Syonan Gallery achieved more than it set out to do

According to Hsien Loong, the Syonan Gallery was to ‘evoke that dark and traumatic period in Singapore’s history’. In my view this episode evoked more than that. Within a matter of two days, Singaporeans were given a history lesson that they would not forget. I don’t think the school text books and lessons could be told in such personal and dramatic way to touch the raw nerves of the people, young and old. Many old wounds were opened, many old and painful memories were invoked for those who suffered, their children and closed ones to feel the pain once more. It was hurting to many of the victims.
 
How’s that for achieving the task of evoking the horrific and traumatic period of a forgotten chapter of our history? But more, many old stories of betrayals were retold and some crying out for blood. Many of the younger generations would not have known of the hideous past, of hooded men acting as informers to betray the victims that were eventually led to their death in the hands of the butchers, the Kempeitai and the Japanese Imperial Army. Many would now get to refresh their memories of how heinous were the crimes of the barbaric Japanese invaders.
 
A big thank you for this timely reminder to arouse the anger and hate for the Japanese invaders of our country. Many would have forgotten and would love everything Japanese. Many stories are being retold in the social media. Now anything Japanese would come with a distaste. Some may want to ‘pui’ and would look at the Japanese more closely to see the evil lurking behind that disarming smile and that polite bow.
 
This is a good way to learn history and to relive history, to remind the millennial not to take things at face value. Know your past, know your history and be wiser for your own good. The past cannot be forgotten. This unintended result is the only good thing coming out from this dreadful episode. Now the name Syonan can be dumped into history and good riddance.

What India done right

What India done right and Singapore failed miserably is the emphasis on IT. Singapore seems to have lost a generation of IT programmers/analysts/software specialists through its neglect in teaching these subjects in schools, polytechnics and the universities. Everyday I am reminded of the army of IT professionals in MBFC. My whole floor is flooded with these IT people from India, a testament that India has done right in foreseeing the future, planning and educating a whole generation of such specialists for the industry worldwide. How could we have missed this boat?

The dearth of IT specialists is seriously felt in the banking and finance industry and they have no choice but to go to India where they are armies of them waiting eagerly to be hired. If only Singapore's education has done it right, today all the IT specialists being hired to work in the banks would have been Singaporeans and not foreigners. Our university graduates would be gainfully employed and not be dumped into taking up part time jobs or unrelated contract jobs earning a pathetic pay not enough to live on.

This is what careful planning and doing the right thing is all about at govt level. They called it foresight, the ability to look into the future like the CFE is doing. This is also proof that the govt's proactive and crystal ball gazing ability is greatly lacking.

How I wish the number of IT specialists employed in MBFC are Singaporeans and not foreigners and our graduates need not waste their time and money to study irrelevant courses and ended with degrees that cannot be eaten.

Please learn from India and start to educate our graduates in useful and relevant courses and not courses that no employer wants. I feel so sorry for our graduates and their parents that foot the bills for their education whenever I see the happy faces of the foreigners here. These faces could be the happy faces of our young graduates.

Where is the clever thinking and planning for the future? Would the recent CPE end up 10 or 20 years in the future with more pathetic problems like what we are seeing today when a whole industry needing an army of IT specialists and has to import them, unable to find any local to fill the vacancies?

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Redbean

Govt policies must be sensible, reasonable, focused and responsible

Many people have heard the reasoning for the big water fee hike and the logic being aired in Parliament and many are shaking their heads in disbelief. Do the ministers really believe they are convincing in their arguments and the people are really so daft to accept the reasoning. We have a highly educated population, more than 50% have received tertiary education and any farcical, flimsy or flawed arguments would stand up like a sore thumb. Ministers must be careful and not stand out looking like fools with foolish arguments and thinking they could get away with them.

Just read this piece of statement saying that ‘Water prices were increased substantially to reflect its true scarcity value’ by Masagos. Using the same logic, should not the govt raise the salaries of ministers substantially to reflect its true scarcity value? The scarcity of good political leaders is frightening and a strategic issue, a national security issue too. I just borrow some of the phrases used in Parliament to depict how serious the matter is.

Yes pay the really good minister $10m or more, but this must be done discriminately not like the carpet bombing price of water fee that hit everyone so hard. Some ministers deserved $10m, some not even $100k.  In the case of water, the pricing must be carefully calibrated to be reasonable and sensible and responsible.

Water is a basic necessity and is a must use item by everyone, from the richest to the poorest. And in some cases the poorest need to use more water than the richest. A manual worker would need to bath more and wash more given the nature of his work. A multi millionaire could bathe in perfume or Evian water or no need to bath as he rarely need to sweat under the hot sun. The bedridden would need to be clean. Everyone needs to take their bath in this hold tropical city. Everyone, rich or poor, needs to shit and flush the toilet. How can such acts be punished by high water fees? Don’t bathe, don’t shit, don’t wash and don’t flush?

What is reasonable and sensible is to allocate a fix quantity of water to every individual/household, regardless of wealth, maybe a bit more to the workers, to clean themselves, for personal hygiene. Water is a basic necessity and should be priced as such. Then the axe can come down to bear on those that over used, misused and abused, those that could not appreciate this precious item. Using water reasonably for basic needs must not and cannot be punished with an across the board price hike. Levy progressive and punitive taxes on over usage of water. And I quote Masagos again, ‘Consumers must feel the full price of water’. The difference is that the axe must not be used indiscriminately against everyone.  Not all consumers waste water irresponsibly. Many are actively and responsibly cutting down on their water usage. Why should they also be punished?  If an axe is swung wildly like a mad man, it discredits the person wielding the axe as a mad man, thoughtless and unreasonable.

I do not want to belabour this point. It is common sense. Please be reasonable, be sensible, be focused and be responsible and raise water fees in a calibrated and thoughtful way.  Think a little more. Anyone behaving like a bull in a crystal shop will look like a stubborn and mindless raging bull. No one would respect a mad bull ramming and knocking down everything in its way.

No need to use phrases like scarce resources, strategic issues, national security issue to pull a veil over a flawed pricing policy. It defeats everything being said.

Time to bankrupt the American Empire

Trump has said he wants to build the biggest and most powerful military force ever for the American Empire. They could do that when they were productive and fleecing the Arabs of their oil and the world by printing cheap paper money and selling them to the world as international currency. Can the Americans afford to continue to spend lavishly on military weapons to control the oceans of the world and to maintain 5000 military bases all over the world?

The Arabs are getting wiser and want to control their oil and decide their own future. The world will sooner or later abandon the American dollar as the international currency. The world would soon stop buying cheap and worthless American Treasury bonds and that would be the end of the American dollar and the end of printing easy money. The dollar would be worthless when the world gets wiser to the cheating Americans, getting rich without having to work or pay for it, just printing money.

In the meantime China and Russia can play the game in an arms race. Both Russia and China should spend more on their defence. If China is to roll out 6 aircraft carriers and Russia likewise or even 3, that would make a combined force of at least a dozen aircraft carriers to match the existing 10 American aircraft carriers.

What would the Americans or Trump do? It can be expected that they would want to double their carrier fleet to 20 or more. They need the numbers to maintain their superiority as the world’s hegemon.  Russia and China should not just confine themselves to aircraft carriers and ships, but ICBMs, aircraft, satellites etc etc. This would force to the Americans to spend big and to bankrupt themselves faster.

The Americans no longer have the capacity and the money to compete in an arms race without the industrial complexes to pay for it. They also cannot rely on free or cheap Arab oil or printing more greenbacks. The greenbacks would rapidly run out of its usefulness, become irrevelant and end up like monopoly notes.

Russia and China must proceed to challenge the Americans in an all out arms race to bankrupt the American economy and bring the Empire to its knees. The Americans just cannot afford it. Just keep the defence spending up and let the Americans try to outdo and outperform and outspend the combined forces and defence budget of Russia and China. A 3 times more American strategy to remain aloof and unchallenged would see the Americans huffing and puffing to its own demise.

$600b defence budget and the Trumps wants to spend more. Go ahead and spend. The Russians and Chinese should oblige by providing the reasons and motivation for the Americans to keep spending on defence and make it $1 trillion. That would be nice.