Selling national icons

The Great Singapore Sale is on, but this one will take a longer time span as it involves real big ticket items. The PWD or Public Works Division was sold, power stations were sold, Robinson sold, Tiger Beer/F&N sold and the latest item under the hammer is iconic NOL, the national carrier of international fame and of big losses.

Richard Hartung, a foreign talent, wrote in the Today paper today asking ‘Why Spore should not sell off its iconic firms’. The reasons are obvious, there are things that are more valuable than just in monetary terms and should not be put up for sale using profit and loss rationale. There are national psychic involved, national pride, culture, aspiration and identity. What would Singapore be if they sell away DBS, SIA, the Istana, PSA, SMRT, SBS, HDB, the National Museum, National Arts Gallery, the universities like NUS, NTU etc etc? What the heck spending on foreigners to buy gold medals in sports for?

Richard Hartung also talked about the loss of core skills if a national shipping line would go and how it would affect the business of PSA. Would the new owner bypass PSA and make Malaysian ports their ports of call and head office? What about the core skills of shipping talents? Not important? Yes, not important. We already have lost our core skills in banking and finance and IT and would need 30 years to train our next generation of bankers, finance and IT experts if the govt is serious to pursue this line of thinking and not just paying lip services.

We even compromised our Total Defense Concept by bringing in foreigners in the millions and given important appointments in govt services and GLCs to foreigners called new citizens and some not even new citizens. We are at the verge of cleaning out our local academics in the academia by replacing them with foreigners. Would we be losing any core skills and talents?

And the NOL and SIA do not just play a commercial role for profit and loss. In times of war, they have supporting role to play for our military services as well. Are we really going all out on this Great Singapore Sale just counting dollars and cents? Are there other more important considerations to think about, strategic interests, the big picture, a nation versus a hotel?

All the kpkb in the social media will be of no use. Maybe what this Richard Hartung said may ring a bell, because he is a foreigner and foreigners are the smarter people in this Sin City. And in this case this foreigner also thinks this Great Singapore Sale of iconic assets is not a good idea.

What do you think?

Bomb threat protocol on SQ001

SQ001 arrived from San Francisco on Sunday with 267 passengers on board. The media reported that it was the target of a bomb threat and was held at the tarmac for more than an hour with all its passengers on board. It was a great relief that it was found to be a hoax and all the passengers were safe.

The incident is receiving a lot of brickbats from netizens saying that the protocol was flawed. Should it not be top priority to get the passengers out of the aircraft as the first instance when the aircraft landed instead of holding them inside the aircraft that is the subject of a bomb threat? It sounds very logical. And the procedure of keeping the passengers inside the aircraft looked so silly to many observers and commentators.

Maybe there are other reasons or information that the public did not know. What is the nature of the bomb threat? Normally it is like a bomb being planted in the plane. So getting the passengers out and away from the aircraft looks the most reasonable thing to do.

What would it be if the threat says do not open the door for doing so would trigger the bomb to go off? Ah, no one thought of this right? I think the security people are not that daft as the public thought them to be. Understand the nature of the threat first and then the measures taken would make sense. Some bombs are designed to  trigger off at certain heights, above or below or at certain speed like it will go off if the speed falls below say 300 knots.

Now what is this case all about? Who knows? Did the security people made a booboo by allowing the passengers to remain in a plane with a bomb threat or there is more than what we know?

The war in Syria going to blow up

The Turks down Russian SU24 fighter jet yesterday when both sides were supposed to be fighting the ISIS. Putin called this a stab in the back while the Turks are claiming that the Russian jet entered their territories.  Such silly behavior is very typical of some Asean countries, thinking they could pull the whiskers of a sleeping tiger. The Russians with Putin in charge would not let this event go unpunished. Turkey can expect a few bombs at their radar stations or airbases or a few F16s to be shot down by the Russians.

Turkey is behaving like little pesky countries thinking that with the US behind them they could go around shooting at anyone, including a nuclear power like Russia. There is no way they are going to get away with this silly act. The Russians are prepared to take on the Americas and Turkey is a push over.

This is a lesson that the Philippines and some Asean states must take note. Don’t try this silly trick on China. They will give them a blue black even if it risks the Americans joining the fray. There are things that silly pesky countries can do, there are things that they better not do.

The war in Syria will cross over to Turkey and the innocent people of Turkey will be the next war collateral. It is really baffling to think that leaders of a country could act in such a silly manner and think they could get away with it.

Well done Turkey, welcome to the war zone.

Tapping solar energy

Everyone is tapping solar energy. PUB is conducting a 9 month test to see its impact on the environment and reservoir. Solar panels need a lot of space and installing them means some space much go. Not a good way to use our limited space. We need more space for more foreigners to come in, 6.9m or 10m. So the reservoir with it wide expanse of water surface offers a perfect setting for solar panels. Really? Would it eat into the space of water activities?

Actually there is a lot of unused space that would not be put to use and when used for solar panels, no space will be wasted. In fact it is maximizing space that would be wasted anyway. Look at the new sound barrier panels SMRT are erecting on the side of tracks to cut down noise level. Why can’t they install solar panels instead, killing two birds with one stone? The panels could also act as sound barriers. And the long stretches of tracks can definitely take in a good number of panels without wasting any extra space.

If SMRT were to line all the tracks with solar panels, it may be able to turn it into another business, selling electricity with the surpluses or at least be self sufficient in energy consumption.

What do you think?

Enemy within

Today paper on 24 Nov published an article from Financial Times titled, ‘Enemy within is the biggest threat in cases of cybercrime’. It does not need a super talent not to see the truism in the title of the article. The article went on to say that most cyber attacks, more than 80%, was inside job, committed by people within an organization. However, many of the cases were simply deflected intentionally or otherwise to outside sources. Notably the massive attacks on US govt and commercial organizations were claimed to come from North Korea or China. What is the truth? The 81% statistics that such attacks were from within needs no further explanation.

How is this serious threat relevant to Singapore? Obvious isn’t it? With the IT industries dominated or even overtaken by foreigners, with many foreigners taking over important and financially or strategically sensitive institutions and corporations, would these people within be a threat to the interest of Singapore as a country?

The answer is a BIG NO. Singapore is very comfortable with foreigners, and foreign talents to take over our institutions and maybe even our countries. Just issue them a pink IC and they will not be foreigners anymore but Singaporeans. So simple.  Did anyone say so silly? We have complete faith and confidence that the foreigners coming here, given important appointments and CEOs, even sitting in Parliament, are all for Singapore and will not betray the trust the ever trusting Singaporeans took them in, hired them, to run our show. It is all about faith. We trust them and they would reciprocate our trust. Nothing to worry about. Do not be hysterical over such things. All is well.

Have no fear of foreigners doing inside jobs to compromise our security and interests. Singapore is an exceptional country in that every foreigner coming here will be good, like angels.

In the Today article, Tommy Helsby, the Chairman of business investigation firm Kroll said this, ‘Cybercrime is one of those things where the insider is the dominant threat…You have all these clever defences against people on the outside, but people on the inside are already on the inside.’

What nonsense, this kind of things would never be a problem in Singapore or in Singapore’s institutions. We are absolutely safe from inside attacks. We have many experts and security organizations overseeing our security from such attacks. If there is a risk, they would have opened their mouths. So far they are very comfortable with the situation.

And we have the strongest armed forces to guard against external attacks. We got Total Defense also. Where got problem? Insiders, 2 million foreigners here? So what? We need growth and they are here to help us grow our economy and provide jobs for our people, plus the talents that we are sorely in need of.

We have all the holes covered. Fear Not. Just build a strong defence force against enemies coming from outside. Buy more F35s to frighten them away.

PS. The enemy within did not wear a tag saying he is the enemy. He probably wears a smiling face full of innocence and a tag saying ‘I love you, trust me’.