CNA deletion of forum reply symptomatic of ills of society
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Channel News Asia has been publicizing itself all over the local and Malaysia TV as a leading newscaster.
The Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid was seen on TV as expressing the hope that CNA will be balanced in its news.
I have earlier while giving a reply to a forumer experienced deletion of a simple objective reply to someone bent on praising the government.
If CNA is indeed objective and balanced in its news as hoped by Syed Hamid, why not allow my forum reply to be published. Why be afraid of reporting certain news. -
Get round the system. Type your message in sgforums and just put a link on the CNA forum. Pull the reader(s) here where there is a greater freedom of speech.Originally posted by robertteh:Channel News Asia has been publicizing itself all over the local and Malaysia TV as a leading newscaster.
The Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid was seen on TV as expressing the hope that CNA will be balanced in its news.
I have earlier while giving a reply to a forumer experienced deletion of a simple objective reply to someone bent on praising the government.
If CNA is indeed objective and balanced in its news as hoped by Syed Hamid, why not allow my forum reply to be published. Why be afraid of reporting certain news. -
Channel News Asia has no journalistic credibility anyway.
Their reporters are there to look pretty and glam. Most of them are there because they think it's glam to appear in front of a pseudo-glam channel whose idea of news analysis is to report, report and report...
Watch CNN or BBC. -
Why not show what you tried to post?
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Hello BamboozlerOriginally posted by Bamboozler:Why not show what you tried to post?
My Forum reply to forumer "Bookfish" which was deleted by CNA is given below:-Posted by "Bookfish"
Singapore is indeed heavily reliant on huge export and import volumes to keep the economy growing. There are also high-end products that we manufacture and export overseas. We do things that are high in value chain such as semi-conductors, chips and computer parts. In what way are we lagging behind the Asian Tigers?
Japan is struggling to reinvent itself. Bank loan interest rate stay at 0% for many years to encourage enterprises to borrow and expand their businesses. China and India are catching up.
We remain very competitive with Hong Kong and Taiwan. If you are not aware, technology like the thumbdrive orginated from Singapore. The proliferation of this technology with so many countries producing it was a result of the company not patenting the technology. (see ST Digital Life- July)
I also don't remember quite clearly that there were few, if any, years that our GDP was in deficit while our neighbouring countries are struggling to stay above water. I believe our economy is not "haning in the balance" and at the mercy of other economies. Yes, Singapore is a small economy in comparision to many other countries, but it has diversified in so many areas like military, bio-chemical, pharmaceutical and computer technology.Reply of Robertteh
I agree and I think most people will readily agree that Singapore has been competitive for the period 1960s -1970s. There is no need to compare selectively to say that Japan or other countries too are also facing ecoonomic problems to make our economy look less bad than admitted. If we want to have reasonable discussions let us go straight to look at how our economy has progressed from its early days.
I agree that our first-generation founding leaders have been humble, objective in the early days trying to serve the people as their servants.
Sadly after 1970s, they were returned to power by the people consecutively and from that period they became obsessed with their own self-importance.
They let arrogance go to their heads. They began to promote themselves and tried all ways and means to retain power by tinkering with the electoral boundaries, GRC grouping to prevent individuals to stand for free and fair election. They benchmarked their own pays to the highest boss-category of remunerations in 10 professions/industries.
Million dollar hyper-salary rewards like S$600,000 were dismissed as peanut by claiming ability to create million surpluses or 30-60 year reserves as their achievements with self-ego and arrogance. The best talents in the corporate world were judged on on real world performance. Sadly in our case the ability at taxing and recovering costs and some mundane iron rice bowls were gerrymandered to look like talents to justify all the self-rewards.
Greed knows no limits and sadly it has been allowed to trump over morality and erode our leaders' original fire-brand spirit since the 1970s. Problems were regularly explained away without any sign of implementation management excellence as shown in the 20 persistent major policy errors posted to the Feedback Unit as reproduced below:-
(1) Bureaucracy in civil service.
(2) High costs of essential government services e.g. medical, utilities, housing, transportation, education, etc, etc
(3) Growth Triangles
(4) Affective divide due to lack of understanding of people's views and aspirations.
(5) Work site safety problems (Hotel New World Collapse's blue paper was not effectively implemented)
(6) Deliver a Swiss standard of living
(7) Asset enhancement scheme fiasco
(8 ) Unit trust investment fiasco
(9) Foreign relation fiascos
(10) Non-formulation of a value-adding investment strategy
(11) Double-charging on lands (paid by taxpayers yet charged back to them at full market prices) and triple charges on vehicles.
(12) Meritocratic education policy that backfired - brain drains of thousands
(13) Mother tongue - CL1 admission fiasco
(14) Reaching World Cup soccer league by 2010 - no sign of getting near.
(15) Investment losses by thousands of citizens from CPF funds.
(16) Spiraling of government ministers' and civil servants' salaries.
(17) Failure to implement accountability and transparency in respect of investments of citizens' monies in overseas investments.
(18 ) Loss of economic competitiveness due to high costs.
(19) Neglect in promoting entrepreneurship
(20) Neglect in nurturing the domestic sector of economy.
After 1970s all the plans and announced projects were no longer being achieved. Many MNCs and foreign companies are still in the process of pulling out their operations to China, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam etc.
The leaders have refused to admit the serious loss of economic competitiveness. Good people and talents are migrating fearing for their future.
It is very sad that autocracy has failed to put in place any major changes to solve the 20 problems. There is no effective solutions of the high-costs to enable the economy to compete with external competitions whether from China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan , Korea or even Vietnam.
More and more Singapore's SMEs and domestic sector companies continued to go down and suffer losses due to policy errors as posted and high costs.
Despite all the feedbacks from the people the leaders persisted in carrying on the same past policies as we are losing out to in practical broad-based education practised in small countries like Finland, Switzerland or Denmark. Our per capital ranking dropped from 8th to 25th while other Asian tigers climbed up the ranking. The promised Swiss standard of living promised by the government was nowhere in sight. People saw the wages dropping to the third world while the costs of living climbed up to the first world.
The tax-and-recover system of creating government's own surpluses and reserves continued to be pushed relentlessly causing more problems to majority of the citizens who were struggling for survival.
The wage gap between the rich and poor widened with no actions taken to address underlying serious fracture in the economy or social sphere. Ministers are paid first-world salaries in millions but none were seen capable of turning around the moribund economy except in giving constant excuses about factors beyond their control or the external economic situations. They lack the fire-brand spirit to re-structure or upgrade our weakening economy.
Senior civil servants are paid higher than CEOs of major companies who had built their own businesses based on proven entrepreneurship abilities.
For the past many years now, the following major problems simply cannot be solved or projects as announced have failed to attain results:-
Therefore it is not untrue or incorrect to say that the local or domestic economy except for MNCs and GLCs is "hanging in the balance" and at the mercy of persistent surplus-oriented government high-cost pro-foreign policies.
The economic planning only consists of some ad hoc and uncoordinated military or biopolis hubs resulting in losses of competitiveness with our best scholars taken away by US and migrating to many countries due to major policy errors.
There is an urgent need to implement consistent and focused implementation of the technology upgrading as what Dr. Goh Keng Swee would have done in building the original Jurong. Instead we only heard of the long gestation period of 35 year for our biopolis and constant talks of our resourceless economy. No wonder our econmy is seen to be taking all the "U-Turn" like seen happening to our once-heralded chip industry where millions were lost due to dire lack of foresight or implementation abilities.
MNCs are moving out by the hoardes during the past two recessions and many jobs were lost. Instead of upgrading the economic competitiveness through broad-based education there was the same insistence on producing more academic education and pro-foreign investment incentives that turned away our own talents and entrepreneurs in large numbers.
We are losing many opportunities in cultivating our own SMEs. I agree that government might be doing something every now and then but all that were done were seen to be too little too late with the same lack of consistent implementation abilities as mentioned in the foregoing.
I am glad you have at least admitted that Singapore cannot afford to be aloof and proud as they have been all these past 20 years or so and has to recognise it and are doing something about it.
[quote]
"Bookfish"
It is precisely that the government see the closing gap of competitiveness that they are encouraging entreprenuership, risk-taking and taking responsibility for our own financial future; changing syllabus and pedagogy in schools to encourage self-directed learning and analytical thinking than mere textbooks and examinations.
EDB has collaborated with NTU and NUS to set up entrepenuer and technoprenuer centers. TV programs like "start-up" on Thursday 7.30p.m Channel 5 are also made to expose Singaporeans to entrepreneuralism.
Even with our CPF, the government is slowly but surely teaching us that there is no more economic "safety net" we can totally rely on. The interest rate of 6% per annum was taken over by another policy.
Robertteh:
Citizens hope that the above-stated ad hoc measures will work well and there will be consistent masterly implementation excellence under the good hands-on control of senior cabinet ministers of some calibre like Dr. Goh Keng Swee and not all the arrogance and denials of problems.
Our underlying economic problems are being grossed over or covered up as the domestic sector of the economy is still in bad shape. Just look at all the business indicators : dropping COE prices, property slump and highest business failures and bankruptcies and retrenchments to understand the real problems.
The reason why I have used Dropping COE prices and property slump as indicators of our state of economy is precisely because aof the state of denial the government is currently engaged in. It keeps using numbers and statistics to portray some look-good bits of the economy. The empty shops, vacated factories all over the island showed the whole sad state of Singapore domestic economy.
The earlier the government is prepared to admit the above-stated policy errors the better it will be in the eye of the citizens now still struggling from first world costs while earning third world wages.
While it is agreed that COE prices might reflect other factors at work but essentially from the general downward trends over the past few years the sign of weakening economy is very much in the wall as written by the dropping COEs.
Property slump was among the 20 problems caused by past errors of government's asset enhancement bravado. The beneficiary was HDB which managed to cream off billions in HDB super-inflated prices.
If the currently high business failures and bankruptcies is accepted as "not bad" indicator then the government should own up and take stock of all the problems and not continue to practise denial or justifications.
Statistics might have shown too that 95% of businesses fail within the first 5 years we are here not being statistical but trying to tell why there is an exceptionally high failures and bankruptcies during all these past years. Most likely the new policies are still ad hoc and for presentation or window dressing and not effective.
The remaining 5% which did not fail might go on to succeed in creating jobs but are there effective measures to nurture our own vibrancy or resilience? The first urgent change obviously is to lower or put right all the unnecessary double charging of lands and hyping up of all the business costs. The second urgent measure is to balance off the past pro-foreign investment policies and try to create incentres to encourage our own local technology start-ups especially promising ones which have not yet become famous. Do not just pick the winners. It is more proactive and creative to identify potential and build up broad-based capabilities.
Retrenchment is a sign of seriousness of the economy. Do not just implement ad hoc policies like getting the Work-Develpment Agency to mull over some minor job redesigning. Until monies are made to turn round and broad based education instituitions are fully in place a few ad hoc policies here and there would not address serious structural problems.
SPRING has admitted publicly that their past training programs thier programs have not basically changed the competitiveness of our work force. Big pictures such as these should be understood and relevant changes made to address fundamental problems.
Sad to say what has been done to date is a bit of ad hoc measures here and there such as converting of taxi-drivers to tour guide or cleaners but such measures are lacking in depths and the 20 major problems largely unsolved. This is the kind of look-good approach which is postpoing and delaying solutions.
Quote:
If the new leaders really want to save the situation, they should lead by morality and not just on their presumptuous leadership or talents. They should acknowledge past mistakes and presumptuousness and admit there is now a serious losss of economic competitiveness of Singapore and do something big.Unquote
"Bookfish"
On "doing something big," I believe we should recognise that big things start small. Biopolis is up. But it will take years before we reap the fruits.
Read the article. It's really insightful.
Robertteh
You asked : how do we define "morality"? My answer is : By the government leaders so well taken care of, and therefore believing S$600,000 is peanut to pay to some CEO running our charitable organization, they already showed their own money faces.
There is no morality left now in our system of government as leverything is measured in monies. While there is no denying that the best talents do deserve the right pays but look at how we reward our leaders and civil servants ? Is it correct or prudent to push the whole civil service wage to three times that of private sector wage cost. Is such a wage push done with accountability and transparency in the first instance ?
Why do we end up with theis kind of wage costs or the 20 major policy errors as stated in the foregoing? It is arrogance and lack of accountability and all the presumptuousness which has caused all these problems. The above-stated review showed should help to pin point the root cause of our greatest failures since the 1970s which are failures beyond all imagination. -
Yes, I agree that one way to get round it is to leave link to more liberal site like sgforums. Thanks for the advice.Originally posted by Cindyfeh:Get round the system. Type your message in sgforums and just put a link on the CNA forum. Pull the reader(s) here where there is a greater freedom of speech.
When CEOs are appointed by the influence of central authority, they usually end up serving the hidden agendas, wishes or implied commands of central authority.
Media Corp lost millions but what did we see - CEOs cannot deliver but were give grand sending off giving impressions of contributions and good job well done. Singapore is about the only country where losing millions is regarded as corporate success. No wonder we have so many problems as seen in the NKF saga. -
Posted to Channel News Asia on 6.9.2005 2100 hr: (Subject to CNA approval)
Just to test to see if the post below will be approved by CNA:-How indepedent is CAD or CPIB or our courts ? If the top people are implicated, what will CAD or CPIB do?
I am sure no matter what the media try to portray in this NKF case, our civil servants will always consider the interest of their immediate or most powerful masters due to lack of confirmation by independent panel in their appointments or supervision of such officers.
In USA, officers equivalent to CAD or CPIB will be jointly appointed by the executive and house of representatives.
This NKF case is now paraded in public just to give a show that we still have an effective system to check on wrong doers but the system at the top is still questionable and opague !!! -
I will say the chance of CNA approving your post is as good as Singapore Lions winning the Asian Cup. Not nearly without chance of being approved as Singapore winning the world cup but still very low.Originally posted by robertteh:Posted to Channel News Asia on 6.9.2005 2100 hr: (Subject to CNA approval)
Just to test to see if the post below will be approved by CNA:-
Also just in case some people don't know, the below is interesting to note about our branches of gov. The below was mentioned by someone in other threads before but I can't find the threads and I think it is a good idea to retype this.
Singapore has 3 branches of gov:
1. Legislature (Parliament + President)
2. Executive (President + Prime Mister + Cabinet Minister)
3. The Judiciary (Supreme Court and other courts)
This 1-2-3 separation of powers is supposed to be a safeguard against tyranny.
The Chief Justice is appointed by the President with the advice of the Prime Minister. The rest of the Supreme Court judges are appointed by the President with the advice of the Prime Minister and Chief Justice. *To be fair to the Sg gov, it is important to note that even USA also has the President advising who to appoint as Chief Justice.
Tie in the above with the somewhat significant comments about legibility of Presidential candidates, you will know who is actually the Government. -
Hi Cindyfeh,
One point to CNA. May be there is a change of mind on their part after my raising of issue with them and FU. My post on the independence of CAD or CPIB has surprisingly been approved. -
cindy-feh and robert-teh
sounds like a couple name leh.
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Hello SmapLionheart
No lah, no connection with Cindy. Feh is not Teh what. I felt bad I made Cindy bet against Young Lions. Anyway, as a saying goes you win some you lose some. -
haha. Good that CNA approved your latest posting. Congrats.Originally posted by robertteh:Hello SmapLionheart
No lah, no connection with Cindy. Feh is not Teh what. I felt bad I made Cindy bet against Young Lions. Anyway, as a saying goes you win some you lose some. -
What do you expect from a third-rate news channel which is only broadcasted on substandard cable providers in Asia.
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Strongly Agree. But there are people here who actually think that local broadcasters have greater credibility when it comes to reporting local events...Originally posted by LazerLordz:What do you expect from a third-rate news channel which is only broadcasted on substandard cable providers in Asia.
Like it's okay for Channel News Asia to do a feature on Lee Hsien Loong but it's not okay for a regular Singaporean to spend $500,000 to make a commentary on a downtrodden local opposition politician. -
Aren't we aware that our media enjoy reporting what the Government likes to hear?