TR EMERITUS – Untold Hard Truths From Around The World – 淡马锡评论 – formerly Temasek Review

Possible increase in population target

1. The minister for national development reported in parliament that HDB will ramp up BTO projects, with 150 projects to be built by 2025. 2. I searched the news report to find out how many units are comprised in the 150 projects. I could not find any mention. I am disappointed that the minister failed to give relevant information and the media does not ask for this information. 3. I searched the Internet and found a news report that 10 projects comprising 10,000 units were offered recently. I guess that each project would yield about 1,000 units. 4. The 150 projects would probably yield 150,000 units. This is over a period of three years. The annual rate is 50,000 units per year. This is rather high. The number of marriages each year is about 25,000. 5. Perhaps some of the flats are required to clear the backlog, as the waiting time for a new flat is currently 5 years. 6. It is possible that HDB is building for more foreigners to live in Singapore. We might be aiming to increase our population to 6.9 million, or even 10 million. This was planned in the past. 7. As the MRT network has been expanded considerably during the past ten years, it can probably cope with the increase in population. However, I am not sure if we are building enough schools, hospitals and other facilities to cater for the bigger population. Tan Kin Lian Read More →

‘Going back to normal’ claim is utter rubbish

Ignorant people would claim that we can now "go back to normal" because we have high vaccination (V) rate etc. That's utter rubbish. Low V rate places and countries are also going back to normal MINUS the high Excess DEATHS which is seen in almost all highly V countries! The most serious pandemic in history was Spanish Flu (which started from US). But it only lasted 5 years without any "advance technology" V. In fact, Spanish Flu subsided greatly when it went into the third year. This is the natural cycle of flu evolution and it has absolutely nothing to do with V. The virus will just mutate its way to adapt and survive in its human host. It's not us learning to live with Covid (CV) but rather, natural evolution will make the CV to mutate in order to live with Human! Sad to say, it's Human beings who has overstated their intelligence, ability and competency that bring more harm unnecessarily to ourselves. History will record this as the most foolish act of pushing an untested vaccine without long term data right in the midst of the pandemic by humans, which will bring lots of Excess Deaths which they would refuse to acknowledge as the result of this vaccine. What won't kill us will only make us stronger. But our own ego and stupidity will bring us devastation. Goh Meng Seng Read More →

Tin Pei Ling’s (TPL) joining Grab

Alot have been voiced out and published online by many people recently about the potential conflict of interest regarding Tin Pei Ling's (TPL) joining Grab as its Singapore director of Public Affairs and Policy and at the same time, TPL has also assured the public that she would conduct herself in her new role with utmost professionalism and transparency etc. Well well... In Singapore, even though our part-time MPs are paid very respectably, many still hold full time jobs, a practice that we have kept since earlier generations of government. Whether it is desirable or not or whether Singaporeans deserve a full-time MP whom they have voted for to serve them and pay for with high allowance of their own money, it will be a topic for discussion for another day. If TPL were to join another company and not Grab, I would not have as much gripe. Let me explain. Grab and Singtel formed a digital bank joint venture in 2020 and were selected to be awarded a Full Digital Banking Licence that year. The last I checked, TPL is not a superman or superwoman. Although it is not impossible, I do not believe that and it would be much easier said than done for anyone so closely related to the government and in her new role to be totally impartial, totally transparent and totally in everything that she said she will be lalala when coming to dealing with the authorities. As I compose my commentary, one lyric comes to my mind and it goes something like pretty face telling pretty lies.... I want to stress that it is just a lyric that comes to my mind and absolutely nothing else. Think. Simon Lim Read More →