Why are we paying so much for education system?

There was an article being circulated recently on why employers here preferred foreign graduates or foreign talents rather than local graduates. To put into perspective, the local graduates are from three branded universities that ranked pretty high in all the fictitious ranking systems that you can think of. And the foreign graduates are those locals that cannot get a place in our local prestigious universities and went overseas to second or third rate universities. And the foreign talents that came to take over the places of local graduates are mostly from third world universities that are not even listed among the top universities in the world. And to make matter worst, and more sickening, many of these foreign talents actually got a piece of paper from some degree mills or bought from a back lane without going through universities.

And we claim to have some of the best universities in the world, lectured or tutored by the best academics, and great exchanges with foreign graduates here and in overseas exchange programmes, but somehow still found lacking and not up to the mark.  What is going on?

The Govt is paying billions to attract the best academics from around the world, game the ranking systems to stay among the top universities. There are also many joint campuses with reputable foreign universities. For the money spent, what is the Govt trying to achieve? To produce a Newton or an Einstein, or to rank high in university rankings or to produce graduates that employers shunned?

Does the Govt need to spend that kind of money and other than the latter two objectives, the possibility of producing a Nobel Prize winner is near to zero. Even if there is one, is it worth the money spent? A genius is not produced by having high international rankings or buying famed lecturers or professors. Such talents are inborn and come once in several life times. They are not nurtured. Any good university and a good learning environment and culture should be able to produce them. Newton discovered gravity by sitting under an apple tree. And better still, the irony of it all, if you want a Steve Jobs or a Bill Gates, you can’t find them in good universities.

Why are we spending billions to fatten so many foreign lecturers and professors for? For sure they would not be able to produce the genius that we want and neither would they be able to produce the Nobel laureates if the input, the quality of students, is not up to speck. Are the money worth spent or can be put to better use instead of gaming the ranking system?

Don't just overhaul the banking industry but overturn the entire Western evil Capitalist system

Don't just overhaul the banking industry . Overturn the entire evil Western Capitalist system and replace it with people's centred socialist governments.


You can't overhaul anything unlessyou start with overhauling the Evil Empire's , ( USA )  capitalist system . The USA capitalist system is the most corrupted and most rotten to the core. USA has been exporting its shit all over the world and all those so called democracies with Western capitalist systems have been badly tainted by the US system of self serving rogues, crooks and scoundrels and robber barons who operate in both the government and private sectors as either ministers or CEOs or directors of banks, stock exchange, big listed companies or government linked companies. Worst still the high office personnels either in the government or the listed private sectors are linked and interchangeable. Ministers who are retired can be appointed as CEOs or executive directors in big listed private companies while existing incompetent company CEOs or directors can be quietly posted to head government ministries or departments or even stand for election to be the country's president. You can't possibly overhaul the banking industry unless the whole evil self-serving  American capitalist system is completely destroyed and replaced with the people's centered socialist system. The world needs a revolution to do this. First citizens of the world must be aroused and awakened to the intrinsic and insidious danger of the American system which post great dangers to all countries. Then at one go all countries must rise up against the Americans and their governments which operate under the American system, a system of thieving,robbery, aggression , murder , genocide and imperial conquests.  In other words all US or Westeern style capitalist systems must be destroyed and new people's centred socialist governments be installed.

Southernglory1

Do we want to be a City of immigrants forever?

The White Paper has touched on very serious issues about nation building, about nationhood and citizenship on one side and economic growth on the other. It seems that in the name of economic growth, everything can be compromised, even reducing the Sinkie core to an ever smaller number. There was no policy statement as to how many people should be housed in this island and what is the right mix between citizens and foreigners. And the term citizen is so corrupted that many are simply foreigners given a pink IC.

The number of people in the island and the composition of citizens are of paramount importance to the true blue Sinkies as this is their only home. They would not want to become boat people or be forced out of their home island by the influx of foreigners who took on the façade of citizenship.

Where is the dialogue between the Govt and people on these two important issues? Would the Govt initiate a discussion with the people? Would the 77 or 80 elected MPs want to consult with the 3.3m people on these? Or the farce of passing the White Paper be enough to seal the fate of the 3.3m and that’s it, there is nothing more to say?

If the Govt thinks that there is nothing else to talk to the people, is there anything else that the people can do before 2016? By the look of things, the only time the people can say no to the Govt on these issues will be 2016. In the meantime they can cry and kpkb, have more protest rallies in Hong Lim, the 77/80 MPs will not listen and will just do what they set out to do, to bring in more immigrants and to reduce the Sinkie percentage to 55% or lower.

What is the Natcon for? What is this talk about engaging the people, talking and listening to the people? Can the 77/80 MPs feel the disquiet?

Overhauling of banking sector to regain trust

The CEO of DBS, Piyush Gupta, spoke to students and finance professionals about the need to overhaul the banking sector to regain public trust. This call is troubling as it touches only the surface of a major industry where trust was fundamental to its existence.

The banking industry used to be very conservative and operated under some fundamental rules like strong and steady without big risk taking. Today, the industry is the biggest gambler and risk taker in the history of modern finance. The risk the banking sector is taking is many times more than all the casinos in the world combined. A slip is all it needs to bring the world economy down to its knees. It did in the late 1990s and a bigger one is coming as nothing really changes. The gambling gets only bigger and more furious. They need to pay themselves crazy.

What Piyush Gupta said is nothing knew. Jackson Tai, his predecessor, also said more or less the same thing. But it was all words. Who would want to overturn the gravy train when every banker is filling his bank accounts with slush funds and easy money from big stake gamblings, yes, in derivatives and complex derivatives, not forgetting all the insidious dealings in money laundering, in rate fixing and crooked deals etc etc ?

So what, nothing will change and the game will continue as big money needs to be paid to satiate the big appetite of the bankers. How else or where else could they find the money to pay themselves?

At the domestic level Piyush pointed his fingers at ‘…ineffective boards, the outsourcing of risk assessment to rating agencies and the creation of overly complex derivative products.’ But these have been on going for ages. Even the recommendations by SIAS to hang responsibility on boards of directors for wrong doings in their companies were shot down for fear that there will be no directors willing to be directors when they can be found culpable and responsible for wrong doings or frauds under their watch. Can you believe that? All the directors are being paid humongusly and many will form a long queue to be one and some are claiming that there would not be any around if they are made to be accountable for negligent or wrongdoings? Who is kidding who.

As for derivatives and other high risk financial products and instruments, they have become the opiate of the banking industry. Remove the derivatives and funny deals, where are the banks going to bring in the big profits to pay the big salaries? So how?

Piyush called for a code of conduct to regain trust by doing the right and proper thing, by being not only responsible to the shareholders, to themselves but also to the public and society. This is a tall order, an aspiration, but unlikely that something will be done or anything will be done in this vein. The stakes are too high and the profits of banks will fall sharply to ground zero.

The whole banking industry needs a big overhaul. How and who is going to do it?

Occupy Singapore the FTA/CECA way

All free trade agreements have a lot of complex economic and trade issues, import export tariffs and quotas, taxation, goods, preferential duties etc etc to benefit both countries. But this free flow of PMETs is very deadly to a small country with a small population like Sin. It is so apparent that one or two million foreigners would create a big impact and havoc to this island in all aspects, from housing, goods and services, infrastructure, transportation and simply people on the road. Then there are jobs consideration, schooling, medical services, social services and social space. And in close proximity in a small space with so many people, tension is bound to rise and it is a matter of time when rioting in big scale is going to hit this rock.

We are now told that there are 200,000 Indian PMETs in the island, not counting the PRC PMETs, the Pinoys, and the others. The FTA would have opened doors for these foreign nationals to be here, to operate and work in the companies and factories/offices they set up. So we have big businesses and big number of people. Wonder if the 200,000 PMETs include their families, some three generations, being brought here. If that is the case, it could be nearly 1m.

Next the housing needs, other than the office and factory spaces for the commercial activities, for the families. 200,000 units or thereabout. They need a roof. They need all the supporting living facilities, schools and services. 200,000 plus families, that is bigger than one of our biggest township or housing estate.

This is the trade off for the economic activities and revenue brought in through FTAs. How many direct jobs did these businesses brought to Sin and is it worth the trade off? More jobs for foreigners or for locals?

Imagine if this keeps expanding, the Indians and PRC Chinese and Pinoys will go on to fill up several townships/housing estates. It is like occupy Sin peacefully with Sin openly its arms and legs happily, without knowing it.

What would all these lead to? How much of our island would we have to give up to these foreigners in such numbers, our land, facilities, jobs and what else?

We are being occupied, through these FTAs and CECAs. The Govt apparently is very comfortable with such a situation, but the Sinkies are not. In 2030 Sinkies will be 55% on paper but in reality much less. What about 2040, 2050….?