The Malaysian EPF has been consistently paying an interest rate of
between 5 to 6% for the last 10 years. How is this compares to our 2.5%
and 4% interest rates paid by CPF? Damn shiok right?
Now how could the Malaysians do it? They employed fund managers and so
did our govt. They are likely to invest in a basket of financial
products like us. It would be the greatest joke if their investments are
chalking better returns than our world best fund managers. They could
not be doing anything too different from us. Cannot be right? How then
could they pay that kind of interest rates for so many years?
It would be patronizing to assume that their returns are lower than ours
and still able to pay higher interest rates. Let’s be fair and presume
that both perform just as well in ROIs. So, if the Malaysians are paying
higher returns to their EPF owners, then the fund managers must be
getting much lesser in salary and bonuses or they are returning
everything they earned to their fund holders.
I think this is it. They did not engaged world best fund managers at
world best pay, so the savings could count a lot and could end up paying
better returns to their EPF owners. Explaining it in this way is not
too complimentary to our fund managers. Our fund managers must be better
and making better returns for the money they are being paid. And the
lower pay out could or might be due to other reasons that we are not
privy to.
Overall, it must be value for money. If we are paying so much we must be
getting more in return. Tio Boh? But still doesn’t answer the
discrepancy that the EPF can pay so much but with our world best talents
our CPF are paying so little.
10/10/2013
10/09/2013
"We pay people what their job is worth................"
"We pay people what their job is worth and what the quality of the people is worth..............." Does this statement impute that the presidency and the ministerial posts in Singapore are heavier and of greater gravity and responsibility than those of USA, Russia, China, Germany, England, France, India Indonesia and Brazil and therefore needs to command premium salaries many times higher than the others.
As regards the quality of our president and ministers , do they measure up to that of President Putin of Russia, Merkle of Germany, Xi Jingping and Li Keqiang of China and those of the aforementioned countries. In both cases they do not and therefore their salaries should henceforth scale down to more commensurate level say forty to fifty percent that of the salary of Obama or Merkle or Putin. Singapore is very much let down by our president and ministers. They have four of the five proverbial blindness viz blind to injustice, blind to their incompetence, blind to the righteous, blindly engaged in war and blind to the citizens' well being and all this would eventually doom the state to fall and the people to suffer more.
They do not seem to care that their sinful unrealistically high salaries, the COES, ERPS and GSTs have a very high negative and direct impact on the peoples cost of living and therefore a great burden to them. They don't seem to realise that the high cost of HDB flats, high cost of transport and high medical cost is a nightmare to the people at large never mind what Koh Boon Wan said about paying only $8.00 for a heart operation.
Many of the government's policies and governance are poorly thought out especially regarding the workers' CPF , foreign talents and intake of hundreds of thousands of immigrants into this tightly sardine packed island and these have a great detrimental impact on the lives of Singaporeans. The president and ministers should 'Walk The Talk' and not talk 'NATO'.
As regards the quality of our president and ministers , do they measure up to that of President Putin of Russia, Merkle of Germany, Xi Jingping and Li Keqiang of China and those of the aforementioned countries. In both cases they do not and therefore their salaries should henceforth scale down to more commensurate level say forty to fifty percent that of the salary of Obama or Merkle or Putin. Singapore is very much let down by our president and ministers. They have four of the five proverbial blindness viz blind to injustice, blind to their incompetence, blind to the righteous, blindly engaged in war and blind to the citizens' well being and all this would eventually doom the state to fall and the people to suffer more.
They do not seem to care that their sinful unrealistically high salaries, the COES, ERPS and GSTs have a very high negative and direct impact on the peoples cost of living and therefore a great burden to them. They don't seem to realise that the high cost of HDB flats, high cost of transport and high medical cost is a nightmare to the people at large never mind what Koh Boon Wan said about paying only $8.00 for a heart operation.
Many of the government's policies and governance are poorly thought out especially regarding the workers' CPF , foreign talents and intake of hundreds of thousands of immigrants into this tightly sardine packed island and these have a great detrimental impact on the lives of Singaporeans. The president and ministers should 'Walk The Talk' and not talk 'NATO'.
5 kinds of blindness worse than being blind
In an article written by a David Wu and Tanya Harrison on music in The
Epoch Times they mentioned an ancient blind musician by the name of Shi
Kuang. When the emperor took pity on his blindness he told the emperor
that his blindness was nothing. There were 5 kinds of blindness that
were worse than his.
He said, ‘when a king was blind to injustice, blind to his official’s incompetence, blind to the righteous, blindly engaged in war, and was blind to his subjects’ well being, his state would be doomed to fall and his people would suffer more.’
This little ancient wisdom can be applied to modern day states and the state of blindness of heads of govt or country. Any head of govt or country that lives with the 5 blindness will soon see his country’s doom and his own doom.
He said, ‘when a king was blind to injustice, blind to his official’s incompetence, blind to the righteous, blindly engaged in war, and was blind to his subjects’ well being, his state would be doomed to fall and his people would suffer more.’
This little ancient wisdom can be applied to modern day states and the state of blindness of heads of govt or country. Any head of govt or country that lives with the 5 blindness will soon see his country’s doom and his own doom.
CPE will not take legal action against student blogger Han Hui Hui
Media Release
STATUTORY BOARD WILL NOT TAKE LEGAL ACTION AGAINST STUDENT BLOGGER
Court Action Discontinued as Parties Arrive at Agreement
SINGAPORE, October 8, 2013– Han Hui Hui, the 21-year old Singaporean student blogger who was threatened with a defamation suit by the Council for Private Education [“CPE”], has agreed not to proceed with her challenge in Court against the statutory board. The CPE has agreed not to take any action against Ms Han for defamation.
Acting for Ms Han, lawyer Mr M Ravi believes the matter has come to a happy outcome for his young client. “I am so proud of Ms Han’s conviction. She has not shied away from a fight and through her persistence and activism, Ms Han has raised awareness on this issue – Singaporeans should have a reasonable expectation that they will not be sued for defamation when they question or criticize a public authority.”
Through her challenge, Ms Han was asserting in the Singapore Court what is known as the “Derbyshire Principle”: plainly, that individuals should be free to criticise government institutions and their agencies without fear of being sued for defamation. The principle has been adopted widely in the Courts, beginning in the United Kingdom (Derbyshire Town, for which it takes its name) and following in Canada, Australia, India, South Africa and Malaysia. In the United States, this principle has stood for nearly a century and its purpose is to allow free and fair criticism of public institutions by the citizens who both fund them with their tax dollars and are governed by them.
“I hope that Parliament will act soon to amend the Defamation Act to ensure that government agencies do not continue to use the tax-payers’ dollars to fund actions against their own citizens in Court. The government – particularly in Singapore where the mainstream media is state-controlled – has ample resources and opportunity to respond to any inquiry or criticism raised by the public without resorting to punitive civil action against private individuals” states Mr Ravi.
Han Hui Hui and fellow Singaporeans should say a big thank you to brave and upright lawyers like M Ravi to stand up for them. Many had in the past decided to back off and even pay compensations to rogues that were in the wrong but used the weight of the law and their big bank account to bully innocent citizens and abusing the courts of justice. Without professional and civic conscious lawyers like Ravi, Han Hui Hui could go the same way if she could not find anyone to represent her without bankrupting her with legal fees.
Thank you Ravi and the likes, if there are any of you in the community
STATUTORY BOARD WILL NOT TAKE LEGAL ACTION AGAINST STUDENT BLOGGER
Court Action Discontinued as Parties Arrive at Agreement
SINGAPORE, October 8, 2013– Han Hui Hui, the 21-year old Singaporean student blogger who was threatened with a defamation suit by the Council for Private Education [“CPE”], has agreed not to proceed with her challenge in Court against the statutory board. The CPE has agreed not to take any action against Ms Han for defamation.
Acting for Ms Han, lawyer Mr M Ravi believes the matter has come to a happy outcome for his young client. “I am so proud of Ms Han’s conviction. She has not shied away from a fight and through her persistence and activism, Ms Han has raised awareness on this issue – Singaporeans should have a reasonable expectation that they will not be sued for defamation when they question or criticize a public authority.”
Through her challenge, Ms Han was asserting in the Singapore Court what is known as the “Derbyshire Principle”: plainly, that individuals should be free to criticise government institutions and their agencies without fear of being sued for defamation. The principle has been adopted widely in the Courts, beginning in the United Kingdom (Derbyshire Town, for which it takes its name) and following in Canada, Australia, India, South Africa and Malaysia. In the United States, this principle has stood for nearly a century and its purpose is to allow free and fair criticism of public institutions by the citizens who both fund them with their tax dollars and are governed by them.
“I hope that Parliament will act soon to amend the Defamation Act to ensure that government agencies do not continue to use the tax-payers’ dollars to fund actions against their own citizens in Court. The government – particularly in Singapore where the mainstream media is state-controlled – has ample resources and opportunity to respond to any inquiry or criticism raised by the public without resorting to punitive civil action against private individuals” states Mr Ravi.
Han Hui Hui and fellow Singaporeans should say a big thank you to brave and upright lawyers like M Ravi to stand up for them. Many had in the past decided to back off and even pay compensations to rogues that were in the wrong but used the weight of the law and their big bank account to bully innocent citizens and abusing the courts of justice. Without professional and civic conscious lawyers like Ravi, Han Hui Hui could go the same way if she could not find anyone to represent her without bankrupting her with legal fees.
Thank you Ravi and the likes, if there are any of you in the community
Education quality to be improved
In his dialogue with Poly students yesterday at the 17th Polytechnic
Forum, Heng Swee Kiat said there was no need to build another
polytechnic. The five polytechnics should be adequate for our needs.
What is lacking is the quality and this must be improved ‘to make
learning more engaging and valuable for students’. This about sums up
the education and job situation here at the moment.
We are producing enough graduates but lacking in quality. The problem is solved by importing good quality graduates from the third world and they have the numbers we need. In the meantime the urgent matter is to raise the quality of our world ranked education system to compete with those in unranked education institutions in the third world countries. They have got their education system right while we got it all wrong. We are like getting all the branded goods, brand names, but all fake, unusable and of poor quality.
The issue of improving the quality of a flawed education system will take a longer time to correct. While the MOE is doing it, perhaps it would be better to correct the clear and immediate problems by sending our students to the third world countries that are producing all the great talents that are replacing our daft graduates. The second step is to send a few teams to these third world countries to learn from them on how to produce graduates that are better than our universities and polytechnics. And certainly, even if the quality does not improve, the cost will be much cheaper if we engaged all their top professors, lecturers and teachers to replace the robots that we are using to teach our students.
With this two prong approaches, we would be able to save a lot of cost in education and produce good quality graduates as well. We may not need all the world ranked universities and polytechnics by sending our students to universities and polytechnics in the third world countries. No need to pay expensive western professors and lecturers, no need expensive education institutions and infrastructures, no need to sell ourselves as the education hub when we are producing not employable graduates or graduates good only for second or third tier management, etc etc.
That’s the way to go, cheap and good, very good and very cheap.
We are producing enough graduates but lacking in quality. The problem is solved by importing good quality graduates from the third world and they have the numbers we need. In the meantime the urgent matter is to raise the quality of our world ranked education system to compete with those in unranked education institutions in the third world countries. They have got their education system right while we got it all wrong. We are like getting all the branded goods, brand names, but all fake, unusable and of poor quality.
The issue of improving the quality of a flawed education system will take a longer time to correct. While the MOE is doing it, perhaps it would be better to correct the clear and immediate problems by sending our students to the third world countries that are producing all the great talents that are replacing our daft graduates. The second step is to send a few teams to these third world countries to learn from them on how to produce graduates that are better than our universities and polytechnics. And certainly, even if the quality does not improve, the cost will be much cheaper if we engaged all their top professors, lecturers and teachers to replace the robots that we are using to teach our students.
With this two prong approaches, we would be able to save a lot of cost in education and produce good quality graduates as well. We may not need all the world ranked universities and polytechnics by sending our students to universities and polytechnics in the third world countries. No need to pay expensive western professors and lecturers, no need expensive education institutions and infrastructures, no need to sell ourselves as the education hub when we are producing not employable graduates or graduates good only for second or third tier management, etc etc.
That’s the way to go, cheap and good, very good and very cheap.
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