TR EMERITUS

I am writing to you in the midst of utter desolation and desperation, and hopefully this email will not get filtered or lost in the sea of entries that barrage your emails on a daily basis. I am writing to you because I have no one else to turn to, and hopefully my message will serve as a cautionary tale for other young students like me who thought we stood a chance in the F&B industry in Singapore. My little bar is (or rather was) located at 29 Dalhousie Lane, on the outskirts of Little India with good proximity to Rochor MRT. My younger brother, sister, and two other close friends of mine were the founding members of this bar. All of us are still full-time students in university, except for my sister who is still awaiting her ‘A’-Level results. We had saved up for approximately 2 years, collectively, as well as taken up significant loans from our parents to fund the start-up costs of the bar, which totalled to close to S$180,000. Happily, and filled with naïve idealism, we opened our doors on 6 May 2021, amidst what seemed like a hopeful trajectory towards endemic “New Normalcy” as promised by the government. Back then, our contractors had even planned for 8-seaters in the bar, given that the prevailing rule was 8-pax dining. First Closure On the fourth (4th) day of opening, we were slapped with a ten (10) day closure as well as a S$1,000 fine, as the Safety Distancing Ambassador Officers purportedly caught a table with six (6) diners at a table, on the same day the new rules were gazetted reducing dining limits to 5 pax. Admittedly, we had indeed broken the letter of the law through our negligence, but I simply regret that the magnitude and harshness of the law had to be levied on us, especially given our utter inexperience regarding these novel rules. I’m sure there are others like me out there, who admittedly know that inexperience is inexcusable for non-compliance with the regulations, but seek some level of amnesty or at least discretion, and rigidly apply the letter of the law against us. Reluctantly, we accepted the punishment levied against us with grace and chose not to contest the claims. Notably, this incident occurred 2 days prior to Minister Lawrence Wong announcing Phase 2 Heightened Alert (circuit-breaker for F&Bs) which banned dining-in altogether. The SDA officers decided to only levy the charges the day after P2HA was lifted, extending our “circuit-breaker” for another 10 days. It was a nightmare for all of us and really drained our bank account, forcing us to cut back on part-time staff and personally take on the roles fulltime without pay. Second Closure Fast forward to 28 Aug 2021, merely 2.5 months later (mind you half this time was spent in P2HA and serving the closure order), came our second closure order. It was coming close to 12 midnight, and my partner/bar manager Rishi, was mopping the floors and cleaning up the place while a few customers were still hanging out in the bar, without any alcohol. In the spur of the moment, Rishi removed one bottle of Budweiser beer from the fridge and drank it himself, and let another staff member have a few sips as a token of appreciation for assisting the cleanup. Unbeknownst to us, Safe Distancing Enforcers were outside our premises, videotaping the incident. They immediately barged into the bar and attempted to enforce order in the place. Despite our best attempts to reason with the officers and show them that there was no attempt at all to sell alcohol past our 10.30 time limits, they pressed hard on Regulation 13(1)(c) read with First Schedule (Paragraph 5) of the COVID-19 (Temporary Measures)(Control Order) Regulations 2020, where even the owners of the bar could not consumer alcohol at all past 10.30pm, due to the broad nature of how the regulations were phrased. We attempted to appeal against the decision, but they simply failed our appeal process within a day, without justification, and levied us with a twenty (20) day closure order and S$2,000 fine. This move nearly bankrupted us as we struggled to make rent attempting to sell food on online channels. Liquor Licence Revocation Order Past the 2nd closure order, we immediately tightened every corner in the bar operations, strictly obeying every letter of the law, and then some. We had Rishi take photos of the bar every 10.30PM to ensure that all customers and alcohol is strictly cleared from the tables and implemented hefty fines for non-compliance. Three weeks later, despite our valiant efforts, the SPF served a liquor licence revocation order on us. Despite sending in long letters of appeal twice, the Liquor Licencing officer simply replied to us with short templated “no” answers. Accordingly, us three partners sought assistance from our MPs. This procedure let us be put through a liquor appeal board, to “adjudge” whether to revoke our liquor licence. After toiling for 2 months, once again, it was a short templated “no” answer, but this time stating that their decision was final. This effectively sealed our fate as revoking our liquor licence is akin to cutting off the jugular vein to our business that was barely making rent every month. This was a death sentence to the business, and effectively now riddled the three of us with a combined debt of close to $320,000. Writing this letter, I seek nothing more than to put my story out there, and hopefully let the court of public opinion judge whether this was the right decision.   Jonathan Foo      Read More →

PM Lee has said he expects the economy to grow by 3-5% this year but that will still only make the economy about 1% bigger than it was at the end of 2019. By way of contrast the US economy ended 2021 over 2% larger. Most of Singapore’s growth in both 2020 and 2021 came from manufacturing with all other sectors below the peak they reached in 2019. Manufacturing’s growth was of course driven almost wholly by external demand, meaning that it was the same old story of dependence on US growth, whether directly or indirectly. Nothing is likely to change this year either. The PAP have made Singapore so dependent on foreign labour that the economy grinds to a halt without it. Thus LHL has reassured business that the doors will be open again to foreign workers, saying “We will also press on to bring in much needed migrant workers, and ensure international talents feel welcome and are able to complement Singaporeans”. Hopefully among the foreign talents that must be welcomed due to the dearth of qualified Singaporeans, despite PAP’s claims that our education system is hugely superior to the rest of the developed world, there will not be too many of the recent rash of paedophiles that have attracted headlines in Singapore such as the American Mixed Martial Arts artist that was making videos for Contact Singapore while making videos of his own having sex with underage girls. The frequency of these cases might have something to do with the fact that while countries such as the UK, US and Australia require a Police Certificate containing details of all convictions (other than those that have been stepped-down after 30 or 35 years), MOM does not seem to make that a requirement. I googled criminal record checks for working in Singapore and the first thing I came across is a post from someone in the UK boasting that he got a job with a criminal record for violence because Singapore only requires a basic criminal record check and not the full disclosure other countries insist on. The post is headlined “A city of possibilities – Living and working in Singapore with a criminal record” which should really tell Singaporeans all they need to know about the PAP’s policies. Our Minister for Law. Shanmugam, normally so eloquent when it comes to telling other countries how to run their affairs and boasting about Singapore’s safety, is strangely silent on these cases and why they were welcomed into the country and not picked up at the visa application stage. It is likely that PM Lee is expecting manufacturing to generate much of the expected 3-5% growth as it is has significantly outperformed the rest of the economy which remains depressed by the pandemic . Manufacturing has also been responsible for most of the productivity growth over the last five years, though much of this may be generated by MNC tax avoidance strategies and is neither taxed nor makes much impact on Singaporeans’ living standards. Ireland has the same strategy and its economy has massively outperformed Singapore’s (and the UK’s) over the last twenty years but its people have not benefited to anything like the same extent. If he is relying on manufacturing, then he may not be in luck as there is increasing evidence that Americans’ demand for manufactured goods, which generated the huge Asian export boom last year and snarled global supply chains on the back of US stimulus payments, is saturated and unlikely to expand much this year. LHL is silent on how he expects the growth to be generated but by removing demand from the economy through a rise in the regressive GST he is not helping to reduce the economy’s (over) reliance on external demand. Most of the extra jobs needed to generate that growth will likely go to new foreign workers and managers who may not spend much in Singapore meaning that what economists call the multiplier effect of that spending will be limited. The PM and his Government’s indifference to the welfare of Singaporeans is shown by the anecdotal evidence of increasing hardship for a significant section of the population. A few days ago a BBC article entitled, “How the high cost of living is hitting Singapore’s poor” quoted Nichol Ng, co founder of Food Bank Singapore, as saying: “What we have seen when we make the door-to-door deliveries is that young families [with] both husband and wife working a part-time job or in the gig economy – these were the families that got impacted when Covid hit and all the part-time work dried up. It is not just the poorest 10% of the population who now need help: It has slowly crept to maybe 20% of the population including middle income families that might not even know where to get help in the first place.” This is similar to findings by the LKY School of Public Policy in their study, “What people need in Singapore: A household budgets study” I wrote about this recently in “As More Singaporeans Go Hungry, PM’s Wife Offers Free Mouthwash”: The Government’s stinginess while sitting on over $2.5 trillion of financial assets, which does not include the value of the land it owns and assets like Changi Airport Group, was put into stark contrast with the plight of many Singaporeans by the publication recently by the LKY School of Public Policy (LKYSPP) of a study of the minimum income needed for a basic (very) standard of living in Singapore for a single person household with one child (aged 2-6 years) and a two person household with two children (one aged 7-12 and the other 13-18). It calculated this as $3218 per month for the single person household with one child and $6426 for the two person household with two children. Comparing this minimum income with the figures for work incomes (including Employer CPF contributions) per family member for employed households (Key Household Trends, 2020) the study found that the incomes of 30% of working Singapore households were below their assessed Minimum Income Standards. However only 87% of households have at least one working member. 8% of households are comprised solely of non-working members aged over 65 while the remaining 5% are also non-working but some at least of the members are under 65. For those over 65, CPF savings and Government assistance are unlikely to be enough to meet the LKYSPP minimum income for the over-65s of $1,421 month meaning that a significant number of the elderly live in poverty. The elderly are forced to continue working into their 70s and 80s, though unlike Father of the Nation Lee Kuan Yew not many are able to draw combined salaries and pensions from state coffers of $5 million per year (till 2011) and continue “working” into their 90s. Government income supplements like WorkFare only cover a fraction of the shortfall. They also subsidise employers meaning that wages are probably lower than they would be in the absence of WIS (Workfare Income Supplement). This year the situation is likely to get much worse with utility bills doubling and food prices rising at double digit rates. The unnecessary and regressive rise in GST will not help. As I said in “Indranee Rajah Misleads Parliament by Falsely Claiming Singaporeans Will Be Protected from the GST Hike for 5 Years. Should She Be Referred to the Committee of Privileges?”, the amount the Government will rebate back to middle and lower income Singaporeans will likely only be about 6% of the revenue raised, and the rebate has in any case been paid for previously through the Finance Minister’s misleading (some would say criminal) practice of claiming as spending money set aside in funds and endowments. There is no certainty that this money will ever be spent. Expect this year’s Budget to contain more fake assistance for lower income hard working Singaporeans and their families in the form of squirreling money away in “long term” funds while the level of reserves, along with how much the PM’s wife has earned over the years, remains a state secret. While too many Singaporean families go to bed hungry, the only certainty is that LHL and his Ministers will continue to draw their outsize salaries for another year. However this will only be the tip of the iceberg as we are denied any information about Ministers’ spouses and relatives’ monopoly on the top jobs in the bloated state sector and also whether they profit from Government contracts like LKY’s wife did in the past as head of Lee & Lee. Unlike the UK where damaging information about Boris Johnson’s parties during lockdown surfaced, LHL’s corrupt control of the media, fear of the penalties that await whistleblowers and desire of the Parliamentary Opposition not to risk losing their seats by questioning the PM too closely, means that LHL and his wife can sleep soundly and continue to plan to pass the baton of power to the next generation of their family. Seemingly, despite increasing immiseration, Singaporeans are quite happy with this state of affairs.   Kenneth Jeyaretnam   I’m a Singaporean economist who became an opposition activist. I blog to provide an alternative to the porkies that the Pinkies tell. It just so happens that my alternative is the truth. That’s why I’ve never been sued in any civil or criminal court no matter how hard hitting my criticism. I’m quoted and interviewed and asked to speak across the world but largely censored in Singapore in an effort to silence my political opinions. The left hate me because they think I split their vote and because I eschew their outmoded economic models. Models that don’t work. The Right and the Conservatives hate me because I’m a liberal. I’m not sure what the middle think of me. I don’t think there are more than a handful of people in the middle, here in Singapore. I’m a Singaporean born and bred, dual heritage, my parents Singaporean established here before the State of Singapore was created. I’m not Eurasian. I read economics at Cambridge and could be broadly described as from the Keynesian school but I believe in interventions. I was formerly a successful hedge fund manager. After economics and politics my greatest interests are history, film and Makan. I run but I run so I can eat like a Singaporean.        Read More →

Twenty-six years ago today, Lim Chin Siong died of a heart attack. He would have been 89 years old this year. Lim Chin Siong was the best-known trade unionist and people person in Singapore’s history. He was only 22 when elected as legislative assemblyman for Bukit Timah in 1955. Lee Kuan Yew too was elected in that election as assemblyman for Tanjong Pagar. He was 33 years old. Lim Chin Siong’s life as a politician was short-lived. He was like a “comet in our sky” as the book edited by Tan Jing Quee and Jomo K.S. described him. Deeply concerned with the well-being of his countrymen soon after the second World War, he never completed his secondary school education. But his brilliance and ability for organising poorly paid workers, fighting for better wages, oratory skill and willingness to work hard well surpassed all the highly educated PAP leaders. We know today that Lee Kuan Yew "made use of" Lim Chin Siong and his hard-working, idealistic and trusting friends to win the confidence of the masses and get himself and his English educated colleagues to power in 1959. In politics, being older does not mean taking responsibility to care and guide the young! Lee Kuan Yew and his contemporaries (S Rajaratnam, Toh Chin Chye, Goh Keng Swee and E W Barker) were all about ten years senior to the younger leaders like Lim Chin Siong, Dr Lim Hock Siew and Dr Poh Soo Kai. They too were founding members of the PAP but they are never acknowledged as such to this day. Lee Kuan Yew had in various books, openly and proudly admitted that he rode on the “tiger’s back”. But of course, without the British taking his side, I think he would never have succeeded in taking power. In recent months, parliament has made much about a small “lie” which I would rather call a small mistake of Raeesah Khan. She was not only compelled to quit politics but was subjected to humiliation and several days of torturous interrogation by members of the Committee of Privileges. The hearing was broadcast throughout the world. It is a great shame that PAP leaders had chosen to ignore their forefathers’ past and think that they are all on moral high ground when it relates to matters that transpired in parliament. I am of course, referring to the big lie committed against Lim Chin Siong in 1956. That lie took away his freedom for several years. Lim Chin Siong was accused of making a inflamatory speech at the PAP rally at Beauty World, encouraging the crowd to "pah mata" (beat up the police) when what he said was the reverse - "mai pah mata" (don't beat up the police). It took 58 years for the truth to emerge. We have to thank Dr P J Thum for digging out the truth. In 2014, Dr Thum unearthed from the British Archives at Kew, the transcript of Lim Chin Siong’s speech delivered at the PAP rally at Beauty World on 25 October 1956. In that speech, Lim who spoke in Hokkien, called upon the crowd “mai pah mata” (don’t beat up the police) but to shout “Merdeka” (Independence). He told them that the police were their friends and wage earners too. Their job was to protect the people. Lee Kuan Yew and his colleagues who were on stage with Lim Chin Siong must have heard what he said. Regrettably, they did nothing to assist their colleague when he was subsequently arrested under the Preservation for Public Security Ordinance. This has given rise to the understandable suspicion and allegation that he had, probably with the blessing of the British, conspired with the Lim Yew Hock government to arrest and ruin Lim Chin Siong. On 6 November 1956, in the legislative assembly debate on a motion that was submitted by Lee Kuan Yew, the Minister for Education, Chew Swee Kee said: “The Member for Tanjong Pagar, in moving his motion, asked, "Who began the riots?" He tried his very best to put the blame on the Government, saying it was apparent that the thousands who gathered in front of the Chinese High School in Bukit Timah Road were collected there for the purpose of the riots, but he conveniently forgot to mention that it was after the Member for Bukit Timah and his henchmen had arrived at the scene that the riots began. The Member for Bukit Timah, as pointed out by the Chief Minister, made inflammatory speeches at the Beauty World, and soon after the meeting, those who attended it drifted along to the High School vicinity and almost at an instant jeered at the Police. It is significant to note that the Member for Bukit Timah at that meeting said that instead of shouting "Merdeka" the people should now shout, "Pah Mata", which means "Beat the Police". Is there any doubt whatsoever as to who sparked off the riots?” https://tinyurl.com/msbw6err (col 501). We do not know why the PAP rally was scheduled on that day when PAP leaders knew that huge crowds from all over Singapore had gathered in and at the vicinity of Chinese High School to protest. Listen to Dr Poh Soo Kai here https://tinyurl.com/2p8as7yv. Lee Kuan Yew was in the legislative assembly and heard what Chew Swee Kee said. But he did not stand up to defend his colleague. Neither did the British representatives in the assembly who must have listened to their Special Branch recordings of all the speeches at the rally, made any clarification. The transcript of Lim Chin Siong’s speech was made public by Dr P J Thum in May 2014. We don’t know if Lee Kuan Yew had been informed of this transcript and whether he was of sound mind to respond. But we know that he was very much into the practice of meditation in 2013 before he died in March 2015. In any event, he was aware of the truth throughout his life. He had thus chosen to let the lie of Chew Swee Kee pass as truth and perpetuate the lie by his silence, solely for his benefit. The moral of this piece of history is that many lies are spoken in parliament. We cannot accept everything that is said in parliament as the truth. It took more than 58 years for the lie which grievously wronged Lim Chin Siong to be exposed. He never lived to be vindicated. Even with Dr P J Thum’s discovery of the truth, PAP historians like Kumar Ramakrishna still choose to perpetuate the lie. It is sad.   Teo Soh Lung      Read More →