TR EMERITUS

Let us all take a break from the thrill/stress of living with the virus and divert our attention to this sweet, young talented lady from the Philippines, Morissette Amon, whose vocal abilities are simply out of this world, zooming in and out of the whistle register with ease. Welcome to a new singing universe, where Morissette performs. Once you’ve entered into this universe, you will not be content when you return to the universe where human singers dwell. You don’t just listen to Morissette, you experience Morissette. She is a vocal assassin from which no genre is safe! Morissette doesn’t just sing a song, she becomes the song, and pulls you in, and has her way with your heart and emotions. She is renowned for her God-given tone and her ability to effectively deliver the message of the song. If you are just starting to pay attention to Morissette, you haven't seen nothing yet! No idea what the "whistle register" means? Never mind, just sit back and enjoy her original song, "Akin Ka Na Lang". We trust you will stil enjoy the song despite it being in a language we probably don't understand.   * Note that she is singing sitting down!  Read More →

Ms Chua insists that BTO flats are affordable compared to many Asian cities. She says that most first time buyers use less than 25% of their total pay to service the monthly loan repayments, which can be covered by CPF. Most of us will realise that this line of thought is a non-starter because the duration of the loan can be increased. I vaguely recall loan duration used to be 15 to 20 years, but now it can be stretched to 30 years. More pertinently, she cites the price-to-income ratio (PIR), which is the most reasonable measure of affordability, because it takes into account both house prices and purchasing power. (A PIR of 1 means it takes 1 year’s worth of household salary to buy the house.) She notes that the PIR for HDB as reported by the Urban Land Institute* is 4.5, while her own calculation of a 4-room BTO in Ang Mo Kio is 6.8, which she claims is “still low compared to many Asian countries”. She cites the PIR for private property in Singapore, which is 13, while that of Hong Kong is 30, Beijing is 27 and Tokyo is 17. This comparison is misleading because it gives the impression that HDB is affordable. It is not. There are cities where the PIR is lower than Singapore’s and she did not mention those. She has chosen a comparison just to make her point, thus losing objectivity. A useful PIR takes the median house price and divides it by the annual median household income (Median is better than average because it is not skewed by extreme prices). According to Demographia International Housing Affordability^, “In a well-functioning market, the median priced house should be affordable to a large portion of middle-income households”, which makes sense and indeed, was the case a few decades back, before the onset of neoliberalism. Using the PIR, middle-income housing can be categorized into “affordable” (PIR 3.0 and under), “moderately unaffordable” (PIR 3.1 to 4.0), “seriously unaffordable (PIR 4.1 to 5.0) and “severely unaffordable” (PIR 5.1 and above). Demographia calculated the PIR of 92 cities using publicly available data and Singapore scored 4.6 in 2019 which puts it in the “seriously unaffordable” category, which quickly deteriorated to 5.8 in 2021 to “severely unaffordable”. Significantly, Ms Chua’s calculation of 6.8 for a 4-room BTO costing $347,000 based on a couple’s income of $6,500, puts it firmly in the “severely unaffordable” category. The Urban Land Institute report of 4.5 for HDB puts it in the “seriously unaffordable” category, which curiously, it nonetheless states that “Singapore stands out as the only city-state where housing is deemed affordable”. Even though many major cities have deteriorated into the “unaffordable” categories in the last few decades according to Demographia, it brings no comfort that Singapore is one of them. My father bought his 4-room HDB in 1973 at Toa Payoh for $12,500. His pay, with lots of overtime, was about $700 per month. That puts the PIR at less than 2, firmly in the affordable category. And bear in mind, those days, household income mostly meant only the husbands were working while the wives were looking after the family. Put that into context and you appreciate the wonderful job PAP 1.0 did with regard to public housing, and the mess PAP 2, 3 and 4 has gotten us into. So, what is to be done? There are various reasons why prices are exorbitantly high now, including allowing CPF to pay for houses, factoring the market price of land into HDB, albeit with subsidy, as well as allowing foreigners to buy houses here. My humble suggestion is to make it extremely prohibitive for foreigners to buy houses here, bearing in mind that there is a rippling effect from private property all the way to HDB, including BTO prices, given that it is pegged to resale prices, as well as substantially increasing the subsidy for BTO, including for 4-room and 5-room flats, so that the PIR drops to the “affordable” category but increasing the minimum occupation period substantially, perhaps 20 years, so that the temptation to flip for a quick profit will be curbed.   Foong Swee Fong *2022 ULI Home Attainability Index ^Demographia International Housing Affordability, 2022 Edition  Read More →

One of the most interesting reactions from my last post about the new British Prime Minister, Mr. Rishi Sunak, came from my former editor at Arab News, Mr. Khaled Almaeena. He forwarded me a WhatsApp message, which made the point that Mr. Sunak is not the first leader of a Western country to be of Indian-origin. The current Prime Minister of Portugal, Mr. Antonio Costa and the current deputy Prime Minister of Ireland (who was previously Prime Minister and at the time of writing looks set to taking back his old job), Mr. Leo Varadkar, are both of Indian-Origin. Unlike Mr. Sunak, both men have won elections in their respective nations, yet neither of them captured the imagination of the global Indian community in the way that Mr. Sunak did. The message suggested that their failure to capture the imagination of the global Indian community could be because neither are Hindu. The First Indian-Origin Leaders of Western Nations – Copyright Indian Express Given that I am of limited intelligence (I earn less that half a million Singapore dollars a year), I shall leave the deeper debate to those with more brain. One could say that the reason is simple, Mr. Sunak does have an Indian connection through his wife, Ms. Akshata Murthy, daughter of Mr. Narayan Murthy, which neither Mr. Costa or Mr. Varadkar have. However, the point that someone has equated being Indian with being Hindu should be discussed. Automatically equating a nationality with an ethnicity or religion isn’t something new and unfortunately its something that has seen a resurgence on a national level in many places. Ethnic or religious majorities are making the point that they are majorities and therefore entitled to set national agenda. It’s even true in Singapore, which is officially “regardless of race, language or religion” still makes the point that the public is “not ready for a non-Chinese Prime Minister.” At its most reasonable, the call for dominance by ethnic and religious majorities was once best expressed by India’s BJP, which argues that as Hindu’s are the majority, India is a Hindu nation that allows the existence of religious minorities just as the UK is a Christian nation (there is an official church) that allows religious minorities to practice their religions freely. I’ve always found this argument to be unnecessary in as much as majority cultural dominance is pretty much a reality on the ground. Take Singapore as an example. We are officially multiracial and multicultural. However, by virtue of being in the majority, the Chinese, specifically those of Hokkien origins rule the roost. Whatever the PAP government tells you, the language on the streets is the Hokkien Dialect and its not uncommon to find those of Tamil origins speaking fluent Hokkien, even if they don’t speak Tamil. It goes without saying that you don’t find Singaporean Chinese learning Tamil. The reason is simple, the minority learns to speak like the majority in order to get by. There is no need for the majority to adapt to the minority. However, whilst that is the case on the grounds, is it something that nation builders and intellectuals should be promoting? I like to think that people should look beyond race and religion as a unifying factor. If anything, I believe that using race and religion as unifying factors are damaging to society in that it produces “group think” and inbreeding, which stifles just about everything that creates prosperity. People who can only operate with their “own kind” set themselves up for being sacrificial lambs. I think of my favourite “Brexit” voter who was so determined to kick out links with the French without relaising that his entire living was dependent on the free movement of goods and people between France and the UK (he was brining in cheap French cigarettes into the UK, which was perfectly legal under EU law). To put it crudely, ethnic and religious majorities can lose their position. Demographic changes can affect national identity if those are the only things holding a nation together. This was one of the major points in dealing with Northern Ireland, where the point that Catholics would eventually outnumber Protestants. So, its always best to find things beyond race and religion to unite people. One should find ways of getting people to share experiences. For me, I credit national service as being one of those experiences that has helped unify Singaporeans. I think of a function I went to where one of the attendees was asked “Are you Singaporeans?” The reply was “are you asking if I have served national service – yes, I have.” National Services, as they say, is something that every Singaporean guy can share whenever they meet. More can be done in Singapore and the rest of the world to create greater unity among people. So, whilst race and religion will always play an important role in people’s lives, one needs to look at things beyond that if they want to create stronger societies where people are united by shared experiences regardless of religious or racial affiliations.   Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able 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 →