Do we need a lynching party?

Many police reports were made by the public against people, some times kids, making racist or anti religious remarks in the internet or facebook. Though all racist and anti religious remarks are not acceptable and cannot be condoned, is there really a need to make a police report? In many instances the comments were made in the heat of the moment or at a thoughtless moment by someone who could not understand the seriousness of the remarks or the consequences that could follow. Many would not have done so if they knew what they were doing. Not many, not even one in all the reported cases, was there a recalcitrant who had the intent to stir racial or religious hatred.

It is right to put such people into their proper place and telling them what they did was wrong. And if they need to be punished, let it be. Making police reports often is only aggravating a bad situation that is unnecessary. The last thing is to treat making police reports callously, like people making calls for ambulance service for the slightest reason. Making police reports is not like going for a pee. It must be a serious matter that needs the police attention.

The police must not be exploited by anyone for personal attention or to serve their personal agenda, or to use the police to whack another person. People who think they can misuse or abuse the police, to set the agenda and make the police to run around like bull arse flies, need to think again. First, the police have many serious matters to deal with. Two, the police would not react every time a public make a police report.

For those who are passionate and feel that people making racist remarks in the internet must be hanged, I would suggest that they form a lynching party if that is what they think should be done to appease their anger. I think there are many such righteous and upright fighters for justice, for fair play, for teaching the bad boys or girls a lesson they would not forget. And they want them to be whacked badly.

No one is going to stop them from forming their own lynching party. But don’t expect the police to do the lynching for them. The police would unlikely have the resources to answer to every report made and to conduct an investigation.

But after reading today’s ST, in the front page, the police has already launched an investigation into the Amy Cheong police report. So I take back whatever I said about police not having the resources and people should not suka suka make police reports. Our efficient police will investigate into their reports if this case is an example of the standard of our police force.

By the way, the outbursts by some netizens and bloggers could be a manifestation of the problems of overcrowding and strains in our compact living environment. Feel the pulse of the people and understand the real cause of the problem instead of attacking individuals. The symptoms of a people under stress are all there but the people that matter are blind to them and stubbornly persisting with their agenda of increasing the population to even bigger numbers.

The age of Scams

Why are consumers being scammed by the insurers and no authority bothers to do anything about it? Why are the workshops continuing to scam the insurers who in turn pass the buck to the car owners? Really, that there is no way to curb the scam, like loan shark harassments?

Scamming and cheating the consumers seem to be fair game as there are profits to be made, depending on which side one is on. Even in the internet, spamming, Nigerian scams and spreading viruses are allowed with eyes wide opened, encouraged, as it means big businesses to the software developers.

There is no moral or ethics to talk about when making money is concerned. As long as there is money to be made, the scams will continue, the spammings and the development and spreading of viruses will be part and parcel of internet biz. Only the poor consumers ended as suckers, paying for the irritations, harrassments and the damages.

This is the real world. How many of the less enlightened, computer illiterate, and the poor, have to end up forking up money to clean up the virus infecting their computers? How many people would fall victims to Nigerian scams? How many people will have to live with the spamming and abuses or invasion of privacy to their internet accounts because no one deems it necessary to stop the nonsense?

This is exactly like the American weapons industry. The industry thrives on warfare and they will get the American govts to continue to incite and start wars to feed the industry. The poor buggers will be the American boys and girls coming home in black plastic bags or live a life as invalids on wheelchairs, and the collateral damages, the innocent victims of the targeted countries and the ruins of their countries and lives of their citizens.

Scams are good for biz.

What we need to feed the bananas?

The issue of ethnic and religious practices is getting more annoying to some Sinkies. The huge population and crammed up environment, living so closely with each other, undoubtedly, have added pressure to mutual tolerance. When there were lesser of us, when there were more living space, when such practices were relatively less frequent as the number of people were smaller, things were much manageable.

Now the crazy thought of 6m, without thinking how the sardine packed environment is going to turn every average tolerant Sinkies into a monster in an instant is not funny. People who lived in 30,000 sq ft houses, who are being chauffeured around in comfort, can NEVER understand what it is like to be cooked in such a pressurised environment and would merrily go around spouting nonsense that 6m or 10m is no issue. We have the technology to build more houses and be creative in space management. To me they are just asses that only use their own comfortable lifestyle as a reference point. The masses can be squeezed and moulded to any shape and size for all matters. It does not affect them.

What has bananas got to do with multi racial religious and cultural activities? Bananas’ lifestyle is highly dependent on the media hype. The media says go and jump into the Singapore River in your evening dress at 12 midnight and they will do it. Go and scream at Block 108 at 3am in the morning, they will go and think it is fun. Go to the next field or park and bang the dustbins for an hour to create a record in the Guinness Book, they will do it. It is hip, fun, cool and spectacular.

Ethnic celebrations and ceremonies? Yak, so uncool, so backward, so noisy, dirty, smelly. Bananas cannot appreciate their own cultures or anything Asian except something that I don’t think much about, a bastardised culture called Peranakan. This is the only hip thing that they adored and craved about.

But there is hope. All the govt needs to do is to invite a few westerners to say a few good things about our ethnic diversities, cultural practices and ceremonies. Film the angmohs having a good time at a void deck wedding, at a seventh moon ghost festival, at a Thaipusam procession, and let them comment how excited and exciting these events were. I bet the bananas would turn up in droves, with the reporters, to report on these events as something new and fantastic that they never know were so interesting, something so cool and they want to be a part of them. A little PR using the media, and using the westerners, and the western lenses will do the trick.

Then all our ancient and antiquated cultural and religious practices would be in vogue, cool. Otherwise they will be viewed as disgusting, tasteless, offensive and waste of time and money.

The govt, Tourism Board, Media Corp, can do their part. And yes, you need to spend money using angmoh PR firms and angmoh models if you want it to be successful, to change the taste of bananas. Don’t use MPs or ministers.

Big banks can gamble away your money

There were so many excruciatingly painful stories of gamblers gambling away everything and ended in deep trouble, and dragging their families along with them. And both the govt and NGOs are struggling to come up with more rules and regulations to keep the gamblers from trouble. The most notable thing is the self exclusion order, or family members can choose to exclude them with the same order. These are individuals that could do just so much harm to themselves and their loved ones.

What would happen if banks, financial and investment banks were to gamble with high stakes, with the depositor/investor/shareholders’ money? Any mess up means hundreds of thousands of people will be in deep shit. This is exactly the same problem with the ‘too big to fail’ banks in the last financial crisis. The govts had no choice but to rescue them using taxpayers’ money. And hopefully these rascal bankers would have learnt and stay away from high gambling using other people’s money. No, they are back at it, everyone of them.

I am really surprised to read in the BT today what Hsien Loong said about these big time gamblers while in New Zealand. Below are some of his comments:

‘The difficulty is that financial markets have variegated into all kinds of sophisticated activities, products, derivatives, investment activities, trading – and the banks are also in these….But the reality is that the gambling part is intrinsic to the financial system….Noting that central bankers and regulators are under a lot of pressure to split the deposit taking role of banks from the reckless and even morally doubtful part that many argue amounts to gambling with money….These were investment banks, risking their shareholders’ money. But they were all doing similar things, they were all getting sick at the same time and the govt had no choice but to go into it.’

What can I say? And these bankers knowing that the govt cannot do anything about their gambling activities, will go on crazily gambling away with OPM and demanding huge outrageous pay for doing that. And should they lose, they know that the govt will have to bail them out.

What kind of shit are these animals made of? Licensed to gamble and to break banks and destroy the savings of everyone coming into contact with them, having trusted them and putting their money with them? And better still, govts simply dunno what to do with them and cannot control their wild gambling streaks disguised as sophisticated investments!

My goodness, what is happening? No wonder all the banks and SWFs are happily gambling away.

The Tramp’s Corner

With million dollar public flats everywhere, Singapore is a country that literary has no slums. The closest that one can get to resemble a slum is the little corner in Potong Pasir, a void deck with an aged and worn out desk and with a couple of make shift dividers to keep the weather away. This little corner in Block 108 was the make shift office of the elected representative of the people where Chiam See Tong used to meet his residents to assist in their problems.

Comparing to the surrounding, it was quite pathetic really. It was not much better than the desk of Chief Minister David Marshall under the staircase in City Hall in 1959. The colonial govt was too poor to provide the Chief Minister a proper office. It is difficult to understand why the richest country in the world, willing to spend billions on make belief gardens, but could not afford to provide its elected members of Parliament with a proper office space to serve the people. It is puzzling to think that a junior civil servant is found necessary or appropriate to ride around in a top end model bicycle that cost $2000 when a $200 would suffice. And the junior civil servants would also have a decently equipped office with very decent chairs to sit on in an air conditioned environment.

Why are our members of Parliament treated so shabbily? Are they not serving the people, not working for the people? Are they not the law makers of the nation? Are they not the leaders of the country, the elected representatives of the people?

For justice and equality, may I suggest that all members of Parliament be given a proper office with desk and chair in a void deck to conduct their meet the people’s session there? I think any security guard would have a more decent office to work in. Maybe the country cannot afford to pay for such an office. It must have something to do with being financially prudent, not to squander public funds too freely.

How many slums corners are there in the island of millionaires and million dollar flats? Can the govt show some decency and respect to the office of the Members of Parliament? Thank God this little tramp corner is gone and not need to be an eye sore anymore. Are there anymore eye sores in Hougang and Aljunid?