TR EMERITUS

Thailand's Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra was ordered by a court to step down in a divisive ruling that handed a victory to anti-government protesters.(18 May)   Thai elites need to rethink their grasp on institutional order amid shift in political loyalties. Thailand is heading for a political showdown unless opposing sides consider compromise. The anti-government movement is calling for electoral reform after the dismissal of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra on May 7. The Constitutional Court ruled Yingluck abused her power by appointing a relative as national security chief. Yingluck's Pheu Thai party favour pressing ahead with a planned election on July 20. Thailand is no stranger to coups - a well-oiled military and institutional tool to oust the unfavoured. In the past, those who brandished this weapon have had the socio-economic upper hand. Now the millions who traditionally deferred to the elites are shifting their political devotions from the elites to themselves. Deference can no longer be relied upon. A majority thumbs up at the ballot box for anti-establishment parties and growing disgruntlement with the elites means the coup as guaranteed silencer of the masses could no longer be relied upon. Is it time out for Thailand's political elites? Their steel grasp on state organs, like the Constitutional Court and the National Anti-Corruption Commission, to retain power is a rearguard action from factions grasping for air. Demands by the establishment for sweeping political reform over a general election is a delaying ploy to regroup. Read more: www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/05/time-out-thailand-elites-201451863547502357.html  Read More →

PM Lee In an interview with Japan's Nikkei media group last Wednesday (14 May), a reporter asked PM Lee about PAP's strategy to win the next general election. Mr Lee replied that the election might not happen for "another 2.5 years". Constitutionally, the next election must be called by January 2017. He told the reporter that the PAP's focus is on "doing the right things so that people have reason to vote for the government, which is doing good for them". Over the last 2 years, the government has addressed both immediate and long-term issues, he said. Immediate issues include making sure there is adequate housing and improving public transport, while a long-term concern is making sure Singapore can grow its economy and upgrade its workers so they can continue to earn a good living, said Mr Lee. Indeed, on 19 May 2014, the government issued a statement expanding on the concept of a “Nation of Opportunity” outlined by President Tony Tan in his address to Parliament last Friday (16 May). In the statement, the government said that Singapore must remain a place where “every Singaporean can succeed whatever his starting point; where pathways upwards are open to all, at all stages of life”. The statement talks about equipping Singaporeans with the skills to take on a wide range of specialist, managerial and leadership roles ('Govt: We’ll equip SGs to take on wide range of PMET roles'): We will equip Singaporeans with the skills to take on a wide range of specialist, managerial and leadership roles. We will strengthen our Continuing Education and Training (CET) system. We will develop career pathways, and improve applied learning tracks and specialist programmes. We will provide more structured career guidance and counselling. With regard to this continuing call for re-education and re-training to help PMETs upgrade and get jobs, some TRE readers are not impressed: Senior Citizen: It is NEVER about Singaporeans not being equipped for the job. It is always about much cheaper alternatives from the 3rd World countries (regardless of whether they are qualified to do the job). Let’s not go into denial again and start wasting our hard-earned tax-payers’ money on ‘WAYANG’ SME Programmes and Continuous Education Training! We should stop dragging our feet and get to the root of the problem now before it is too late! MIW liars: Continuing education and training, and giving more structured career guidance and counselling – all of which have been done in the past 30 years, beginning from last 1990s, yet more and more Singaporeans are out of jobs, replaced by the truckloads of foreign workers shipped in by the shit, vicious MIW thugs and goons. This is not new, in fact passe. Retrench and out of job workers spent monies on such courses, but it is all a waste of their valuable time and monies. In the end, all jobs still go to foreign workers who are cheap to hire and are forced to work very long hrs and close to 7 days a week. No work, no pay for them. Plus, no cpf to pay and no medical benefit to pay, from employers. So, voters and citizens, this is all wayang, year after year. Look back at Shit Times to just 15 years and you will find all these wayang statements after statements on job training and retraining and countless programs to help this and that. It is all a big fat WAYANG, hoping to con and cheat and swindle the less educated retrenched workers. Voters, just vote for a new govt in coming GE and you will see your life and your family’s future getting better. TRE went through some old news articles and found, indeed, that the government has talked about continuing education and training to help PMETs in the past. Certainly, such talk is not new. In fact, 5 years ago, blogger Lucky Tan already wrote an interesting piece criticizing the government for only thinking about "retraining, retraining, retraining" as a solution to employment woes faced by Singaporeans ('Unemployed PMETs Situation : Bad to worse......'): April 03, 2009 The proposed govt solution has been the same in good times and bad - retraining, retraining, retraining. When retraining does not work, what does the govt propose? More retraining. Right now the govt is proposing to have more 40 conversion schemes for PMETs. Do you think they will solve the problem if they have 100 conversion schemes?...make that 200. The problem is not the skills but the age of these people and the ability of employers to practice age discrimination a.k.a ageism. Why did employers take in those over-40s in the past... say 15 years ago? The reason is very simple. Singapore had a rather tight labor market so when the economy boomed employers couldn't find workers didn't have much of a choice except to give those who were older a chance. The booming economy created opportunities for these people. When the recession came, they had as good a chance as anyone else of getting retrenched. If they became jobless, they had to struggle until the economy recovered before they got another shot at decent employment..... but that was the situation 15 years ago. What has changed? When the PAP govt opened the floodgates for foreign workers, they also changed the demographics of our workforce. The supply of workers below the age of 30 became almost unlimited, given you can always find workers from India and China willing to come here. When the economy boomed in 2007/2008 the employers could employ hundreds of thousands of foreign workers. Instead of the labor market becoming tight creating opportunities for those over-40s, the influx of workers caused this group of Singaporeans to remain unemployed or underemployed during the boom. If the goal of the PAP govt simply wanted grow the GDP as fast as possible, it is easy to understand what they were trying to do. The huge influx of foreign workers caused the cost of living (e.g. rentals) to rise and the rapid growth of the economy caused it to overheat (Link - 'Singapore economy shows sign of overheating as companies hire workers at an unprecedented pace'). The PAP continues to insist that its economic model is the best for ordinary Singaporeans but ordinary Singaporeans are beginning to ask: What's in it for us? Being forced to work until our old age burdened by the highest household debt in Asia while becoming increasing unemployable after the age of 40...is that something that we want for ourselves and our children? The wealth from this GDP growth distributed inequitably as the system results in an income gap comparable only to 3rd world nations. Indeed, what blogger Lucky Tan wrote 5 years ago still applies today.    Read More →

The more the establishment tries to come out in support of the atrocious Young PAP (YP) video, the worse it gets. The first lame line of defence deployed was that it was meant for "internal consumption". Then writer Tham ("Young PAP video: Good message, bad delivery", ST May 17) let the cat out of the bag, leaking that it was first broadcast at the party's convention in December, before being uploaded to YouTube 3 weeks ago. Meaning, for the excruciating period of about 4 months, not a soul within the ranks of the elitist youth wing realised it was a lemon, or bothered to inform the young people behind the ersatz production it was "raw and unpolished". Including the minister who used those descriptive. With friends like those, who needs enemies? We now know the Media Development Authority (MDA) actually cleared the YP video earlier this year, giving it a “PG” rating. Meaning, MDA sat through the horrific 4 minutes 43 seconds, and deigned to provide constructive feedback to the youngsters. Quite obviously, MDA was more focused on the potential infringement of Section 33 of the Films Act. They must have desperately wanted to save the youngsters from conviction to a fine not exceeding $100,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years, without having to call in the minister for a hall pass. Many will concur with MDA it was definitely a film without animation and dramatic elements. Put kindly, the cast of inanimate lacked any contribution of dramatic talent. They were more like marionettes manipulated by puppet strings. Pinocchio would have done a better job; his nose would have grown dramatically in length with each utterance of an untruthful message. Another set of youths is having everything but the kitchen sink thrown at them, for delivery of a message of a different kind. Maybe the kitchen sink has been included, if you count the charge for "removing a reflective vest worth $5".   Tattler * The writer blogs at singaporedesk.blogspot.com.  Read More →