From Angelina Jolie to Ng Eng Hen

What has Angelina Jolie got anything to do with former Education Minister Ng Eng Hen? The link is Andy Ho, at least for me that is.

I never forgive Ng Eng Hen's prevarication on the education statistics on mobility. He declared the less privileged have not become less mobile. Of course eventually he had to humbly climb down when his boss contradicted him, but to me the damage has been done and I will find it very hard to trust him.

I have no time and so Andy Ho provided the data I need to harden my position against Dr. Ng. Andy in his article explained how the breast cancer incidence and markers statistics are read by doctors. Wasn't Dr. Ng a leading breast cancer surgeon? So how could he have been so mistaken about the mobility statistics? It would have made his competence as a surgeon in doubt. I think he was fixed on some dogmas and didn't want to respect the truth. If I my memory serves me well, Tharman was the first to differ and eventually public pressure caused the PM to disagree with him in Parliament too.

We should be wary of trusting ministers like Dr. Ng Eng Hen. He should be sent off like Mah Bow Tan and Raymond Lim. How can he be useful if he doesn't even respect the facts. That's the way to grow out of touch with the people. A great pity Chiam See Tong failed to send him out of Parliament.

Civil Service Head doesn't get it

So what does the Admin Service really think about us or more accurately what they want us to think about them in these two articles. I am afraid Peter Ong missed it, lost it. Don't even need to read the main article. Just the subsidiary one on the Population White Paper would do.

They still don't get it. Too much pride to defend and self esteem to preserve. The admin service was simply out of touch with the people. How else could they have gotten it so wrong? Then they blame the world for changing too quickly. I wished they would just blame themselves as that is the only way to begin to do better.

This is the only bit worth reading is at the end of the article. Peter Ong's counterparts consoled him that we are a far easier bunch to serve. Well the civil service leaders and ministers have been taking us for granted for too long. We must never allow them to sell us cheap so easily again. We were sold for a song such that foreigners especially some Chinese can't helped themselves but tell us that we are being stupid to give away so much for nothing. That's why citizens feel second class to foreigners in our own country.

If Peter Ong thinks it is going to get easier, he is sorely mistaken. Doesn't his radars tell him that we are no less angry when we shot the PAP in 2011 and at the PE months later. Don't say it is the politicians' problem. Look at the Punggol East by election results too.

So stop telling us how and what to think. Quit telling us what our priorities should be especially when it practically mean many of us become chambermaids in Hotel Singapore serving well heeled foreigners. Your plans reduce Singaporeans sans the elites into a nation of supplicants. No wonder you cannot be anything else but out of touch.

Update: 8:40pm

A cursory look suggest there is nothing in common between Bangladesh and us. Theirs is a system riddled with corruption. Ours is governed by the rule of law and corruption is pursued and prosecuted. So what's common? Both sold themselves cheap. They much cheaper. My worry is more with the trend than where we are now. This policy of cutting prices and not trying hard enough to innovate and add value will over time make us poor. In fact it is the most hard working and miserable road to poverty.

We accuse other nations' leaders of kicking the can down the road but we also do the same; only the cans are different.

There is another similarity with every other nation. Our civil service and the PAP rank their interests ahead of the people. They justify themselves that any alternative to them would be worse and rapacious. So they tell us not to complain. But opposition parties whether they are sincere or otherwise could always try to convince people that they put the people ahead of their party interests. They sell a two or multi-party system rather a single dominant party. This is the WP's strategy. Now is the PAP willing to step up to the plate by upping the standard and seize the initiative back from the WP? We shall see in 2016.

The trap of Japan's markets

I wonder if I should not post this to my private investing blog. Nothing there is confidential but I use it as an experiment too to examine how Google might be feeding me adverts.

I have definitely less than half chance of getting this right, may be not even better than 10%

Japan is not America. They should have dropped money from the helicopter if I might borrow the metaphor from Bernanke long ago. Now they want to do it when Debt/GDP is a more than 200% This is frightening. They are doing it when the locals are running out of money to buy JGBs. Instead they will need to cash them for retirement.

My point? America is a price giver to the rest of the world but Japan has become a price taker. Abenomics would come to grief. But as Japan eventually spirals down it might drag America and the rest of us along. Europe can help to make everyone falls faster and harder. Of course I exaggerate. It is never so one dimensional.

Confidence is the bedrock for quantitative easing. Japan could never do a "It's halftime in America, and we are roaring back". They passed up that chance at least ten years ago. Therefore traders are trading your markets short term. Yen short sellers finally got their profits but this is all flash in the pan.

Eventually inflation would not sustain consumption to grow the economy because an ageing population is worried about using up its retirement savings. Japan is going bankrupt. Perhaps she would be selling their IPs for a song first. Its ambitious young would be forced to leave for greener pastures far away from home but language is a huge obstacle. Again, I am probably wrong here because there are smarter routes to the end but I haven't the time to read up and think through. One possible path takes Japan to war, an alarming thought. Abe is a bloody hawk.

I don't doubt the denouement of Japan but the paths that she might take is much harder to fathom and that is where the money is.

Only the two sentences in bold font are useful and true, the rest is imaginative speculative nonsense.

Bossini Polos

IMM has changed so much after the renovations. There are more shops and the place is as crowded as ever.  I imagine it would be worse when the general hospital across the road opens.

I got these polos for a good price. $12 each if I get four. I had wanted to buy the ones at Uniqlo but felt that it was over priced.

I don't like black but I picked one for those times when I have to go to a funeral wake. I think there will be a greater need for it over the next ten years and beyond. Increasingly I have been told so and so parent just passed away.

Let's see how long these four last. I believe I have many polos that go back more than a decade. It was a pity many of them had to discarded. I had put them on hangers for far too long when I took them with me to Dubai.

Attacking LGBTs

I just read this at the TOC. I am reminded that I don't even know what LBGT stands for until last year. For that I have to thank Lawrence Khong.

I am not anti or pro gay. Personally I accept that LBGT exists but I think they are unnatural in the sense that it is not the default outcome by nature. LBGT happens period, and so we gotta to learn to live with them peacefully and constructively. LGBTs must not be persecuted and they must be accorded rights like any non-LGBT because they are humans and also citizens or residents here.

What are these Christians doing attacking Gay SG Confessions? Why can't they just leave them alone? Their behavior smacks of the same mentality which led to the Crusades of the Middle Ages. Instead of marching toward Jerusalem they are marching to war against gay infrastructure. This is completely un-Christian.

On 377A, we should either repeal or enforce it. The current arrangement of leaving it in the statutes but not enforcing it smacks of weakness and political convenience. I wished the government knew how to be shrewder. As is, they don't even bother to be creative. Gays must not live in fear.

Gays must be worrying that the government might one day decide to prosecute them. You never know. On the other hand as long as 377A exists, the Christians would be thinking up ways and eventually putting pressure on the government to act. This will definitely happen if gays succeed at growing their space in our society.

Society must decide and not pretend this is not an issue. If we are honest about this, what we are doing is tantamount to burying our head in the sand. When and what other issues would we be doing the same tomorrow? At minimum the government must not just set a date but periodically review 377A, which will naturally lead to public discussions. Better the gays try to expand their space publicly and those who are against their agenda also respond in broad daylight in debate and negotiations than for both sides to resort to underhanded means battling each other. This is just dangerous and unwise.

Update: 9:00pm

I first came to know about it from the WSJ this morning.

The gays are increasingly successful at expanding their space. This will bolster the confidence of their cousins here and elsewhere. So what is Ps Lawrence Khong and his compatriots going to do?

I wished Christians had been lamps in the darkness and salt of the earth, but I am not in a position to dictate what shape the world takes. History has shown that they are more adept at mounting crusades and acting religious than serve as good samaritans. What ugly Christians. There is no need to be uglier. Gays acquiring more social space is not their success but your failure to show what society could be, something which by and large you have no idea. Don't call unbelievers names when you are mostly no better. You are so unlike Jesus.

Morning at the Botanic Gardens

First photo I took early this morning at the Botanic Gardens with my S110 at f/2 1/5sec ISO 1600

Usually I would come here with wifey. This is the first time I make the trip alone. I only spent an hour in the Gardens and decided to leave because it was starting to drizzle.

Visiting the gardens is a great way to start the day but it is impractical when you have to fetch the kids to school. And yes, parking this time was only 10 cents :-)

Unjust Laws: The Legal-Moral Gap....PAP vs WP

I had wanted to note this in my blog for sometime but keep putting it off: the unjust legal-moral gap in our laws and regulations.

Apple hasn't cheated on taxes but how it planned and paid it taxes is making US law makers and the public see red. Over time the US government had responded to various forms of special interest pressure to craft the tax code to produce the one today. Like many MNCs, Apple just duly took advantage of all provisions which most in the present Zeigeist would call loopholes, and loopholes must be closed. Small firms are not positioned to enjoy them. It was just unfortunate that Apple has been singled out because they are the most successful. This is now starting to publicly begs the question: Where is the justice of it all? The whole arrangement stinks and looks immoral but completely LEGAL. Today there are countless laws and regulations that smell as bad. We have ours too and the most egregious is the GST. But I accept it not because it is fair but as recognition that we are price takers. We have failed to compete on innovation and superior value propositions, so the GST and other freebies to employers are just cutting prices in disguise. This government has decided to take the easy road because it is less risky to their performance and hence electoral security than the risky high road. We will never enjoy superior outcomes because they exist only as counterfactuals. Most people are not able to understand this and what voters cannot understand, government can get away. In fact I am also not being helpful to visiting readers either. I have failed to make myself clearer as that would take some planning and a more lengthy post. Good for you if you are following me thus far. Separately I would be explaining to my kids but with many words and examples.

One of the shrewdest remarks by any politician on the WP was made by LKY when he toured Aljunied GRC. I can't remember the exact words but he was basically warning voters about the nature and motives of WP contesting in the GRC. He might be off about Aljunied residents having five years to repent afterward but he could very well be right if WP forms the government some day. I can tell because I was looking for WP to bring up the courageous possibilities for Singapore which the PAP playing safe failed to entertain.

The PAP is at its best when the easy road is not available. From that we have our SAF, Bilingualism, exchange rate monetary policy, CPF, HDB, New Water etc., But if they could avoid risking it, they would and send delegations overseas to study what others have done (risk management 101) and adapt it back home. I am still waiting for WP to propose their moral equivalent of CPF, HDB, Bilingualism etc., when there is SEEMINGLY (i.e., there are) no pressure to do so. It is because we failed to continuously act with courage until our backs are against the wall that we ended up becoming a price cutter in order to stay competitive. Over time, like in America but not as perverse it shows up with regulations and laws that with wide legal-moral gaps. Laws and regulations become unjust favoring the desirable successful mobile people because they would otherwise make camp elsewhere. The burden on the majority of Singaporeans must keep getting heavier to keep this place attractive to the global rich, connected and talented until a brick wall in the shape of a backlash at the polls happen. Now a frightened PAP is trying to take back from Paul what it had earlier stolen from Peter.

Fortunately the global winds are reversing and what Apple and MNCs are facing in America and Europe could give us the needed respite, but I am guilty of gross over simplification. We just cannot survive against cheaper alternatives under the present global rules. Let this be a lesson to us to always avoid easy roads. We know we could be getting better when our laws become less hypocritical and more just provided they are also sustainable. We must narrow the legal-moral gaps.

We must always play fair but we must be even more shrewd than fair. And Hazel Poa from NSP gets it when she admonished us to "Never Fear". Of course this doesn't mean I have thrown my support behind them. No need to make up one's mind so quickly. Be open minded.

Why am I suddenly thinking about Section 377A? Because I am watching hypocrisy and looking for courage.

Update: 10:30pm

Interns are afraid to report unfair treatment for fear of a bad report. More broadly and accurately they are afraid will land on them badly because of the unequal power in the relationship with the company and school. Don't I do the same when I deal with my kids' schools? But I am clued in enough to know how to play the system but newbies are at the mercy of their environment.

Some gung ho but repressed beyond their limits to bear bus captains went on strike a few months ago. It takes two fists to punch each other but the other more powerful side got away. Some of the striking bus drivers went to jail. Now what is the take away for the rest of us observing all these? Don't make trouble, don't bother with justice. Bear with it as it is only for a while. We do that in school, in NS and also at internships. If you are already working, you change jobs until you can't and may be you will develop some stress related chronic illness.

You can get away with all these if only a small number of people are affected, but those numbers have been growing. Now we have a problem with no easy solutions. We use the WP as a cane and not an alternative to the PAP. WP's Low is shrewd to publicly accept that role. It will win him support until he is ready to go to the next level.

Why are we in this situation? Because we have been selling ourselves cheap or looking at it from the economic point of view, cutting prices to remain in business or just to fatten profits - the latter will accelerate the wealth gap faster than you can narrow it. First we cut taxes to business and the rich and finally we depress the pay of workers and worsen the terms of employment. Oftentimes they get the boot. And it is all legal but starting to border on the immoral. They have started to redress this for the cleaning workers but there is a long way to go.

We are on the road which workers will if not already see the employment laws as unjust. No wonder NTUC chief Lim Swee Say is so unpopular.

Like 377A, they are afraid to touch the laws and regulations. Naive of them to think that they can get results talking softly without swinging a big stick. I know what the government retort would be. We all know. I also know how to respond but I am not telling yet. To them anytime is a good time. I know now is the wrong time, just as WP Low also know. Just as they knew when to reveal this ghost called AIM.