itunes: Martina Topley Bird, Quixotic (2003)
On Thursday, a casual lunch conversation blew out of proportion into a heated argument. Of cos, I’m the prime culprit who started the discussion of the ‘sensitive’ issue. I do not mean to stir up any unpleasant emotions among colleagues, but I guess there are times we should have the rights to speak our mind. Ironically, the subject matter has nothing to do with neither work nor office politics, but on government issues, amazing right?
It started when I was commenting on the newspaper Today’s columnist Mr. Brown’s issue. Apparently, he was dropped by the papers after an article he wrote on the raising living cost in Singapore was published. (Visit Mr Brown’s website for more info:
http://www.yawningbread.org/) This leads to a full rebuttal of my IT manager, who volunteers in PAP branch office (despite the fact that we constantly consider him to be a PAP member, yet he still maintained that his volunteering is not politically motivated, which is totally bullshit to me) started to defend the raising cost issues by saying that how cost efficient Singapore public systems are, compared to the rest of the world and he just go on and on. Knowing him getting out of point, I pulled him back by throwing him these few questions:
1) If Singapore systems are truly cost efficient, how come our public transportations, medical, utilities expenses are going up?
2) Does it mean by privatising these public services, is there a possible shift from social responsibilities to mere shareholder responsibilities? Or should I say that the main reason for our government to privatise these entities is a move to be cost efficient since it does not have to run services themselves? So how does the government going to explain the fact that companies like SMRT and SBS Transits, which are making millions of profits every year, even though we have some controlling councils set up to govern and monitor these prices? It does not make any sense at all.
3) I’m fine with what he argues with an idea that due to the increasing world fuel prices, the operating costs of these entities are definitely going up too. But now the question is, with the current profitability of these entities, they are rich enough to help the public to filter this burden and not by raising the prices just in order to maintain their profitability, am I right? So it still falls back to my No.2 question, is privatization brings about more shareholder responsibilities than social responsibilities, since the obligation to more social responsibilities (if government runs them itself) has been diluted?
4) Maybe we forget about raising fuel prices for the time being, so what about medical bills then? I totally agree with Sylvia Lim of Workers’ Party when she suggested during the election rally, GST should be removed from the medical bills to beat the raising medical costs. Let’s look at the bills we paid when we visits the GP for common ailments. If neighbouring countries like Malaysia and Thailand can provide cheaper medicine than Singapore, then why we are paying more to GP nowadays? I dun feel that my GP’s services to me have improved tremendously so that’s left only 1 reason. The living cost standards in Singapore are high.
5) He argued on the point that the government has setup subsidies to help the poor to ease the high cost burden. I dun deny of such good acts but the point here is does it benefit the majority of the population? I would not think so (see * below). A good subsidy should be beneficial to the majority.
(*I did a small research on question No.5 when writing this blog. The
press release from the Department of Statistics
http://www.singstat.gov.sg/press/ghs2.pdf, shows that the median household income for 2005 is $3,830 which means that the majority of the population in Singapore belongs to the middle income group. If you refer to chart A5 and assume that the middle income populations stay in HDB 4 and 5 rooms, this constituted 59.4% of the 2005 population. The groups that have the highest chances of getting subsides are those staying in HDB 1, 2 and 3 rooms and they constituted to 25.1% of the 2005 population. So based on my question No.5 above, does the subsidies helped the majority? The answer is obvious NO.)
The 1 hour lunch has indeed turned sour and because of all these questions that I poised, he was speechless, turned agitated and raised his voice, eventually ignoring us altogether for the rest of the week. I heard that that evening, he passed a book on social services to one of us, telling him how much our government has done for us in social service. Looks like he is still very much out of point, we are talking about social responsibilities and not social services.
It seems what most interest him is not to argue what we have highlighted but all out to defend PAP aimlessly. This is blind faith I would say.
Personally, I was disgusted by his immature actions. He should listen with an open mind, hopefully able to explain (if he could) or simply put forward that to his higher leaders. After all, these are the voices from the common people and should be drowned by his defensive mode. Also, as much as his constant emphasis to us that he does not get a single cent or benefit by volunteering in PAP, there is one thing he ought to know as well: as much as our company is paying for his services, he should refrain from spending most of his office hours working on his VOLUNTEER matters. It’s a shame indeed.
Something to ponder: I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the vitim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. - Elie Wiesel, winner of 1986 Nobel Prize in Peace.
