TR EMERITUS

Lt-General (NS) Ng Yat Chung To most people, the mere mention and/or the images of military generals and admirals would immediately convey a aura of authority, respect, seniority and ability. In Singapore, however, our experiences with some of our former military generals and admirals who were parachuted by the government into the corporate world tell a very different story. It is a fact that our former much loved and proud national shipping line, Neptune Orient Lines (NOL) went bust under the leadership of a former senior SAF general. SMRT train services encountered its hellish performances, frequent train breakdowns including a train collision and a fatal accident etc again under the watch of another SAF general. The latest SPH's hiving off its media business into a not for profit entity due to falling advertising revenues despite operating as a monopoly in a much pampered environment happened under the watch of the same general who sank NOL. To be fair, there maybe other ex-generals who were also parachuted by the pap government into other organisations and they have performed satisfactorily, therefore, people don't get to hear of them. In those cases, maybe no news is good news. Given cases of parachuted ex-generals who screwed up big time in our strategic national corporations, it is high time for the government, however unwilling, to seriously review and rethink their belief that their generals are encompassing of all talents and abilities so much so that they can fly, they can dive, they can burrow underground and they can climb trees etc. People are gifted differently and in today's warfare, brain and technology count more than raw brawn, still, I beg to differ that that our supreme military commanders are supermen simply because they are not. Seriously, if they can be so superior and shinning in the corporate world and in businesses, they would have ventured into the corporate world or gone into businesses with their own money than being parachuted into them by the government. Entrepreneurial instincts and abilities demand a different kind of quotient. If being book-smart is all it takes to gauge ability and competence, then all the Masters and Phd holders in the world should be billionaires. They are not. In fact, it is quite the contrary. Thinking citizens must question the official fallacy against our NOL, SMRT and SPH experiences and lessons because it is too painful and too wasteful for our country to see any more of our nationally strategic businesses going down or even folding up under the helm of those can burrow underground and can climb trees pap generals and admirals. In our local lingo, everything also can one, pap generals. To my sucker friends and you know who you are, what do you all suckers think? In conclusion, One of the tragic illusion that many countries of the 3rd world entertain is the notion that politicians and civil servants can successfully perform entrepreneurial functions. It is curios that in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the belief persists. - Dr Goh Keng Swee, Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister, 1972. Do not waste the observation and wisdom that the late Dr Goh had left us. Think.   Simon Lim      Read More →

SPH explained that its operating revenue has halved in the past five years due largely to a decline in print advertising and print subscription revenue caused by an ‘unprecedented disruption in recent years’. Over the past five years, SPH increased spending in technology, product development and data analytics talent by 48%, to more than S$20m. It has also invested S$35m into digital content and audience development talent in the newsrooms. So it has spent at least S$55m on these projects: S$11m a year. SPH also spent on new consumer-facing digital platforms and products, averaging more than S$20 million a year over the past five years: more than S$100m over 5 years. It has thus spent over the last 5 years more S$155m or an average of at least S$31m a year. SPH’s average monthly unique audience across all SPH titles over the past two years has nearly doubled to a record 28 million, with digital circulation surpassing print circulation. However, digital subscription and digital advertising have been unable to offset the decline in print advertising and print circulation revenues. As a result, SPH expects the losses of the media business to continue and widen. SPH’s media business … recorded its first-ever loss of $11.4 million for the financial year ended 31 August 2020. If not for the Jobs Support Scheme (JSS), the loss would have been a deeper $39.5 million. For the six months ended 28 February 2021, pre-tax profit before tax fell 71% to $3.1 million compared to the same period last year. Again, if not for the JSS grant, the media business would have incurred a pre-tax loss of $9.7 million. [LINK]   S$155m is not all. SPH plans to give away another S$120m to get rid of SPH Media SPH will provide the initial resources and funding by capitalising SPH Media with a cash injection of $80 million, $30 million worth of SPH shares and SPH REIT units, as well as SPH’s stakes in four of its digital media investments. That means its NTA falls from S$1.98 to S$1.82: 16 cents (8%). Btw, SPH’s Chairman, CEO and other board members, and chief editor earn more than a successful global news magazine (Economist prefers to call itself a newspaper) pays similar posts: https://sudhirtv.com/2021/05/06/the-elites-have-run-the-straits-times-into-the-ground-whats-next/?fbclid=IwAR3yZmEtEjswt_68Jjlt9PCSHR_47s1-hkotvine51Qk2EfJyzyuqKJfVq4 Sounds the saying “Pay peanuts, get monkeys” is wrong: Pay gold, get monkeys?   Cynical Investor Cynical Investor blogs at Thoughts of a Cynical Investor     Related post: All those years when SPH was minting $, we had quality journalism meh?       Read More →

Dr Goh Keng Swee who laid the foundation stones of Singapore’s economy and defence forces, has warned us about allowing politicians to manage our economy, knowing well that they will be clueless about the business of enterprising or what innovation is all about. Now when clueless politicians start bringing in ex-generals to support their failed mission in governing our country and our economy, we saw how badly prepared Singapore was when the pandemic first hit us. We saw how our world class MRT and NOL ended up as failures. Now, we are witnessing how they had bring Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) to its knee and expect our government to use our reserve to bail them out. Is SPH too big to fail? Even if SPH is folded up or acquired by Mediacorp, we will still have our local news covered. For citizens, there is literally no impact on our life whether SPH is kept alive on our reserve or divested to Mediacorp. But for the politicians, it is like trading away their double-barrelled machine guns, which had served them well, and exchanging it for a single-barrelled gun. They are frightened by this loss of media-bullets. Well, if we keep allowing the 4G politicians and ex-generals to lead our country, our future as a nation will be in serious jeopardy. Look at how the 4G politicians are ruining the once respected People’s Action Party (PAP), and how much “hiccups” had occurred in their succession planning. If they cannot get their party in order, how can they get our country in order? Sad but true, l have to concur with Lee Kuan Yew’s vision that “that day has come when the PAP become irrelevant and will be voted out of power.” Guess Heng Swee Keat, a prodigy of Lee Kuan Yew, shared his foresight to “step aside” and not be a part of the fall of the PAP. PAP will most probably be destroyed by the “elites”, similar to the way how NOL, our MRT, our Gold Standard in Public Healthcare and SPH, SIA, Keppel Corporation and etc are destroyed. Without talents and people with real leadership to save the PAP from itself, Singaporeans must wake up to this Hard Truth that if they cannot save themselves from their own follies, how can they save Singapore? Unless we want Singapore to be ruined beyond hope, let’s appeal to the few good politicians left in Parliament to have the courage to speak up patriotically and start holding incompetent politicians and their failures to account. As for the ex-generals, let’s give them meaningful mission like cleaning up our roads or helping to clean up our hawker centres etc, things that they can do well. Let’s have the collective courage to be patriotic if we still believe that Singaporeans deserve better…   Joseph Nathan   Editor's note: More than 10,000 netizens have signed an online petition calling for the removal of Mr Ng from SPH.      Read More →