It’s not juz eating cockles with mee siam which incidentally is at least an attempt in fusion food: Malay with Chinese.
Recently, PM was criticised by the usual anti-PAP cyber warriors, for comments he made at a dialogue session moderated by DBS CEO Piyush Gupta; comments on the “divisive nature of the internet”. Actually I think, their comments show how self-centred are the critics.
This is because they missed something very important that he also said, while focusing on something that even my dogs* know is a PAP Hard Truth: “Internet is bad for the PAP. So rubbish and smear it.”
BT reported on 23 August that at the above gig, PM said “Our population is aging, we have to take care of our old folks, and give them assurance and security. But the purpose of life is not assurance and security. The purpose of life is to use that security in order to achieve something new and different, and do better than the people who came before.” Emphasis mine..
Well the words I highlighted show that he’s clueless (or insensitive?) about the importance of “assurance and security” to S’poreans, whether they vote for the PAP or not.
“Assurance and security” is something PMETs and their families (and the poor) need because their “purpose in life” is to pay-off their “affordable” 25-year HDB mortgages, or private property mortgages, and have enough to live on in retirement without “downgrading”, “lease-backs” (Uncle Leong shows how unfair are the terms) .or moving overseas (which is a great idea except that most S’poreans juz don’t want to move).
Because of “market-based” pricing mechanisms, is the “correct” pricing (Think CoEs and public housing), pricing out of reach housing and cars for those without access to cheap credit? I suspect it is.
When you think about it, govt must be thinking of “controlled” market, not “free” markets. .In both the property and CoE markets, the govt decides the availability of the product. Only the price is “free”. This is especially true of land: the government controls the supply of land for development, auctioning parcels at its own discretion to developers. The price that developers pay helps decide the value it then puts on land that is used to build HDB flats on. In the case of CoEs, there is, we are assured, a formula.
If the usual suspects had not been so self-centred, they could have accused the PM that his”$2m” annual salary, and his privileged background makes him clueless or indifferent, or boh chap about what matters most. And they would have a reasonable point.
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*Dogs have the intelligence of a five-year old child. Better still, they can sniff out s**t. They’ll bark loudly at one of Roy’s and Hui Hui’s gigs. But will fall silent and wag their tails when Uncle Leong talks.
Cynical Investor
*The writer blogs at http://atans1.wordpress.com/