More ERP gantries - Government stupidity or greed?

Pasting below the contents of an email that I have just sent to: raymond_lim@mot.gov.sg; janice_quah@mot.gov.sg; mot@mot.gov.sg; cindy_lim@mot.gov.sg; soffy_hariyanti@mot.gov.sg; harold_lim@mot.gov.sg; lok_hong_leng@mot.gov.sg; neo_lay_yiing@mot.gov.sg; jasmine_tan@mot.gov.sg; verene_cheong@mot.gov.sg; evelyn_quek@mot.gov.sg; nazrana_zainuddin@mot.gov.sg

Rather than implementing ERP across the board like what you are doing, you should conduct an in-depth study of what exactly causes the slowdown on the roads and expressways or take a drive around the roads of Singapore.

You would find among other things that:
1. "clever" drivers who continuously zigzag their way through the expressways and other roads cause a significant slowdown behind them as other drivers have to slow to avoid the inconsiderate ones.
2. vans and lorries that jump without much warning into the middle lane of expressways slow down other people behind them.
3. motorcycles that can be seen in virtually every lane of expressways slow down bigger vehicles behind them because the motorcycles often drive in the middle of the lanes, thus overtaking a motorcycle ends up being as much work as overtaking another car.
4. the right-most lane is often not the fastest as vehicles have to use these lanes when they have to turn right into smaller roads. Not all roads in Singapore have a special right-turning lane and often that lane is too short.
5. the biggest slowdowns every morning along the TPE happen:
- from Exit 10 to slightly after Exit 9 due to merging from "clever" drivers who find it faster to take Exit 10 and rejoin the traffic further ahead
- and right after Loyang mostly due to poor road planning as the entrance to the PIE is way too close to the Loyang exit, thus ending up in a big slowdown with drivers along the TPE seeking to join the PIE and drivers from the Loyang exit worming their way to join the TPE towards Changi Airport and the ECP.

Joke Army, Joke Country

Still think that everybody in Singapore is treated the same way?

Well this appalling episode of favouritism towards the PM's son in a case where he clearly pissed on the entire ranking system of the SAF and yet got only a reprimand for his troubles should settle it once and for all. Daddy pulled the strings and got his son an early Christmas present or maybe his birthday was just around the corner.

And it's just very convenient too that he got awarded (we'll say that this was entirely based on merit) the Public Service Commission Overseas Merit Scholarship and will soon jet off to MIT on our tax dollars. This when his daddy is already earning more than $2m a year. I can see how those MIT tuition fees would have dented the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed to.

---------------
Full article from Channelnewsasia.com

The Defence Ministry has formally charged and reprimanded a full-time National Service officer after he contravened orders by broadcasting a letter of complaint to other servicemen.

Second Lieutenant Li Hongyi, who is the second son of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, had apparently sent an email to the Defence Minister to lodge a complaint against another serviceman.

2LT Li is believed to have copied the email to other servicemen who are not directly under his command and are not in an official capacity to deal with the matter.

His action has been a subject of several on-line discussions here.

MINDEF says there are proper channels within the SAF to address grievances or concerns.

And in this incident, 2LT Li is said to have written a complaint against one of his superiors whom he alleged had been absent without leave on two occasions.

According to a statement by MINDEF, 2LT Li had also said in his letter that he had reported the matter to the officer's supervisors but disciplinary action had not been carried out.

MINDEF adds that arising from 2LT Li's complaint, an investigation was conducted and appropriate disciplinary action has been meted out to the officers concerned.

The officer who was found to have been absent without leave will be court-martialled.

Two supervising officers have been issued warning letters for poor judgement in administering inappropriate disciplinary action.

MINDEF says to maintain organisational discipline, all SAF servicemen with complaints or grievances should take them up through proper channels for redress.

This is to ensure due process and to protect confidential information.

All complaints which are not anonymous are investigated and dealt with properly.

Ministers and Corruption

So as expected, the Ministers will be getting their pay increase.

What riles me about this whole thing is the corruption argument. Apparently if the Ministers did not get the aforementioned pay increase, they might succumb to the temptations of corruption.

But yet their pay before this increase was not exactly peanuts ... according to today's paper, it was $1.2m for the entry-level Ministers. So $1.2m is a salary where they'd be tempted to look for a little money on the side but $1.6m is not?

And the corruption argument leaves me wondering:
1. Does this mean that the Ministers are of such low integrity that they'd rather fill their pockets with under-the-table $$ than do their jobs?
2. Since the PM's pay is now S$3.1m and Bush earns US$400k, does this mean that Bush is 5 times more likely to fall prey to corruption?
3. What of the average worker? We'll take someone who earns $40k a year (and many earn less than $40k). Does this mean he or she is 77.5 times more likely to take some side money?


Some more food for thought.
From today's paper, apparently Workers' Party MP Low Thia Khiang yesterday said that Finland, Denmark and Switzerland ranked higher than Singapore in certain studies on clean government and the standard of living, yet their leaders earned much less than those here.

MM Lee then replied: 'Their governments never produced the kind of transformation that we have. To make the transformation from what we were in 1959 or 1965, to what we are requires an extraordinary government with extraordinary government officers to support it.'

My answer is: but the people of Finland, Denmark and Switzerland did not have to sacrifice freedom of the press and freedom of speech. And the people of Finland, Denmark and Switzerland are consistently ranked higher than the people of Singapore in studies of happiness levels.

Bad Parents Being Stupid

Came across this article on Yahoo News.



This type of thing really pisses me off. Bad parents trying to shift the blame to some other party for their own bloody failures. Who let the kid play 36 hours straight, huh? It sure wasn't the Warcraft distributor.

In a country where you're only allowed to have 1 kid, you'd think they'd pay a bit more attention to his/her welfare.

And why does the suit say this thing about the warning that the game is suitable only for players above age 13? 13-year-olds are above age 13!!

ST's Top Story

Found this "Top Story" picture on the Straits Times homepage.


Lucky they have this small caption to help us out. Otherwise I would have thought Khaw Boon Wan was shaking hands with yet another PAP candidate.

And how about that guy in the middle showing us all his teeth eh? Happy that the vendor's arm was hiding his fat belly? Feeling the pleasure of his right boob in front of everyone?

Good thing tomorrow's Polling Day and we'll soon be rid of all this election non-sense.


Anyway, for this to be considered a top story, I guess nothing is happening in the world today. Has the massacre in Darfur stopped? Nope, BBC's homepage brings us back to reality.


All about keeping the priorities straight eh ST? But I will also give them pops. After refreshing the ST homepage, I got to see this.


Happy Coronation Anniversary, Your Highness.

Singapore Car Drivers

Singapore car drivers have got to be among the very worst in the world. Sure they may not honk as much as the drivers in China but they are worse due to their selfishness and their lack of courtesy. Sure the Singapore roads are not nearly as congested as Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok but that's in no way thanks to the drivers.

It's pretty easy to see. They will never ever allow someone else into their lanes even when it's much easier to do so. They'd rather squeeze past the other car and possibly risk an accident than to do the right thing.

They might think this makes them weak and it hurts their egos. Or maybe they think that paying the COE entitles them to be the kings of the road - but guess what? all other car drivers in Singapore have paid the COE too. Watch them in action on the rare roads with two-way traffic or in the HDB carparks and you will see the king-of-the-road attitude again.

It's not like the roads in Singapore are very congested, a simple act of courtesy along their way home would cost them 5 seconds at the most but yet it's not done.

I have been to Bangkok where the jams are world famous and even in all this mayhem, you can see drivers allowing others to switch to their lanes without a fuss or a honk. Which leads me to the conclusion that it's got everything to do with the people's mentality.

Singaporeans need humility. It's too bad the only way they can understand this is when they get involved in accidents, get mugged in Malaysia or when there's a tragedy happening.

Singaporeans 'stupid'

The below is an article titled ‘Stupid’ remarks stir up hornet’s nest by Seah Chiang Nee published in the SundayStar of Malaysia on 23 April 2006. I came by it while I was in KL on holiday for a few days.

SINGAPOREANS are affluent, educated, but are they really survival smart?

In a world of harsher living, this question that never dies has again grabbed the public focus here with a general election less than two weeks away.

At the core of the debate: Without natural resources, the Singaporean increasingly has to depend on his own guile, not only a good education, to survive; has he got it?

It’s not a new debate. In the past decade, the Education Ministry has changed the education system to teach independent thinking and entrepreneurship to correct some fundamental defects in the average worker.

The average Singaporean is good at academic studies and works hard, but falls short on individual initiative and streetwise qualities, relying too much on the government for help.

Revisiting the debate is controversial Taiwan lawmaker Li Ao, who recently ranked Singaporeans rather lower in natural intelligence to the people in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

“Taiwanese are scoundrels, but lovable, Hong Kong people are craftier, (Chinese mainlanders are unfathomable) and Singaporeans are stupider,” he said, adding that it is partially due to genetics. The original migrants who came here from China were of “poor stock”.

Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew once told Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping that the ethnic Chinese in Singapore were descendants of illiterate coolies and farmers from southern Fujian.

This had made them less able than the people of Hong Kong or Taiwan, whose ancestors were mainly businessman or technocrats.

Singaporeans could function well only as a group, not as individuals, Li told a Chinese newspaper. They would never be non-conformist or stand out above the crowd.

“If you ask me, other than Lee Kuan Yew, his son Hsien Loong, politicians aside, I can only think of a cute girl, (pop star) Stephanie Sun, there aren’t many other outstanding people. The impression that I get (of normal Singaporeans) is stupid”.

Singapore’s system, Li said, stemmed from the ancient Chinese political philosophy of legalism, which emphasised on the rule of law.

“Singaporeans do not break rules, but they also do not stand out,” he said in Mandarin.

He said Lee Kuan Yew had wanted to build a British-style democracy but because the people were not up to scratch, they only knew how to toe the line.

His report card on Singapore has shaken up the people at a time when election fever is rising, indirectly touching on a campaign issue – government control on society.

Predictably, Singaporeans have reacted angrily to the terms “stupid” and “poor genes”, dismissing them as a popularity stunt that takes no account of their successful, modern achievements. This “genetic weakness” doesn’t aptly describe today’s diverse, more mature and worldly-wise generation.

But some critics say there is some truth in what Li said, but insist that the fault lies not in genes, but in years of political and social conditioning by a top-down government.

One writer however, said: “A better word to describe the Singaporean is naïve, which comes about because of a paternalistic and rather efficient government. Everything is so structured and laid-out that the people do not need to fight for a living, blunting their ability to compete. They’re lulled into thinking the outside world also behave like Singapore.”

Businessmen from Taiwan and Hong Kong are more alert to opportunities, as well as cheats, compared to even the capable Singaporeans, whose preoccupation is getting a high salary.

They know where to take the short cuts when faced with a problem; Singaporeans will just sit and wait for better days.

Under the Lee Kuan Yew leadership, the collective good comes before the individual, so the republic’s success is a “collective creation”, Li added.

The individual is often lost on his own. It has led some critics to ask whether the Singaporean has an original viewpoint of his own beyond what the government says.

“I won’t say we are stupid. We are just not daring and street-smart,” commented a Singaporean studying abroad. In his university, other Asian students would walk up to the microphone and talk about some cause, not the Singaporeans, he said.

Li Ao is not alone in his views. Singaporean columnist Wong Lung Hsiang said it reflected what he heard in China that “Taiwanese are shameless, Hong Kongers are heartless, Singaporeans are ignorant”.

In Greater China, law-abiding Singaporeans have long been seen as gullible.

In a commentary in November last year, Wong advised Singaporeans to treasure their own system at home, “but when you are away, you should know how to adapt to others”.

What Chinese Singaporeans have inherited from their grandparents is peasant culture, explained “peasant judge” online.

“Peasants don’t care for much else except a bowl of rice on the table, a roof over their heads, and the chance to go out to the rice fields to do the daily back-breaking chores day in day out.”

Politics, too, is affected. Almost everyone goes to the polls with his rice-bowl in mind.

It occupies the citizen’s mind a lot more than his counterparts in other countries, who are more passionate about issues like justice and equality.

“Just imagine, well-informed Singaporeans advocating a one-party rule, saying it is good for the future. If this is not stupidity, what is?’ asked redbean.

This could be a recipe for future trouble should a foreign predator one day use this character weakness to take over the country.

All he needs to do to retain the people’s compliance is by keeping their stomach full and their mind empty.