So much has been said about the Anton Casey saga this week, I thought I'd create a page with all the links in just one place for those of you looking to see how the story has evolved over the last few days. I admit the outcome has taken me by surprise but I am just wondering where this leaves us because your scapegoat is now gone (he is in Perth, Australia) and if he has any sense, he will spend some time lying low, keeping out of Singapore until this whole thing well and truly blows over. His PR agency certainly has not handled this well on his behalf and I think it suffices to say that he has burnt his bridges with Singapore for good. Anyway, here are the links for all 8 parts of this saga:
part 1: http://limpehft.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/trending-anton-casey-bernice-wong-story.html
part 2: http://limpehft.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/why-you-singaporeans-have-no-influence.html
part 3: http://limpehft.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/anton-caseys-apology-and-responsefollow.html
part 4: http://limpehft.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/lmfao-singaporean-petitions-anton.html
part 5: http://limpehft.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/the-sedition-act-and-anton-casey.html
part 6: http://limpehft.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/the-british-reaction-to-anton-casey.html
For me, the most "cue face to palm" moment of this whole episode is when Singaporeans appluaded minister Shanmugam condemning Anton Casey's actions. Perhaps I have been rather cautious about this issue in particular so far, so let me be crystal clear now. The PAP lets in over two million foreigners into Singapore, the locals are extremely unhappy with the situation and take their anger out on Anton Casey who has turned into the scapegoat of the week. Didn't any of those Singaporeans who applauded Shanmugam pause for a moment and thought, "wait a minute, wasn't it this very government who opened the doors and rolled out the red carpet for people like Anton Casey to come to Singapore in the first place? So Shanmugam helps gets rid of one very unpopular FT, what about the others just like Anton Casey who are still here,
what about the thousands more who will come in 2014 - what about those FTs then?" Are you Singaporeans so shortsighted that you cannot see the big picture, why are you focusing on just this one FT? Has anyone paused and reflected on the PAP's stance on FTs which created this situation in the first place? Has anyone placed any blame on the PAP for this sorry mess?
So much has been said on this case over the course of this week, I enjoyed a massive spike in traffic to my blog and I hope that some of the readers who have stumbled upon my blog for the first time will take the time to read some of my other articles and check my vlog out as well. I don't think there's much more to be said about the Anton Casey case now that he is gone - but if you have any further comments or questions, please feel free to let me know below. Thank you for taking the time to read my blog and I hope you have enjoyed my writing!
PS. This saga has generated so much debate amongst my readers - don't forget to read the comments section which comes after the end of each article as well, the debates are very interesting too!
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| Anton Casey is but one tree in a forest of over 2 million trees. |
You hit the nail on the head by mentioning that he's just a scapegoat. I was appalled myself when the Law Minister actually made those comments on this issue. This is indeed so contradictory considering that the ruling party was the root cause! (not surprised since 2016 is fast approaching) I guess people find it easier to hack away at the symptoms , rather than to make a real difference at the voting booths.Meanwhile Anton Casey with his money and prospects is still going to have the high life else where, while Singaporeans are still stuck here with all these problems.
ReplyDeleteHi Ayhtas thanks for your comment. The fact that Shanmugam spoke up didn't surprise me but the fact that people started applauding him for doing so made me slap my forecast in utter despair. The PAP lets in over 2 million foreigners and when the minister helps drive just ONE out, you applaud him - like hello, what about the other 1,999,999 foreigners in Singapore after you drive this ONE out?
DeleteEverything you said is so true! Anton Casey and his money will go elsewhere whilst you still have to deal with all the shit on the ground in Singapore - MRT anyone? Instead of focusing on that problem (which they can't solve, what are ordinary S'poreans gonna do about the fare hikes and breakdowns anyway?) no, they distract themselves with Anton Casey. Now that he is gone, you have to face your problems again, boo hoo hoo.
I just found out that his son is disabled and all I can say is stupid is as stupid does. To make it even shorter, angmo guy is a wanker. Instead of worrying how to properly bring up his son, he is mouthing off. This bloody wanker of a human being hasn't woken up to the fact that he is a dad and if this is the case he could move to mars and I'll still be very worried for his son. His son has obstacles in life that nobody else will ever have.His wanker for a dad has no clue and therefore will not be adequate enough when the time comes to teach him the things that he would need to get through life. Angmo didn't start being ignorant yesterday and I don't think he will start clueing himself about what a shit hole he would have to help his son climb out of whether he likes it or not. Limpeh do you have any idea what kind of disability it is? I'm just curious to see just the magnitude of the problem that angmo still hasn't wrapped his head around on behalf of his son...
ReplyDeleteAlso, disabled or not, kids will follow your example. And what is the wife role in all of this exactly? Letting wanker do as wanker wants because he brings in the dough?
This whole thing is such a clusterfuck...remember the part about how children learn from what their parents do? The Singaporean kids will learn how to be prejudice/racist/discriminatory against anybody that does not conform to their idea of "normal" worse, they can't hold a decent conversation cos the parents never did.
Face, meet hand and welcome to Singapore. Angmo earns more in one year than my dad earns in many years, is more lowly educated than said angmo, but i'll still choose my dad over this clueless guy any day. Makes me angry that people like him get a free pass to become parents just because "you cannot prepare yourself to be one like you do for an exam."
As this wanker has shown, to be a decent human being with the ability to exercise self-control is a pretty good indicator of how well you will be as a parent.
Twenty-tree
Hi 23, I will respond in full later - I am an uncle of a disabled child, not a parent but I think I do want to respond. But just not now, later. I have quite a lot to deal with at the moment. I just think that your expectations are unrealistically high and you've set yourself up to be disappointed I'm afraid. I've learnt that lesson that way myself so many times in life. More on this later.
Deletehttp://limpehft.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/a-reply-to-muchopunks-question-about.html
DeleteLimpeh,
ReplyDeleteA lot has happened in the past week. First there was the rant by Stephanie Koh on why she was not proud to be Singaporean, the insensitive remarks by Anton Casey and the furore that led to his exile to Perth, the anger at fare hikes amid more frequent MRT disruptions and higher profitability, and not to forget the riots in Little India, population protest and free my internet movement last year. Do all these things add up? Do they collectively hint that there is a larger problem in Singapore or are they just isolated incidents?
First let me start with the educational system in Singapore. Its meritocratic system only allows a small fraction of locals to study at its local uni. Students are streamed at primary 6 and split into normal, express and special stream based on their abilities. Then at 'O' Levels, students are channelled into ITE, polytechnics or junior colleges again based on their abilities. For ITE and polytechnic students, most of them do not get the chance to study at local unis. They stop at their level or pursue foreign degrees if they can afford it. For JC students who finished 'A' Levels, most will be absorbed into local unis. A small number of exceptionally smart 'A' Level students who aced their exams will be offered government scholarship. Some of these scholars will go on to become elites in the system and exert great control over the lives of Singaporeans. In order to find those elites at the top of the pile, the educational system has to be made as rigorous and difficult as possible, forcing many students to become study robots (coined by Stephanie Koh). When one studies too much (or rather have too much things to study), one mind's becomes too rigid due to lack of self-expression. One study for the sake of study, accept whatever is spoon-fed by teachers as the truth and never pause to question things on a deeper level. No wonder Stephanie Koh says (i) Sinkies are narrow minded and believe everything the papers says (though more have become sceptical and since turned to alternative media), (ii) not creative, (iii)submissive and (iv) laments that talented people can't enrol in uni unless they are booksmart. But too bad for sinkies, the meritocratic educational system is a necessary evil for the government to pick the elites from the crowd so that they can fill high positions in government ministries, GICs and Temasek companies, etc.
Let's move on to government control. The government controls virtually everything in Singapore, the press, unions, election department, the domestic economy via GIC and Temasek, grassroots, people's savings through CPF, etc. They are able to exert heavy influence on civil service and courts. The government also has a special weapon called ISA to detain people without trial for as long as they want. With so much controls in place on such a small island, everyone follows the rules (another Stefanie Koh complaint). Nobody except the very brave like JBJ Jeyaretnam dare cross the line. Moving on to the economy, 35% of our salary goes to CPF and over time this has allowed Temasek and GIC to build up a portfolio of companies so competitive that very few if none of the local companies can challenge them. With their savings locked up in CPF and also due to risk adverse mentality cultivated by a rigid education system, entrepreneurship amongst Singaporeans is almost non-existent. Now blessed with so much power and money, the elites now want to conquer the world. They don't want privates jets, they want to own multiple airlines (SIA, Scoot and Tiger). They don't want private yatches, they want an entire shipping company (NOL and APL), they don't want private chateaus, they want to buy an entire town (Stuyvesant Town which unfortunately went kaput). They want to show off to oil rich countries that they can compete with their sovereign wealth funds even though Singapore has no natural resources.
To raise more funds for Temasek and GIC, the elites decided to privatise public companies and ramp up GDP as quickly as they can, in the process collecting more income tax, stamp duty, GST, COE, ERP and other taxes. The modus operandi is to increase the population, open casinos and attract more funds to Singapore by positioning Singapore as a centre for wealth management. To cater to the housing and transportation needs of a higher population, the govt imports tons of third world labour to build new infrastructure and work in service industries. To cater to the rich, the finance industry imports many wealth managers like Anton Casey into Singapore. All these policies eventually lead to the stratification of society. At the very top, you have a small percentage of elites who pay themselves multi-million dollar salaries working in govt, Temasek and GICs, next comes highly paid foreigners like Anton Casey working in wealth management and finance. Lower down the food chain are the hollowed out middle class who find their salaries stagnated by the influx of foreign PMET and struggling with higher cost of living. At the very bottom you have the lower class competing with third world labour and struggling to get by. The influx of foreigners only serve to increase asset prices, benefitting the rich and making life more difficult for the middle class and poor by making them pay longer instalment for their houses. In fact many middle class people have been relegated below poverty line (as defined by World Bank to be earning less than half the median income). With a widening rich poor gap and dilution of Singapore identity due to the govt's liberal immigration policy, there is bound to be more tension and conflict in the society. With such a society, it is no wonder that Stephanie Koh says sinkies are not happy and nice.
ReplyDeleteMoving on to the riots in Little India. When people riot, they riot for a reason. They just don't riot because they are drunk. They riot because their anger and frustration are not addressed. Alcohol is one of the cause but not the root cause. When the bangalas see one of their comrades knocked down and killed by a bus, they decided to take matters into their own hands and seek justice for him because they no longer believe in the system. The bangalas feel that they are not properly protected by labour laws and exploited. There is no minimum wage (yet another Stefanie Koh complaint) to protect them, many of them incur heavy debts to come here to work, and can be repatriated at any time if they don't do as their bosses say. Many of them are forced to work even when they are genuinely ill or injured and some are not even paid. Their contracts are ambiguous and they have no legal recourse in disputes. Throw in the discrimination showed by sinkies towards these people, it is no wonder that they riot to release their pent up frustrations. Of course the elites will want you to think that the riot is an isolated incident. They want the exploitation to continue to keep their grassroots leaders (many of whom own construction companies) happy and profit from foreign levies.
Now to Anton Casey. There is a lot of friction between locals and foreigners lately. Frustrations of the locals include the lose of jobs and higher education opportunities, wage stagnation, higher living costs as a result of influx of foreigners, discrimination by foreigners against locals in the workplace, etc. Sinkies have no channels to vent their frustration due to a lack of human rights and freedom of speech in the country. All feedback to the govt has fallen on deaf ears as they are hell bent on pursuing their target of 6.9 million population. When a rich foreigner who has benefitted so much from the system at the expense the locals comes out to insult the locals, it was the straw that broke the camel's back. Sinkies hit Casey with a wave of tsumani attacks, eventually forcing his exile to Perth.
ReplyDeleteNext the fare hikes and protest amid higher profitability and more frequent service disruptions. When the Public Transport Council said that fare hikes and service disruption are unrelated, you know whose side they are on. The public transport operators enjoyed a fare hike in 2011 and increase profitability since then but allowed service standard to deteriorate. How can fare hikes and service disruption not be related? It is not a coincidence that the Minister of Transport and CEO of SMRT are both former generals from the elite, serving the interest of Temasek who have already received more than half a billion in dividends from SMRT since SMRT was privatised.
Moving on to the population protest. As mentioned earlier, the elites want to import more people to ramp up GDP and collect more tax revenue to feed GIC and Temasek. They do not care about the costs to the society. They don't care if there will be more tensions and conflicts between people of different social class and nationalities. Already the middle class is hollowing out and disappearing, leading to a larger lower class at the bottom against a richer and more powerful upper class. Imagining another 1.5 million foreigners coming into Singapore, what will Singapore be like with foreigners outnumbering locals?
The Little India Riots and Anton Casey furore is only just the beginning and the tip of the iceberg. There will be more to come, don't be surprise to see blood on the streets soon. Of course the govt will want you to think that they have everything under control. They believe that they are in control of everything including online news and the blogosphere, hence the introduction of new licensing rules for websites. But the only thing that they cannot control is the people's mind.
To conclude, the elites are obsessed with power and money and their greed knows no bounds. 'Whither Singapore' says George Yeo after the fall of Punggol East. Sinkies better take his words seriously and start thinking about what they want for themselves, their future generations and Singapore.
Wow. Wow. Extremely well written. Whilst I don't agree with 100% of everything you wrote, I agree with most of it and applaud you for the way you have articulated yourself so eloquently.
DeleteI will probably cut and paste this into a proper blog post because I think you've written so well and I fear that people who only read my articles and not the comments may miss out on this. But I will do that later, something I need to attend to right now.
Do you think HSBC is going to collapse soon?
ReplyDeleteWhat are you talking about, HSBC is the world's 2nd largest bank and has a strong global presence. What makes you think it will collapse soon? It's going pretty strong as it is.
DeleteI saw a online thread about HSBC on the verge of collapse [http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/eat-drink-man-woman-16/hsbc-limiting-large-cash-withdrawals-customers~-4555062.html]. I don't think it is true but I am rather worried. :x
DeleteMy parents have a LOT of money in it (140k) and I getting really worried about it. Should I be?
DeleteFirstly, I would take anything I read on HWZ with a pinch of salt as it is populated by a mix of people who know what they are talking about and people who don't - in this case, it boils down to a story on the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25861717 And it is about HSBC restricting big cash withdrawals and it seems to be a step too far in terms of protecting their customers against financial crime - this seems to be a story about poor customer service, rather than a bank running out of money. After all, in the story that was featured in the article, the amount in question was £7000 - like please, that's a drop in the ocean when it comes to how much money the bank has, £7000 isn't going to make or break the bank. Even a small shop deals with more money than that - so the figures are simply not adding up, the evidence simply isn't there. It sounds like HSBC's customer services have really messed up in this case and there are unhappy customers, sure - but the collapse of a bank would be over far, far larger amounts of money in the billions, not in the thousands.
DeleteNote that in the original BBC article - nobody talked about HSBC collapsing, they just talked about poor customer services. It is some blogger somewhere who then misinterpreted the story and jumped to the wrong conclusions.
Once again, be careful what you believe on HWZ. Anyone can quote any blogger and start a rumour which may be totally untrue.
Muchopunk, what has his parenting skills got to do with this controversy, and how are they relevant? You might as well say that he goes not go to church, or that he does not recycle, or call his mom often. Singaporeans bullied him over his poor judgement, and have shown the children of Singapore that you deal with disputes by condemnation and death threats. "Son, if someone says something about you that you do not like, go tell your teacher and your friends. Then together with your friends, you attack this person with condemnation and death threats. Atta boy!" Yeah, Singaporeans are much better parents than Anton Casey. Sure. Sure. If it makes you feel better than yourself. Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Anton Casey is obnoxious. Singaporeans are thugs. See the difference?
ReplyDeleteI totally agree. You and I are so on the same wavelength Di.
Deletehttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/jim-armitage-expat-who-mocked-the-poor-in-singapore-is-not-unique-9078717.html
ReplyDeleteThis fella makes a lot of sense. The government (PAP) needs to take a long and hard look at its immigration policies for the upcoming GE (2016) . But in all honesty, I'm betting that nothing will change .... cest la vie
Oh please Claire, you know exactly where the PAP stands on the issue of immigration - they want 6.9 million! The PAP are honest and up front - but it is the S'poreans whom I'm fed up with. They don't want more FTs in S'pore - yet they keep voting for the PAP despite knowing exactly what the outcome will be.
DeleteEinstein said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.
This reminds me of an incident in a Malaysian restaurant in London. Dumb Angmoh asks the waitress, "what is Laksa?" Waitress replies, "it is a very spicy seafood noodle soup." Angmoh replies, "I'm not fond of spicy food but I'll try it." Waitress warns her, "Are you sure? It is very spicy. If you don't like chillies, I recommend other dishes with no chillies and are not spicy" Angmoh replies, "no, it's fine, I'll have a laksa please."
Waitress comes back with a bowl of laksa and the Angmoh takes one sip of the gravy and turns red in the face. "It's too spicy!" Waitress replies, "I did warn you that laksa is spicy! What were you expecting?"
So Singaporeans are like the dumb Angmoh. They know exactly what the PAP's stance is on population and FTs. Yet they're hoping for the PAP to change its mind, the same way the Angmoh was somehow hoping for an authentic Malaysian laksa not to be spicy.
Duh!!!
I twonder if it's a little naive to think the minister for law spoke up against anton casey because he identifies with the poor, smelly train-people. Or even with the layman. Time to take my meds again...
DeleteYes because generally, Singaporeans are a strange lot, we want change yet we are afraid of change, we don't like uncertainty, we complain and complain but yet we still do ... we don't like being told "told you so" , I just don't understand how come the majority of us ended up with this kind of mentality, I'm worried for our younger generation in the long run. Yah sure the kids are dreaming big now, with the "explore options" etc but in the long run can we really hope for them to turn out different from the generation of today?! haha
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