Uniquely Singapore, F1 or F9: “Residents willing to pay more for service and conservancy”?
December 2, 2007
By Leong Sze Hian and Andrew Loh
The following article was first published here in TOC on the 2nd of Oct 2007. The Straits Times has a report titled “New rule to safeguard council funds“, December 2nd 2007, which addresses some of the issues in our article.
In a report titled “Punggol 21 Plus masterplan is a long-term one: Grace Fu” on the 15th of September 2007, Channelnewsasia website stated:
“But according to feedback to HDB, 81 percent of residents said they were willing to pay more for service and conservancy to enjoy the new flat designs. About half of them said they were willing to pay above S$10 more than the usual rates.”
The report did not reveal the details of the “feedback” which HDB had received. How the percentage of 81% was arrived at was also not revealed.
NMP’s views at odds with AIDS relief research paper
October 27, 2007
By Jinesh Lalwani and Choo Zheng Xi
Safe sex awareness pamphlets censored as pornography. Information booths closed down for distributing “illegal” content. Awareness outreach funding stifled by choking off of charity fundraisers by homosexual groups.
The government has given its repeated assurances that s377A of the Penal Code criminalizing ‘gross indecency’ between two men will not be enforced. However, evidence from healthcare workers on the ground seems to highlight a far more insidious effect of 377A.
A paper by Aids relief expert Associate Professor Roy Chan, President of Action for Aids Singapore, highlights how 377A hobbles HIV prevention efforts by the local sexual healthcare community.
Government using hyperbole to justify public protests ban
October 26, 2007
By Gerald Giam
The Singapore Government has once again employed the use of hyperbole to justify its near-total ban on public demonstrations, whether peaceful or not.
In his letter to the Straits Times and TODAY, the deputy director at the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) cautioned that “(t)he worst race riots in Singapore history began as peaceful processions”.
Let’s examine that statement a little more closely by looking at the history of riots in Singapore.
TOC Feature: 377A - To prevent what harm?
October 10, 2007
By Michael Hor
Curiously, the Penal Code (Amendment) Bill of 2007, proclaimed as the result of only the second comprehensive review of Singapore’s 136 year old criminal code, is likely to be remembered more for what it did not do than for what it did.
To be sure, there is much reform in the Bill, and much that is uncontroversially needed. Many of the changes are technical in nature and would require some acquaintance with the intricacies of criminal law to appreciate.
Not so the issue of whether consensual gay sexual activity between adults ought to continue to be criminalized. When the proposed amendments were unveiled in November last year, few other matters in the document so dominated public discourse. Yet after many months, much feedback and careful deliberation, nothing has changed.
Is compulsory Longevity Insurance necessary?
September 21, 2007
SUMMARY (in italics, by Yeo Toon Joo, Peter): Contrary to the Manpower Minister’s protestations in parliament over CPF’s poor rates of return to members and the unpopular proposed longevity insurance scheme, the Government, if it so inclines, can ensure a good monthly pay-out for Singaporeans who live beyond 85 – without making all Singaporeans contribute compulsorily to the scheme.
The Government should not spend the $1.2 billion one-off payout for bonuses tied to the later draw-down of the Minimum Sum. It should instead set aside that sum and grow it at 5 per cent.
By 2042, the year the 85 and above longevity insurance kicks in, that amount would have swelled to $6.6 billion – enabling a pay-out of $52 million a month for 15 years until age 100 for our aged Singaporeans.
Unanswered questions about CPF changes
August 24, 2007
By Leong Sze Hian
This is in reference to media reports that the CPF Special, Retirement and Medisave accounts’ rates will be modified next year.
The question that may be in every Singaporean’s mind is whether the peg to “an appropriate long term bond rate” may result in a higher or lower average rate, compared to the 4 per cent fixed rate now?
Channelnewsasia reported Manpower Minister Ng Eng Hen as saying:
“… the new rates will be lower initially than the current rate of 4 percent but it should do better than 4 percent over time.” (link)
What is the basis for the statement that “the new rates will be lower initially than the current 4 per cent but it should do better than 4 per cent over time”?
Myanmar regime belongs in the dog house
June 6, 2007
By Gerald Giam
The extension of Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s imprisonment on 27 May 2007 was a widely expected move by the country’s military government which has already kept her under detention for most of the 17 years since she won national elections by a landslide in 1990.
While Indonesia, Philippines and Malaysia have voiced their dissatisfaction with the lack of democratic progress in Myanmar, there is still a lot more that the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) can and should do to push the recalcitrant regime towards the path of democracy.
ASEAN needs to send a strong and unambiguous message of disapproval to Myanmar or risk becoming a laughing stock, irrelevant to the rest of the developed world.
Artificial Dynamism?
May 7, 2007
By Ned Stark
“It’s not possible for us to be hermetically sealed and to close out to the world, and this is just a jewel box by itself because our people travel, millions of people come to Singapore, and even if you don’t travel, you’re on the Internet, everything is available so we have to grow up in this environment, and we have to open our doors and windows, and if a few flies come in, well so be it, we’ll swat them.”
- PM Lee Hsien Loong , “Singapore’s future bright if growth hits 3-5% yearly”
Singapore embarking on the pathway to be a dynamic international city is a sound one, as I have said somewhere in the depths of the past, such a solution is the only tenable one in the long run since there is no way Singapore can continue to compete with China and India just by relying on workers, no matter how skilled or unskilled they may be. However, as the saying goes, saying is one thing, doing is another.
The First Tier of The First World: Beyond the Bottom Line
April 6, 2007
By Leong Sze Hian & Choo Zheng Xi
Like a responsible board of directors, we may have been constantly keeping our eyes on the bottom line, obsessing over the most cost efficient solutions to build up the solidly reliable Singapore Brand. Perhaps, keeping a country together requires something more than keeping a company solvent, profitable and growing.
But what is it?
While economic news is regularly upbeat, some of the ‘softer’ indicators of success may seem to be going south almost as quickly as our GDP’s going up. Sometimes, the response to these, like a dismissive board of directors faced with corporate social responsibility activists, is to explain away some of these statistics as soft numbers. But aggregated, these ‘soft’ numbers may paint a disturbing picture. Perhaps some of the following statistics give an idea of what we may be leaving by the wayside in our rush to reach ‘the first tier of the First World’:
Why’re we like that?
March 27, 2007
By Zyberzitizen
It is quite depressing to hear what has been said lately – by government officials and some others – about how so many are leaving the civil service, how we must essentially seduce them with money, and how much exactly (down to the last dollar) we should be paying them to stay in service of their country.
As I said in my blog, one glaring aspect missing in this whole discourse is the question of what kind of leaders we have and we want to have, actually.
My mom, who is in her 70s, is not highly-educated. She only has primary school education. But she speaks more sense than most people I know. So, she asked me the other day, after watching the news:
“Why’re we throwing money at every problem we face? We have traffic jams, we increase ERP. We don’t have enough teachers, we throw money to increase their salaries. Not enough nurses, we throw money. Helping the poor, we increase GST. Old age population? Increase GST. People going to JB to fill up petrol, we fine them. Don’t flush toilet, fine them. Now, want people to serve their country must have millions of dollars salaries. Why are we like that?”
It’s a simple question – “Why’re we like that?” – but it got me thinking about fundamentals.
