TR EMERITUS

Much of what has been written on Ridout and the Black and White houses is incorrect - and understandably so as very few members of the public live in one. This is because the SLA manages 500 or so units, of which many are reserved leases (American military in Sembawang, British Council in Dover), commercial leases or educational leases which leaves only a few hundred residential. Renters tend to stay for a long time so turnover is low. There might only be a few dozen opportunities to rent a year, so public interaction is miniscule compared with the private market. Nonetheless, there is always a stock of dilapidated Black and Whites waiting to be restored for when demand is strong. Units often stay vacant for years. Why? The pool of renters is niche. The houses are old, come with no a/c, no hot water, no cabinets, no facilities & no appliances : exactly how they would have been in 1920-1940. The land area may be large but you cannot enlarge your house or build anything on it - this is why psf methods of valuing them don't make any sense. The land is not yours to do as you please. The plot ratio is not usable. The large field is only for you to mow and for your dog to run on. You can build a pool but you have to remove it when you leave. For barracks style units there is no security guard, or tennis court and you cannot prevent the public from wandering up to your window. For these reasons they usually rent for below the price of a comparable condo or house. I looked at maybe 30 units before leasing mine, and I also grew up in the Hooper/Makepeace cluster. Minister Shan's unit which was leased in 2018, would in my estimation have leased in the 20k to 35k range - nothing like the 200k or more bandied around by those with an agenda to enrage. The SLA lease process is designed to prevent corruption. If the situation is competitive, you submit a deposit to register your interest and then you drop off your blind bid at SLA by a deadline. The next day all the bids will be published. Someone will call you if you won and if you agree to honor your bid, the top bid will be published as the winner. Otherwise they might confiscate your deposit and talk to the second bidder. Even if you bid double the next person you cannot change your bid - and every bid is in the public record *before* you can decide yes or no. This is all then archived after a few months. If this process is not circumvented there should be no reason why anyone cannot bid on it, even the Minister. Why even have Black and Whites? So why do we even preserve these Black and Whites? If the demand is low, why not build HDB flats or condos instead on them? Today only the SLA manages Black and Whites, but back in 1920 Singapore was full of them. When the British left Singapore they handed over all military and civil service housing to the Singapore Government. This became the SLA portfolio. The private sector Black and Whites were mostly slowly demolished and replaced by modern homes that built over the grounds. Without the SLA's conservation effort the current portfolio would be similarly wiped out by each owner's desire to maximize living space, monetize plot ratio or break into pieces to distribute upon death. The SLA has been creative about how to keep these B&W estates alive by making them relevant as beautiful residential estates that double as a sort of historical park for the public, F&B and lifestyle spaces like Seletar and Dempsey and universities like UBS at Command House. They serve as an extension of the National Museum and play a soft role in nation building and our shared identity as Singaporeans. They play a role in tourism and what international visitors takeaway in their minds about Singapore. The conservation effort has been far sighted in my opinion, but you need people to occupy and maintain them for otherwise they will fall apart. When tenants leave they must restore everything back to the original 1920-40 condition for the next tenant. So you pay to put in a/c, hot water, cabinets, fridge, washing machine, oven, stove .... and then you pay *again* to remove them all. In that sense, when you lease a Black and White, you are effectively a custodian of it for Singapore even as you enjoy the surroundings of a bygone era - a win-win conservation solution. (I was prompted to write this after reading Calvin Cheng's well written pieces. I think Calvin has got it right and I think the inaccuracies in the accusations are so blatant they cannot be guilty of ignorance but rather creative malice. Nonetheless, the SLA process was built to withstand corruption and it is fitting that it should be tested it to see if the public's faith is justified).   * Facebook post by Yishen Kuik.  P/S: Reproduced without permission for sharing and discussion only.        Read More →

One of the biggest points that gets raised in Singapore whenever there is a debate on the cost of living and wages, is the fact that Singapore is a proud meritocracy where people get promoted according to their abilities rather than their race, religion or gender. If you look at Singapore on the surface level, you’ll believe this to be true. I remember the renowned journalist Tom Plate gushing about how Singapore had come up in the world many years ago because it treated its women so well. Mr. Plate had completed a series of interviews at MediaCorp where he had been interviewed in connection with his biography of the late Mr. Lee Kuan Yew by a couple of ladies and felt that this experience gave him an incredible insight into the way Singapore ticks. However, if you look beyond the headlines and actually live in Singapore, you’ll notice that meritocracy is a very loaded word. Yes, if you compare us to some other places, you’ll notice that gender, race and religion play a relatively minor role in promotions. However, what does play a major role in things is academic qualifications. As long as you are from the right junior college, scored significantly well in your exams and went to the right university, you are considered a person who has achieved “merit.” The paper qualifications imply that you are not an idiot. Places like the Oxbridge universities or the American Ivy League to demand certain standards and you could say that our top people (who inevitably go to those places) must have some brains to get good degrees from such places. However, as everyone who works in the productive sector (non-government) of the economy will tell you – just because a person has the right papers, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re any good at the actual job they’re assigned to do. Funnily enough, one of the most prominent examples where this plays out is in the military. We have generals who get the top jobs in their early 40s. None have seen any form of action. All have great paper qualifications. Are our generals clever? The qualifications our generals have, imply that they have brains. However, are those brains good at leading men in a war front? Nobody knows because nobody as been tested. This on its own would be bad enough. However, what makes it particularly bad is the fact that proving that you have the abilities to be a good military leader might actually be detrimental, especially if you don’t have the right papers. Case in point, Major-General Tan Huck Ghim, who lead a task force in Timor Leste and was praised by everyone, including the Australians and New Zealanders he led. His reward was to get knocked down to Brigadier-General on his return to Singapore. As far as our ministry was concerned, he was “old.” Second case in point was Rear-Admiral Bernard Miranda who led a task force to combat piracy in the Gulf of Aden. Everyone said he did a fantastic job. That is everyone except the bureaucrats in the Ministry of Defence who saw to it that the Rear-Admiral got bumped back down to colonel and retired from active service as soon as possible. Here were two men who proved that they had “merit” to do the job that was assigned to them but they failed to meet the official definition of merit and so they were actually demoted. Meritocracy is a wonderful idea on paper. If you think about it, why shouldn’t things be run by the best and brightest. Our scholarship system is often praised by everyone else outside Singapore because the idea looks good on the outside. We, the people, are a little less enamoured with the idea because the results are well, a little less desirable. The problem here is not only the definition of merit but the fact that system tends to waste brains by placing them in bureaucratic silos. Scholars who proved their intelligence and ability to study are essentially placed in environments that ensure they never have to face challenges. The brain, like the other muscles in the body, has way of rotting when its not challenged. In military terms, good officers are never placed anywhere near problematic platoons and get promoted half-colonel within six-years as long as they sit there and behave. Bureaucracy has a way of stifling the desire to be better and when you have situations where its about climbing up the ladder and position becomes a sign of godhood, you get the worst of many worlds. Yes, there’s a meritocracy of sorts but its not necessarily the meritocracy of ability to the job. If you think of the outsized role that the government has in our economy, you’ll understand that many private enterprises end up trying to model themselves on the government bureaucracy, which is essentially the main customer. I think of someone in the construction industry who made the point that one of the most important things in the business was ensuring that you had a “Godfather” in the organisation above you. The skill that becomes essential in business is “Por Lamba,” or “Angkat Bola” (the Hokkien and Malay, which roughly translates to “carrying balls”) [LINK] Now, as one of the smoother operators I’ve known once said “it doesn’t cost me anything to say nice things,” and one has to accept that every relationship needs to be greased. An ego stoked boss is bound to be more malleable when the ego is pumped. However, the problem sets in when the man on top only values the skill of ego pumping. There are, for example times when the man on top needs to be told that his idea is downright suicidal. When I worked freelance, I had to make the clients feel good. However, I also needed to have enough respect from the client to tell them when they were being ridiculous. I am pleased to say that I had clients who respected that. If you, for example, depend on a boss who is more interested only listening to praise than in what you actually want to do to make business better, sooner or later you’re going to find that its actually better for you just to sit there and smile and nod at whatever the boss says, regardless of how idiotic. Is Singapore like that? Again, let’s go back to the issue of foreign worker dormitories. Activist like Jolvan Wham have spent years trying to raise the issue of conditions in the dormitories. Nobody wanted to listen. In fact, the activist were often wacked with all sorts of lawsuits for being trouble makers. Why? The activists were trying to tell the powers that be that things were not hunky dory on the ground. The construction industry on the other hand were talking about how great things were. What did the government want to hear? So, I guess you could say that we are a meritocracy – it’s just a question of what we are actually good at that matters.   Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able to meet people who have crossed borders and cultures. I’ve befriended ministers and ambassadors and worked on projects involving a former head of state. Yet, at the same time, I’ve had the privilege of befriending migrant labourers and former convicts. All of them have a story to tell. All of them add to the fabric of life. I hope to express the stories that inspire us to create life as it should be      Read More →

In a secret report that has been declassified under freedom of information act, it is revealed that Pfizer is fully aware that its mRNA vaccine is a “killer vaccine” from the onset. The evidence comes from the “Horse’s Mouth” [Link To Report] Pfizer's mRNA vaccine was authorised by FDA for emergency use in Dec 2020 and by Feb 2021, Pfizer had already received more than 1,200 reports of deaths allegedly caused by the vaccine and tens of thousands of reported adverse events, including 23 cases of spontaneous abortions out of 270 pregnancies and more than 2,000 reports of cardiac disorders. All in a short span of 2 months. Bear in mind, this is Pfizer’s own data. In a twisted irony, the data revealed in this “insider report” refutes the official vaccine narrative of "benefits outweigh the risk" peddled by governments all over the world and the WHO. It also confirms the analysis of numerous medical doctors and scientists who have revealed the devastating consequences of the mRNA “vaccine”. What is contained in Pfizer’s “confidential” report is detailed evidence on the impacts of the “vaccine” on mortality and morbidity. This data which emanates from the “Horse’s Mouth” can now be used to confront as well formulate legal procedures against Big Pharma, the governments, the WHO and the media, according to an expert, Professor Michel Chossudovsky. [LINK] Apparently, Pfizer was fully aware that the mRNA vaccine which it is marketing Worldwide would result in a wave of mortality and morbidity. This is tantamount to a crime against humanity on the part of Big Pharma. Pfizer knew from the onset that it was a killer vaccine! It is also a Mea Culpa and Treason on the part of corrupt national governments Worldwide which are being threatened and bribed by Big Pharma. Clearly and without doubt, residents in countries that zealously promote the use of Pfizer's mRNA vaccines were misled and deceived into believing that the vaccine saves life, when in actual fact, it maims and kills. Figures available to date show that there are 69,053 Covid-19 mRNA vaccines related deaths and 10,997,085 (10 million+) serious injuries for the EU, US and UK combined for a population of 830 million people. To put it into perspective, individuals who died Worldwide due to Covid-19 infection is 6,935,876 (6 million+), while the combined injuries and deaths caused by the mRNA vaccines for only the EU, US and UK is 69,053+10,997,085 = 11,066,138  (11 million+). So do the benefits really outweigh the risk, the BS repeated ad nauseum by various government agencies?      P/S: To download the report for offline reading, right-click here and choose "save link as".      Read More →