I’ll Do It Legal – Lucky Luciano.

 

Lucky Luciano, who is considered to be the father of modern organized crime, was reputed to have said that if he had to do it all over again, he would “do it legal.” He said, “"I learned too late that you need just as good a brain to make a crooked million as an honest million.”

I think this line at a time when the hot topic in Singapore is “scams.” Banks have suddenly discovered that cyberspace is filled with scam artist and they have been forced to “warn” customers about the reality of being scammed online:

 

Scams are officially sexy. If you want to start a discussion on anything outside Covid-19, talk about scams. Crime has always been a sexy talking point and why shouldn’t a scam that robs a young couple of their funds for a dream home or an old lady of her pension be a talking point?  

While its fun to talk about scams and crimes in general produces grab headlines, the real money, as Mr. Luciano alluded to, is in the legitimate. Why break the law and risk the punishments that come with it when you can work within the law? There are ways of doing things which may sound questionable but are in fact perfectly legal.

Singapore is rich in examples of how people make money from doing things legitimately. If you look at the top, we have the example of our politicians, whom unlike most of their Asian counterparts, are known for NOT taking bribes.

There’s a reason for this. Our politicians are the world’s best paid and we are reminded that we need to pay politicians exceedingly well to ensure that there’s no incentive to use their positions of power to dip into the public purse. Our politicians are placed in a situation of “Why steal when you can get an exceedingly good life legally?”

When Singaporeans complain about politicians, it’s always about whether they are getting the value for what they’re paying rather than where any given politician gets their money from. Our Prime Minister is the world’s highest paid but unlike his former counterpart across the Causeway, he does not have to explain how he got a “donation” into his personal bank account.

Just as our politicians are in position where they have “no incentive to be corrupt,” our banks are placed in a position where they have “no incentive to be reckless” with their funds. Just as you will never have to bribe a politician in Singapore, you will never get a “subprime” situation out of Singapore’s banks.

Singapore is a wonderful market for banks to be in. Look the basics of what a bank does (borrow money cheaply and lend it out at significantly higher rates). Our banks offer some of the lowest interest rates around. The standard interest rate on a fixed deposit is less than one percent per year.

https://blog.moneysmart.sg/fixed-deposits/best-fixed-deposit-accounts-singapore/

On the other hand, the banks are position of lending at much higher rates. Home loans, which the most secure loans for banks hover around one percent per year and there are credit cards, which allow banks to charge up to 25 percent a year.  

https://www.mortgagewise.sg/

https://www.finder.com/sg/credit-cards/credit-card-interest-rates

You would imagine that the difference in what they pay to people they borrow from and what they get paid by the people they lend to would be the only license to print money. Well, it isn’t. One of the great money spinners for banks is “fees,” particularly “fall below” fees.

A fall below fee is essentially a fee charged for having less than a certain amount in your account. The amount can vary from as little as $2 a month for having less than $500 in your DBS savings account to as much as S$35 a month for having less than $10,000 a month in the business accounts offered by most banks.

https://www.dbs.com.sg/sme/businessclass/articles/finance-and-operations/best-sme-bank-singapore?pk_source=google&pk_medium=organic&pk_campaign=seo

 

The banks have ingeniously argued that it is necessary for them to charge fall below fees because customers might set up dormant accounts and having less than a certain amount in a bank account costs the bank money (let’s remember that the main inventory stored in a bank account is money, which for the most part exists as computer code, in the bank’s system).

It goes without saving that the people who provide a good portion of the bank’s fees tend to be the less well to do. A person earning S$1,400 a month (the amount most people consider the minimal for survival) is less likely to be able to keep the $500 minimum sum in his or her account at the end of the month than say someone earning S$5,000 and above. Hence, the person earning less is more likely to have to pay the monthly S$2 surcharge that DBS/POSB imposes. The same goes for enterprises. An entrepreneur starting out will need to factor an additional $35 a month in bank charges as a business expenses whereas an established government linked company does not have to. Reasons is simple, a government linked company will at any given time have more than S$10,000 in the bank than a “boot-strapping” entrepreneur.

Now, if you follow the argument as to why banks need to charge a “fall-below” fee, the immediate question is why don’t the banks hive off the customers to someone else. Budget airlines started by taking over the routes that were “unprofitable” for national carrier. It’s also been done in places like China, where “FinTech” firms compete with the banks. Firms like Ant Financial (Alipay) and Tencent (WeChat pay) have developed sophisticated payment systems that by pass the banks. It’s reached a stage where even the beggars (not exactly the people banks try to get as customers) offer you a QR code.

That’s not going to happen in Singapore. As much as the government talks about “inclusiveness” in the banking sector and inviting “Fintech” firms into the market, the ecosystem in Singapore is “Bank-centric.” Everything has to start and end with a bank account. In China, I don’t have to deal with the Chinese banks. I merely do as the Chinese beggars do – I get an account with Alipay or WeChat. By comparison, I need to have a bank account, even if the only payment system I’ll ever use is “PayNow.” The system is designed in such a way where the FinTechs can only exists as subcontractors to the banks rather than as competitors. This situation is best described by Mr. Emanuel Daniel, Founder of the Asian Banker:

https://www.emmanueldaniel.com/why-dbs-is-not-the-worlds-best-bank/

Sure, the banks haven’t wiped out large sums of money like the crooks behind the recent phishing scams. However, their ability to charge “fall-below” fees eats away at the savings of those at the bottom of the pile (S$2 a month might not seem like a lot but it adds up). More Importantly, what they’re doing is perfectly legal and their ability to continue doing this is blessed by the government.

The wisdom of Mr Luciano cannot be disputed. Sure, the guys doing the phishing are making the headlines but the guys really making the money are the banks. Instead of trying to break the law, we should always get the law to work for us instead.

Study So Much until S***id

 One of the most prominent quotes about one of the ladies in my life came from Singapore’s dumpiest hooker, who described my ex-girlfriend, who was had been to Raffles Girls School (RGS) as having “Studied so much that she had become stupid.”

I think of this line because in a way, this sums up the biggest problem in Singapore these days. We have top heavy management filled with people who have studied so much that they have become stupid. If one were to look at the performance of the big firms run by born and bred CEOs, as was done in “BE LIKE A PARALYMIAN AND DON’TBUBBLE WRAP YOURSELF” (26 August 2021), you will notice an uncomfortable trend. Our big local firms, run by born and bred Singaporeans have been underperforming in just about every measure of the word and that is despite the fact that they’ve got near monopoly power in their domestic market on essential services.

The internet is a buzz with lots of noise about how the influx of dark-skinned Asians has ruined the lot of our local born Singaporeans. The common complaint is this – how can someone from the University of Rubber Pundek Prata on the tip of Tamil Nadu get a position superior to the graduate from the National University of Singapore (NUS), which we are told is a world-class university? As much as the government decries the people complaining about graduates from the University of Rubber Pundek Prata, the government is actually grateful that the complainers are focused on the University of Rubber Pundek Prata because it districts the population from the awful truth that the real problem with Singapore is the fact that the government has stuffed the top positions on every organisation with power over the lives of ordinary citizens with people who have studied so much that they’ve become dumb to the reality of what’s happening on the ground.

Our guys have great degrees and the top ones don’t even come from NUS. They come from places like Harvard and Cambridge. If you looked at their qualifications, you’d say that these people are exceedingly smart. You would be right to assume that they’re smart – they’re so smart that they realised that all they had to do in life was to ignore all the basic laws of economics and collect money. The key to success once you’re in a lucrative position is to stay there and avoid getting into trouble – which means not doing anything. Your screw ups will be miraculously turned into a success narrative.

Just look at the SMRT Corporation and how it’s CEO, Mr. Desmond Kuek became a hero for creating value for his shareholders by selling the company to his largest shareholder, Temasek Holdings. Or look at another former General, Ng Yat Chung, who ran Singapore Press Holdings in such a manner that he became a hero by hiving off the media part of the company that needs government support and the property part was sold at a few times less than its peak to another property company.

Our “local” genius seems to come from creating stories about how fine everything is without checking on the ground. Today (25 January 2022) had one of its best. Apparently, an academic in our world class national university has worked out that the people on the lowest rung of the ladder were in fact the least affected by price increases. The story can be found at:

https://www.straitstimes.com/business/economy/lowest-income-groups-least-impacted-by-rising-prices-in-second-half-of-2021

 

 As with the case of Singapore, the good professor ensured that he had the statistics to back his claim.

It’s quite clear that the good professor is rather sheltered. Sure, the price of certain items that the middle and higher classes buy might have risen a bit more than the prices of the things the poor focus on. However, it doesn’t take a genius to understand that someone earning S$5,000 a month is going to feel the pinch significantly less than someone earning S1,400 (the amount that is considered a minimal wage of sorts in Singapore).

 What exactly are we trying to prove here? We have a world class university because it can come with statistics that magic away the reality that people face on the ground?

There’s no way of saying it other than to say that we are wasting brains and talent of our local achievers on creating a fantasy world. There are plenty of issues faced by normal people, who are paying Rolls Royce prices for a “top-notch” government to solve. The government and our local elites need to spend a bit less time creating stories that have no relation to the reality that the rest of us face and start having an honest dialogue with the people.

Are the Long Hours Instructive or Destructive?

 One of the most interesting results of the Covid Pandemic has been a world-wide phenomenon called the “Great Resignation.” Despite the economic devastation brought about by Covid-19, the workers of the world have decided to quit their jobs and companies around the world are having problems recruiting. This phenomenon goes against every previous economic downturn, where people who had jobs hung onto them for dear life because having a job, even a badly paid one was better than not having a job at all.

In Singapore, this has been felt most keenly in the “professions,” or the jobs that everyone used to aspire to. Young professionals, who spent years studying for something that they believed would give them “instant respect,” have decided to quit for other things which they’ve generally argued, provide them with better work life balance and better mental health.

https://mothership.sg/2021/09/lawyer-auditor-banker-quit-mental-health/

 

One of the most affected professions was law. Survey after survey showed that young lawyers had a common complaint – long hours, which lead to burn out. More details can be found in the following story:

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/lawyers-singapore-burn-out-great-resignation-wave-2453276

 

 The President of Singapore’s Law Society, Mr. Adrian Tan of TSMP Law now has the unenviable task of trying to address the high attrition rate in the profession:

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/companies-markets/culture-not-main-reason-for-attrition-lawsoc-president

 

 I am far from an expert on managing human resources, so I can’t give any “hard” insights as to who is right and who is wrong in this debate nor can I really comment on cultures of any particular industry.

However, I can talk about my own relationship with long-hours and having worked a few long nights in my past.

I would argue that in the initial stages of any given career, one is bound to work long hours. It’s a case of, you’re starting out. You have no idea what the job is about and you’re bound to make mistakes and be “less productive” than your more seasoned colleagues. When I started out at the age of 26 in 2001 for a small “fly-by-night” marketing communications firm, I worked insanely long hours. My girlfriend at the time hated it because I wasn’t in a job where I could knock of at six and then spend time with her.

Well, the girl friend had a point. I did burn out after five months of 24/7 and being pushed to bring in revenue and so on. Towards the end, I lost the ability to string a sentence together and to impress clients I was servicing. I was told five months did not count as work experience and labeled a “job-hopper” who couldn’t last in future job interviews. Didn’t know how to tell people that the average lifespan in the job and place I was in was around three weeks (inclusive of notice period) and five months there was like five years everywhere else.

Interestingly enough, the “five-months” work experience there gave me enough confidence to try and sell myself as a “PR Consultant” (at that stage it was might as well go to the client direct to take money rather than spend money looking for a job in an agency and waiting out the month till you saw your next pay cheque).

So, whilst my PR stint was never a “career” in the normal sense of the word, little me from nowhere was able to take on the big guys and get results. I take great pride in the fact that I could get work from big name clients without having stepped foot and been part of a team that ultimately took orders from London or New York. However, I was able to do that because I was happy to work the obscene hours in those early months of my working life.

The reality is that working hard is a “given” in any job. There are simply times where you got to do whatever it takes to get the job done. You don’t worry about “work-life” balance because if you don’t do the work spectacularly, you’re not going to get more of it, which will result in you not having a life.

If you in a profession that by its nature is confrontational, you should no further than Mr. Walter Silvester of SilvesterLegal LLC who says it best – “Do you want to win or do you want a work-life balance?”

 

 

It was the same case when I joined the insolvency business. I’m not a trained lawyer or a trained accountant. However, I put in the hours and whilst I am by no means qualified to call myself an expert, I can hold my own as long as I don’t go into the details of legal acts and accounting practices. I can only do that because I had a step learning curve, which came from being willing to put in the time.

Having said what I’ve just said, one has to distinguish between working long hours because it’s a necessity or whether its simply unproductive. After three-years of doing anything, people should find themselves working more “reasonable” hours because they’ve become better at their craft and have found ways to do things in a more efficient manner. If someone continues to work 24/7 after three-years, one has to question if that person is either not learning or a genius for creating inefficiency.

There is working long hours because you need to achieve an objective. My experience was Absolut Mandarin in 2002. Our little agency slogged it out but we achieved something amazing when the Absolut client expressed her delight with us. I think lawyers who work all day and night preparing for a trial of a client they believe in and when they win, that victory is so much sweeter (or as a lawyer who managed to get a trial heard in Singapore in a situation where the case did not involve events in Singapore – “knowing you’ve given your all and you managed in a year to hit a master swordsman who had twenty-years to prepare).

Then there’s working like a dog for no particular reason at all. Its as if you’re doing it because management has no clue about what its doing but instead of coming down to the trenches to find out, they’re sitting in the club house complaining the champagne isn’t cold enough because you’re not fighting hard enough even though you’re currently taking on ten big guys with your arm tied behind your back and the only thanks you’re getting is a “f** you.”

I don’t believe that working long hours in itself is causing the great resignation. I believe its other factors that put people off. In the “normal” office people put up with all sorts of things because they accepted it as part and parcel of “working.” However, when the pandemic hit and we had to work in a different way, there was a realization that much of what went on in the old work place was not actually work but self-destructive masturbation of the pointless. Covid showed us that “normal” was in fact not normal and instead of rushing back to impose a system that was clearly failing people.  

Trust Me?

 

The great story in this early part of the year is a story of a young couple who got scammed out of a huge of money in a “phishing scam,” that was targeted at the Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation’s (OCBC) customers. The full details of the story can be found at:

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/ocbc-bank-customer-lost-120k-in-fake-text-message-scam-another-had-250k-stolen

 

 There was something of a kuffle over the liability of the bank and the end of result was the fact that all the banks in Singapore started sending out warnings about scams and listing down all the prevention methods that they were taking in order to protect their customers.

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/dbs-bank-warns-of-sms-phishing-scam

 

Scams and con-jobs are nothing issue. Con-jobs have been around since there have been jobs. As human civilization has gotten more “advanced” so have scams and con-artist. This has been particularly true as technology has advanced to levels that were once considered futuristic. The level of phishing scams has become so sophisticated to the level that the average person is not going to be able to tell between the scam and the actual institution they are impersonating. An example of that subtle difference can be found below:

 

I guess if you have to be fair to scammers, the guys who create the sophisticated scams actually put a lot of hard work into creating something that most people won’t be able to recognize as a scam. How, for example would an untrained eye be able to distinguish between the real bank and the scam bank pretending to be the bank when the difference in the URL is almost the same?

However, a lot of scams aren’t all that difficult to around if you were only sharp enough. The scam letters out of Nigeria were usually the easiest to spot. In some cases, the letters from the respective ministries might not even have the letter head of the ministry they claimed that they were representing. One of my favorites was a diamond dealer who had bank statements from a bank in Macau that looked like they were printed on an excel sheet the night before.

As unsophisticated as these scams are, the question remains – if such scams are easy to spot, how is it such that they continue to flourish. Well, the answer is pretty obvious, they continue to thrive because they have and endless source of customers.

The reason why people continue to fall for such scams is the fact that the scams often tend to dress themselves up in a veneer of credibility and they appeal to the greed factor in their victims. It’s the second factor that usually screws up the victim. Speak to any of the victims of these scams and they will tell you that there were “NO REASONS NOT TO TRUST.” So, what are these “NO REASONS NOT TO TRUST”

One of the more sophisticated ones that comes to mind is a scam that involved getting mid-level professionals to invest in hydroponic farms. The premise was credible. The government (usually the source of everything in Singapore) had been talking about food security and not depending on imports and the science of hydroponics has been proven. So, in that respect the premise was credible.

However, the key issue was that it was more “talk” about hydroponics than actual hydroponics. The scam artist in question was very generous in producing glossy brochures. They held impressive seminars for the "investors." However, this was hype with no substance. Even the glossy photos used in the brochures were stock photos from the "royalty-free" section of the stock library. 

The premise of the scam was actually credible. The presentation was incredibly slick. On paper there was nothing to fault the investors for not believing in it.

Another method used by scammers to gain trust is by using “trusted people.” One of the saddest cases that comes to mind was that of an “investment” house that claimed that they were lending money to banks which offered higher interest rates.

In this case the premise of the scam sounds improbable. However, in this case it turned out that the main scammer was the type of person whom his target audience was naturally inclined to trust – specifically a well-established working professional. He introduced his victims to two young men, who behaved like “Nice-boys” as they proceeded to fleece a group of pensioners out of their life savings (which promptly found its way to Mauritius, India and St Lucia).

If you ask each of the victims why they parted with their money, you’ll probably find that the answer being “I had NO REASON NOT TO TRUST.” I think of one of the victims telling the director of the company that scammed him - “You are my niece – you should have stopped me from putting in the money in October when you knew the company would have to close its bank account in December.”

Ask any of the victims of this scam and they are likely to tell you that they had “NO REASON NOT TO TRUST,” the people that they were talking to because they were either “nice” or a “relative” or a “friend.”

In a way, Singaporeans have been lucky. We are one of the best educated people on the planet. However, we tend to fall for things easily because we’ve been trained to trust certain things. How can, for example, established working professionals be untrustworthy – after all they are all licensed and regulated by the state? How can anyone who spent so much on a marketing campaign be a crook? We have been trained to believe that anyone who wears a shirt (especially a white, pressed one) has our interest at heart.

Crooks and conmen are not unique to Singapore. However, in a culture where signs and symbols of material wealth are equated with virtue and skepticism towards established authority is frowned upon, you provide a fertile ground for con artist. When someone shouts “Trust me” you better not.

What Do You Do After You Get F***ed?

 

The Story of Unpaid Wages – Copyright – Daily Post Nigeria

I had the opportunity to catch with one my oldest friends, after a day of looking through boxes of various old cases in the warehouse. During our catch-up session, we found that we had a number of common worries, which are rooted in the fact that we are both approaching 50, our earning power is on the slippery slope down and its unlikely that we’ll reach the stage where we’ll ever be able to look to our dependents to take care of us in old age. My friend then made the point to me that whilst things are likely to look very bleak for the rest of us, I was in the lucky position of being in an industry that is likely to do well.

This got me thinking about the prospects that I and many of my contemporaries are likely to face as economies (as the economies that people rather than statistics operate in) around the world lose the government support. In a way, I was lucky that I never “climbed” very high and thus don’t have that far to fall. I will probably struggle to survive like the masses. However, for those who have gotten onto the “Five C” ladder, things could be rather different. So, its perhaps a good time think of the awful scenario of the very real possibility of being thrown out of work.

Let’s start with the good news. If one is thrown out of work because the employer goes bankrupt, your salary is considered a “Preferential Debt.” When a company goes under, there is a pecking order as to who gets paid. The way this works is that when a company goes under, a liquidator will step in. The liquidator’s job is to “realise” what’s left of the business (collected debts and sold off whatever assets can be sold off). The first thing that gets paid is the “expenses of the liquidation” which includes the liquidator’s professional fees. After that, if there’s money left, salaries will have to be paid, followed by CPF and the various taxes. If there’s any money left after that, the “unsecured” creditors get paid.

There is, however, a cap of S$12,500 on preferential payments. So, if you’re a waiter who is owed a month’s salary, you’re in luck. Chances are your salary will be paid. However, if you’re a General Manager on S$18,000 a month, only S$12,500 will be preferred. The remaining S$5,500 will be “unsecured.” You should also be aware that only the “salary” is preferred. Leave-pay, notice-pay, medical claims and whatever allowances are not “preferred.”

To qualify for any dividend from a liquidation, you need to fill out what is called a “Proof of Debt” form in order to be counted as a creditor. It also helps to know what’s going on in the liquidation process. So, where possible, try to attend the creditor’s meeting and keep in touch with the liquidation staff, especially when the topic of their payment comes around. Scrutinize to ensure that their bills are not inflated.

You should take note that liquidation is a legal process, which inevitably means that it is time consuming. Any potential payouts are likely to happen not faster than six-months after the company goes into liquidation. Do not depend on payouts from a liquidation scenario to pay your bills.

That’s the good news in the event that you lose your job due to your employer going insolvent. As any medical practitioner will tell you:

 

 I remember one of my first Filipina colleagues in the Bistrot telling me that she was working for a boss, she had to look after the boss’s business because the boss paid her salary and needed money to pay her salary. So, she did her part to ensure that the boss had the money to pay.

The key message is that one should always be aware of what’s happening in the employer’s business for the simple reason that one’s own income is dependent on the boss’s business.

The first step is to adapt the mindset that loyalty has its limits. A good businessman is always on the look out to create greater efficiencies and more importantly cost savings. You are not exempted from that. The boss will replace you with someone cheaper or a machine that merely needs a bit of oil and can-do things at a push of a button. The process used to be limited to blue-collar manufacturing jobs. Now, in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and block chain, many white-collar jobs are being replaced by machines.

This mindset protects you from the fantasy that the boss will always be there to protect you. One should always save for a rainy day and one should have a side-hustle, whether it’s a part-time job or find ways to make a hobby pay (I used to wait tables, until Covid put a dent in the restaurant business and I do encourage people to support the advertisers of this blog and I take YouGov Surveys).

The second point is that you need to be observant about the health of the business and the boss’s reaction to his or her circumstances. If the boss has an attitude thinks has the mindset that the supplier is getting “ya-ya” and expects the supplier to negotiate for lower prices to get what is due to them – you better start preparing to upscale your alternative income and ensure that your rate of sending out CVs gets higher, because chances are they’ll treat not paying your salary in the same manner if they’re pushed into it.

However, while “bad boss’s” make headlines in issues of “non-payment,” the truth is that its actually the nice guys who screw up their employees in issues of “non-payment.” Being a good person and even a good businessman does not exempt you from making bad business decisions.

One of the saddest cases I had to handle involved a construction company that hadn’t paid its workers for five months. The boss was actually a good man (took construction workers on holiday with him) and had done great things for his company (they did big projects). However, he ran into a spell of bad luck and decided to throw all his eggs into a “big-kill” project. However, the usual story of slow payments down the line happened and he couldn’t sustain it. His staff from the admin down to the workers gave their all and worked for him without pay for five months. He took personal sacrifices to do what the right thing by his workers. Sold his private property and his BMW so that the workers could get something. In the end, it still wasn’t enough and we had to move in despite his best efforts to save his business. He was put into personal bankruptcy thanks to a ruthless labor supplier and sorting out the wage bill was not funny (I broke professional rules to help a few of the guys out).

He was a good guy and his intentions were good. He was by all intents an inspiring leader (as my boss pointed out – the workers were quite happy to take photos with him despite not being paid for over five months). However, he broke the cardinal rule of business – he ran out of money.

Your bills will not stop pilling up just because your boss is running for sainthood. If your boss misses one month’s salary, it should be a sign that he or she is not going to be able to pay the month after that. Now, this is not a hard and fast rule. There are situations where the boss had a bad month and the next month proved to be significantly better. You might want to stay for another month, especially if you see your boss has sold his home to ensure that you can keep yours.

However, the reality is that businesses do go through rough patches and a good majority do not recover. Even if you decide to give two months of free work, you should leave by the third if you see that you’re not going to get paid. Your bills don’t stop just because your employer is going through a rough patch.

Ignore the rosy statistics. Governments are now pulling back support and many businesses will go under. One needs to be ready for the awful eventuality that your employer might be one of them.

Here’s the Test – Here Are the Answers – Yay, Everyone Scored Full Marks

 

Since I’ve had a piece published on TRemeritus and had had the usual accusation of being part of the PAP Spin machinery, I thought I would start by giving kudos to one of the greatest banding exercises conducted by the Singapore government – namely using the name “Red Dot.” The inventor of the term was Indonesia’s third President, Mr. BJ Habibie, whom allegedly had used it in disparaging manner. We took this insult and turned it into a very successful brand.

I think of this branding exercise because the government recently tried to do something similar, only this time it was an effort to turn a common complaint about the Singapore government into a virtue. The leader of the opposition, Mr. Pritam Singh had coined the phrase “Ownself check ownself” when talking about the government’s disdain for opposition voices. The phrase caught on and is used consistently whenever someone wants to complain about the lack of alternative views in Singapore.

Given that the phrase had gathered something of a following, our minister of health, Mr. Ong Ye Kung, decided that it was time to turn the phrase around to the advantage of the government and so, at an event organized by the Institute of Policy Studies on 13 January 2022, Mr. Ong stated that he believed that “Ownself-check-ownself” as a virtue of the Singapore government. His arguments can be found at:

https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/ownself-check-ownself-virtue-spore-trouble-if-govt-cant-ensure-public-accountability-ong-ye-kung-1789921

 

I will leave the details of his arguments to the more intelligent. However, I will argue that Mr. Ong has a point when he says that there needs to be a system of checks and balances to keep the government of the day fairly honest. Mr. Ong talked about a “non-politicised” civil service, independent organs of state like the auditor general’s office, an independent judiciary and a public service commission that appoints civil servants.

As with many things said by the Singapore government, his claim is backed by the fact that we still rank pretty well in many international comparisons. I’ve often stated that whenever I’ve wanted to complain about things, I get people from the US and Europe looking at me and saying “What are you complaining about?” In a way, Covid amplifies this. Say what you like about the various lock downs and social restrictions but our Covid numbers are a darn sight better than most places, including the world leader in Covid infections and deaths – the USA.

Having said all of that, there are flaws in Mr. Ong’s arguments. The most glaring flaw is that his argument is self-serving. As he promoted “Ownself-check-ownself,” as a virtue, Mr. Ong proceeded to reiterate one of the government’s most used lines – namely the fact that Singapore is too small to have a two-party system.

https://mothership.sg/2022/01/ong-ye-kung-two-party-system-unlikely/

 

Mr. Ong’s argument betrays one of the biggest weaknesses in Singapore’s system – namely the fact that the ruling elite has lost touch with basic laws of nature, which state that in order to survive, species need to evolve and the only way they evolve is when they’re forced to by competition.

The ruling party and its various entities have been using Singapore’s smallness to justify their monopoly on just about everything. A two-party system won’t work because we are small is like saying there can only be one monopoly provider of services because the market is too small for competition (a phrase used when the media duopoly was losing money because they had to compete in each other’s markets).

Mr. Ong’s lack of understanding of the virtues of competition lead to the second major flaw in his argument, namely the assumption that the system will forever be perpetuated by good and wonderful people.

Sure, “ownself-check-ownself” is a virtue if the people running the system have a miraculous way of resisting the temptation of power, money and other external influences indefinitely. Unfortunately, this only happens in Confucian wet dreams.

Interestingly enough, the best reasoning can be found in our education system, where Singapore gets its kids to take O-Levels and A-Levels which aren’t even marked in Singapore. Why do we insist on sending our public exam papers to be marked in the UK despite being independent from the UK after nearly six-decades?

Could it be the fact that this ensures that the exams taken by Singapore’s students have a certain credibility because they’re marked by someone who has no possibility of knowing who our students are and having an interest in them passing an exam? Whatever the reason, we don’t seem to be in a rush to have “ownself-check-ownself” in our education system. Why isn’t anyone suggesting that Singapore is too small for school children to be measured against a common standard set on the global stage?

The other flaw in Mr. Ong’s argument is that he assumes that competition comes about because of size. It doesn’t. It comes about because the monopoly starts to get shoddy and takes its position of dominance for granted. It sees no need to evolve and slowly but surely other players start to form and chip away at the dominant players’ market.

The ruling party needs to look at what happened elsewhere. India’s Congress Party was pretty much THE political party in India. Same was true of the Kuomintang in Taiwan and the PRI in Mexico. These parties were dominant, got stagnant and blown into opposition because they lost touch with the voters, who found someone else who offered them what they wanted.

Ironically, as Mr. Ong was defending “Ownself-check-ownself,” the United Kingdom, was providing an example of what happens when a political party dominates for too long. The Conservative Party, which came into power in 2010 and won election after election, ended up with a Prime Minister who didn’t believe in “ownself-check-ownself” and proceeded to thrown parties in Downing Street while making it illegal for everyone else to have indoor gatherings. Just take a look at the following clips from the Financial Times and Daily Telegraph, which are not bastions of liberalism by any means.

https://www.ft.com/content/3e81d26f-2902-458d-bb8c-a36fe6b59ddf ; and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iytKZKm3Jbs

We know that facing competition is healthy. We subject our kids to a competitive education system and measure their success based on exams that are also taken by kids from elsewhere. Nobody tells our kids that they can “ownself-check-ownself,” or that the market is too small for them. So, why the hell are we holding our adults to lesser standards than our kids and why do we think it’s a virtue for our adults to live up to lesser standards?

Sleazy T*** Part II – Or Why You Need to Understand Your PR Advisor isn’t a Trophy Mouthpiece

 

It’s hard not to have sympathy for Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom and the Realms of the Commonwealth. The woman, who will be making history as the first British monarch to celebrate her Platinum Jubilee (70-years) has dedicated her entire life to serving her people. She has avoided giving press interviews or commenting on any of the issues of the day, thus keeping the monarchy as a bastion of political neutrality and more importantly, she’s kept her private life pretty much to herself, thus being the perfect symbol for the nation. At the age of 95, she continues to meet with the Prime Minister of the Day on weekly basis and by all accounts has a very good grasp of what’s going on in both the UK and the rest of the Commonwealth.

Yet, despite her dedicated service to the nation, her children have been something of a letdown. Her heir, Prince Charles was involved in the soap opera of the century with his ex-wife Diana and has a way of voicing his opinions in public, which doesn’t always sit will with the politicians he will be expected to deal with. Her favorite grandson, Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, married a TV star and proceeded to leave the family for life as a Champion of Wokedom in California. Now, there’s the story of her second son, Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, whom a judge in New York, has decided, should face a legal suite for sexual abuse of a minor. It should have come as no surprise that the Queen had to strip him of his military ranks, patronages and more importantly the “HRH” (His Royal Highness).

It’s this simple, the Queen had no choice in the matter. It was the choice of her favourite child or the institution of monarchy and given her history of service to the institution and the nation, she chose the latter. More details can be found at:

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3163493/calls-prince-andrew-pay-security-bill-lose-dukedom-monarchy-casts

 

 Photo -EPA-EFE

While the Prince has yet to be convicted in a court of law, he’s behaved in a way that has led him to be convicted in the Court of Public Opinion. He has been dangerously loyal to known criminals in the public domain. He has been famously uncooperative with law enforcement and most recently, he tried to hide behind a legal technicality, which failed spectacularly. Try as he might, Prince Andrew will most certainly never be forgotten for the disastrous 2019 interview he gave with the BBC, where he claimed he was unable to sweat because of his experiences in the Falklands War:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtBS8COhhhM

 

 In a sense, its easy to understand where Prince Andrew is coming from. He’s born into a situation where he doesn’t have to worry about how he’s going to pay his bills. However, unlike his older brother, he has no purpose and he is pushed further down the line of succession with each child that his nephews produce. So, I guess you could say he’s bound to get up to some mischief since there’s nothing for him to do.

However, that is actually not true. His older sister, Anne who is even further away from the throne (Anne being born in the era when women only sniffed at the throne when there were no male heirs) is famous for working hard at her royal duties and using her position to do good. She’s also kept her children away from the limelight, thus allowing them to have “normal” lives.

Then there’s the fact that while people might forgive a little mischief, a shifty criminal is a different story and in his PR efforts, the Duke of York has been a walking disaster. This should be a surprise because when you are born into the Royal Family, you are born with the very idea that your very existence depends on public goodwill and that goodwill comes from having a good working relationship with the media.

You would imagine that PR savvy is part of the territory of being in the public eye 24/7 and if you are not by nature, PR savvy, you have the means to hire the best. In places where the press is paid to dig and ask questions, being able to mange PR is essential for public figures.

Whatever is said of the institution of monarchy around the world, many of the world’s royals have become media savvy. Princess Diana was exceedingly good at it (even if she moaned about how the paparazzi made her life miserable). Amongst the Gen X monarchs, one of the best in King Abdullah of Jordan, who has cultivated an image of a dynamic “warrior.” Then there’s the Crown Prince of Dubai, Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed Al Maktoum and the Prince Azim of Brunei who have become social media stars.

https://www.businessinsider.com/king-abduallh-of-jordan-is-a-total-badass-2015-2

 

  The comparisons in his own family and with other monarchs around the world, make Prince Andrew’s lack of PR savvy worse.

Let’s face it, one of the golden rules in PR is to tell your story first. If you tell your story first, you’re more likely to come across as being upfront and honest. You also set the other side of the defensive when you get tell your story first.

Then, there’s the issue of “appearing” confident and credible. Now, there are people who are natural on television. If I look at the people I’ve worked with, one of the best is the chairman of Apex-Avalon, Mr. Girija Pande, who relishes live TV interviews. In all of his interviews, Mr.Pande has come across as exceedingly knowledgeable and dynamic interview subject.

However, there are people, particularly in the local Singapore corporate scene, who are not comfortable with live television. I’ve had clients who were very specific about keeping their interactions to the print media.

The other thing is that you need to know your audience when engaging the media. Think of every media interview as having a chat with a mate.

You would have believed that Prince Andrew would have had the type of people who would have understood these basic facts. However, as seen from the BBC interview, he did not. So, who was on the team that allowed him to screw himself on live TV?

Well, it turns out that the PR consultant was quashed by a gang who were more interested in helping the prince hide from the news than in making the news:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10384053/Prince-Andrews-expensive-team-advisers-including-solicitor-nicknamed-Good-News-Gary.html

The actual PR advisor, who got overruled, could have saved him a lot of grief. However, when you would rather take advice from someone called “Good News” rather than “News” it shows that you are not living in reality because all you hear is the stuff you want to hear rather than the stuff you need to hear.

It goes without saying that his actual PR advisor quit after the disaster of the BBC interview.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2019/11/17/prince-andrews-pr-adviser-reportedly-quit-over-jeffery-epstein-bbc-interview/?sh=2bfa40ec777f

Anyone who wants to be a public figure, needs to understand that they need to have a degree of control on things. They need to understand that the media’s job, as was so eloquently put by Fox News host, Neil Cavuto is to “Cover them” not to “Fawn” over them. Survival depends on communicating with the public via the media. PR advisors are not expensive trophies but a necessary part of survival.

Pitchforks

 

The great story on the 11^th day of 2022 concerns a car and a school. A Bentley driver was denied entry into a school because his car did not have the permit to enter. Instead of parking outside and trying to walk into the school, the driver of the said Bentley decided to ram his way into the school even though the security officer was standing in front of the car. A more complete report of what happened and has happened since can be found at:

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/moe-probe-bentley-driver-security-officer-red-swastika-075610443.html

 

This story could not come at a worse time for the government, as people worry about their livelihoods due to the uncertainty caused by Covid restrictions. The stark image of a very rich person (the Bentley is not cheap wherever in the world you are – it’s particularly expensive in Singapore where there are all sorts of costs to car ownership to ensure Singapore’s car owners pay at least three times what everyone else pays) trying to mow down a vulnerable person (security officer in Singapore is seen as a job of last resort) could not get any worse. This very image must have been particularly tough for a government that has struggled in recent memories to prove that it isn’t “anti-poor.”

Singapore has never been the most equal of places. We were set up to be a trading port by the British and many of our forefathers came to Singapore for the sole purpose of making their fortune. Most remained in poverty but a few great fortunes were made. Singapore is one of the great success stories of modern capitalist economy and if you dig deep enough, we were the example of a place where the rich got richer and the poor also got richer. Inequality was never an issue until recently. Why was that?

I believe that one of the key issues of inequality is not so much the disparity of wealth but the disparity of power. Its relatively easy to accept that if I am a truck driver, I am going to earn significantly less than the owner of the trucking company I work for. Its relatively easy to accept that because the other chap has more money than me, he’s going to have certain advantages in life. For example, I will go to the polyclinic and government hospitals whilst he will go to a private one. His kids will probably have a head start over mine because his wealth allows him to send them to elite schools. However, I accept that because that’s the way things are and if things turn out well, my kid could end up owning the truck company and his could end up driving trucks for mine.

What people find harder to accept is a situation where the rich don’t play by the same rules. The analogy is simple – think of someone ridding a two-cylinder moped everyday getting a speeding ticket but seeing the cops ignoring the Ferrari speeding past him every day. What makes this particularly hard for many people is the fact that this situation has been “intellectualized” into the national fabric. The intellectual argument is that because the Ferrari drivers have more money to spend on their vehicles, they are making the roads better for the rest of us and so, we need to give the Ferrari drivers some leeway and flexibility when it comes to enforcing the rules. Sure, I expect the Ferrari driver to pass me on the road, he’s in a Ferrari and I’m in a moped. However, I do expect the cops to enforce the same speed limits on the Ferrari as they do on me.

Now, in this case the Bentley driver has been arrested for obvious criminal behavior and the Minister of Education, Mr. Chan Chun Sing had a field day slamming the Bentley Driver for “unacceptable” behavior. One can only ask – what else could the police and the minister do. This was as they say, a little too obvious and any sign of the Bentley driver would get the pitchforks coming out.

However, one can argue that the Bentley driver got the idea that he could push his way despite the obvious rules, from the fact that there has been a growing example of proverbial Ferrari drivers being allowed to speed past the traffic police. Let’s start with National Service, the supposed “great equalizer” of Singapore. Here you have the concept of the “White Horse” system where sons of the famous are, in the words of Mr. Cedric Foo “Marked out so as to ensure nobody gives them special treatment.” I think one of a national service colleague who had been “disrupted” from an earlier batch who had admitted that he never did a single push up as punishment during his basic military treatment. Why was that? Well, he belonged to a “scholar platoon” that had been marked out to prevent “preferential” treatment. The chap got himself posted out quickly when he noticed that the guys in the unit were actually expected to do physical work.

There was TT Durai, who wrote his own appraisals, awarded himself a generous bonus and got the board of directors to sanction them at Singapore’s largest charity. For committing what most people would consider fraud, Mr. Durai was told to quietly sit in jail for three months and was then given an equally lucrative job in Dubai.

Then we can look at our policy on drugs. We proudly tell the world that we are strict and it works. We hang traffickers no questions asked. It’s just that by some coincidence, the traffickers are inevitably dark-skinned people from “s***hole” countries or countries that don’t protest when we hang their citizens.

There was Dr. Waffles Wu, cosmetic surgeon who actually got someone to take the fall for something that he did and despite the outcry, the Dr. Wu remained as free as a bird.

Let’s go back to the outbreak of Covid and our initial circuit breaker in 2020. The government could not move faster than to subsidise the people who had grown rich by housing people in Covid causing conditions and the only real benefit for the victims was a few noises of sympathy and they were then confined to the same places where the disease had spread. 

Not long after, we had the Parti Liyani case where the police were quick to lock up a maid earning less than $1,000 a month because her multimillionaire boss didn’t want to pay her for illegally giving her more work. If it were not for a dedicated lawyer working pro-bono, the police and the attorney general’s office

In fact, the only time where a rich person seems to get hit by the rules is when they have the audacity to take on anyone richer. I think of Dr. Susan Lim who sent a S$12 million bill for devoting her entire $30 million a year practice to the care of a single patient from Brunei for over four years. What was Dr. Lim’s sin in the issue? She sent a big bill to the one patient on the planet who could afford it. Somehow that was wrong and Dr. Lim, who managed to keep a woman with stage four cancer alive for four years, lost her medical license.

These instances of their own are isolated instances and I guess you could say the things that could happen anywhere in the world. However, if you start to look at them in a pattern, you can’t help but get the impression that there is a set of rules for the guys who are in the proverbial Ferraris and for guys in the mopeds on life’s proverbial roads. Are we surprised that the 61-year-old Bentley driver thought he was untouchable because, well he was a Bentley and how dare the plebs expect him to follow the rules?

You don’t need a situation like in China where all the Ferrari drivers are being made to drive with tires of three wheels. However, you don’t need a situation like in India or America where the Ferrari drivers are lifted off the road by the guys on mopeds so that the guys in the Ferraris don’t need to face on coming traffic.

What you do need is for the rules to be applied fairly. The guys in the Ferrari’s and the guys in the mopeds can co-exist on the same road as long as the rules are there and applied as they should be applied.

  

Can’t You See I’m Busy? (Doing What is another matter).

 I make no secret of the fact that I dislike being in an office. In the years that I’ve been around the work force, the least productive moments were inevitably away from an office. From what I’ve noticed, offices are places where counterproductive people gather to hinder others to justify their sense of superiority regardless of whether their actions benefit the organization they are working for.

This can be put down to what I’ve called the “Cult of Busy,” where people become so busy with their station in life that they don’t actually do anything. Being busy is no longer about having a lot of things to do but about showing people how important you are. This cult like worship of busy is particularly bad in bureaucracies, where profit and loss are a minor part of the organisation’s purpose and unfortunately, small time enterprises are not immune from this symptom either. This is particularly in enterprises where the entrepreneur has reached a stage where the enterprise needs a few employees and the presence of those employees serves more as a boost to the founder’s ego rather than to get work done.

What happens when you get an enterprise that is part of the cult of busy? Well, you end up with a situation where very little actually gets done or whatever gets done is actually the arse covering work rather than the actual work.

This was brought home to me when I had to post some letters and walked past an escalator, which was not functioning.

 

 It was clear that whoever was in charge had covered their behinds by ensuring that the public knew that “maintenance works” were in progress. However, there was no maintenance work taking place at all. This was at around four in the afternoon, which is a time when people can still do maintenance work. Yet, there was not a soul in sight and the escalator in question hadn’t been touched at all.

This is, unfortunately, not the only time I’ve seen a sign for maintenance work put up without any visible sign of maintenance work actually being done.

How does the cult of busy fit in? Well, if you were to call up the people in charge of the situation, there is a good chance that you will find yourself being put through a very long line of options before you get to speak to someone who might pretend to attend to the issue of hand. The best part is that the busy people hiding behind a million options don’t have direct phone lines or emails, so should you require them again, you have to go through the whole process again. One of the worst offenders of such modern efficiency are our local telcos, who have lots of physical shops where you can buy phones and phone lines but have no ability to solve basic issues – you have to call the hotline. You’re left wonder what exactly the people in the shops doing?

One of the best or worst examples of the cult of busy was the Land Transport Authority (LTA). During the pandemic, they made it clear that they would not entertain anyone at their headquarters unless they had made an appointment. However, to make an appointment with the officer I needed to see, I needed to go through a hotline and common email. Somehow the best you could do was to wait for the officer to receive the message that you had called or emailed the hotline but because the officer in question was so busy, I ended up having to go to their headquarters to demand to see him. Even then, I was informed that the security guards didn’t have the access to the officer inside the building they were guarding. They had to call the hotline.

We live in an age where most things can be done with a push of a button. Part of the reason for this high level of development was done to save us time. I do most of whatever research I do on a laptop. Thanks to Google, I just search for things and filter through what I need. Process can take me a few hours. In the days before the internet, I would have had to spend days in a library or even interviewing people.

Yet, despite all these advances to save us time, we’re finding ways to become busier. Instead of freeing us up to focus on getting the job done, we find reasons not to do the job. Posting letters for example can be a very strenuous task when you involve “busy” people.

If Covid has done anything for us, it should be to show us how valuable our time is. Instead of trying to return to “normal” of being busy for the sake of being busy, let’s refocus and look at how we can finish the job in the quickest possible way. Let us fix the damn escalators instead of focusing on telling people that the escalators are under maintenance. If we do that, we might actually make progress and be the smart futuristic city that we’re claiming to be.