Walked Over

Saw this article on Temasek Review about some guy who lost $350,000 investing his CPF funds.

What struck me most about this article was this:

He had invested in some shares under the CPIS, but did not elaborate more on how he lost his monies and the shares he bought.

…

Under CPF regulations, members can invest up to 35 percent of their CPF savings in their Ordinary Account in shares.

Wait, what? So this guy lost $350,000, which was 35% of his CPF savings? A CPF millionaire is complaining because he made some bad investments and now he thinks the government shouldn’t have allowed him to make those investments in the first place?

Well, cry me a river.

For some reason, TR decided to take this story and run with it, turning it into a hack piece about Singaporeans’ lack of control over their CPF funds.

Though Singaporeans have a choice to invest their CPF monies under CPFIS, they have NO CHOICE but to contribute a certain percentage of their monthly pay to CPF.

Furthermore, they have NO CHOICE on when to withdraw their own CPF savings.

Yes, a story about a millionaire complaining about being given inappropriate choices is an excellent example of how having no choice hurts us. And a CPF millionaire is a prime example of how the little man is losing out in Singapore’s evil social security plan. The logic hurts my brain.

I suppose from TR’s viewpoint the entirety of the CPF is bad (I don’t agree with this), therefore any criticism against it contributes towards its crusade, but sometimes it just looks like the random rantings of an angry child.

In the face of the recent slew of complaints about immigration and foreign workers in Singapore, I was surprised to find this article from Al Jazeera about Malaysia’s foreign-worker-woes.

Malaysian firms depend heavily on foreign labourers, with migrants making up more than a fifth of the country’s work force.

…

Many are employed in construction sites, factories, restaurants, households and palm oil plantations, doing work that Malaysians will not do.

Well now, that’s a surprise, isn’t it? Almost like something straight out of TR or OC.

From Channel NewsAsia:

DSO National Laboratories examining letter to PM

SINGAPORE: The DSO National Laboratories is examining a letter addressed to the Prime Minister.

A police spokesperson confirmed that the letter was received at the Istana at around 8pm on Monday.

SCDF conducted tests using detectors and did not find any traces of hazardous materials.

The letter, which was typewritten and consisted of a few pages, has been sent to the DSO National Laboratories for further checks.

I have quoted the entirety of this pointless report.

So a possibly poisonous letter has been delivered to the Istana addressed to the PM, which is now being checked. The contents are not revealed. The manner in which it was delivered is not revealed. Whether or not the PM has touched the letter is not revealed (I doubt it). I am none the wiser for this report, other than that this kind of thing must not happen very often, for the Istana to kick up a fuss.

The news report might as well have been twittered.

To be fair, it did come out at 2228hrs on a cold Tuesday night. I imagine the reporter, one poor Lin Jiamei, is wishing she could be at home doing something other than waiting for a call from DSO labs to see if it’s going to be a poisonous zinger or a nonlethal dope.

From ChennelNewsAsia:

Speaking in Parliament on Friday, Acting Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, Lui Tuck Yew, said the aim is to get four in five Singaporeans to attend at least one arts and cultural event each year by 2025.

You’re kidding me. We’re going to have a measurable KPI now for artistic development in Singapore?

In a truly impressive (one might almost say… artistic?) explosion of ridiculous corporate-buzzwords, Acting Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, Lui Tuck Yewtells us how he’s going to do this:

… the focus will not be on infrastructural development … proposals outlined by the Economic Strategies Committee, to make Singapore a leading global city

… it will recommend the place-making efforts necessary to develop socially- and economically-vibrant cultural precincts…

… It will also identify concrete strategies to mould distinctive peaks of excellence that would differentiate and distinguish Singapore as a global city…

The last point gave me the terrible mental image that the government is going to sponsor breast-implants. I suppose that would “differentiate and distinguish” us…

Or maybe given the casinos and IRs, “erotic dancing” is going to be considered an art?

From Elderly HDB households have sufficient income for daily expenses: survey:

SINGAPORE: The Housing and Development Board (HDB) said more than eight in 10 elderly households – in which the head of household is aged 65 and over – have sufficient sources of income to cover their daily expenses.

20% of elderly households in Singapore are destitute? That’s a MASSIVE figure, given that we have no social security in Singapore. Is this a survey based on the personal opinion of the members (who may have weird ideas of what constitutes “sufficient sources of income”)? Or has some form of analysis been done as to their financial means? What does sufficient mean? Are 2 out of every 10 old people dying slowly of starvation in their homes, or does it mean they can only go for KTV once a month rather than every week?

From HDB’s press release:

More than 80% of elderly have sufficient sources of income to cover their daily expenses

12. Almost all the elderly (99.6%) identified at least one financial source from a list of possible financial sources to meet their old age needs. The major sources cited were financial support from children, and self-reliance through personal and CPF savings (Chart 3).

Chart 3 (JPG 39KB)

13. About 81% of the elderly mentioned that their sources of income were sufficient to cover their daily expenses. The main reason stated among those who felt otherwise was the high cost of living/healthcare cost. Some also felt that their incomes were too low.

Right, so in actual fact only 0.4% of old people are completely without income. Only a couple thousand starving in their homes. The rest of them have some kind of money, though 17+% of them think it isn’t enough, the greedy old grubbers!

Ok, it’s not perfect, but at least it’s not 20% poor old people.

Thanks for the scare, Straits Times / HDB.

Only 1 Singaporean turned up with something to say to Barrack Obama for a movie project, an NSF on his way to Harvard (rolls eyes).

Evidently the woman had advertised on FM 95.8 and Lianhe Zaobao. Yeah, that’s a real good way to reach out to an audience that’s interested in US politics. I wonder if she bothered trying The Temasek Review or The Online CitizenYoung PAP website. Or even Stomp!. I’ll bet there are plenty of people there who have something to say to Barrack Obama. But she probably didn’t want to rock the boat too much by politicising the event. So now the reporter is complaining that the fault lies with apathetic Singaporeans.

In the end, they got 8 responses–the sole volunteer, the “filmmaker” herself, the reporter covering the event, and 5 passers-by. Smells like a failed school project to me. The movie for which this is being produced, www.myamericathemovie.com, is supposedly to explores the United States’ global role in the 21st Century and our own individual responsibilities towards making the world a better and safer place..

I can’t wait to see what the Iranians have to say.

I recently joined the National Library Board’s “Friends of the Library” programme as a volunteer. So far, I’ve gone for the orientation briefing and helped out with one story-telling session/lesson.

Things I have learned:

1. Kids love volunteering with the library. Some of the Secondary school kids I volunteered with last Saturday informed me that they have to perform a compulsory 30 hours of community service a year. The library is a great place to volunteer for them as it is relatively easy, clean and effortless compared to old folks’ homes or flag days. Plus air conditioning and free food almost every single session.
2. Other than the kids who need to fulfill a quota, adults really love volunteering with the library. There are over 15,000 volunteers according to the Volunteer Programme IC, of whom evidently there are several hundreds who perform over 15 hours of service a year. Top contributor last year did several hundreds of hours of service (to be fair, she is retired).
3. Because of the glut of volunteers, library volunteer sessions tend to be very easy. I spent last Saturday with seven – eight other volunteers helping out with a story-telling session/lesson for the 10,000 Fathers Read! programme. From the attendance sheet, I think there were supposed to be more, but some didn’t show up. Still, there were more than enough of us to go round–only about three people were really required. Still, given that it’s a volunteer-thing and that there’s no gurantee that the people you ask for will show up, I guess the redundancy is a good thing.
4. Our public library is very well-funded. The National Library Board gets a cool $180 million a year from our Budget. Which is why there are so many programmes about to encourage literacy and reading, and also the fancy new buildings and shiny new machines. (to my surprise, in terms of percentage, we spend relatively little on our library–only about 0.1% of GDP compared to South Korea which spends 0.31%, and the UK which spends 0.2%).
5. Given its budget and size, library volunteers are frankly unnecessary–but I’ve think one of the reasons for the existence of the programme is to draw Singaporeans to become more involved with the NLB and help provide some kind of informal personal outreach. Hell, they’ve got me blogging about it so that’s got to be worth something.

On a somewhat related note, the guy doing the story-telling and giving tips was Roger Jenkins, a professional story-teller (I wonder how you end up with that job) who was really good, considering he managed to get a bunch of kids all excited and happy with nothing other than his voice. I don’t think he even had any props other than a tasteless star-adorned vest. Although I kept thinking “Leeroy” thoughout the session and imagining him telling some kind of fantasy story involving some idiot charging in at impossible enemies. He didn’t, but I was somewhat surprised that his stories featured quite some amount of violence (to an anthropomorphic chicken). I guess I’m just a wuss.

Bizarrely, he chose to end the tips on story-telling session with a story about “baby snake” and “baby frog” who become friends and teach each other how to slide and hop, respectively, but are torn apart by their parents who insist that they are mortal enemies (a little one-sided towards the snake’s side, I should think). Then he started talking about how important it was as parents to teach our kids to love rather than to hate, and to look beyond superficial differences so that we could all get together, muslims and jews, blacks and whites, indians and chinese. I almost thought he’d go for “Israeli and Palestinian”…

Whoa. Pushing the envelope for cultural relativism and racial harmony at a kids’ story-telling session? Heavy. The predominantly-upper-middle-class parents looked a bit stupified. I wanted to laugh, but I figured it would be a little bit rude, especially since it was a pretty good way to teach valuable life lessons to little kids. Also probably would have made future volunteering a bit difficult.

In any case, I’m actually considering a career with the library, which explains the volunteering. As far as I can tell, it seems like a pretty nice organisation, though I’m a little uncertain if I could fit into the backdrop of female motherly-figure-types.

Former NMP Thio Li-ann cancels trip to teach at NYU School of Law

[cackles in glee]

The irony, that the country that spawned the likes of her rejects her.

We’re removing the upper-age limit for organ donors, it seems. Now, even those over the age of 60 can expect their bodies to be recycled upon death. Why the Ministry of Health thought this was necessary eludes me. Surely elderly organs are not particularly suitable for transplants? Or perhaps there just aren’t enough young people in Singapore dying in ways that can allow for body-part-reuse?

In any case, I had no idea that we were recycled quite so… efficiently.

From Channel NewsAsia:

The amendments approved by Parliament in March this year is expected to increase the number of organ donors by about 10.
This would mean some 70 patients could potentially benefit from the move.

That’s an average of seven organs per donor? That seemed like a lot, until a wikipedia search for common transplantable organs and tissues:

• Bone
• Bone marrow
• Corneal
• Face
• Hand
• Heart
• Heart-lung
• Kidney
• Liver
• Lung
• Pancreas
• Penis
• Skin
• Spleen
• Uterus

So it turns out that we’re only transplanting at less than 50% efficiency here and we’re not even taking into account things like Islets of Langerhans. So uncharacteristic of our little technocracy.

Goodness gracious me. I had no idea that the reason we have that Raffles statue still standing, even after our neighbours pulled down their respective colonial masters’, is due to the advice of one Dr Albert Winsemius, whom it seems we owe much of our current financial sucess to.

One of his earliest pieces of advice was not to remove the statue of Stamford Raffles as it was a symbol of public acceptance of the British heritage and could alleviate concerns that investors have toward a new socialist government. With his help, Singapore attracted big oil companies like Shell and Esso to establish refineries here.

And I always thought it was a symbol of the uneasy legitimacy the chinese leadership here have forged for ownership of the island.