Singaporeans are fed, up with progress!

According to a paper by Stephen J. Appold entitled Singaporean University Graduates in the New Century: Over-educated but Under-skilled?
dated 24 July 2004, the median monthly income in Singapore is supposed to look like this:

                     1980    1990    2000
Overall              $441    $1,204  $2,382
University graduates $2,175  $3,857  $4,827

Does that look like progress? It depends on what you are measuring against. Say, one plate of fried kway teow moved from about $1 to $2 from 1980 to 2000. Since income more than doubled in the same period, if you measure your well being on the affordability of eating fried kway teow, congratulations, because Singapore is making fine progress!

But being a ungrateful young Singaporean blogger, I am supposed to be able to find fault in the most flawless government in the world, and I try not to disappoint.

My father bought a 4 room flat in 1980 for $28,000. He paid in cash. No loan, no CPF. Today, identical flats in the same block are selling for over $310,000, despite running down 29 years of the 99 years lease. That's an inflation of over 10 times in 29 years.

Using the 4 room flat affordability as inflation adjustment, the median income graduate in 2009, who would earn roughly $6000 according to Salary.sg, is equivalent to someone who earned $600 in 1980, better than the non-graduate in 1980, but nowhere close to the graduates in 1980.

Therefore, as far as certain items are concerned, much of the "progress" in recent years has more to do with young families ramping up debt levels to keep up with the appearance of "middle income" rather than actual income increases resulting in better affordability.

It is also no wonder that double graduate income families do not seem to feel more financially secure than single non-graduate income families in 1980.

But let's focus on the number of plates of kway teows we can eat instead of depressing things. Especially if you are a property owning baby boomer who earns more from property price appreciation than your salary. Or if you are a senior civil servant or cabinet minister, whose pay is very well adjusted for inflation.

Good luck to young Singaporeans who do not own property. If this trend continues, in a few years time, it would be a highfalutin' idea for fresh school leavers to own lease 3 room flats.

Majullah Singapura!

The title was shamelessly stolen from the Today article that got mrbrown in trouble.

Who is neutral, really?

Over the weekend, there is more coverage on the AWARE gay advocacy scandal, and Dana Lam, interviewed in Zaobao, the Singapore Chinese daily is totally unapologetic about AWARE's gay advocacy in the MOE CSE. Even Marthia Lee backpedalled a little by saying the CSE instructor manual had been a little careless in the wording, while Dana Lam continues to rubbish the whole idea that there was any tinge of gay advocacy in AWARE's CSE.

And this Channel News Asia "journalist" Pearl Forss, who was seen cheering emotionally at the announcement of the voting outcome of the AWARE EGM, inserts another pro-AWARE old guard mantra into her "report" of the MOE press release regarding sex education, that,

"Homosexuality is seen as neutral in the AWARE CSE."

It is clearly her insertion because no other reports I have seen has that statement. She is clearly showing her pro-old guard bias by repeating that mantra.

And from what source did they get that mantra from? Apparently, they think they have collected a "slip" from their favourite smearing target, Thio Su Mien.

The problem is

1) Thio Su Mien is an extremist and does not represent me. I'm sure a lot of parents angry about the AWARE CSE would agree with me.

2) Pro-gay extremists tries to draw parallels between them and the civil rights movements in the US or the Jewish Holocaust, as though we segregate our beaches according to sexual orientation or round up gays in concentration camps, which cannot be further from the truth. Singapore has been very tolerant of gays. But to them anything short of gay pride parades and anal sex clinics in secondary schools would probably be seen as "neutral".

3) Like the pro-gay extremists, people like Thio Su Mien believes there is no middle ground. To her, being neutral about homosexuality is probably enough reason to burn in hell.
Getting Thio Su Mein to say the AWARE CSE is neutral means nothing.

Anybody who read the instructor's manual for AWARE CSE knows that it is far from being neutral with words like "Homosexuality is perfectly normal".

If the AWARE CSE is seen as neutral, there will not be any controversy.

AWARE as unrepentant and extreme as it is, should be permanently banned from access to all public services, not just MOE.

My problem with homosexuality II: What gays want

What does the gay movement really really want? They had worked had to create the perception that gay people are really just like the rest of us, but with special needs that are consensual and harms no one. But is that the complete truth?

4) Why GLBTQ and not GLBTQI

The I here refers to incest. Take a look at an example of "incest activism" here: Brother and sister fight Germany's incest laws. For all the talk of being tolerant and inclusive, the gay activists and their AWARE comrades are noticeably quiet about incest. Why dont these liberals fight for acceptance of this "alternative lifestyle" as well? I'm talking about mutually consensual incest, not Joseph Fritzl. Do they find incest "unnatural"? Are they suffering from traditional moralistic hangups, perhaps from the Abrahamic religions?

Do they think abstinence education will be effective for siblings sexually attracted to each other?

Who is the victim in consensual incestuous sex? If the increased risk for having children with birth defects is the main concern, all the more we need a good proper sexuality education to ensure birth control is done correctly, right?

Besides, couples do not have to be siblings to be at a heightened risk for having children with genetic defects. Therefore, such couples should be treated the same way as incestuous ones?

Or do they totally accept incest as a "natural and healthy" but recognizes that society abhors such behaviour and choose to ignore the needs of incest community, to save their self interest?

5) Gays dont really want to repeal 377A

It is a silly law. It attracts the sympathy of moderates, maybe even some conservatives. It creates an impression of an oppressed community.

However, in it's current state of no active enforcement, it does encapsulate the attitude of Singapore: As long as gay sex is discretely, privately, consensually done between gay men certain of their identity, there should be no need to fear the law.

It does leave open the possibility of blackmail and extortion, but so do heterosexual relations. It's not unheard of for women to regret having sex and falsely accuse the men of rape. Or other freakish circumstances, like police investigations on unrelated charges that reveal consensual gay sex taking place.

I think the law needs fine tuning, and is best left to people with smarter minds than me.

Until then, 377A will remain a powerful rallying cry for gays to lobby for more power and rights, and they are not in a big hurry to repeal it.

6) Gays don't really want to get married

Despite all the lobbying especially in the US, the gay community dont really believe in marriage as an institution. You can blame the homophobic society pushing them to extreme liberalism, but the gay community has no beliefs in monogamy, despite their attempts to manufacture an image of being just like regular folks who want to settle down, get married in a church and raise children.

Take a look at the first article on yawningbread.org regarding the AWARE takeover. Alex Au digresses in that article to talk, not about gay rights, but on the failure of abstinence education. Everybody sees the world through their tinted lenses, and clearly he wants as much sex with as many men as he can get, with consent of course. For such hedonists, marriage is an inconvenience.

So why do they still lobbying so hard for gay marriage? In the US, married couples have significant tax advantages, so there is a financial motivation. But more importantly, they want to chip away traditional concepts of relationships, and re-create the world in their own image and ideals.

I dont share the moral/amoral clarity of the Bible fundamentalists or liberal extremists. I find homosexuality a complex and delicate issue, often with no right or wrong answers that can last the test of times and changing attitudes.

Just as I dont think Bible fundamentalists are Christians, Christians should not succumb to the smearing tactics of the gay movement to either choose to support them or be labelled a "fundie", or a "sheep".

The gay movement dont really believe in being open or tolerant. The recent events show that these gay activists have no tolerance for Christians.

MOE clarifies foreign undergrad admission numbers: numbers still seem wrong

When MOS of Education Gan Kim Yong reported in parliament that only 987 foreign students got into local universities this year, I knew immediately it had to be some mistake or some massive policy U-turn, but I did not comment on it because I did not have anything useful to add to what Lucky Tan, Ned Stark and Leong Sze Hian had eloquently written, and I was hoping that with a new PM, MOE may have actually reduce the number of foreign students to cater for Singaporeans.

But alas, MOE uncharacteristically decided it was necessary to do some OT and work pass 5pm to issue a press release as late as 9pm to clarify that the numbers were wrong. (This is after all, a country that has a blood bank that does not even want to talk to people who was misled into thinking a loved one will bleed to death if they fail to make good the blood bank's losses, 5 minutes before the start of official working hours)

And guess what, the numbers are still wrong. MOE now claims the actually number of foreigners admitted is 4,218. The MOS of Education Gan Kim Yong had earlier claimed that there was a total of 14,685 places in the three universities. They also claim there is 20% "cap" for foreigners, and not admitting every single one of the 19,000 full-fee paying foreigners, irregardless of their academic ability, is "costing" the nation $480 million dollars in missed revenues.

Guess what:

4218 / 14685 = 28.7%

Surely there is yet another mistake that needs to be clarified.
Let's say the 14,685 were all for locals only (locals is yet another government attempt to fudge the PR numbers with the citizens)

4218 / (14685+4218) = 22.3%

So, either the 20% cap is really a flexible round down, or there are many more caveats that a simple peasant like me can never comprehend.

This is not a foreign student problem any more. I do not know if the MOS of Education Gan Kim Yong was trying to play with semantics or received faulty information / typo error etc. I hope it is the former, because for someone in his position, he should have instantly recognised that 987 is a ridiculous number. If he does not even have a good gut feel for the numbers, sigh...


"Close to 20% of foreign students who apply for local universities get in
By Pearl Forss, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 19 July 2007 2149 hrs

SINGAPORE: Close to 20 percent of foreign students who applied to local universities were accepted this year.

The Ministry of Education had said in Parliament on Tuesday that the figure was only 4.3 percent, and only 987 foreign students got into local universities this year.

In fact, out of the 23,000 foreign students who applied for local universities, the actual number admitted was 4,218.

The Ministry explained that the 987 figure only referred to foreign students who had obtained GCE 'A' level or polytechnic qualifications in Singapore.

It has capped the number of government-subsidised foreign students in Singapore at 20 percent because it does not want schools to expand too quickly.

However, this cap makes it difficult for universities to take in more full fee-paying foreign students.

Full fees for foreign students enrolled in non-lab courses in local universities are about S$26,000 a year.

This year, nearly 19,000 foreign students applied for local universities and did not get in, which translates to over S$480 million in lost revenue annually."

Time to end military training in Taiwan and Thailand

My condolences to the family of the national servicemen who were killed or injured in Taiwan. I think it is about time we should ask ourselves: Why are our troops in Taiwan?

I do not fear an imminent military Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Both governments, are too concerned with chasing money to cross swords. What is going on now instead, is a war of words, and a war of language. China does not like to see any official language for Taipei that suggests their sovereignty, but that is precisely what the Taiwanese wants, and is pushing towards that incrementally. Already, Singapore was played like a pawn during Lee Hsien Loong's visit shortly before he became the PM. And even though the PM may be the most eloquent politician in the world, as shown by his world number one salary, he managed to offend both sides of Taiwan Straits, by first seemingly supportive of Taiwan, and then seemingly berating Taiwan, leading to the "peesai/lampa" comment.

When the British troops announced their intention to leave the then newly independent Singapore, nobody was willingly to help Singapore with our national defence. Nobody except equally pariah states like Israel, and later Taiwan. This is something we ought to remember. But just as Israel does not expect Singapore to send troops to defend them, neither does Taiwan need Singaporean troops. To continue our military presence in Taiwan makes our relationship with China, difficult. In times of war, will the Singaporean troops help the Taiwanese? It is a rhetorical question, and if we were pressed for an answer, we will offend someone. Let's end this diplomatic timebomb sooner, rather than later.

If we cut out the Taiwanese training, I believe we can cut back NS by at least 3 months. Will this compromise our operational readiness? Not at all! Who in the world needs two full years to train footsoldiers? Are Singaporean footsoldiers especially slow learners? The Swiss only train their conscripts for as little as 6 months. Anybody who claims that a shorter NS will compromise the training of our soldiers are really saying Singaporeans are a bunch of world class retards.

The same can be said about Thailand. Singapore going to war with Taiwan is a laughable prospect. Singapore going to war with Thailand is not that far fetched. It is not hard to imagine the discomfort felt by the Thai generals over Singaporeans getting too familiar with their terrain. And given our relationship is totally soured, keeping a military presence is like playing with fire while doused in kerosene. Shut the base down. End the troop training. Cut back on the length of NS. Cut both Taiwan and Thailand, and we can shorten NS to just 1.5 years. The men can start university just one year later than the women and foreigners!

Then, MINDEF may have some extra pocket change out of that 10.6 Billion budget to support the lives destroyed by NS.