You fall, not I fall!

The 46-year-old housewife who were recently fined for failing to provide safe working conditions for her two maids, in addition to making one of them perform tasks as a scaffolder and maintenance worker, deserved what she got. But what she got was only a fine.

Willow Phua Brest had breached work pass conditions involving the work safety of her maids by making the two perch on a two-storey scaffold while cleaning the windows of her Cluny Park house.  Although they were provided with safety belts, the MOM prosecutor said they were not sufficient to reduce the severity of injuries should the maids fall. Neither were the maids trained to work at height.  As though that was not enough, when contractors delivered an unerected second scaffold, she had one of the maids erect the structure from the components delivered - never mind if she wasn’t trained for that either.  And on this DIY structure the maid stood, sanding, varnishing and painting a wooden wall at the back of the house.

For such callous disregard of the safety of a fellow human being, one has to ask:  Is a fine punishment enough?  And given the upscale address of the employer, is a fine an effective deterrent in the first place? My guess is $46,000 for the owner of a Cluny Park residence is probably loose change. No more than an affordable slap on the wrist.  So what is a more effective deterrent for such moneybags?  Jail time - and mandatory jail time at that.  Jail time with all its inconveniences - a cold cell, a cement bed, a shared toilet, a lack of privacy and freedom. In short, everything that moneybags dread. It would be wonderful if eventually they can experience the terror of working at height by having to clean windows from their own flimsily-constructed scaffold.  But for now, I suppose jail time will do.

The flaw logic of one trick pony

The influence of LKY and his thinking is still very strong in the PAP. It would be alright if his thinking and logic were still relevant and useful. Unfortunately many of his policies based on his thinking and logic have proven to be flawed and no longer valid in the context of the new realities. And unfortunately, many of the unthinking would continue to parrot his thinking and logic as the gospel truth, word for word, without a thought, with no value add, to make them relevant or to discard them when proven unwise or impractical.
 
Many Singaporeans have seen the flaws of PAP’s policies but are keeping mum, not wanting to rock the boat or offend anyone, and letting the proverbial Emperor to strut around without his clothes. The flawed policies are not only going to down PAP in a matter of time, but also going to cause very serious damage to the country and people in the long run. Many of the flawed policies are already hurting the people very badly today but everyone is pretending that it is not happening and everything is fine. A good example is that CPF is no longer your money, spoken and endorsed in Parliament.
 
Recently the logic of paying ministers outrageous millions is being touted again as the golden rule. No one can see the flaw or reasoning of this policy. Oops, many did, but not wanting to say anything and let the one trick pony to go on as per normal.
 
Under this policy, the PAP leadership claimed that only by paying out of this world salary would they get super talents, and went scouting around for top earners in other professions assuming that a good surgeon or a top lawyer would automatically become a good politician. Just look at those professionals turned politicians and ask how many really did well as a political leader and how many fouled up the jobs so badly that the damages are hard to repair? Foreign policy with China is a good example.
 
By picking a top professional from a different profession and making them a political leader could result in a good politician and all is good. It could also end up with a round peg in a square hole leading to a profession losing a top guy and the govt getting a dud.
 
What is worse is that the dud would be paid millions as a politician and still unhappy because he could earn more in his previous profession and also excelled instead of failing in politics and looking so ridiculous. This is an injustice to both professions and also to the individual for making him earning less and becoming a misfit.
The other consequence of this logic is that because of one or two professionals that were earning millions in their professions, other average Joes would also be paid in the millions when they in their whole life time would never be able to earn that kind of money out of politics. This is wasting public money on the undeserving.
 
Incidentally, did Edwin Tong lose any income for joining politics? Please come clean on this. Politics is a part time job for him and he is still practicing as a top lawyer and earning big bucks like in the City Harvest case when he is a minister of state. Heard of fake news or misinformation? OK he recently got promoted to senior minister of state. Can anyone confirm that he is getting only $500,000 and not more, no other income like director or chairman fee or bonuses to make up to his millions? If Edwin Tong really took a $1.5m or even $500k loss in salary to become a politician, I will call him an idiot, but I would respect him for making such a big monetary sacrifice and losing $1.5m or $500k in dignity. His life style and his family will suffer in the quality of life for nothing making millions.
 
There will be exceptional individuals in other professions that would become good political leaders and willingly wanting to serve. In general, it is better to leave the top professionals in their own profession and making their millions instead of forcing them into politics and lose their millions and doing a bad job and wasting public money. This is a win-win situation that could turn out to be a lose-lose position for everyone.
 
What do you think? Repeating what LKY said can make one look funny if not silly if what LKY said is no longer relevant or has become obsolete. Many people don’t believe this crap about having to pay someone millions to go to politics and that someone from another profession earning big bucks would also make a good politician. This may still be touted by some as political wisdom here but is a joke in the whole wide world.

2050 - Exceptional city of exceptional people

Fellow local people of Super City TT0908. Today we celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the day we digitalised this City into a smart city for smart people. I can see that all of you are looking very well and prosperous and very happy for being a member of this great City. Everyone of you is an exceptional talent to be qualified to stay here. There is no more mediocre people in this Super City. All the mediocre people have left on their own free will to the neighbouring countries when they rightly belonged.

We did not achieve this state of ever bliss and prosperity, where only exceptionally talented people gathered to live among themselves without having to be bothered with the problems of the mediocre people, unable to pay for bus fares or cheap food and cheap housing without careful and forward planning. Our forefathers have made the right choice to open this City to all the talents of the world, to welcome everyone who is talent to this Super and Smart city. The process of renewal started several decades ago, to make this City a City of genuinely talented people.

In the beginning we called everyone coming here a talent, even knowing that they were not the talent we wanted. We bear with them. The agenda then was to quickly grow the population to 15m initially and finally to 30m today. As we go along and more and more foreign talents came in, we were able to weed out the lesser talents. We don't have to do anything. We only keep raising taxes and fees until it was unbearable for those mediocre people to stay and to pay. They voluntarily sold their homes and moved out to cheaper neighbouring countries where they are more comfortable with their low talent and low income.

10 years ago we have already achieved our target of a Super City with only super talented people living here. We have also redesignated or digitalised the name of our city to TT0908 and done away with the vestiges and historical garbage of the past when the losers everyday asked the govt for help and assistance. Our govt today does not need to provide a budget to help the poor and losers. There are no poor people or losers in our glorious city. There is no need for charity. There is no free lunch.

We  have also done away with many things that needed human beans and their labour. National Service has been abolished. We do not need human soldiers. They have been replaced with droids and the weapons for defence are all drones and robots. The City is clean not because we need cheap human labour. Our super talented local residents are smart and discipline and would not dirty the place. The streets are kept clean, of course by machine.

Oh, because we are now a Smart City, we also do away with citizenship where the losers used to fall back on to demand special privileges from the govt. Today everyone is a digit, can come and go. Only those that can afford to live in this expensive City will remain and those who could not would leave. How did we do this? Simple. We just keep increasing the cost of living, higher taxes and higher fees. And this is also necessary as such a great City must be run by the best talents and they deserved to be paid by the billions. Everything in this City is the best, world class, including the residents and the people that ruled this City.

Let us celebrate another successful year together as the most talented and highest paid human beans in the world.

Your PM
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99.9% of Singaporeans are mediocre people

This is an assumption I made from Chok Tong’s comment here. 'Goh Chok Tong was reportedly quoted in an audio recording as saying that PAP Ministers are not paid enough, and people who earn S$500,000 annually are “mediocre”.'
 
I think I am not very far wrong. So in Singapore we not only have 3rd, 4th or 5th raters but more important, almost everyone other than the natural aristocrats is a mediocre. Extrapolate this world wide, all the political leaders outside Singapore except for one or two like the President of the USA, is also mediocre. Oops, no exceptions, I got to correct myself on this one, Trump is getting only $1, far short of the $500k, so must be mediocre also. And in his good company will be leaders like Xi Jinping, Putin and our neighbours like Mahathir, Jokowi, Duterte etc etc, all mediocre, for I don’t think they earn anything near the magical $500k to determined their ability or intelligence.
 
I know for one that first raters like Da Cunha would not want to be associated with 3rd, 4th or 5th raters as it would affect his reputation. What would our better than mediocre leaders be thinking of the mediocre leaders when they met? Would they also feel that their reputation would be tarnished? Or would they look down on these mediocre leaders and telling themselves what a waste of time being in the company of these mediocre leaders?
 
What do you think? Would you advise all the mediocre leaders not to come to Singapore to be insulted or to tarnish the reputation of our sikit atas, super talented leaders?
 
The population of the world are almost entirely made up of mediocres except the rich businessmen, the crooks, the cheats and of course the millionaire ministers of Singapore.

Chok Tong really knows what he is talking about

'Goh Chok Tong was reportedly quoted in an audio recording as saying that PAP Ministers are not paid enough, and people who earn S$500,000 annually are “mediocre”.'

Simon Lim made this quote in his article on how disappointed he was with Goh Chok Tong. He may be disappointed but Goh Chok Tong did not become LKY's first choice candidate as the PM of Singapore for nothing. It must be exactly for making such wise cracks, oops, I mean comments to be noticed by LKY as his number one choice. Pardon me, I am ageing and maybe getting dementia.

But Chok Tong need not be unduly worried about the ministers being underpaid since the recommendation by the nasty COI to reduce a bit of their grotesque out of this world salary. There are many ways to increase a minister's salary without asking for a pay revision. Let me be a smart alec for once and offer a few good suggestions that the govt can do to increase the salary of ministers without asking for a pay rise and without raising alarm and unhappiness among the daft citizens.

1. Just promote them, to senior this and that or deputy PMs. Can have 4 or 5 dep PMs. The increase in salary would be seen as due to promotion ie clever and deserving, not simply pay hike. Who can quarrel with that? Clever ministers must reward mah. If not every minister acts stupid stupid how?
2. Create more minister positions, like having more ministries, ministers without portfolios or having more ministers in a ministry. So instead of one minister, two ministers can be promoted to be paid ministerial salary.
3. If that is still not enough, appoint them to be chairman of GLCs, part time jobs with good monetary rewards.
4. Can also appoint them to be directors of companies, easiest is GLCs. If one directorship is not enough, offer 2 or 3 directorships, or 8 or 10 until happy happy.
5. And chairmanship and director fees need not be reflected in the govt's budget some more. The pay of the ministers would look unchanged and can look unchanged for ages. And ministers can pretend to look very unhappy and grumpy because got no pay rise or salary revision. This is like playing the sympathy card, so poor thing, so long no pay rise. Caveat, this is a tough act if ministers all eat until fat fat and chubby chubby, looking so oily, rosy and radiant, very difficult to have the hungry look of cleaners in kopitiams or cardboard collectors. They must not look like Napoleon.
6. Of course there is the annual bonus to add to the salary. Be creative, call it productivity bonus and tie it to some fanciful formula that always go up, or can be jigged to go up.
7. When productivity bonus still not enough, can create creativity bonus, leadership bonus, innovative bonus or PLP bonus. PLP stands for people in short, ie people bonus for being people caring like scheming compulsory insurance schemes using CPF money that the people cannot say no. Don't have funny ideas.
8. There are also other indirect bonuses or rewards in kind, like going for overseas trips, fully paid, for training trips, learning trips, fact finding trips etc etc. Go and learn how to manage MRT, how to manage the oldies, how to make our education system better than third world education system...QED.

Just ask any HR professional and they would be able to produce a long list of monetary rewards without increasing the basic salary or calling for a pay revision.

I think I have given a lot of good suggestions that the govt can consider without ruffling the feathers of the unhappy and very sensitive daft citizens. They would not know what is happening, not a clue that the ministers salary can be fatten in these ways and keep telling everyone the ministers are only earning $1m or the PM earning $2m dollars as officially said so. So 'cham', so poor thing. Like that how to become the highest paid politicians in the world with the highest dignity?

What do you think? My suggestions good or not?  Oh, one trade secret, don't tell, don't talk about it. When smart alec asked, just be very transparent about the basic salary and buat bodoh about the additional perks, bonuses, fees etc etc.