'I don

[Jp66]

He is not stupid, his question has "hidden agenda". Thats the way I interpreted his intention. Didn't you find Ah Goh also answer likewise . The two Taichi here and Taichi there.

 

Regards,

because both are SAP trained officers mah :D

[Vid]

Btw, is there any stats on the number of FT chinamen and ah nehs out there?

[Watwheels]

Talk so much the main issues are still NS, high cost housing and high cost of living.

 

If govt improve more on NS, reduce housing cost and reduce the high cost of living. Ppl won't care FTs coming here or not. It's a money issue and not FT issue.

[Jp66]

Talk so much the main issues are still NS, high cost housing and high cost of living.

 

If govt improve more on NS, reduce housing cost and reduce the high cost of living. Ppl won't care FTs coming here or not. It's a money issue and not FT issue.

spot-on

[Maroon5]

sama sama...this is no longer the singapore i know...but the stakes are too high now...once again, fellow singaporeans accept the new singapore!

[Vblaster_w211]

i guess when you made it thru the local uni

 

and you realise that farking chinamen and ah nehs out number the locals

 

and that they're studying at our tax payer's expenses without any gratitude whatsoever

 

i think we all have a right to hate them

 

Only local Singaporeans get subsidy for education from MOE (not counting those on scholarships). The difference is substantial.

 

I believe those in professional areas like medicine are required to stay and work in Singapore as well. Similar payback required.

Edited October 31, 2010 by Vblaster_w211

[Vblaster_w211]

No offence meant, but I just wanted to use that quote of yours as an example. Nowhere in that statement is there a mention of the Californians and any benefits to the residents there are merely implied, indirect consequences of the state achieving the "status" of "one of the most vibrant IT and knowledge industries". Is that necessarily so? I mean, it's a very top-down view and one that assumes that such benefits eventually filter down to every single person there.

 

You see, the thing with the States and other large countries with a lot of land is that if people can't compete with globalization forces, they can always move out of the city and take it slow, though even that is becoming rather debatable now when you look at what's going on in Shanghai. They won't bask in the metaphorical, utopic sea of opportunities that businessmen and entrepreneurs love to foist upon others as a vision to work towards, but maybe they don't want to and have never needed that in the first place. A personal friend of mine, after getting 2 degrees and a wife said sod it to this city and went to JB to retire as a farmer even before working. Well, he makes money when he needs to through other means, but he more than fulfills his responsibility to his family. There're better things to do with the short time we have on Earth than work ourselves to ruin by running the economic treadmill till the day we die. I find that it's a fault of education that many people don't actually know what else they can do, like to do, or love to do with their lives and only know one thing - work. It's a success, evidently, because our education system was inherited from an age of industralization where putting money on the table was all-important and getting to university and through university was the only way people knew how. We have utterly failed to move away from that era. But that's a subject for another time.

 

Now in every society, you're going to get people who can't measure up and for some reason or other, and not always within their means to control, have been left by the wayside. Blithely exposing the citizenry to the full brunt of the forces of globalization leaves the less able out to die. And we are apparently doing jack-all about this when even giving a couple of extra dollars on top of a paltry $300 (was it?) as aid to the needy merits a minister's chiding, or having the world's most hilarious labour union with a chief that's more interested in (puke-inducing) cosplay and coming up cringe-worthy slogans, preserving the interests of businesses on the pretext of fighting for the longterm benefits of the citizens. We assume that the benefits will filter down to all the local citizens, however nebulous that concept is these days - is it really a benefit if you have to break your back to earn $400 a month? Hey, the businesses can take care of themselves or go form their own damn union to. A labour union is supposed to look into the welfare of the workers dammit.

 

This is none other than the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest. Do we really want that? How different are we from animals, save the superficial cosmetic differences of clothing and appearances? I forget the name of the person who first suggested this idea - the grace of a society can be measured from how it treats its elderly/animals/less able/etc. We aren't faring too well here.

 

Zi Rui's question essentially asks who we are defending if we do take up arms for the nation. Defend our family? That's easy. Book a ticket out of the country. If we are going to hold a rifle and defend this land, then this land had better be worth defending, because as many disenfranchised globalization-burnt workers see it, there isn't much difference between the soil here and the soil in other countries right now in terms of personal significance since if you look out there now, roughly half the population comprises people from foreign lands coming to displace the locals from jobs. In short, you live in a house, but you defend a home. The idea of this place being a home is fast fading.

 

 

Just for fun, we can use a SC2 analogy. Competitive SC2 play is quite technical and frenetic - expand or die, keep up with the macro, micro units in battle across several locations, etc etc etc. But there're many people who just want to dick around and have fun because that's what a GAME is about, having fun. There's a place for both types of players. Now imagine if Blizzard had designed it so that only competitive players could access Battle.net.

 

Actually, it's pretty simple - we just have to ask ourselves what keeps us connected to Singapore. If there is nothing, then it's transactional. Good times? Stay. Bad times? Leave.

 

The government and us as citizens, and all who have a stake here, need to examine what connect us, and what disassociates us, from Singapore. It can be family, friends, place where we grew up in, work, pleasure, life style, a place we can call our own (don't overlook this) etc.

 

To your point about making space for all, including those not so competitive, you are right. However, Singapore needs to be competitive to stay relevant. It's a fine balance. Get it wrong, and we have protectionism, welfare (and often bankrupt) state, inward culture and economy, all of which leads to nowhere. Get it right, and we pull everyone along in a sustainable economy.

 

It is not simple. I don't envy the Government.

Edited October 31, 2010 by Vblaster_w211

[Coder]

Do any of you feel this way too?

 

http://sg.yfittopostblog.com/2010/10/30/i-...ending-anymore/

 

 

[Cerano]

Only local Singaporeans get subsidy for education from MOE (not counting those on scholarships). The difference is substantial.

 

I believe those in professional areas like medicine are required to stay and work in Singapore as well. Similar payback required.

 

remember that PRC PR who went back to march for her country and showed her card ^^

[Curahee]

100% agreed!!! i have this thinking 20 years ago! when i apply for NUS degree course. saw so many PRC student there, but NUS rejected my application 3 times!!! (my female classmate with same result can get in after 1 reject!)

only recently, got to know from wife, her PRC colleague husband and wife only paid 10% tution fee in NUS. they are selected by MXE in China (Yes, Singapore send people there to pick up FT!). they only need to stay here work for 3 years and can go back.

 

From what i read in our newspaper, they know this problem and majority will leave after they enjoy the benefit but a small % willing to stay in spore what they want is these small % of ppl. Mentality is like no fish, shrimps also can... thats the state of desperation for foreigner.

[Flykite]

after i read all the comments, it started to ring a bell.

 

im watching ch U now on some investment thingy, the "professional" they consulted is PRC.....

 

walked the pasar malam after dinner just now, so many PRC and FT...

 

 

 

yeah, i like that comment "we will even have to protect these FT on their way out of sg when war comes"

[Ladykillerz]

correct mah. OCS song.. ... "we come from many places, all across the land"...

but then again, maybe should change to "we come from many places, all across the Earth"... =x

[Iisterry]

Even the ang mos' recognise us as a corporation.

 

The money-making machine of Singapore Inc

October 30, 2010

 

For one-party rule, the city-state has few peers, writes Eric Ellis.

 

IN THE fomenting debate over Singapore Inc's bid to buy a most vital pillar of Australia's economic architecture, there's something deliciously apt that the decisive call on the Australian Stock Exchange will probably be made by Canberra's independent members of parliament.

 

Singapore doesn't do independents, Mr Oakeshott.

 

Indeed, it would be aghast at - and quite likely arrest - anyone compelled to spend 17 minutes publicly justifying democracy and why it matters. The mere notion is abhorrent to Singapore's very ethos, its effortless merging of mammon and political muscle into a formidable money-making machine known as Singapore Inc.

 

Singapore doesn't really do parliament either. Yes, it has one, where hand-picked loyalists occasionally convene in a brutal modernist edifice to rubber-stamp edicts from above. In the last election in 2006 the People's Action Party won 82 of 84 seats with a gerrymandered 66 per cent of the trackable votes.

 

Only North Korea, China and (just) Cuba from 1959 outrank Singapore in single-party-rule longevity. Which may explain why the average Singaporean is more likely to know Sony's head office over the peoples' chamber.

 

Conflicts of interest? Not in Singapore, where independent thinking complicates and slows its real business, which is business. Real power at every critical institution in this rich, urgent little place gathers efficiently and pyramidally, peaking at one of the most powerful families in the world, the Lees. And their power prints are everywhere, even at the Singapore stock exchange.

 

It's not corruption - Singapore ranks well on that score - but rather an intimidating, and often intimidated, power network of trusted, well-rewarded hands (cronies?) who know what side their bread's buttered on and don't step out of line. All easy to manage in a small, highly wired town like Singapore. Compliant Singaporeans don't have to be told what to do, they just know.

 

Far from the non-interventionist paradise advancing the world's best practices of governance and transparency, the Lees have finessed probably the world's most capable dirigiste economy, a top-down model to impress the most rusted-on French enarque.

 

It impacts elsewhere too; autocrats from places like Kazakhstan, Russia, Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Sri Lanka rush to embrace the ''Singapore model'' as if it were some miracle philosophy, when it's more like The Truman Show. And clearly some Australian stockbrokers are impressed, too, though likely more so with the millions they seem set to pocket from the SGX deal.

 

It doesn't take long navigating Singapore Inc to bump into a Lee. There's even one on the board of the SGX bidding $8.1 billion to buy the ASX, the deal known as Project Avatar. That's Lee Hsien Yang, the youngest son of former long-time prime minister and Singapore's ''philosopher-king'', Lee Kuan Yew.

 

A shy man, Hsien Yang knows Australia well enough, though those who have dealt with him say he struggles with our robust press and public life. He was for 12 years the CEO at Singapore Telecom, which bought Optus on his watch in 2001, the last time economic nationalism flared with such fervour over a controversial Singapore Inc purchase of a strategic Australian asset.

 

Like the SGX now, Lee and SingTel were hammered. Australian critics cried ''national interest'' about the farm being sold to Asian autocrats, but ultimately the deal got done. Two things helped: that the seller was a foreign company, Cable and Wireless of Britain, and that the deal did not require parliamentary approval.

 

The ''Singapore premium'' helped too. SingTel's $14 billion was a lot for a company that had made just $400 million. But even though Lee Hsien Yang was lavishly spending Singaporeans' money in Australia, because of who he was few Singaporeans dared take him on back home.

 

Singapore Inc and the Lees were on their best legal behaviour, resisting their infamous instinct to sue anyone who dares criticise them. But most of that criticism was outside Singapore. The Lees tend to bring their cases in Singapore, where a win seems guaranteed.

 

SingTel-Optus's major shareholder is Temasek Holdings, which by some estimates - such as the US government's - controls as much as half the Singaporean economy. Temasek is the leviathan state-owned investor run by Hsien Yang's sister-in-law, Ho Ching, and serves as a key lever in Singapore's economy.

 

Indeed, many analysts argue that Temasek's over-arching influence in Singapore's economy deters the genuine grass-roots entrepreneurism of say, a Hong Kong, and that Temasek's breadth is too wide and its pockets too deep to spark genuine competition and reform. Singapore has a great many things, but a vigorous competition commission is not one of them.

 

Ho Ching's record is patchy, and her dealmaking controversial elsewhere in the region, notably in Thailand, where its $4 billion 2006 purchase of then Thai prime minster Thaksin Shinawatra's telecoms and media empire precipitated a coup, Thaksin's ouster, four years of political turmoil, a $2 billion paper loss and a legal stoush with the current government angling to take the Thaksin empire back.

 

That fight is led by the Thai finance minister, Korn Chatikavanij, who once remarked of the Thaksin deal that Singapore Inc's purchase of the private Thaksin assets was ''akin to nationalisation'' of a private company acquired by a state.

 

That it wasn't the Thai state didn't make it any less a nationalisation, Korn argued. Cranky Thais delighted in setting fire to Ho's effigy, such were the passions aroused by her ill-advised Thaksin play, which puts Australian economic parochialism over the ASX in telling perspective.

 

Madam Ho is married to Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore's Prime Minister since 2004 and finance minister for six years until 2007. The Finance Ministry owns Temasek, which also controls Singapore Airlines (SIA), another key power circle. SIA is ''regulated'' by Singapore's civil aviation authority, which also ministers every airline, like Qantas, flying into Changi's strategic regional hub. Apart from being an SGX director, Lee Hsien Yang is the aviation authority chairman, completing that Singapore Inc circle.

 

But Hsien Yang does not get to sit on the board of Singapore Inc's other great sovereign wealth fund, the Government Investment Corporation. That job is reserved for his father, the GIC chairman, and his Prime Minister brother, GIC's deputy chairman, as well as the Finance Minister Tharman, also of the MAS. (If Lee Kuan Yew's memoirs are any guide, his eldest son and political heir is clearly his favourite, Hsien Loong being cited 19 times by his father in two volumes versus just three for his younger brother.)

 

With an estimated $350 billion in assets - including vast tracts of Australia's CBDs - the GIC ranks among the world's top five sovereign wealth funds. But it was not so long ago that Singaporeans knew who was stewarding their foreign exchange reserves, when the GIC first revealed who composed its board.

 

It still doesn't make public its full accounts, which might be a good idea lest Singaporeans start blogging their wrath at its recent ill-fated forays into Western banking - that blogging done anonymously lest the wrath be returned by authorities, who don't like having their failures pointed out.

 

The Australian lawyer David Gonski is an SIA director, and is chairman of the ASX. There are other key members of that SIA-SGX power vortex. Chew Choon Seng is the SIA chief executive. But he is about to become the SGX's chairman, and would head the combined SGX-ASX if Singapore Inc prevailed in Australia, with Gonski as his deputy. He is also a GIC director.

 

There is also the banker Euleen Goh, the former chief executive of Standard Chartered's Singapore operation. She is now a director of Singapore's DBS Bank, the Temasek-controlled bank that came close to buying Westpac a few years back, and she sits on both the SGX and SIA boards.

 

Then there is Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Singapore's Finance Minister, who took over from the Prime Minister Lee in 2007. Of Sri Lankan Tamil origin, he is a director of Temasek, the GIC and also of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the central bank that is ultimately the SGX's major shareholder as well as its regulator.

 

Singapore may play as an entree to Asia but Singapore Inc is relatively lightly invested in its ASEAN backyard, where its state-backed corporate thrusts have not always been welcome - pace Thailand - or have bumped up against the similar Asian politico-corporate power networks like its own, such as in cronified Malaysia and Indonesia.

 

In Australia's open economy Singapore has become one of the top five investors over the past decade, accumulating assets from property to power generation in deals totalling more than $100 billion.

 

It has been a happy hunting ground and Singapore a good corporate citizen, with Australia providing experience for other big deals away from Singapore's own hermetically controlled economy.

 

But one place pragmatic Singapore is well-invested is in the pariah state Burma. The SGX hosts a number of Burma plays, as it does low-level Chinese listings of often dubious provenance and governance, products of an attempt to compete with Hong Kong and Shanghai, an initiative of mixed results that it does not much like having pointed out, certainly not now as it sells itself to Australia as its ticket to Asia's wealth.

 

Indeed, Singapore Inc manages its image very carefully, studiously avoiding having its executives interviewed by locally resident foreign journalists and analysts who tend to be aware of where the proverbial bodies are buried.

 

Rather, Singapore Inc likes to host lesser-informed editors and academics from abroad, sometimes paying for their passage and stay, and banning local colleagues who might ask difficult questions about its clubby networks.

 

The American Tom Kloet ran the SGX for just under three years until early 2003. He says the proposed SGX-ASX tie-up is a "very interesting development" being closely observed in North America, where he is chief executive of the Toronto Stock Exchange's parent, TMX.

 

"Any time two major exchanges start having a serious conversation about combining, it's a surprise. To me, it's the natural evolution of financial markets, but this doesn't move the needle for us in terms of our own strategy."

 

Kloet was one of Singapore Inc's first experiences with ''foreign talent'', a program championed by the Lees to deepen Singapore's executive pool and counter criticisms of its clubby power networks. Kloet was nanny in the SGX's first years after the 1999 merger of the Singapore Stock Exchange with the Simex futures market.

 

He took SGX public in 2000 in a $1 billion float, a move partly inspired by the ASX's successful listing two years earlier.

 

But Kloet did not last long, leaving the SGX four months before his contract expired amid a local whispering campaign about lax regulation and - ironic this - his "ill-conceived" cross-border trading tie-up with the ASX.

 

Contrary to market chatter of the day and unflattering articles in the state-controlled media, Kloet says he left Singapore early because "I had accomplished what I had come to do

[relacker]

not replying to you personally, but this is an neutral open challenge.

 

rather than complain abt what we dun like abt the govt, why not get into the action and do something abt it ? the $2 or 3 mil is there for the taking - but only for those who have the steel to take it.

 

its always easier to complain abt others.

 

only thing we can grumble is abt mother nature's wrath, coz there's nothing anyone can do abt it.

 

 

i pay those guys 2-3mil/yr to aks me to care of my problems? uniquely singapore

Edited October 31, 2010 by relacker

[Ah_tee]

100% agreed!!! i have this thinking 20 years ago! when i apply for NUS degree course. saw so many PRC student there, but NUS rejected my application 3 times!!! (my female classmate with same result can get in after 1 reject!)

only recently, got to know from wife, her PRC colleague husband and wife only paid 10% tution fee in NUS. they are selected by MXE in China (Yes, Singapore send people there to pick up FT!). they only need to stay here work for 3 years and can go back.

 

 

you are rite,

 

my jaw dropped when i learn abt this while having lunch with one of my PRC colleague,

 

i asked her how did she end up here, i was half expecting she to say the usual better life, higher income or wad

 

but her reply snook me, i m jus serving a bond and i will go back lor, i asked her serve simi bond

 

 

she told me MOE went to her sch in china and "HARD SELL" yes, she said "HARD SELL" abt studying here and living here,

 

it seem like a publicity campaign and they even show statistics abt getting employment here after they grad

 

 

on top of that, her fees and "LIVING EXPENSES" are paid by MOE during their studies there and after that they r being offered PR.

 

 

 

it pains me to learn this knowing we as natives are being put a thru a gruelling rat face at 5 yrs old all the way to national slavery and on the other hand our MIW go and poach these pple with no national sense of belonging and tell me their presence here is to make competitive and

 

i mus try to integrate them into my society, i was like WTF is all these nonsense , and to think i pay 4 digit income tax per yr to feed all these pple here to make my"life more competitive" ,

 

 

and to MIW with the BS abt FT cheaper, i am the one who did her PO and she is being paid 30k per yr as a fresh grad.

 

 

 

 

and lastly, my prc colleague ask me the next qns that they normally ask, this did not take me by suprise

 

 

"life in sg is hard, u got any rich bf to intro me" ?

Edited October 31, 2010 by Ah_tee

[Vid]

and lastly, my prc colleague ask me the next qns that they normally ask, this did not take me by suprise

 

 

"life in sg is hard, u got any rich bf to intro me" ?

 

common qns. They are here to fish. studying and working is just a surface of it.

 

Seriously, how many bros here actually did wed a china woman? No offence to anyone who did, but I can't stand them. Some are pretty to look at but to live together with them, sorry, can't take it.

[Requiemdk]

Actually, it's pretty simple - we just have to ask ourselves what keeps us connected to Singapore. If there is nothing, then it's transactional. Good times? Stay. Bad times? Leave.

 

The government and us as citizens, and all who have a stake here, need to examine what connect us, and what disassociates us, from Singapore. It can be family, friends, place where we grew up in, work, pleasure, life style, a place we can call our own (don't overlook this) etc.

 

To your point about making space for all, including those not so competitive, you are right. However, Singapore needs to be competitive to stay relevant. It's a fine balance. Get it wrong, and we have protectionism, welfare (and often bankrupt) state, inward culture and economy, all of which leads to nowhere. Get it right, and we pull everyone along in a sustainable economy.

 

It is not simple. I don't envy the Government.

 

Zi Rui was probably highlighting that the connection to Singapore, at least for the young who grew up in the late 90s and early 2000s, is far less obvious these days when it's getting harder and harder to actually see Singapore. It might still be ok for the slightly older folk - we have fond memories of what Singapore was like back then (hell, Malaysia Cup glory anyone?) and we will fight to preserve that. But looking back over the last 10 years or so, I can't blame the younger folks for not sharing that same sense of zeal we had for Singapore. In fact, the whole concept of Singapore is getting murkier right now - is this a country that we call home (Shanmugam thinks otherwise) or just some giant corporate machine? From what I see, when the younger fellas who study overseas say they're homesick, what they really miss falls into two categories - family and food. That the first is important is obvious to anyone. I can't see how the other defines Singapore. It's really unlike the sense of patriotism that the Americans have, even while Bush was in office mauling their sensibilities, or the Chinese, many of whom fervently want to go back home.

 

I don't envy the government either. In fact, I don't think the founding fathers would as well. It's easier to build something than to sustain it for the rest of eternity. But I was taught something when I was young - that rewards come AFTER one has finished the task, not before. The founding fathers of Singapore deserve every penny they got, but this current crop of ministers? I think not. By any less politically correct a description of the amount we pay them for their capabilities, this could be considered outright fraud. When you're paid millions, you'd better have more substantial answers than "honest mistakes".

 

Another thing - I don't get why the words "protectionism" and "welfare state" draw such heavy negative reaction. As with many other things, taking these to the extreme is bound to have ill effects. But I don't think people are asking for that much - anything more than the negligible lip-service to "helping the needy" right now would be considered a huge improvement.

 

Lastly, culture. Not quite sure what to make of this, but we have little of this as it is and it's plain obvious how integral a nation's culture is to its identity. Some might even say that they're synonymous. I can't see how the presence of a large pool of foreigners would do any good for a country that was struggling in the first place to develop its own culture and identity, unless the goal was to do so by assimilating everyone else's, in which case, can we really call it our own?

[Haziqko]

after all that flaring... you all still got 1 thing in common... being Chinese....