>National Day Rally 2010 – Housing; we had it coming

>So the latest ruling to cool down the property bubble is that after 30 Aug 2010, you have to sell your HDB flat, if you have purchased a private property (even if that private property happens to be overseas). The principle is that in a land scarce Singapore, HDB flats are meant for citizens to enjoy affordable housing and if there are those who can afford private properties, they should not be entitled to the subsidized HDB flats.

Not that I believe that HDB flats are subsidized in the first place, but otherwise, I support the above ruling. Some may argue that retirees may want to hold onto private properties as rental income while they keep living in their HDB flats. However, if we allowed that, it would deprive of first time HDB applicants (especially young married couples) of their new flats. In a land scarce Singapore, I agree that a first home is more important than a property that gives you income.

Liberalized use of CPF for private property started chain reaction on housing prices -
That aside, how did we come to this property bubble in the first place? About 20 years ago, the PAP liberalized the use of CPF. It allowed the CPF to be used for private properties. There was a mixed reaction. Those who had high amounts in their CPF (yes, the rich and elite, if you don’t know who I mean) were excited with the new ruling.

However, the ground feedback was that if that were to happen, there would be a rush for private properties, pushing private property prices up at one go. This is because of the large amounts of “unused” CPF monies. That in turn will push up higher end HDB flats like Executive Flats. The chain reaction will be that even lower end HDB flats like 5 and 4 room flats will follow suit, due to the domino effect.

The PAP wouldn’t listen. It was seen that some years after the liberalization of CPF monies to buy private properties was allowed, the property market bubble began to form. That was around 1991 to 1997. It finally burst during the SE Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s.

The damage was already done. Ever since that liberalization of CPF in around the early 1990s, the HDB prices have always been so high, most new applicants would have to take up long term loans that last about 25 to 30 years – which is about nearly the whole of their working lives.

I bought my flat with my wife in the 1980s. A good thing that we married young because our friends who married later after 1990s, missed the low HDB prices of the pre-1990s ruling where you could not use CPF for private properties. We took only a ten year loan and our monthly installment to repay that loan was a ridiculous $266 a month! Yes, ridiculous by today’s standards.

That wasn’t the surprising thing. The surprise was that we bought a RESALE flat! At that time there was no $30k, $40k or what not k subsidy. And I was the one who paid the installment in full, without my wife contributing.

Needless to say, when our flat was fully paid up, we were only in our thirties!

A different story today -
Today, I worry for our children who have to face stiff HDB prices. In the early 1980s, the flats that were bought from HDB can be as low as $10k to $20k for a 4 room HDB. Today, it is many more times that.

Yes, the property boom in the 1990s helped my wife and I to upgrade our flat because we sold our 4 room flat at a ridiculous price. However, while we may have benefitted, I worry for the future generations (like our children), who will have to pay through their noses, just to have a roof over their heads.

It is not that this ridiculous housing prices for HDB flats was not foreseeable. 20 years ago, when there were warning bells sounding that if the CPF was liberalized to buy private properties, it would cause a chain reaction and push up HDB prices, the govt just would not listen.

So today, we see the govt doing yet another “patch up” work by putting a ruling that if you were to buy a private property after 30 Aug 2010, you have to sell your HDB flat. But this in turn will cause some unintended results (just like the Education policy as seen in my earlier article). These unintended effects are:

1. Bona fide retirees who intend to buy private properties (be it in Singapore or overseas) so as to earn rental income are now affected.

2. PRs who come to Singapore to work long term are now burdened to either rent a HDB flat or buy a private property. Isn’t this making it harder for PRs to come here, when it is PAP’s intention to bring them in?

As always, the PAP are patch up workers. They only patch up holes that open up more holes in other areas. They didn’t have the long term vision to see that 20 years ago, if they had listened to the warning bells, the HDB prices would not have been as high as it is today.

But bottom line is, Singaporeans’ grievance is that it is our young generation today who have to bear the brunt of high housing prices, no thanks to the usual tunnel vision of the PAP and their policy makers.

>National Day Rally 2010 – Education; making it worse?

>In his National Day Rally 2010, PM Lee mentioned how the education system will be tweaked. It was supposedly to address parents’ concern that their children may miss out to be in the “best schools”.

As it turned out, this tweaking is about creating another 7 more Integrated Programme (IP) schools where secondary students bypass their O Levels and take A Levels in their sixth year. Here is a report from the Straits Times, dated 1 Sep 2009.

7 new schools to offer IP

IN a first for Singapore, three secondary schools will come together to provide students for a new Junior College.

The all-boys Catholic High School and the all-girls CHIJ Saint Nicholas Girls’ and Singapore Chinese Girls’ schools have banded together to create a new Integrated Programme (IP). The IP will begin with the Secondary 1 cohort of 2013.

With this move, all the students in the three schools are on a six-year programme that will see them heading to a new as-yet-unnamed government junior college after four years in each school. The new JC will offer the A-level examinations and open in 2017.

The three are among seven schools that have got the approval from the Ministry of Education to give up the O levels for an IP leading to A levels or the International Baccalaureate (IB). The expansion of the IP to more schools was announced by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the National Day Rally on Sunday (Aug 29).

This will bring the proportion of each cohort enrolled in an IP up from 8 per cent to 12 per cent.

‘We are very pleased. We had been applying for the programme at every opportunity, but it was only now that we hit upon the right formula,’ said Catholic High School principal Mr Lee Hak Boon. The school has been trying to get an IP in place since 2006.

The other alliances will see the all-boys’ Victoria School and Cedar Girls’ Secondary School partnering with Victoria Junior College and the Methodist Girls’ School tying up with Anglo Chinese School (Independent). St Joseph’s Institution (SJI) will expand to offer a six-year programme leading to the IB.

On the surface, it appears to be a good move because it allows more Primary students, after completing their PSLE, to be able to take the IP courses. But what is so attractive about IP?

IP in itself is no big deal. The big deal is that it leads to a direct entry to the choice Junior Colleges like RJC, Hwa Chong, ACSI, VJC etc. Hence, if a PSLE student does well enough, and he gets into a school that has the IP, he has assured of that top choice JC the secondary school is affiliated to.

Ironically, there lies the problem!

Before we had IP, ALL students had to go through O levels to gain entry to JCs to take A Levels. The fight for the top JC places was hence, at the O level stage. This meant that even if a secondary student was from a neighbourhood school, he had an equal chance to compete for a top JC with another student from an elite school. The only advantage the top secondary school student had was affiliation.

With the introduction of IP a few years back, that changed the playing field. It was no longer level. With IP, it meant that any student who gets into the secondary school with an IP set up, IS ASSURED that he ends up in the JC of that choice (provided he does not fail his yearly exams, but why should he in the first place?).

For example, if a primary student gets into RI, he is assured of a place in RJC for his A levels. Because of this “reserve system” (otherwise known as “choping system” in Singlish), the vacancies left in RJC open to the public gets reduced. From the standpoint of the student who did not get into RI, his chances of getting into RJC after his O levels now becomes bleaker. If there was no IP, all students will stand equal chance. Not anymore, no thanks to IP!

Currently, 8% of secondary students are in the IP system. With an addition of another 7 more schools, it is projected to increase by 12%. Conversely, it now makes it harder for the remaining 88% secondary students, after these 7 schools embark on the IP, to enter the top JCs because 12% of the secondary cohort has already reserved their places.

What does the above mean?

It means that from the traditional “let’s compete for top JCs when we are in secondary”, it has now come to “let’s compete for top secondary schools (so that we can be in top JCs) at primary level”!

Are not primary students more vulnerable to emotional stress and fatigue than secondary students? Yet this pressure shift down to primary level?

What the introduction of IP a few years back has done, is to shift the pressure to perform from secondary level to the primary level. What the introduction of 7 more IP schools will do is to pressurize the primary school students to get into IP even more, because if they don’t, the ever elusive top elite JCs may well be out of their reach.

I feel that ever since the old guard of the PAP stepped down (that includes the likes of Goh Keng Swee and Party Chairman Toh Chin Chye), the following generations of PAP leaders are simply ad-hoc fire fighters. They see a problem, they tackle that one problem. They don’t see a problem as part of a bigger problem. Yes, that’s the problem!

When the IP was introduced, it was already seen that the pressure was shifted down to PSLE students. Ironically, that’s why PAP (stupidly) now wants to “relieve” that pressure by introducing “more vacancies” using the IP system by introducing it to another 7 secondary schools – which will magnify the problem even more!

This kind of ad-hoc patch up work is prevalent in PAP so much so that about every problem is tackled that way. If you note PM’s Rally speech, that’s the approach they take. Be it rising housing prices, transport squeeze, immigrant issues etc.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that they don’t deserve their high paying salaries. We don’t need patch up workers. We need long term thinkers. The ones the old guard of the PAP showed to be.

Living in a pressure cooker society is one thing. To pressurize kids at primary level is to deprive them of their childhood. That’s what the PAP has just done to your children.

>National Day Rally 2010 – YOG is a PAP Election Prop after all

>More than 2 years ago, I wrote about Singapore’s successful bid for the YOG – Youth Olympics – Victory for Singapore or 2011 Election prop for PAP? The main point I made was that the YOG was more of a Election Prop for the PAP to ride on, than for Singaporeans to benefit. Excerpt from article above.

So why is it so important that our government wants to have the Youth Olympics here in 2010? It must be remembered that the last elections we had was in May 2006. By 2010, the PAP would have already approached the end of their 5 year term. What better than to use this Youth Olympics to inject the feel good, bonanza, we did it, factor to rev up for their elections?

Last night, PM Lee mentioned the YOG in his National Day Rally. Note that it was the last item in his 3 hour long speech, probably so that you will remember it because if it had been in the beginning or in the middle of his 3 hour ramble, you would have forgotten it. Yes, he used the YOG to rev up the “we feel good, so let’s keep supporting the govt” mantra as predicted!

Here is summary of that “Hey, we all feel good so you should continue to vote for us” speech last night.
National Day Rally Part 3

(9.41pm) – On the just-concluded Youth Olympic Games, PM hails Singaporeans for taking part in the inaugural YOG with enthusiasm, and gives the volunteers top marks for a magnificent job done.

(9.45pm) – ‘The IOC, youth athletes and vistors were all impressed’ said PM Lee.

(9.47pm) – PM Lee winds up speech by saying that even though Singapore is a young nation, it has distinguished itself by looking forward, and daring to transform the city again and again.

‘Our future is bright,’ he says. While he cannot promise an ‘effortless cruise’, he says Singaporeans can expect good leadership, and a close-knit team.

‘We will seize the opportunities around us’ and ‘take our nation to the next level,’ says PM Lee.

Left unquoted in the above ST blog was PM Lee’s example how some foreign volunteers praised Singapore, including the catered food provided. Left unsaid by PM Lee himself was that there were reports that the very food the volunteer heaped praises on caused some volunteers to fall sick!

The bottom line to gauge if the YOG was beneficial to citizens is this – how does it help Singaporeans offset the high rising cost of living? If it does in no way to help them, what benefit is it to us?

We don’t need international praise. We need jobs and means to earn a living to keep us alive.

So how did YOG help? It helped PAP rev up the feel good emotion for the coming GE.