Affordable Houses

The Housing and Development Board (HDB) has a two-fold problem, built more flats and make them more affordable. First one is easy, and suits the appetite of the GDP growth junkies to a T. More flats for sale mean more money in the state coffers - just think of the contribution from the mysterious "reserves" portion of the pricing policy.

The good news is that $75,000 will now actually buy you a brand new flat (cheaper than those affordable $100K units), if you can contend with 35 sq metres in a non-mature estate. That's HDB nomenclature for an ulu part of the island which may lack certain amenities like schools, supermarkets, clinics, hawker centres, as well as sports and recreational facilities. On the plus side, the relatively remote locations may suit those planning a discreet afternoon tryst with a female IT sales executive. Just imagine, if they deliver on the $60,000 housing grant, a studio flat will cost only $15,000.

Before you rush out to nominate the HDB for a humanitarian award in finally reducing the entry level for basic accommodation, read on. The new flats will not be fitted with sanitary essentials like wash basins and taps. Those are optional items which HDB will happily supply at a mere $4,300. Recall the gold plated tap that caused NKF's TT Durai a lot of bother was priced at $990, including discount and GST.  Sure that was in 2004, and them HDB executives have had their paychecks revised upwards umpteen times since. For those on a tight budget, say earning $1,000 a month, please make do with a plastic pail and stand pipe. It will add a touch of nostalgia, and bring back fond memories of kampong days in the 50's, before ministers award themselves million dollar salaries. At Teck Ghee Parkview, HDB will even offer you a partition to separate the kitchen from the living room, at $2,000 extra.  Do you really need to prepare curry and risk a police report from the PRC neighbour?

Once again, the guys in charge missed out on another golden opportunity to appease the unhappiness of the disgruntled citizens. Then again, if the wealthy foreigners can have their Formula 1 races for another 5 years, Goh Chok Tong's concept of net happiness is attained. Didn't Lim Hng Kiang just remind us that while foreigners currently account for about 20 per cent of all income taxpayers, they contribute more than 25 per cent of Singapore's total personal income taxes?

Follow The Corruption Story

Mercifully, the kids are busily engrossed with the Primary School Leaving Examinations which starts today, Thursday 27 September. Spare the innocent children from the sordid details the mainstream media is wallowing in with the prurient aspects of the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) corruption case.

Even blue-nosed matrons will empathise when an upset Ms Sue warded off the Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP)'s relentless enthusiasm for a stroke-by-stroke account of the in-vehicle gymnastics with: "I can't remember.  I don't want to remember." The DPP isn't the only one inordinately fixated with an immoderate or unwholesome interest on anatomical matters. Our so called journalists also had a field day with headlines like "Woman had 'high degree of contact' with at least four officers". And we thought the court hearing was about corruption, you know, bribery, kickback, or, in the Middle East, baksheesh.

With all the sensationalism in the front pages, it is easy to miss that poor manufacturing output is heralding a technical recession. Instead of the anticipated 1 percent expansion in industrial production,  output slumped by 2.3 percent. This adds to the bad news of the 11 percent fall in exports in August, and the 2.9 percent drop in retail sales. Even the hallowed gross domestic product (GDP) shrank 0.7 percent in the April-June quarter.

It's one thing deflect from ill tidings - hence the series of salacious stories in the pipeline - it's another to make up for the numbers (spoiler alert: GDP bonus at stake!). But who would have thought they'll pick on the hawker center cleaning fees? The National Environment Agency (NEA) hiked the Holland Village Market and Food Centre monthly charges from $240 to $614. NEA claims the new rates are attributable to higher wages for cleaners - the same lowly paid workers who were denied the pay rise proposed by Lim Chong Yah - and training costs incurred by accredited contractors. The cleaning services of the 107 hawker centers and markets managed by the NEA are outsourced to NEA's contractors. Since our cleaning auntie probably won't be enjoying a near 3-fold jump in her pathetic takings, the cut is obviously going into the wrong pockets. Follow the money, and we may get to see what corruption is really like.

What Foreigners Have Done

You know they are running out of excuses when the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) puts up a half hearted defence for squeezing Singaporeans out of jobs (and living space) with the 1 million foreign workers shipped ashore over the recent years. The five key contributions listed by MTI would be laughable if they weren't so sad.

Foreigners pave the way for new industry sectors -
This was the case during the early years of industrialisation when companies like Rollei, Seagate, Hewlett Packard, etc, pioneered manufacturing operations for cameras, Winchester disk drives, computer peripherals, etc, and trained a legion of line production staff. More important, they transferred the technology to local staff and then the expatriates went home. Is that the situation with the biomedical sciences and aerospace engineering examples quoted?

Foreigners provide the buffer for firms to grow or downsize quickly -
Shipyards always have had a bad rap, jobs there are associated with the 3 Ds - dirty, dangerous and demanding. A CEO of a local yard was honest to admit that they are just big time subcontractors, the real engineering is done by overseas experts.  They even have their own terminology for foreign labour, such as NTS, meaning non-traditional sourced. They'll close shop in a hurry during a business downturn, employee loyalty is not an option. Ask the many retrenched middle managers driving taxi cabs.

Foreigners complement the domestic workforce -
In a perverse twist about jobs shunned by local workers, MTI claims consumers will have to pay more if the retail and F&B employers run out of cheap foreign workers. Well, we'll be happy to see the extra money go to our own Singaporeans manning the check-out counters than the imports from PRC who can't speak English. It is obvious that the foreign talents have spread from the hot and dusty construction sites to the air conditioned environs where no locals have shunned. That includes those cushy IT jobs.

Foreigners add diversity to the workforce -
How is that even a justification for more foreign influx? What economic advantage awaits P&G's setting up a beauty and male grooming facility? Sure we know Minsters with bad haircuts like Lui Tuck Yew's are in dire need of an extreme makeover, but do we really care? Ptui! Next, they'll be saying A*Star's Center of Excellent in Advanced Packaging is strategic in selling the national conversation package.

Foreigners build Singapore's physical and social structures -
Ah, the olde argument about builders of road and houses, and now filtered down to the nursing homes and hospitality suites.  The fact is that there are lots of retired nursing staff who can take up the slack except for the availability of cheap alternatives who abuse our senior citizens at places like the Nightingale Nursing Home.

Asked if the hard sell was a prelude to the reversal of tightening of the inflow of foreign workers, Minister Lim Hng Kiang said, "No, I don't want to go into that". And why not, pray tell - is it hurting the GDP bonus?

What Foreigners Have Done

Pause And Reflect

Baey Yam Keng (born in the year of the dog) got a lot of flak after telling Singaporeans to reflect upon themselves following foreign talent crap Sun Xu's odious observation that our senior citizens are dogs ('We need to reflect upon ourselves, are we the way they described?").

Now Senior Minister of State for Education, and Information, Communications and the Arts Lawrence Wong is using the same "r" word: "we should really pause  and reflect, and ask ourselves whether this is the kind of society we want." He was weighing in on the public relations disasters of (1) the Prince William wayang, and (2) the con in the national conversations.

Feigning "some heaviness in my heart", Wong expressed dismay that the politically staged events were politicised. That sentence doesn't even make sense. Next, Wong will be telling us he's not in politics to practise politics. Politics (from Greek politikos "of, for, or relating to citizens") as a term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, and modern political discourse focuses on democracy and the relationship between people and politics. If Wong plans to take the people out of politics, dream on. If there's a suppurating political divide in society, surely the blame should be on those running the government, not the people they are trying to govern. As the popular saying goes, if you can't stand the heat, get the fish out of the kitchen!

Unlike Baey, Deputy Managing Director of Hill & Knowlton, Wong the minister may excused for  having a tenuous grasp of public relations. For that matter, he's also probably ill prepared for Education, and Information, Communications and the Arts. Hey, he's simply there because of the GRC. And as for Baey, he should really deserve a royal reprisal for insinuating that Kate's choice of fashion wear in Singapore was attributed to the wayang motive. Reflect on that.

[Refer to Anonymous @ 9/26/2012 8:30 AM for an excellent translation of Baey's Facebook post]

Myth Busters

"The pigs begin living in the farmhouse, and rumor has it that they even sleep in beds, a violation of one of the Seven Commandments. But when Clover asks Muriel to read her the appropriate commandment, the two find that it now reads “No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets.” Squealer explains that Clover must have simply forgotten the last two words. All animals sleep in beds, he says—a pile of straw is a bed, after all. Sheets, however, as a human invention, constitute the true source of evil. He then shames the other animals into agreeing that the pigs need comfortable repose in order to think clearly and serve the greater good of the farm." (Chapter VI, "Animal Farm" by George Orwell)

Poor Clover, it's tough separating telling myth from fact if the story telling keeps changing.

The Government has set up its own "myth busting" web pages called "Factually". Nestled within the tabs of the official www.gov.sg website, is a section for "cutting through the swirl of rumour and distortion online". One of the "bite-size answers" is a nugget about HDB flat sizes. Of the 399 words, only the following really matters:

It was at the annual REACH Contributors' Forum on Wednesday night of 2 May 2012, that National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan told a student from the National University of Singapore that HDB flats are not shrinking, contrary to popular belief. In fact, sizes of HDB flats have been the same for the past 15 years.

Thanks to online feedback we soon discovered why the minister chose the magic year 1997. Those have lived longer distinctly remember that a four-room HDB flat in the 1980s boasted a size of 105 sq m, or 1,130 sq ft. Today, four-room flats built by HDB have shrunk to about 90 sq m, or 969 sq ft.

Khaw must have a shorter attention span, since HDB chief executive Cheong Koon Hean had already told the audience at the HDB Professional Forum at DB Hub Auditorium in Nov 2011, it reduced flat sizes in the mid-1990s. It is significant that the true picture emerged from online sources. Not all websites are created equal.

Minister for Trade and Industry S. Iswaran must be having problems with his memory too, the Formula 1 race was supposed to be economically viable. Yet he has signed on for another 5 years without presenting the financial tally for a single race. Instead he's keeping mum about the bleeding ink, just because Ecclestone the Hitler lover said, "A gentleman should never speak about money". Let's see how the "Factually" pages put the spin on this one.