Clinton urges China to prove intentions
Posted: 08 March 2012 0951 hrs
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday called on China to show in "concrete ways" that its rise is in the world's interest, saying that Beijing needs to take greater responsibility....
China should just ignore her and all her stupid colleagues. China is not accountable to the USA for her rise as a global power. What can the US do or want to do? Attack China? What a stupid woman.
3/08/2012
Does China have a legitimate claim?
This is a very serious article written by an academic, Robert Beckman, Director, Centre for International Law and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, NUS etc…in the ST today. It discusses about China’s claim to the group of islands in the South China Sea that were also claimed by a few of the littoral states. By posing such a question it takes a supposedly neutral stand, to question whether the claim is legitimate or illegitimate. So thought provoking.
Would the professor also discuss about the legitimate claims of Europeans as the owners of the USA, Australia and New Zealand and other colonized islands all over the world, like Guam, Gan, the Falklands? Or were the ownership of these continents and islands is now legitimate and a fait accompli because no one is there to challenge it or to write about it?
The concept of planting a flag in someone else backyard and claiming to have found it for the King or Queen sounds funny today, or not really?
Would the professor also discuss about the legitimate claims of Europeans as the owners of the USA, Australia and New Zealand and other colonized islands all over the world, like Guam, Gan, the Falklands? Or were the ownership of these continents and islands is now legitimate and a fait accompli because no one is there to challenge it or to write about it?
The concept of planting a flag in someone else backyard and claiming to have found it for the King or Queen sounds funny today, or not really?
Gan Kim Yong – Agent 002
In my article on Lui Tuck Yew I mentioned two agents of change. The other is Gan Kim Yong. I have trouble trying to catch up with the initiatives he has started to revamp the healthcare business, or was it public healthcare? I could not imagine that there are still so many things to do to make the system betterer. Didn’t his predecessor did a good job and make life more cosy for him? Unlike Tuck Yew’s inheritance of a pail of transportation shit, healthcare was supposedly well taken care off, with mean testing and bringing cost down? Did cost really come down? Did mean testing really work or creating more unnecessary and stupid work?
It is revealed in the ST that when they calculate a patient’s means to subsidy, they included every children of the patient. If the patient has twenty sons and daughters, married or unmarried, all their incomes will have to be computed. Unbelieveable to even imagine. Ok, Gan Kim Yong has simplified this a little by only taking in the incomes of those staying with the patient. I am not sure how many letters and emails were sent to the US, UK, China, India or Australia to trace down the children of those patients to qualify for subsidies.
Though steps were taken to make mean testing less mean, a better way would be to make it simpler by doing away with this demeaning and invasive act of prying into people’s privacy in the name of fairness and subsidies.
Gan Kim Yong will be launching his affordable Healthcare 2020, to provide good quality and affordable healthcare with some tweaking to the Medisave Insurance scheme, with higher premiums to go along. Let’s hope his version of affordability is the version that the citizens can understand and appreciate and not the public housing kind.
He is also ramping up hospital beds and community healthcare services working with GPs in the neighbourhood. How would these measures affect the people and the high cost of medicare is still waiting to be seen. If they indeed bring benefits to the people, then he could be another big agent of change. Tentatively, everything sounds good on paper but what is real? Shouting affordability does not mean that it is affordable as public housing is a good example. The bottom line is how hard would the pockets of patients be hurt, be emptied? The affordable housing schemes have resulted in many Singaporeans with not enough for retirement, and with big mortgages that need two incomes and 30 years to repay. If this is the same kind of affordable thinking, then it will be another big disappointment.
One positive point about Gan Kim Yong is his demeanour and composure in Parliament. He responded to questions from all parties purposefully without being ruffled or resorting to making snide replies to belittle others. He is a gentleman in many ways and a role model to other politicians on how to behave well in Parliament.
It is revealed in the ST that when they calculate a patient’s means to subsidy, they included every children of the patient. If the patient has twenty sons and daughters, married or unmarried, all their incomes will have to be computed. Unbelieveable to even imagine. Ok, Gan Kim Yong has simplified this a little by only taking in the incomes of those staying with the patient. I am not sure how many letters and emails were sent to the US, UK, China, India or Australia to trace down the children of those patients to qualify for subsidies.
Though steps were taken to make mean testing less mean, a better way would be to make it simpler by doing away with this demeaning and invasive act of prying into people’s privacy in the name of fairness and subsidies.
Gan Kim Yong will be launching his affordable Healthcare 2020, to provide good quality and affordable healthcare with some tweaking to the Medisave Insurance scheme, with higher premiums to go along. Let’s hope his version of affordability is the version that the citizens can understand and appreciate and not the public housing kind.
He is also ramping up hospital beds and community healthcare services working with GPs in the neighbourhood. How would these measures affect the people and the high cost of medicare is still waiting to be seen. If they indeed bring benefits to the people, then he could be another big agent of change. Tentatively, everything sounds good on paper but what is real? Shouting affordability does not mean that it is affordable as public housing is a good example. The bottom line is how hard would the pockets of patients be hurt, be emptied? The affordable housing schemes have resulted in many Singaporeans with not enough for retirement, and with big mortgages that need two incomes and 30 years to repay. If this is the same kind of affordable thinking, then it will be another big disappointment.
One positive point about Gan Kim Yong is his demeanour and composure in Parliament. He responded to questions from all parties purposefully without being ruffled or resorting to making snide replies to belittle others. He is a gentleman in many ways and a role model to other politicians on how to behave well in Parliament.
Lui Tuck Yew – Agent of change
I can’t remember praising any minister in the past, or at least not the new ministers. The pioneers were different as they were the pathfinders, the people who set the stage for the play today, selflessly. It is hard to praise the ministers now as they have held themselves up as supermen and superwomen and thus are expected to do super works. Mediocrity is not acceptable from super beans. And with the super pay they are claiming for themselves, anyone talking about sacrifices need to be stuffed with shit in their mouths.
The expectation is superlative. But when mediocrity is the order of the day, anything better is betterer and deserves some encouragement. I was watching in Parliament last night on telly and two ministers stood out for mentioning. Lui Tuck Yew is one of them. He came across as someone with a mission to do a big repair job. And he is earnest and tuned up for it.
The transportation mess that he inherited would have to be dealt with in a different light. The causes, the past assumptions, must be thrown into the dustbin and a new set of assumptions need to be put right. Wrong assumptions would lead to wrong results though perfectly logically and defendable. When 1 is 3 and 2 is 4, 1 + 2 = 7. Logic. No one can argue against such thinking.
The angst against public transportation was likely to be the result of a different set of perverse assumptions, eg, maximization of profits and with the Tokyo train as the role model to surpass. The comfort and graciousness of the people were not factors for consideration. Maximising profit would mean longer waiting time and jam packed trains to benefit the shareholders and big bonuses for the top management. Scintillating profit numbers are so good to look at. Then there is the added Tokyo standard to surpass. Jam packed train will only be at best as good as Tokyo’s. To surpass that, the trains must be bulging at the sides. Only then can it claim to be better than Tokyo’s.
What Tuck Yew has done is to dismantle such beliefs. Commuter comfort, efficiency and graciousness are equally important, or more important. More trains and buses will be added to reduce waiting time. The desired 95% load will be cut to 85% to provide more comfort and breathing space for the commuters. There will be overall increases in the number of trips run by trains and buses.
The new assumptions and standards would definitely make public transportation much better and tolerable than the standards of the past. There will be big costs involved but temporarily this will be delayed till a later date.
The changes are major especially in the mindset. Maximising profit has taken a rubbing for the moment to give way to commuter’s interests. Just hope the fare hike will not be too prohibitive and the Govt will give a helping hand. Public transportation is not simply a service and to be run primarily for profits alone. Public transportation affects our way of life, the way businesses are done, business costs, people’s costs, social and economic costs. Bringing public transportation cost down will benefit everyone and everything, including business and the govt. It is a big change for the better.
The expectation is superlative. But when mediocrity is the order of the day, anything better is betterer and deserves some encouragement. I was watching in Parliament last night on telly and two ministers stood out for mentioning. Lui Tuck Yew is one of them. He came across as someone with a mission to do a big repair job. And he is earnest and tuned up for it.
The transportation mess that he inherited would have to be dealt with in a different light. The causes, the past assumptions, must be thrown into the dustbin and a new set of assumptions need to be put right. Wrong assumptions would lead to wrong results though perfectly logically and defendable. When 1 is 3 and 2 is 4, 1 + 2 = 7. Logic. No one can argue against such thinking.
The angst against public transportation was likely to be the result of a different set of perverse assumptions, eg, maximization of profits and with the Tokyo train as the role model to surpass. The comfort and graciousness of the people were not factors for consideration. Maximising profit would mean longer waiting time and jam packed trains to benefit the shareholders and big bonuses for the top management. Scintillating profit numbers are so good to look at. Then there is the added Tokyo standard to surpass. Jam packed train will only be at best as good as Tokyo’s. To surpass that, the trains must be bulging at the sides. Only then can it claim to be better than Tokyo’s.
What Tuck Yew has done is to dismantle such beliefs. Commuter comfort, efficiency and graciousness are equally important, or more important. More trains and buses will be added to reduce waiting time. The desired 95% load will be cut to 85% to provide more comfort and breathing space for the commuters. There will be overall increases in the number of trips run by trains and buses.
The new assumptions and standards would definitely make public transportation much better and tolerable than the standards of the past. There will be big costs involved but temporarily this will be delayed till a later date.
The changes are major especially in the mindset. Maximising profit has taken a rubbing for the moment to give way to commuter’s interests. Just hope the fare hike will not be too prohibitive and the Govt will give a helping hand. Public transportation is not simply a service and to be run primarily for profits alone. Public transportation affects our way of life, the way businesses are done, business costs, people’s costs, social and economic costs. Bringing public transportation cost down will benefit everyone and everything, including business and the govt. It is a big change for the better.
3/07/2012
Vivian Balakrishnan replies to Low Thia Khiang
From affordable housing to affordable medicare and affordable water bills. Singaporeans are so lucky. All the ministers are working so hard to make housing, medical and water for bathing affordable. Why are they still complaining? Ingrates or unthinking? Please go down on your knees and show your gratitude.
There was a bundle of data on water fees and water bills shown in Parliament by Vivian in reply to Low Thia Khiang. The total cost ‘to operate Singapore’s water treatment and reclamation plants and sewerage system’ is $1.3b annually. The revenue collected, $674m in water tariffs and $327m in waterborne and sanitary appliances fees. Immediately I notice the huge subsidy that the govt is providing for water usage. If not, then the whole operation is a big loss. Better to privatise it to make it more efficient. I got no details to put under the microscope to read further about how 3c per cubic meter water can cost so much and still operating at such a loss. Someone please correct me if it is no longer 3c. I know this has been going on for donkey years.
Whatever the data say, the most important statement by Vivian is that ‘the Govt will ensure that water remains affordable for everyone.’ This is the most pleasant message, like music to the ears.
There was a bundle of data on water fees and water bills shown in Parliament by Vivian in reply to Low Thia Khiang. The total cost ‘to operate Singapore’s water treatment and reclamation plants and sewerage system’ is $1.3b annually. The revenue collected, $674m in water tariffs and $327m in waterborne and sanitary appliances fees. Immediately I notice the huge subsidy that the govt is providing for water usage. If not, then the whole operation is a big loss. Better to privatise it to make it more efficient. I got no details to put under the microscope to read further about how 3c per cubic meter water can cost so much and still operating at such a loss. Someone please correct me if it is no longer 3c. I know this has been going on for donkey years.
Whatever the data say, the most important statement by Vivian is that ‘the Govt will ensure that water remains affordable for everyone.’ This is the most pleasant message, like music to the ears.
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