Ministers regularly talking stupid

It could have been Goh Chok Tong if I had chosen to blog about this earlier. Vaguely in my mind now, he had this idea of top executives sharing their pay rise with rank and file workers conveniently forgetting that current workplace ethos would make his suggestion look stupid. Bosses would have increased the pay of workers from the company earnings without cutting back their own. Don't they decide on such matters? Really silly.

Here is another inane one, this time from DPM Teo.  He was suggesting work life balance to low wage workers. Clearly this guy is out of touch. Sure lowly paid workers would welcome a better life but their greater pain is not making a living wage and you the PAP government had directly contributed to putting them in this predicament. Don't offer the excuse the jobs would have been lost to workers elsewhere.....

 

I chose Teo Chee Hean as my example since scrolling down my iPad I had a great picture my friend put up that couldn't be more apt for this occasion.

Instead of proving you are an Grade A government by coming up with original and bold policies which our Old Guard ministers did the new PAP only took what is best elsewhere and run it better here than where they were adapted from. Yep, that is why this is only a top boy in a class of inept governments. So we do better than many other countries but not good enough. That's why we have so many not making a living wage.

Unlike the founding fathers, ministers now protect their self interests and salaries first before our welfare. If I were a minister, I would ask for $1 pay until the problems are solved. This high pay is just making the job too hard to do. If you are totally committed to solving problems you wouldn't allow pay to stop you from succeeding right? But these ministers want to have their cake and eat it. I am not sure they can live life without personal trade-offs but they are always asking us to make painful trade-offs.

In time ministers might discover as society gets angrier it will adopt Hitler's attitude toward his generals.

That's right. If they were first class ministers, no pay is too large. If they are duds, even $1 is too much because they had prevented better men and women from doing the jobs they had failed in.

Update: 9:05pm

Managed to find this. So wishful, so fairy tale like. Life here is no longer like that. How could it be when our society is built on chasing money and keeping scores with money. And who was in the vanguard on this? This government. Now that we have arrived at a place many of us don't want to be, what's next?

Unless ministers show in a very tangible way they are not after money, I don't know how they are going to rebuild trust and succeed.

Update: June 12 9:00am

Someone as a comment to this post mentioned Lim Swee Say suggestion of training for a second career during office hours. Guess what? 93.8 FM had this as their topic for this morning Talk Back program.

And some left comments for the station as follows.

You don't expect candor on national radio but you could tell the two guests in the show today from ASME and Paul Heng were politely explaining how impractical this is.