up. Let’s gag the President. I am in favour of it as he is basically a ceremonial piece, good for waving hands during National Days or shaking hands with foreign dignitaries and the people visiting the Istana grounds and engages in the exchanges of pleasantries. No, he can be an extension of the govt, by speaking in favour of govt policies and agenda. He can also promote trades!

Why the hell is the President being paid $4m annually, and maybe another 10 or 20 mths of bonuses when he is just what he is constitutionally, a rubber stamp? How to justify this kind of obscene pay?