Ngiam Tong Dow once said George Yeo can weave magic with words. The context was the request from the MITA minister to build the Esplanade theatres and concert halls for $600 million. Before this, the highest ever request from MITA had been for $50 million to reconstruct and refurbish the Victoria concert halls, and even that was approved only because Goh Keng Swee personally placed his "considerable power of persuasion" behind the proposal. At the launch of Ngiam's book "Dynamics of the Singapore Success Story", Yeo confirmed the story: "When I was in MITA, Mr Ngiam was Permanent Secretary in the Finance Ministry. He almost killed the Esplanade project about which he paid me a high compliment years later."
The "high compliment" paid by Ngiam: "MOF was defeated by this ingenious procedural innovation," which was to use the Totalisator Board to finance the capital expenditure outside the Budget, using future revenue streams. Then Finance Minister Lim Hng Kiang has another variant of the ingenious scheme, giving Yeo less effusive credit for deploying future revenue streams, but the money was still spent.
Behind the cascade of words, more schemes must have been hatched. Why else is the current generation feeling the burden of financing the strained infrastructure, such as the $1.1 billion freebie for SMRT and SBS Transit? On Tuesday (Aug 12) SBS Transit reported a 57.2% increase in net profit for the second quarter; will they ever return anything to the taxpayers? The future's a tricky business, when the guys in charge weave magic with words.
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When saying the national pledge, your fist must be positioned on the heart. I guess some one has too much "hard" to stomach any "heart".
ReplyDeleteWhen you don't have a heart, it really does not matter where the hand is.
Delete@anon 11:07, well said!
DeleteWhy is he still a MP at 91 year old? Why is his son the present PM? Why his daughter the CEO of temasick? Why? Why?
ReplyDeleteI would like to see georgie boy talk his way to his boss Robert Kuok and ask for just $10m to build a white elephant. In a real world, where there are no state coffers to plunder and other people's money they can dip their manipulative hands into, somehow their minds become more focused. even the fox find the birds cannot be talked down from the trees anymore. In lala land, well, we never learn, keep handing the keys to these scholar types who never worked a single day in the real world and still pay them a few millions a pop, Where would hairdo lim be if he loses his GRC? Wud you hire him to be your manager if you had a business?
ReplyDeleteVote PAP if you think they are working for Singaporeans.
ReplyDeleteVote Opposition if you think PAP is working for themselves and their aliens.
All of what you say is chicken feed when compared with the sleight of hand in transforming CPF funds into SSGS bonds with the proceeds co-mingled with other moneys and handed over to GIC. Then transform GIC into a private company with no legal duty to account to the CPF members. Voila,everything is legal.
ReplyDeleteGood god... the batteries are really good!
ReplyDeletebatteries not, it's a thousand year old secret among chinese emperors. old yoda feasting daily on human placenta, mao would have died at 60 given his 3 women-per-nite ritual, yet with placenta he lived till well into his 70s - notably similar was that mao actually became senile in his last years and the yanks like kissenger who met him noted privately about his dropping jaws and incomprehensible mutterings. Maybe placenta also has its side effects. In this day of SARS, MERS and EBOLA, people are expending so much to keep the unworthy alive while young and robust people wither away. Makes me shake my head and wonder why we call ourselves the apex of animal kingdom...
DeleteGood batteries no doubt, but the old fart needs both men on each side to prop him up. This could be a useful group photo for Chan Chun Sing to include in his resume when applying for a new job in 2016.
DeleteWithout the Old Man,
ReplyDeletethe Young Man will not
be in the Cabinet.
On his own, he will not even
be a Member Of Parliament.
If he stands in a Single Seat Ward
in the Next General Election, he will
be sweeped out of the Cabinet. Having said that, PAP will not dare put him as a candidate in any Single Seat Constituency.
Everyone's right fist on heart, except for .......
ReplyDeleteCan you insure against Ebola? Looks like the first case has landed on Singapore's shore. Female Nigerian 55 years old.
At 3.45pm, the Straits Times sent a tweet saying that Singapore “may have its first suspected case of Ebola”.
DeleteAt 4.27pm, the Straits Times sent another tweet citing TTSH as saying that she “does not have Ebola as first feared”.
The newspaper's original tweet and story have since been deleted. Note: no apology offered for the irresponsible incitement of mass panic.
About the HDB flat. There needs to be more education on the 55-years-old cap on the use of CPF, and hence one may need to clear off one's OA by 54 if cash is a problem. Also the 120% withdrawal limit needs to be taken into consideration. One needs to be careful of the asset and asset appreciation rhetoric. And the suggestion of the disposal strategy of the asset at retirement is very unpalatable.
ReplyDeleteIn theory, the use of CPF to pay for housing sounds really great and
ReplyDeletethe reasons get more palatable when the value of house goes up & up.
The reality is, you cannot take a single brick out of the house and buy medicine, or meat with it. And if you monetise it, by selling it, you need to pay for the next home anyway.
The principle that one's home is not part of retirement planning must be believed. That principle has been violated many times over.
That is the fundamental crux of this "not enough to retire" issue.
that blood sucking leech........just like all the rest!
ReplyDeleteYes, lately Kee Chiu has been harping a lot on the future: "future-proof Singapore society", "advise against borrowing against the future". What is he, our future prime minister? What future is there if we can barely survive the present, when all their schemes (shifting CPF goal posts, selling our homes for retirement, etc) are to future-proof themselves from spending more on the people. To survive, we have to future-proof ourselves come 2016.
ReplyDeleteDidn't know until now, a nanogenarian will become a three-headed person (in every standing photo taken).
ReplyDeleteWhen Tom Plate interviewed him at the Istana, he noticed two attendants were required to provide him with hot towels. Now we see with our own eyes two human walking sticks are needed to prop him up.
DeleteWonder who is the walking stick to who, Kee Chiu or the Nonagenarian. Didn't both these guys walk-over into Parliament by the back door, crutches and all? Not forgetting the Ranee from Singapuri - these three heads you mean?
DeleteOr the two guys in blue flanking and bolstering him, who look like PRCs or Gurkhas! Anyway it's a dodgy business taking care of Ole Dodgy.
DeleteI want to know why he needs such a big house; so much space. There's just him. Why cant he move into something where the size makes more sense. One of those itty bitty places that the rest of us are expected to live in.
ReplyDeleteIt is particularly vital he does this - to convince old pple why they should sell and leave behind an abode which has been home for years. He needs to show them that it's easy to do so. Show them how to be unemotional about such things.
But then he's a man who gets rather emotional. Take that time we left Malaysia. There went all his plans to rule over something much more than a red dot. He sulked for almost 6 months in a bungalow in Changi, incommunicado, without even naming a stand-in. And all this at a time when the country most needed leadership to map out a new direction.
Right now, even as he's about to hit 91 at any moment, he still cant let go. And this even though he cant perform the duties he was elected for. He needs to walk the talk.