TR EMERITUS

Britain's new High Potential Individual (HPI) visa scheme is waving and wooing graduates from the world's top 50 universities to work in Britain. They include China's Tsinghua University, Harvard, Stanford, MIT and our own NTU and NUS etc. Such an opportunity may only come once in a lifetime for many young people. Imagine if you were a Singaporean who has recently graduated from either NTU or NUS and unmarried, would you pass up on this opportunity to travel, to explore and to experience life and work in Britain? This is an obviously attractive prospect. The question is whether this euphoria will last. To be fair, life and career prospects in Singapore are decent for our educated young people but the advantages that we have over foreigners whom the pap government has so liberally let in over the decades is fast diminishing. To add insult to injury, we don't know for sure how many of those whom the pap government has let in are of dubious quality or even charlatans and competing against us.. To me, at least for the next 2 to 3 GEs, I do not foresee Singapore breaking away from having a mediocre or even a weak pap government and a mediocre and/or weak government will definitely create hard times and lesser opportunities for its people. I may be wrong but despite much unwillingness to believe among many people, we are alearly witnessing them happening right before our eyes. Next, although Britain is a no utopia and their tax rates are famously high, still, it is a breath of fresh air. At home, the competition at the work places against foreigners is stacked high against Singaporeans be it reservist obligations, family commitments, cost of living or CPF contributions etc. If I were the government, it is unlikely that I will ease up too much on the importation of S pass holders and EP holders because they are my potential harvesting grounds for new citizens who in turn will beef up my vote bank to make up for the fast disappearing native Singaporean electoral support. This strategy is now so clear to so many people. At most when the pressure gets too much, I may wayang a little merely to pacify those gullible suckerporeans. In short, with HPI visa, we are likely to lose more of our own limited, young, qualified and energetic As but the pap government will on the other hand, 'very cleverly' make it up with more Bs, Cs and Ds from CECA, from Malaysia and from China etc. If I were young and qualified graduate, I am likely to apply for Britain's HPI visa. Unlike under the old guard leadership, Singapore under that useless lhl and this current pap 4G leadership will continue to go down even more. Think.   Simon Lim      Read More →

Is it necessary for Singapore to bend itself backwards to cope with someone else’s inefficiency or indifference to promote good relationship with its neighbour? Here, I talking about our Northern neighbour’s Checkpoint Authority. We have just learnt that four Singaporean passports were not stamped at the Johore checkpoint. Three were fined RM3,000/- each after they were handcuffed and detained. Did the fine go into the Johore treasury or were the fines pocketed after crumpling up the summons? Just the other day, a car was waylaid into a Johore checkpoint office for demand of extortion money by off-duty personnel (in slippers) as the family’s passports were also not stamped. With this poorly managed situation by the Johore authorities, why would Singapore want to demolish some nine blocks of HDB flats in Marshiling to expand the Singapore ICA? Why should the residents of HDB blocks 210 to 218 be made to give up their comfort and familiarity of their hometown for this houdini. I suggest the project be remitted as there is really no telling on what can take place given the poor experience by Singaporeans on the previous construction and expenditure of the fastrack rail in Jurong. Similarly, can Singaporean travellers be assured that their passports will be stamped when presented at the Johore Immigration office when the facility is expanded at the southern end? Unless a firm assurance is given and a thorough investigation of the two cases be conducted and the perpetrators brought to bear, there is NOT A NEED to reconstruct or expand the Woodlands land crossing.   Gilbert HK Tan      Read More →

It is rather frustrating to discuss data with a lot of people. When we are looking at raw data of infected among Vaccinated (V) & UnVaccinated (UnV) from real world data, they would claim that's not from "Double Blind Randomized Trial". But when they want to look at V & UnV death from Covid-19 (CV), they will use real world data to blow their trumpet! They don't understand what's important in different contexts of comparisons. Infec of a population is actually RANDOM. It means everyone should have equal chances of being in contact of the infec persons. It doesn't depend on your V status or health status. Even though choice of taking V or not can be bias dependent on factors like health consideration, but that does not have direct influence on whether you will come into contact of infec persons or not. Thus the chances of being Infec are independent of V status. However, whether one would eventually get infec or not, after coming into contact with infec persons, may depend on V status. That's what the Pro V people believe and trying to prove. However real world data, even though V status may not have gone through Randomized selection, have shown that there is little different from between V and UnV in eventual infec. Even SG preliminary data has shown that. This is how I could conclude very early, the V could not prevent infec at all. Yet the official Pro V narrative kept on saying otherwise until tremendous amount of data prove them wrong, finally they conceded herd immunity is totally impossible! But when it comes to death from CV, the official Pro V were quite happy to use totally unrandomized Real World data. The real world data has shown that whether one would die from CV or not depends on age as well as pre existing conditions or Comorbidities. It is clear from the data that regardless of V status, this is so. Even though there seems to have more UnV people dying from CV than V, but it might not be due to V at all. This is because whether one take the Vor not, it is NOT RANDOMLY determined but biasly determined in Real World. Those who are UnV are mostly people in the vulnerable group, old age and or with pre existing conditions or Comorbidities. Even those younger ones, are concerned because of their health conditions. Thus obviously, people from this UnV group would have higher chance of death or hospitalization due to their health conditions and age, may not be so because they didn't take the V! This is what we call selection bias. This is reasonable deduction because even though people of similar health and age conditions in V group are hospitalized or dying of CV as well! It is just like old people may prefer dull color clothing while young ones brighter colors. So among those death are mainly wearing dull color clothing, can you conclude that wearing dull color clothing can result high deaths? Absolutely not. Its the age! Most people are just ignoring the context of data but just manipulating the presentation and interpretation of data just to suit their own agenda. That's what we call Confirmation Bias. From Real World Data, more often than not, we will not get our PERFECT RANDOMIZED DATA or sampling, not to mention control group via double blind methodology. However, with careful discernment or understanding the context of the datas, we could still come up with meaningful induction or prediction, not just mere suspicion via correlations. But this can only be done if one is Truthful in dealing with these data objectively without pre determined agenda or biasness. The world has somewhat turned crazy for the past 2 years.   Goh Meng Seng      Read More →