Mysingaporenews Collection – A book launch by crowdfunding

I have received several suggestions and requests to compile my writings into a book form for easy reading and reference. Depending on the interest, I would want to gauge your support for a Collection of Redbean’s political satires and tongue in cheek commentaries on the social and political affairs of Sin City. A selection of the inconvenient truths, often provocative and contemptuous or shocking ridicules, real or unreal, believeable or unbelieveable posted in mysingaporenews would be made available in print. The book will have about 100 to 120 essays to laugh and ridicule at the things that were happening to our beloved country and people.
 
The cost of production, postage and kopi should not exceed $15 per copy. Please order your copy/copies by sending your donation to POSB savings account 091-04300-9 follow by an email to redbeansg@yahoo.com indicating how many copies needed and the address to deliver to. As an example, for a donation of $50 you can have 3 copies of the book to be delivered to you with the balance as donation for kopi. You can donate more if you like what I wrote. Oh, for deliveries outside Singapore, please add another $5. I did not check but think this would be enough for foreign addresses.
 
The title of the book is:
 
Mysingaporenews
A Collection of Redbean’s tongue in cheek commentaries and satires on Sin City
 
This is Redbean’s crowdfunding project for a book. In case there is insufficient support to cover the production cost the project will be aborted and the donations return to their owners. The book could be ready in July, 3 months after the fundraising project closed in March. Thank you for your support.
 
Redbean

World class education opportunities up North

Malaysia’s tertiary education is world class according to the Second Education Minister Idris Jusoh. Malaysian universities are as good as those in UK, Australia and Germany in terms of quality. To back up his claim, he quoted the large number of foreign students coming to Malaysia for their tertiary education, conducted in English of course. So the quality must be good to attract foreign students to Malaysia.
 
The presence of foreign students is again quoted as a major factor for quality education ie world class. On this aspect, Malaysian universities would never be better than Singapore’s because the number of foreign students in the student population is much higher. Not only that, the lecturers and professors are mainly foreigners, or a large percentage, could be more than 50% in some faculties.
 
Malaysia needs to work harder to better its ranking if it wants to be better than Singapore by importing more foreign students and lecturers. They could also follow Singapore by giving no string attached scholarships to foreign students and pay the foreign lecturers salaries that they cannot refused. Singapore got a lot of money to spend on these foreign students and lecturers, so can Malaysia. Just throw more monies to the foreign lecturers and students and the ranking of Malaysian universities will definitely go up, like those in Singapore. And when there are more foreigners, the quality also goes up.
 
Singaporean students must now be eyeing a place in Malaysian universities. Malaysia just need to spend a bit more money to raise its ranking and Singaporean students would surely make a beeline to the high quality world class university education in Malaysia. And with the exchange rate so favourable, it would be an option that Singapore parents find very attractive. And Malaysia could also earn a lot of foreign exchange, increase its percentage of foreign students with Singaporean students, and thus improve the quality of education further. It would be a virtuous circus. Oops, I mean virtuous circle.
 
Malaysia would be happy and Singaporean students would also be happy. More foreign students and foreign lecturers equal to higher quality of education. It is a simple formula and so easy to achieve.

What is the role of a MP?

The role of an MP is about law making, about national issues and policies, about running the country, about serving the people. It is definitely not about running a Town Council. A Town Council, or whatever you choose to call it, must be a public service not different from other govt services. The people did not vote an MP to run Town Councils and be involved in the nitty gritty details that he has no time for more important matters like attending in Parliament. An MP can head a Town Council, to give it direction, to make sure it run well to serve the people. But the operations of the Town Council must be managed by a team of professionals, not a mix match team to be brought together after an election without continuity.

The MP can be there to ensure that the Town Council serves the people fairly and equally. He should be out of the administrative role, to take the Town Council to task if it does not serve the people and not be taken to task as an administrator of the Town Council. It would be very tough it the MP, a politician, may he be a lawyer, a doctor, a vet, a singer, a soldier, or whatever, be made to run a Town Council as his primary duty.

An MP’s primary duty is in the Parliament. If he cannot be in Parliament, he should not be a Member of Parliament. If he is absent from Parliament most of the time, if he his bogged down by the routine of running a Town Council, how can he serve effectively as a Member of Parliament? You don’t call an MP a Town Council Chairman or Manager, but a Member of Parliament. The people did not go to the polling station to elect a Town Council Manager. They went to the polls to elect their representatives to the Parliament.

The PAP has a different view on this. They want an MP to be first a Town Council Manager, to be able to run a Town Council, as a test to eventually run the country. I quote Boon Wan, ‘…the Town Councils Act has a wider strategic objective of testing parties aspiring to form the national government, by running a town council to first prove their competency.’ This is like telling everyone that he needs to get a degree as a test of his ability to be successful in life or to run the country as a national leader. Is this a logical argument and expectation?

WP said they are not going to form the govt. So can they be excuse from running a Town Council when there is no aspiration to be the govt? So are many independent candidates that would not even dream of running a govt as an individual. Chiam See Tong has wasted more than 20 years of his time running Town Council, an impediment that prevented him from devoting fully to law making when he cannot dream of forming the govt.

What is the primary duty of an MP? Running his clinic, running his law firm, running his business, be directors here and there, running Town Councils and neglecting his duties in Parliament or no time even to attend Parliament that sat for a few days a few times in a year?

What is happening? Running Town Council as a pre requisite to be an MP necessary? I can’t help it when my head keeps shaking. National leaders are not necessary the kind of people that are good at running town councils, running sports associations, running clan associations or trade unions, definitely not necessary to be a successful lawyer or doctor. National leaders are people that have a passion to want to serve the people, to give the people a better life, people with a vision and a political will to make the ministries work towards that goal. What they need is a clear vision, to see the bigger picture of country and people, not about running town councils or squabbling over petty issues. They should be looking at national issues, at problems that involved hundreds of millions or billions, not a few dollars. They must have the helicopter ability, the bird’s eye view of things and not be bogged down by the daily grind of administrative procedures of a town council. The heart must be in the right place, and a really big and good heart with a passion to serve the people.

What do you think? Should an MP be turned into an administrator instead of a law maker, instead of a Member of Parliament? If he is so busy with Town Council matters, with his own business, where got time to be in Parliament to tackle national issues and law making? It is a joke that after paying the MPs such a big sum of money they could not find time to attend Parliament sessions.

A politician/MP's role should be as a check and balance on the govt and all the govt agencies. A politician/MP should not be put in a position to be checkmate in an administrative role.

100 Serangoon residents signed petition against AHPETC

According to an article in TRE, a Chinese paper reported that a petition demanding the WP to explain the loss of funds by AHPETC was signed by 100 Serangoon residents. The matter must be real serious. The PWP only got a miserable 5,000 attendance at Hong Lim Park, the remisier’s petition to Tharman only had a pathetic 1,200 signatures, and my polls here even had more than 150 signatures.  They better approach Raymond and he could easily double the number of signatures with a few phone calls.

The article is receiving a lot of negative comments in TRE and they are all pointing their fingers in one direction and sneering at the 100 signatures in a GRC of more than 200,000 residents. They smell a rat immediately. The stink is spreading.

Actually they could easily get 10% of the 40% who voted against the WP to sign and that would be 8,000 signatures.  No need to be shy, walk the ground and get more signatures to prove a point, that the residents have turned against the WP and would vote the WP out in the next GE. Would they? Or have more voters starting to see the goodness of the WP and sympathise with their plight and starting to cross over to the WP camp?

This 100 signature petition is very meaningful. Read in between the lines and it will reveal many things that cannot be transparent, cannot see light, and no one would come clean on why there is such a petition and who is behind it, and many more things waiting to be revealed.

Online debate more balanced but political blogs more anti govt

This is the finding of the Institute of Policy Studies and appeared in the ST a couple of weeks ago. The IPS survey also assured the Govt that social media is not a Wild Wild West domain and discussions are quite balanced but political blogs are more anti Govt.

I would like to correct IPS on this, that political blogs are anti Govt. There is a world of difference between unhappy and critical of govt policies and being anti govt or more appropriately anti PAP. Just like the commentator ‘simple’ who called me pro China just because I wrote about the farce and hypocrisies of the West and Japan that he is probably more in tune with and agreeable. Exposing hypocrisies and telling the uncomfortable truth that happened to favour China is not necessary pro China. Speaking about the injustice against the Chinese civilization is not pro China but pro justice. If such a simple reasoning cannot be grasped then it is a waste of time trying to explain what it means.

There are many critics of govt policies. And this is not anti govt. There will be no or lesser criticisms of the govt if the policies are well received.  Citizens do not criticize the Govt as a past time, as a fad.  Is it wrong to speak up and disagree with govt policies that are seen as unreasonable or unacceptable or even foolish and against the people? Speaking up against bad policies is NOT anti govt. Hope IPS will be able to understand this subtle difference. Does IPS know what is the meaning of anti govt? Sure they know but the comment must have come about because of an obsession to see things in black and white.

Who would be hitting out against the Govt if the policies are good and well conceived and received? Neither is there a need to praise the Govt whenever good policies are made.  Only an insecure Govt needs to be praised daily. Unfortunately good policies are few and in between for a long time. You may disagree and feel otherwise. Anyway the Govt will be well rewarded when they made good policies by their self rewarding system that is one of a kind in the word. I don’t think there is any govt in the world that would reward themselves with 12 to 24 months of bonuses if they did well. A conflict of interest? Govts are expected to do well and their reward is to be reelected or be booted out if they failed.

Oops, I am criticizing another govt policy, so am I anti govt?