So Lame (Brain)

Recent incidents reported in the press should give Singaporeans cause for concern regarding the true quality of our much vaunted public institutions. When put to the test, they fail our expectations. The fault lies in both the people and the systems under which they operate. Or maybe it's something in the water that is dumbing us down!

SBS Transit NE MRT Line Service Breakdown
Public transportation has become a politicised issue thanks to the rash of major breakdowns at the end of last year. So it is no surprise that when a fault developed in the NE line last week, the operators shied away from calling it a breakdown and chose to call it a delay instead.

Even if the delay is truly 10mins (PER station as it turned out), it represented a reduction in throughput of at least 80% if normal train intervals is 2mins. Front line staff either never made the mental connection that transportation is about moving people (and not about whether the train is moving however slowly or not) or are constrained from action by company policies to take sensible action, namely: Activating shuttle buses to relieve the passenger load from the trains. The shuttle buses need not be free-of-charge. The excuse we heard was that as long as the trains are moving, they cannot provide shuttle buses.

Wild Boar Culling
Granted that we might not expect the brightest bulbs in the Admin service to be seconded to NParks, the public response from NParks to the need to manage the wild boar population nevertheless gives cause for concern. Managing the wild boar population is going to be an ongoing activity. It's like cutting grass. It is not
something that you do once and that's it.

Given that it is not going to be a one time activity, then is culling the best approach? NParks is suggesting sedation and then euthanisation by injection. Is the cost of sedation and euthanisation by injection cheaper than administering a chemical contraceptive for example?

Clearing away food sources like oil palms will only force the boars to concentrate on remaining food sources like wild gingers and seeds from the hardwood trees (which NParks wants to protect) or else to wander out of the parks. Do we expect the boars to remain in the reserve and starve themselves? Destruction of saplings for nesting and seeds need to be seen in the context of natural forest regeneration. New trees can only grow when an old tree falls and creates the space. Most of those saplings have no chance of ever growing into trees, wild boar or no wild boar.

But most egregious of all is the apparent eagerness of NParks to go ahead with the culling when they do not even have the most basic of information available: What is the size of the wild boar population and what is its composition (males, females, adults, juveniles). Do they have a long term plan to effectively manage the size and health of the population? Do they even HAVE a plan at all?

50 Year Home Loans
Mr Khaw Boon Wan has come out and labelled the 50 year home loan offered by UOB as a gimmick. We were rather hoping that he would go further and ask UOB to terminate such loans. But alas, not! Mr Khaw Boon Wan, one presumes is instead adding it to his "I'm monitoring it" list.

If something has no redeeming value and is likely to cause harm, why leave it be? Surely we can't be leaving it to the principle of "caveat emptor"? If there is a big pothole in the middle of the road, do we leave it for the individual car drivers to avoid? Why have a casino exclusion list? Why control the sale of hard drugs? If someone wants to gamble their lives away at the casino or 'chase the dragon' into zombie land, let them, caveat emptor man!

Is Mr Khaw waiting for the take up rate for the 50 year loans to get big enough to become a sub-prime problem of our own before he takes action? I would suggest he tries to 'fix' the problem now for the few who have taken up such loans to get a feel for the kind of effort it would take.

I would like to be able to write something positive about some policy or action that is good but I can't find any! Take the news about the building of preschools being ramped up. Sounds good right? But wait a minute... if parents are not having enough babies, then why is there a shortage of preschools? Where are these preschools being built? Would they crowd out the building of eldercare centers? Again, something is not right here!