Friday, September 30, 2022

Was Normal Really Normal?

 

One of the biggest signs that things have returned to normal has been the return of the Singapore Formula One (F1), which the government has proudly reminded us is the world’s only street race to be held at night. The fact that F1 is back, means that the government can now return to its favourite activity – showing off to the world’s rich and famous. As an ordinary sap earning below the wage of intelligence (judged at $500,000 a month), normalcy is negotiating between the happy headlines of how all the five-star hotels are fully booked and praying that your regular bus to work has not one of the many disrupted by the holding of the race.

People of significance are creaming their jeans at the thought of returning to normal. Landlords are celebrating the return to the office, and the ability to cream off productive people. Food outlets are getting happy because there are crowds waiting outside to be fed. More importantly, the government has been able to do what it likes to do best – selling Singapore.

It's returned to reminding the locals that Singapore needs to be attractive to the best and brightest and has gone as far as to work out a new visa for the extra wealthy. Everyone in government seems to be slapping themselves on the back as headlines as to how Singapore has done things like become the world’s fifth richest city (only four other cities have more billionaires and centimillionaires) and how we have replaced Hong Kong as the third largest financial centre of the world.

The government’s point is that we need the world’s best and brightest if we’re going to have any form of a future, let alone a bright future. We are told that we need “foreign” money and talent in order for us to have great, well-paying jobs.

I am, for the record, not against foreign talent or money. The three greatest moments of my working life, came from foreigners. The Saudi Embassy and the Indian IT community were willing to give me, a small nobody the chance to do high level work, while native born Singaporeans wouldn’t look at me because I never worked for a big company based in either New York or London. Without our foreign arrivals, I would probably remain waiting tables and having to take orders from village idiots.

Like or not, Singapore is a small and vulnerable place. Our prosperity and even our basic survival depends on being open to the outside world. Border wall policies will simply not work here.

Having said all that, what is clear from this new found zeal to attract the world’s richest and brightest, is that we’ve failed to learn anything from the two-years of limited movement that Covid forced upon us. Sure, I get it that everyone wants to get back to making their pre-covid revenue but we wasted the two-years of limited movement because it gave us a chance to slow down, reflect and make the effort to restructure the economy in a more sustainable way. Instead of reflection, it’s been a rush to return to normal.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/foreign-talent-singapore-workers-expats-companies-one-pass-2962481

None of the bright sparks in government have asked if “normal was really normal” to begin with. Why is the government doubling on a policy that cost it a GRC in 2011 and another one in 2020? It’s as if the idea that the world’s wealthiest has become a religion rather than a carefully thought-out policy.

Let’s look at another “religion” disguised as political policy – low taxes. Talk to any “conservative” politician in the world, be they Republicans in the USA or Tories in the UK or even PAP politicians, and they’ll all tell you that low taxes are essential to prosperity because that’s what the world’s rich want and you need the world’s richest to create prosperity. How has this doctrine worked?

The UK’s latest Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Kwasi Kwarteng believes that its essential to cut taxes to get the UK humming again and a week ago, he produced a mini-budget that came up with the deepest tax cuts seen in several decades. The market reacted by sending the currency to historic lows and the Bank of England has had to intervene in the markets to prop up UK government bonds and the British government has just been rebuked by the world’s lender of last resorts, something usually reserved for “s*** hole” countries run by tin pot dictators instead of the world’s sixth largest economy.

 


This is what happens when you think economic policy as a religion.

Now, the economic markets have not reacted to Singapore’s new drive for the world’s richest the same way they’ve reacted to the British government’s tax cuts. However, its not wrong to ask if doubling down on a policy of going all out to bring in the world’s rich. How exactly does a huge number of billionaires camping out in my neighborhood help me?

In Singapore, it appears that the answer is not much. Billionaires are invited to buy very expensive property and that’s about it. We got very excited when Sir James Dyson bought the most expensive piece of property around. Did it create jobs? Did it give Singaporeans a chance to shine at something or another?

So, while it is important to be attractive to the world’s richest and best, we need to remember that the backbone of any economy is not with the one percent, who can go to where they’re treated best. Surely, it is more important to focus on ensuring that the 99 percent are capable of looking after themselves. Unless the government understands this, we’re going to find that we’re heading the way of the British Pound in a race to give things to the people who don’t need them.  

Monday, September 26, 2022

I Thought She Was Stunning ….. and then She Spoke

 

I grew up in a family where the women have been very competent. My family is filled with matriarchs who managed drove the family to greater heights. As my dad admitted, he wrote the cheques but it was my mother who did the work when it came to making me an educated man. It wasn’t just women who were strong characters. Men were expected to respect their wives. My father did not go for this “scared of his wife,” theory. He called “Respecting her judgement.”

My exposure to women in leadership roles wasn’t limited to my family. I was going to school in the UK in the early 1990s, when the pollical icon for most of my peers was Margaret Thatcher. The classic cartoon of the time had a little girl asking, “Daddy, can a man ever be Prime Minister?”

In a way, Covid vindicated my childhood experiences of seeing women do well in power. The places that seemed to survive Covid were inevitably places run by women like Angela Merkel in Germany, Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand and Sanna Marin in Finland, while the countries that screwed up were inevitably run by aspiring macho men.

However, while the current crop of women in power have been providing much needed competence in running the world, there is, unfortunately a parallel trend of prominent women bringing out the worst in people. I am talking about the likes of former British Home Secretary Priti Patel, who introduced anti-immigration legislation that by her own admission would have bared her parents from entering the UK, Marine Le Penn in France, who has managed to rebrand the far right, xenophobic National Front into the National Rally and give herself as historic 30 over percent of the vote in the two presidential elections she contested and at the time of writing, we now have Giorgia Meloni, of the “Brothers of Italy” party, which is set to win the Italian elections:

 


 Copyright the Transcontinental Times  

What makes these women stand out is the fact that they are very attractive to look at. You could say that everyone of them is a marketing persons dream spokesperson. Attractive women are what you would call the marketing persons dream because everyone likes attractive women. Men cannot help but look at attractive women and women cannot help but look at attractive women.

Unfortunately, this truism about marketing consumer goods applies to marketing politics and a 2017 article in the Independent in the UK found that politicians on the political right tend to better looking than their counterparts on the left of the political spectrum:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/right-wing-politicians-better-looking-left-conservative-labour-socialist-study-professor-janerik-lonnqvist-university-helsinki-a7657516.html

 


 Like it or not, good looks sell and somehow the message seems more compelling when it comes from an attractive woman who sounds reasonable. The most prominent example is Marion Le Penn who made her party votable. Countless of interviewees in France admitted that they would never have voted for her father, whom they thought was a crazy old man but were perfectly comfortable with her. Again, her dad looked like a rabid dog, whereas she was a presentable lady making a presentable case.

However, I am with the late Bill Bernbach of DDB, when he argued that advertising could not save a bad product. As much as I take pride in my experiences in advertising and PR, I believe that the real magic comes from having a decent product or service.

As mentioned earlier, this truism about selling consumer products also applies to politics. A nasty message is still a nasty message regardless of who is delivering it. Sure, I would rather look at and chat to Marion Le Penn than to her father. However, is her message actually different? Same can be said of Ms. Meloni. Who does not want to look at and listen to a sexy blonde? However, when you listen to her thump her chest about God, country and so on, you’ll realise that she’s not far of what Benito Mussolini was doing and my Italian friends would do well to remember how well that turned out for them.

Great packaging isn’t going to hide an ugly product and if you look at the likes of Ms. Meloni or Ms. Le Penn, you’ll see that their message is essentially an ugly one, even if they’ve packaged it exceedingly well.

In democratic systems, people need to remember that they are responsible for choosing their leaders and the results they get. So, its essential that voters listen and understand what they’re voting for. Attractive packaging is just that – packaging.

Every potential voter for these ladies and their ilk need to remember that many men have gone bed with and married women who were beautiful to look at only to find that they were actually ugly people bent on bringing out the ugly in their partners.  

Sunday, September 25, 2022

Rivalry and Respect

 

It’s now official, tennis fans around the world will no longer have the chance to watch Roger Federer play again. The Swiss Maestro, who was the most dominant player on the men’s circuit for the better part of the 2000s and 2010s, played his last match and retired from the game at the ripe old age of 41.

Mr. Federer has been called “Greatest of All Time,” even though his record hall of 20-Grand Slam wins has been surpassed by his two biggest rivals, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Given that both men are considerably younger, its likely that they will surpass more of Mr. Federer’s records. However, on the night of his last match, the world got to see why Mr. Federer is considered the “Greatest Ever” tennis player – the obvious outpouring of emotion from everyone of his rivals at the thought of his exit showed the world that Mr. Federer had transcended his sport. Like Mohammad Ali in boxing, Mr. Federer had become bigger than the sport. A list of tributes to Mr. Federer can be found in the following link.

https://www.atptour.com/en/news/roger-federer-retirement-collection

Furthermore, the one person who seemed particularly distressed by Mr. Federer’s retirement, was Rafael Nadal, possibly Mr. Federer’s greatest rival:

 


 What makes all these scenes at the retirement of a 41-year-old tennis player so powerful is the fact that they are a reminder that basic human decency and friendship can exist in the heart of intense competition and rivalry and respect are not mutually exclusive.

This message has become particularly important in a day and age where you have to be in one camp or another. The most famous example comes from US politics, where you had former President, George W Bush talking about “You are with us or against us.” This was then brought to an extreme under former President Trump, where you were either foaming in the mouth or drooling at the very thought of his existence.

As with any global trend, America merely provides the most visible examples. It’s not the only place where this happens. Singapore, has become increasingly like this, especially when it comes to politics and the expression of politics – the media. Singapore used to be very simple. There was one political party, expressing one political view, expressed through one newspaper. However, in recent years, you’ve seen the proliferation of political parties and the growth of “online” media. Unfortunately, instead of having a proliferation of views, you get two. As PN Balji, former editorial director of MediaCorp (and for the record, my former boss at BANG PR and main contractor on the Susan Lim and Ku De Ta litigation cases), says, “According to the mainstream media, everything the government does is right and according to the Online media, everything the government does is wrong.”

I take my own experiences as an example. I have been “branded” as “anti-establishment” by a few senior corporate figures but at the same time I also get accused of being a “foreign talent,” by some of the online crowd.

The reality is that I agree with certain people on certain occasions and I disagree with them on others. For example, I believe Donald Trump’s handling of Covid-19 bordered on criminal incompetence but I give him credit for “operation warp-speed,” which got the vaccine out in record time.

If I were to move closer to home, my main issue with the Singapore system is that it’s branded itself as perfect and any criticism is considered an act of blasphemy and this attitude does get mirrored by the other side.

I actually think Singapore is on the whole, fairly well run. However, it is not utopia and active citizenry has to voice that fact out on a regular enough basis. It is essentially the one thing that an ordinary person can do to make sure the guys in power don’t develop “God Syndrome.”  One also needs to make the point that the price of being in power and being paid by the public (in Singapore, its lavish pay), is that you’re going to bear the brunt of public criticism. We don’t criticize the opposition the way we criticize the government is because the opposition isn’t in power and not responsible for getting things done.

Sure, extremism sells. Who wants to read a longish piece that gives you both sides when you can spend ten second on a piece that gets you drooling or foaming? However, the problem with living in a “cult” is that you end up living in an enclosed world where you don’t get exposed to “best practices,” and you end up stagnating. As an ethnic Chinese, I am well aware of a history where China assumed it was the best at everything and ended up being humiliated in every sense of the world by countries it thumbed its nose at.

Rivalries and competition should bring out the best in parties. Look at the car market, where the Detroit Big Three had to make better cars that were more fuel efficient because the Japanese manufacturers had entered the market. The existence of a “rival” that you need to respect makes you look at they may be doing right and change what you may doing wrong.

In boxing, we had Ali-vs-Frazier. Brutal fights and for a while they didn’t get along but, in the end, they resected each other and understood the other was essential for their greatness. Top level male tennis players before Mr. Federer either won Wimbledon or the French open. When Matts Wilander won three grand slams in 1988, it was the biggest fete since Jimmy Connors in 1974. Then came Mr. Federer who proved that you could win on grass and clay and suddenly you had Mr. Nadal and Djokovic doing the same.

Mr. Federer will be missed from tennis. As he bows out of the public stage, we should also miss him for reminding us that greatness is not a solo act but an act of inspiration for others to aspire to greatness. He was the living example that you could have rivals who respected you and that life is not an extreme of this cult or that. Mr. Federer symbolized the better things that seem to have vanished from the modern world.

Friday, September 23, 2022

S** Happens – It’s Just What You Do About It.

 Around a month ago, I had the awful experience of having to spend my entire working day sitting in the DBS Bank Marina Bay Financial Centre. The adventure started at 11 in the morning and ended at nearly 5pm. It was in military speak a total failure in as much as after waiting for the better part of the day, I still didn’t come close to getting what I needed to get done.

Now, I get that banking can be a bureaucratic process and in fairness to DBS, they are not the only bank that has made me wait for what you could call an unreasonable amount of time. I had a similar experience with OCBC, though admittedly I did get what I wanted after the wait.

I point out those examples not because I as a customer, was made to wait for what I considered to be an unreasonable amount of time. I took issue with the fact that I had to wait but because it seemed that the wait was due to bad design of the process. It was as if the process was designed for the bank to wallow in self-importance (as if the bank CEO got a hard on looking at the number of people waiting for service) rather than on providing customer service. The front-line staff had to constantly rush to the back room to check things and at OCBC it appeared that nobody was interested in the customer facing part of the job.

As has been said “s** happens.” My experiences in both banks could have been due to bad luck. I could have, for example, when the branch manager had received a dressing down from head office for having a branch that looked empty the day before. However, while ne can accept that “s*** happens,” one ultimately judges the organisation on what they do about it.

Thankfully for Singapore’s financial sector, there are positive examples of how organisations deal with “S***” when it happens. Today’s example comes from CIMB, a Malaysian bank.

My interaction with CIMB is helping my day-job boss pay his credit card bills. I visit the branch on a monthly basis. The process is relatively fast. I end up doing what I need to do within 10 minutes of entering the branch.

Today, was slightly different. The branch was crowded. All the counters were filled and the brank officer told me that although he was happy to give me a number, but suggested I go for lunch first because there were 15 people ahead of me.

However, I decided to wait. Within five minutes of waiting, someone came around to distribute biscuits:

 


 It was nothing elaborate but it was thoughtful gesture. It made it feel as if the bank was genuinely sorry that we, the customers were going to have to wait and it had a cute little bit of branding.

Interestingly enough, it didn’t take that long to get service. Sure, I waited a bit longer than usual but they made it such that I didn’t feel that the wait was due to satisfy some overpaid pencil pusher jacking off over people waiting to get hold of their money.

Thursday, September 22, 2022

“I appreciate that you outrank me many times, Sir. I also appreciate that as you outrank me, its More Embarrassing for you to be in this Position.” – Unknown Sergeant-Major of the US Army

 One of the most challenging parts of my national service was serving as a “Guard Commander,” for the camp. Technically, a Guard Commander has an obligation to check the identity of everyone entering the camp, regardless of who they are and after midnight, he (usually are) has a job to ensure nobody enters the camp. However, while that is the technicality, things are rather different in practice. For example, one tends to be a little laxer when it comes to guys from your unit (you are only guard commander for the night – you got to live with these guys for the rest of term you are serving) and certain high-ranking officers get exempted from checks (in Khatib Camp, everyone knew the Chief of Artillery).

As a rule of thumb, many of the senior officers were decent people. The head of logistics of Headquarters Singapore Artillery asked me why I stopped him when his car had a camp label. When I explained that the label only allowed the car in, he praised me for being diligent. Unfortunately, this reasonable quality was limited to those of a certain rank. In my time on the job, I encountered too many midranking officers (usually captain) who showed their obvious displeasure at being stopped. Now, I will admit that more often than not, I let them pass. The guy outranked me many times over and was actually a familiar face.

I left the army feeling that there were times where I wish I had been more assertive in my role as a guard commander. I think that had I shown a bit more spine then, I would have grown into a more “successful” person. At the time, it seemed like an unspoken rule that you give way to your superiors. The concept of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) is to “Serve And F**Off, so the smart thing to do is to avoid conflicts in order to finish your term of service with minimal fuss.

It was only towards the end of my national service, when I read a book written by someone who had been “Sergeant-Major of the Army,” in the US army, when I saw how “superiors could be told to follow the rules. The author described how he was assigned by the camp commandant to issue speeding tickets on the base back when he was a mere sergeant. He described how the colonels would remind him that they outranked him by so many times and his classic reply was inevitably, “I appreciate that you outrank me, Sir. So, it’s even more embarrassing to be caught in your position, Sir.”

 


 A rank earned through managing those above

I think this book and those moments on guard duty, because life is essentially about management. As much as everyone talks about “Equality,” the truth is that unless you are a hermit meditating in cave in the Antarctica, all of us get stuck in a hierarchy of some sort and at any given time, there’s someone who is going to have power over you.

As an employee, you have a boss or many bosses. As an entrepreneur, you have customers. When the President enters the room, you stand at attention. When there’s an election, the president will come knocking on your door, vowing to serve you.

So, for most of us, life is inevitably about managing through the various hierarchies that we run into in our daily lives and human nature being what it is, an industry on telling you how to mange has developed. Everyone is a management guru. Unfortunately, all the management gurus in the world are only focused in one direction – namely downwards. There is no shortage of wisdom as to how you should manage people below you.

Nobody it seems, wants to discuss how to manage the guy above you. The conventional wisdom, particularly in hierarchical Asian societies, is that the guy on top is inevitably right because he or she got there because they are smarter, more experienced and wiser than you. The guy at the top inevitably drives something better than you and lives in a bigger house, so he or she must be right.

This thinking prevails in professional services, where more often than not, the service provider ends up bending over backwards to “please” the client and the client is always right Is being right so important that you end up not getting paid?

Well, the sad truth is that “superiors” might have more power than you but they are not always right and as a good subordinate, you actually have an obligation of sorts to tell them when they are being a d***.

In professional services, its as simple as, although the client is the ultimate decision maker, clients, like superiors don’t often adhere to a “my decision – my responsibility” way of thinking. The client’s back up is “I hired you because you are the expert – why didn’t you advise me,” which in turn leads to the possibility of not getting paid. Too many people talk about sacrificing “integrity” if it may interfere with your getting paid. While that is true of low-level peons, the people who get ahead understand that integrity is vital for business, especially if your business is essentially selling advice The client pays you for your expertise and he or she will only believe in your expertise if you are willing to sacrifice the pay to stand your advice.

Being able to manage the people with power over you is never taught and needs to be learnt on the job. I think of my times as guard commander in the army and how I failed. Had the find the courage to stand by what I was talking about. It was not easy. I recently had to manage a young man who was drunk and thought it was acceptable to try and get frisky with two young women and rude to the two Indian guys helping them do their job. His reply was “I work for a respectable law firm.” I had to tell him that who he worked for didn’t excuse his behaviour and if he didn’t behave, the venue would remove him in a not so pleasant manner. He eventually got the message.

There are a good many people, who actually believe that their situation in life makes them immune from the norms of social behaviour. It can be “I am your boss,” or “I work in a profession,” or “I am related to so and so.” In a way, you can’t blame people for letting certain perks get to the head. I’ve mentioned that it takes a certain level of strength of character for expatriates to remain decent people because when you have people throwing the good things at you, temptation does have a way of spoiling you.

So, you need to remind people in a position above you that “superiority” means “superior” responsibilities as well as “superior” behaviour. Unless the “superior” does not have these two things, they are not superior people, just people with more money and power. Sure, there will be some who don’t understand this and there’s very little one can do about them. However, these are the ones who eventually fade into bankruptcy and obscurity. The ones who understand that people are only “superior” because of their responsibilities and behaviour, these are the ones that endure.

  

Monday, September 19, 2022

Old Age is Inevitable. Best to Prepare for It

 

It was probably a coincidence that Roger Federer, one of the most dominant tennis players in the world decided to announce his retirement at the age of 41, when the world’s media was focused on the newly crowned British sovereign who had waited 70-years to take a job. This happy coincidence has brought to mind one of the most pressing issues that we face today – ageism or at least discrimination against people who are past a certain age.

I speak from personal experience as a “nearly fifty-year-old” who is continuously looking for work beyond my day job. I have applied for simple manual part-time work for organisations claiming to be “desperate” for workers, only to be told that they’re doing quite well thank you very much. After rejecting me, they promptly put out the ad again, claiming to be desperate. As a sixty-year-old colleague advised, it’s time that I appreciate that I am “past the sell by date,” and be grateful for my dreaded corporate existence.

Everyone gets it that you should not reject a qualified woman or ethnic minority based on their gender and ethnicity. Nobody seems to get the idea that you’re wasting valuable resources when you reject qualified candidates who are over a certain age.

Still, what does one do about it and I think one of the most prominent memes on the internet about the current British King:

https://shutupandtakemymoney.com/73-year-old-man-finally-gets-job-prince-charles-meme/

 


 If you think about it, King Charles is the living example of the great parallel issue with ageism – longevity. Think about it, his only purpose in life was to wait for his mother to die. However, she took over 70-years to do so and by the time he could sit on the throne, he, himself was an “Old-man,” with grandkids of his own. Given that both is parents lived past 90, it looks like he has around two decades to reign and by the time his son is ready to take over, he’ll be in his 60s.

Now, you can argue that the British monarchy is an exception in that they don’t need to worry about where their next meal comes from. However, the point remains, people around the world are living longer and longer lives. However, whilst people are living for longer, their working lives are getting shorter. Concepts like “iron-rice-bowl,” are increasingly outdated as corporations rise and fall according to the financial quarter. Pension plans around the world which were designed in a different era look increasingly outdated.

The reality is that however plentiful your pension fund may look; you will probably out live it and be at the mercy of children focused on their inheritance. In Singapore, our compulsory savings scheme is starting to look like a mirage where more money is placed into it but the withdrawal requirements look increasingly challenging.

So, what can people of a certain age do? Like the British King, one will have to find purpose beyond a certain career path. As the longest heir in waiting, Charles ended up coming up creating a lot of projects to keep himself busy until he had to take the job.

Whilst King Charles was an anomaly in as much as he’s never had to worry about money, the rest of us need to find ways to make sure our hobbies pay. Just about every “self-help” book tells you that you need to diversify your source of income by putting your savings in things like unit trust (Mutual funds to Americans), stocks and so on. Whilst it is good to have investments, one also needs to develop knowledge of what one is investing in and avoid obvious scams.

I started blogging because I thought it was fun. However, it turned out that its probably one of the few side-gigs that I can hold without too much distraction from my day job and my family. Hence, I encourage people to support my advertisers, even if online advertising revenue is famously pathetic. Unfortunately, “alternative” news sites in Singapore’s part of cyberspace are notoriously short of funds too.

Still, what can one do except be on the constant look out for things to do. Like or not, most of us will need to find a way of making our post-work-life pennies last.

Whilst King Charles has become the living symbol of how we need to find purpose for increasingly longer lives, Mr. Federer offers us some hope as someone who has aged well. Professional athletes usually don’t last past 35, so if you think about it, Mr. Federer has had a career that has gone past the average by six good years. The most interesting part of his career was the fact that he actually came back after a slump of a few years when he won the 2017 Australian Open against one of biggest rivals. He was the second oldest person to win a Grand Slam when he won the 2018 Australian Open at 36. His land grand slam final was in 2019 when he lost a thrilling five set match in the final of Wimbledon against Novak Djokovic, who is a good six-years younger and fitter. By way of a comparison, Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi who were considered the “hot” items in men’s tennis in the previous generation retired at 33 and 36 respectively.

So, what does Mr. Federer’s longevity at the top ranks of international tennis suggests? Perhaps it’s a sign that old age doesn’t mean you lose your edge. Mr. Federer obviously found a way to stay relevant and at the top of his game for a long time. So, if he can do it, why can’t the rest of us.

Old age and longevity are going to be challenging, it’s something we need to work around whether the system allows to or not. Better to prepare for it while you can rather than wait for a penniless old age.

Saturday, September 17, 2022

Keeping Too Much in the Family

 

Ever since Covid-19 stopped being such a big worry, the Singapore government has been busy trying to return things to how they were before the pandemic hit and as anyone who has had to que up for lunch in the Central Business District can attest to, things are coming back with a vengeance.

One of the things that is coming back with a vengeance is the government’s belief that all of Singapore’s issues can be dealt with as long as the world’s rich and famous come to Singapore. The government, is as every news channel is reporting, in a war for global talent and at the time of writing, Singapore is working on introducing a new five-year visa for anyone earning $21,0000 to $30,000 a month. More can be found in the following report from Nikkei Asia:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Singapore-offers-new-elite-visa-as-global-talent-hunt-heats-up

In fairness to the Singapore government, the economy always needs funds flowing into the country and the modern economy does require certain skills, which may not necessarily be available locally. Hence, it remains important to be open to global capital and global talent.

However, one has to ask if the government has taken this to an extreme. If you read enough reports from the local press, you’re bound to get the impression that there are no Singaporeans capable of creating jobs or merely surviving in the modern economy. The message that is being drummed in is that Singapore needs people from elsewhere to make Singapore function. If the government’s line on this is correct, one can only surmise that Singapore is actually wasting the “human resources” which is proudly proclaims as its only resource and the drive for “foreign talent” is nothing more than a cover for the fact that local talent has not been developed for the modern world.

Why should this matter? Let’s start with the key lesson that Covid taught us. People from elsewhere, particularly those with a lot of money or high demand skills can run off whenever they don’t feel comfortable. One only has to think of the number of Western expats who were indignant about our curbs on their freedom to kill themselves with Covid and fled imprisonment in condominium land for Covid infested homelands.

Yet, despite the exodus of expats, things had to continue and the only people left to keep things running. If I take the analogy from the Bistrot, its clear that whilst it’s the people from elsewhere who provide cream (the people who buy expensive wines and so on), the bread and butter is inevitably from the locals.

So, as much as the government is not wrong to insist on attracting foreign talent and investment, it cannot be at the expense of developing local talent and making sure that Singaporeans with the talent can thrive within the Singapore system.

Unfortunately, the track record of the government in nurturing local talent would suggest otherwise. Take Joseph Schooling as an example. When he trained in the American eco-system, he was gold medal winner. Then, he came back and was turned into a local icon and has faltered. Same with Sim Woo Hong of Creative Technologies who was a pioneer of innovative technologies outside of Singapore but wasn’t able to produce much once he became a “government appointed hero.” Both Mr. Schooling and Mr. Sim are only the most prominent example of “talents” being wasted by Singapore. A Singapore Business Review article stated that six in ten were willing to leave Singapore for better opportunities:

https://sbr.com.sg/hr-education/in-focus/six-in-ten-employees-willing-leave-singapore-better-job

So, the questions need to be asked – why can’t we develop talents in the local eco-system and why do the talents that succeed, disappoint the moment they have to operate in the Singapore system.

Perhaps the best answer might be to look at the story of how Lamborghini came about. The story that everyone knows is part where Ferruccio Lamborghini had the motivation to build a bigger and better sports car because he was insulted by Enzo Ferrari. What is less well known is the fact that Mr. Lamborghini was able to build his first car in the space of four months because the team that made Ferraris were driven away by the interference of Mrs. Ferrari and her management style. Mr. Ferrari valued Mrs. Ferrari more than the guys who created the value and so they joined Mr. Lamborghini. The story can be found at:

https://www.granturismoevents.com/story-the-epic-story-behind-the-ferrari-and-lamborghini-rivalry/

 


 Copyright Financial Times – If you don’t value the guys who made this:

 


Copyright Motor1.com – They’ll join the guy who lets them build this…..

Are we seeing something similar in Singapore where the people who have bright sparks are always put down because they didn’t go to the right school or they were the wrong colour or didn’t belong to the same family?

Let’s think about this. When we question why certain people have to hold more than one high level job, we’re inevitably told that this is because Singapore lacks the talent and therefore the talents, we do have are inevitably needed to do more than one job.

Its hard to believe that this is the case in nation that is highly educated and, in a place, where that has one of the fastest broadband speeds in the world, thus making information from around the world easily available. So, could it be a case like Ferrari in 1963, where the boss’s wife, whose main qualification was being the boss’s wife, were more valued than the bright sparts doing the work? If this is the case, isn’t it time we restructured things to make sure that local talents have a chance to shine in their homeland?   

Tuesday, September 13, 2022

The Art of Doing Nothing

 

The death of Queen Elizabeth has stirred quite a few emotions. Many have talked about her devotion of duty and her work ethic and how she provided leadership that kept Britain Great throughout her rein. Then there were those who lambasted her for being part of an evil system that exploited people around the world and there were calls to return “stolen” items in the crown jewels.

While I am sympathetic towards those who make the point that colonialism was an evil system that screwed the natives, the truth is the Queen personally had very little to do with the creation of colonialism. In fact, the Queen had very little to do with pretty much anything that went on in her 70-years on the throne. The “action” was done pretty much by her 15 Prime Ministers and the politicians in Whitehall.

The role of the Queen is best summed up by her character in the Crown who says that it is to “Shut up and do nothing,” and “that is the hardest job in the world.” In 70-years, the Queen has had to read a speech written for her at the opening of parliament, inviting the politician who won an election to form a government and meeting the Prime Minister of the day for a tea on a weekly basis.

I mention this not to denigrate the role of the British monarch but to make the point that the British monarch does pretty much what Singapore’s Presidents have done – nothing at all. Singapore’s Presidents like the British monarch are required to read a speech written for them by the government and to wave on National Day every year. Like the British Monarch, Singapore’s President’s are well remunerated.

So, the question is given that the British Monarchs and Singapore’s Presidents do pretty much the same thing, why is it such that so many Britons feel the loss of their monarch, while Singaporeans seem so unsatisfied with their presidents?

OK, in fairness, the British monarchy over a thousand years old whilst Singapore’s presidency is significantly younger. The British monarch’s role has evolved into what it is today whilst the Singaporean Presidency is still being tinkered with. Then there’s the fact that the monarchy unlike the presidency isn’t a job that you do for a certain period – it is a life. A King or Queen does not have a term but serves until he or she dies.

Then there’s the fact that Elizabeth was Queen for over 70 years. Prime Ministers have come and gone but she has remained and while it is not her job to govern the country, all reports have stated that the Queen until the day she died read the red boxes sent to her by the government and knew exactly what was going on and all her living Prime Ministers have confirmed in public that she offered them invaluable advice. Elizabeth II made the monarchy hers in a way that no other holder of public office in the world could.

Having said that, the question remains. How did the late English Queen generate so much emotion for effectively “doing nothing, whereas the fact that our presidents seem to p** off the general public for doing the same thing?

 

She Knew how to Do Nothing with Style

Well, let’s start with the fact that the British monarch is supposed to do “nothing.” Monarchs do not get involved with politics or the grubby business of running the country because they are not elected and as the years have understood that they are not supposed to do anything. In her 70-years the Queen might have told her Prime Ministers if she thought they were f** up in private but she has signed everything they’ve presented to her. In her 70-years the Queen has only stepped in to make sure that there was a Prime Minister (A scene best portrayed in the Crown when she dresses down Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden for being on their sick beds at the same time without telling her.) As her Crown portrayal says, “My job is not governance but to ensure there is governance.”

Elizabeth II “doing nothing” was not an act of laziness but an act of being “apolitical,” and nobody could accuse her of interfering or trying to change the “people’s choice.” As long as they stay away from “political” stuff that brings them in the political sphere, the royals have had the freedom to champion social causes, which was most effectively seen by the late Princess Dianna who hugged HIV positive patients in public and was seen in fields with landmines (admittedly she always looked glamorous when doing so).

By contrast, our presidents have had the misfortune of being politicized even before they’ve set foot in the Istana and somehow, they never get the chance to make the office theirs.

Let’s start with the fact that unlike the UK, the Head of State is not a constant. The constant is the PAP government. In our 57-year-old nation, it is only those who over 58 who have known Singapore to have a government that was not led by the PAP. Whilst the British monarch nominally invites the politicians to form a government, in Singapore it is the government who “selects” the president.

This is not so much of an issue in itself in as much as plenty of other republics have “selected” presidents who are effectively paid to be expensive cutlery. India and Germany have presidents who nobody outside the respective nations have heard of. They are there for symbolism.

However, Singapore’s president is supposed to be more than symbolic. Under the constitution the President is the only elected official chosen by every individual of voting age. While Singapore system does make the president a check on the government the way the US Congress checks the US President, the Singapore system does allow the President to say “Think about it,” in a public way. The idea was that Singapore would need someone who could tell a rogue government not to touch the reserves.

However, practice has been different. Both our fifth and seventh presidents who fought elections ended up being hobbled. The fifth, Ong Teng Cheong called a press conference to say that there were “teething problems.” His reward was to be kicked into retirement and denied a state funeral. The seventh, Tony Tan fought a close election and the Prime Minister spent the inauguration subtly reminding him who was boss. The only thing he was allowed to do beyond the usual was to go on a state visit to the UK where he was photographed with William and Kate who towered over him and the British press called him the “Prime-Miniature”

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/what-is-buzzing/british-tabloid-calls-singapore-president-tony-tan-a--prime-miniature-054403900.html

 


 So much for “democratic” legitimacy. Things got different for our sixth and eight presidents, who are both from ethnic minorities. In theory both were supposed to be “elected.” In reality, they were selected. In both cases, everyone else who thought of running against them was conveniently disqualified. In the case of the current president, an act of parliament was passed to ensure that only “Malays” could run and somehow the current president got selected even though it turns out that she is from the “Indian Muslim” rather than the Malay community (the minister of education proceeded to show off his “education” when he argued that “An Indian Muslim is a Malay.”)

So, the sixth and eight presidents entered their terms tarred. These are the only presidents who have officially granted the government permission to draw on the reserves. What makes this tarring of these two characters before entering the Istana so sad is the fact that they were relatively popular with the people. People who have known SR Nathan, have described him as a warm and caring person (As a matter of disclosure, I have interacted with the late President, who was from that experience very warm). Former journalists have mentioned that Halimah Yacob is a lovely person and she was accessible until she got elevated to the Speakership (the stepping stone to the presidency) Both characters could have, if they were allowed to, won the office fairly.

To be fair to SR Nathan, he did try to support charities and created the “Presidents Star Charity.” However, in the scope of things, he was never allowed to make the office his. What else could he or Madam Halimah do except collect the generous salary and not do anything that might jeopardise that?

None of our presidents have been what you could call “radical.” Ong Teng Cheong and Tony Tan were deputy prime ministers. Halimah was the speaker of parliament and SR Nathan was a spy for the government. Yet each got hobbled.

So, here’s the thing. If the government wants the presidency to be respected, it has to allow presidents to make the office their own. The presidency is not designed to do very much but its occupants can make it work for the nation if the government allows it. If the government really feels that it cannot live with a president with a democratic legitimacy to tell it to “think it over,” it might as well stop wasting tax payers’ money with the façade of presidential elections and return to “selecting” presidents.

Saturday, September 10, 2022

The Perfect Grandma Who Knew When She Was Needed

 

I got to admit that I started tearing up when the news of the Queen’s death broke. I was up at night, following the news online and when Youtube channels and wire services broke the news, it felt like I had lost a nice grandmother.

Although I lived in the UK for my formative years, I am not British and I can not claim that she was “My Queen.” Furthermore, I grew up in the UK, which meant that I ended idolising anyone in history who drove out Western colonialist. My heroes are people like Gandhi, Nehru and Ho Chi Minh. Just look at the following graphic, which gives you an idea of how much the symbols of “valued British tradition” which the monarchy symbolises are built on the stealing from people like me – people of colour. Yet, hearing about her death has left me with a profound sadness:

 


 Trawled through several postings and I noticed that I am not the only one who is feeling strangely bereft by her passing. People I know, who are against the very concept of monarchy were sad and described her passing as the loss of an extraordinary person.

So, how why has the passing of a woman whose sole purpose in life was to be a symbol of many objectionable things be a cause of bereavement for so much people around the world?

Whilst I cannot speak for everyone, I believe that the Queen managed to touch the lives of so many around the world by being who she was and making her personality fit shape the institution that she represented.

Let us start with the fact that although the idea of “monarchy” or the principle the “some people are born to rule,” might seem like an “anachronism” in the modern world, the institution of monarchy, particularly in the constitutional ones, has certain strengths.

Constitutional monarchs are effectively expensive cutlery. They are well taken care of by the tax payer because the only thing that are expected to do is to look good on certain occasions. Constitutional monarchs attend events, meet the people and read the speeches that the Prime Minister bowing before them tells them. Governments policy is issued in their name but everyone knows that is actually the elected Prime Minister enacting the policy. You could say that Megan Markle saw marrying into the Royal Family as being part of a never-ending film production where you just read the lines you are given.

While constitutional monarchs have no “real” power to do things (if anything, they are treated as public instruments to be used by governments) it does not necessarily make them powerless and the more successful constitutional monarchs have understood that the less power they are seen to have, the more power they have. Trying to take political power is a death trap for a constitutional monarch.

Successful constitutional monarchs are the ones who appear to defend the democratic process. Thailand’s late King Bhumibol Adulyadej was revered because of it. In 1992, the military government sent in the tanks to crush protestors. The next day, head of that military government was seen on his knees being told off by the King and he promptly resigned, leading the path towards democracy. In 2006, the King famously dressed down Thai judges for “allowing an election with only one political party – that is not democratic,” while Singapore’s “elected” politicians were justifying why Singapore needed only one political party.

By contrast, the former King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah of Nepal took back absolute power in 2006. Two years later, the Nepalese monarchy was abolished.

Elizabeth II has been aware of this role and played it masterfully in her 70-years on the throne. She never gave an interview and never allowed anyone to know what she thought of or spoke with any of her 15 Prime Ministers. Former Prime Minister, Terresa May in her tribute to the late Queen said that she looked forward to the weekly meetings because she knew it was the only meeting that would never be leaked to the media.

By not saying anything, nobody could accuse of taking positions nor could anyone accuse of getting dirty with the grubby business of getting things done.  

On the other hand, she also had a knack of appearing when she was needed. One of the most prominent moments came in 2017 at the Grenfell Tower fire. The Queen came to meet the victims. The Prime Minister, Terresa May, hid from the victims. The optics were obvious. Another former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson provided the example of the Queen driving her own land rover in the country, whilst his follow politicians stuck to their convoys. Again, the optics are obvious.

The late Queen was like the ideal grandmother, who doesn’t do anything particular to affect your life except to show up when you need someone to be there. The longevity of her reign also made her a reassuring figure. Prime Ministers came and went but Queen was always there (she had seen 15 Prime Ministers, and her last three came in the last six years).

 


 A Constant in our live through the years.

A Queen, who is not allowed to do much except appear where she is told to appear has proven exceedingly useful in another way. She has been a unifying symbol to the nation regardless of political beliefs.

Upon her death, the House of Commons started agreeing. Union leaders of the rail unions called of their strikes in respect of the Queen. The passing of the woman has brought unity to a nation that had been becoming acrimonious and divided by Brexit.

The contrast across the Atlantic could not be starker. US President, Joe Biden has made wonderful speeches about “United States” rather than Red of Blue States. However, the nation remains helplessly divided. Unlike the monarch, the US President is responsible for the results of government. When things go wrong, half the nation howls about his screw ups, which only acerbates divisions.

The world has lost a woman who knew her place in it. She knew how to play the cards she was given and the world will miss her steady presence.

Tuesday, September 06, 2022

Sex Education is Expensive but there is Free Porn

 Watched the entire series of Delhi Crime over the weekend. This is a wonderfully grim TV series in that it was as far away as possible from the usual to come out of Bollywood in as much as it was dark, nasty and did not have a song and dance number to it. The series was based around the Nirbhaya case, which is better known as the “2012 Delhi Bus Gang Rape.” A lot has been said about the case and the series focused on one of the least discussed matters – the surprisingly efficient and effective police work of the Delhi Police, who managed to apprehend the culprits in seven days.

The extent of the rape was horrific. This was more than a few guys trying force themselves on an into a girl. It was about destroying her beyond recognition. One of the points made in the series was that she had her intestines hanging out of her vagina and anus. At the time, the angst in the reporting was that this incident was part of the growing wealth gap in India, where the rich got richer, and the poor got poorer. The criminals were all from the lower classes (bus driver and conductor etc), whilst the victims were from professional middle class backgrounds (the guy who survived in now a software engineer, the girl who died is was studying physiotherapy).

Whilst you can say there was an element of struggle between the haves and have nots, there was a key line in the series which summed things up. One of the policemen made the point that as part of the growing wealth gap, society was finding “providing sex education expensive but people have free access to porn,” thereby giving angry young men an objectified view of women and their sexual wants and needs.

Whilst the show was based around an event in India, the issue spoken by that line is universal. Equipping children with the ability to deal with the world has become very expensive (which is not necessarily in the monetary sense) while getting all sorts of doggy information is free and easy.

The most obvious example is sex education. In most developed countries, whenever “sex education” comes up, there will be a hue and cry about polluting young minds. There will inevitably be the crowd that argues that teaching guys how to put a condom or getting girls to take the pill will turn children into wild perverts. This is even though study after study has shown that groups of kids who undergo “abstinence-only” education inevitably have larger numbers of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases than the groups that are taught “abstinence plus” or “best not to do it but if you do, there are condoms and pills.” I remember that I needed to sign a consent form when the Evil Young Woman was at school so that they could provide sex education.

Making access of sex education and equipping young people with knowledge of how to take care of themselves is a challenge and at times, ignorance about crucial issues has become confused with virtue. My first wife worked on that principle when we fought over her going for the abortion. She took the view that she never had sex before me and so how could anyone expect her to know that she would get pregnant through regular sex. She was 28 when we met and a graduate who had been through the Singapore education system (where biology is taught). This is incidentally a position that a prostitute from a less developed country will not make for the simple reason that getting infected HIV kills business.

While providing education on sex and how to handle it is challenging, getting hold of porn is getting easier. Back in the 1990s, Singapore banned magazines like Playboy and Penthouse, which had a naked lady or two in gynecologically interesting poses. Since it was banned in Singapore, there were Singaporeans who thought it was thrilling to smuggle magazines into Singapore. When I lived in the UK, the mildest porn magazines were placed on the top shelf (harder for kids to reach and browse) whilst the more explicit ones were wrapped up and even then, you had to pay for the magazine, hence even the most interested user would have to think before buying.

These days, getting hold of porn, including the very explicit stuff is easy. Here is a list of seemingly accessible porn sites that I get to in a country that bans the sale of magazines with naked ladies. These sites give you the stuff that is a lot more than just naked ladies posing suggestively.

 


 Now, I am past the age where I drool over everything in a skirt and my technical skills are limited. If I can get hold of such sites, imagine what one of today’s tech savvy kids with raging hormones can get hold of.

Sex education is only the most glaring example of how we are ruining our kids by making their education very expensive in an age where they can get hold of all sorts of information. The “information age,” is called that for a reason. Information is in abundance. I no longer need to go to a library for a day to get hold of some statistics. I merely “Google” it. Education has move away from getting information but being able to discern what is valuable and good information rather than what is junk. Unfortunately, critical thinking is not considered a skill in an increasing number of places.

Take the efforts to ban books in certain American states. Think of the opponents of “Critical Race” theory like that brave combat veteran against sex abuse accusations “Mat Gaetz” who argue that teaching it and reading about “Critical Race Theory” will make White children feel unnecessarily bad about being white.

However, while people are arguing about teaching things like “Critical Race Theory,” one can get hold of say the manifesto of groups like the “Proud Boys” with a dedicated enough search. Then again, why go that far when you can turn on the TV and get Tucker Carlson who has made a fortune telling you that white supremacy is not a thing.

Let us look at Covid facts. The USA had spent years neglecting the teaching of basic science (top science graduates in top US scientific universities inevitably coming from elsewhere) because it was “too expensive” (why be a researcher on a couple hundred thousand a year when you can study finance and make millions on Wall Street). Then, when Covid struck and the scientist and doctors said one thing, the crowds took to the likes of Carlson, Hannity and Ingram who were telling them that they were screwed by the people who knew what was going on. The world’s most powerful and prominent scientific nation ended up leading the world in Covid infections and fatalities, leaving places like India and the African continent in the dust.  

Things in Singapore are officially not that bad. However, critical thinking skills are considered a left over from Western Imperialism. When Yale-NUS College, which was supposed to teach liberal arts, got shut down, you had the likes of Mr. Calvin Cheng celebrating the end of Western Imperialism in the educational system. Mr. Cheng has a point, its expensive to teach liberal arts of anything that does not qualify you for anything directly but does train your mind to ask questions and think critically. Its expensive to teach Singaporeans to think critically. Nobody pointed out that if you think teaching people to think is expensive, just wait till the bill for a group of educated but unemployable people comes in.

Education might cost but in this day and age where information of all sorts is so readily available, the bill for not educating people for the purpose of what education was meant to do will be worse.

Thursday, September 01, 2022

A Decent Man in an Evil System

 

The end of August 2022 was more than just the end of a month. On 30 August 2022, Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union died at the age of 91. Mr. Gorbachev, was the last of the Cold War Leaders, having survived US Presidents Ronald Regan and George HW Bush, French President Francois Mitterrand, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.

Mr. Gorbachev was what you could call one of the most significant figures in modern world history in the last 50-years. Mr. Gorbachev’s final years were sad. The Western world, which once lionised him and the Russian world, which once loathed him, had pretty much forgotten about him and the only “review” of his life and works have only started with the announcement of his death. One of the examples of the reviews of his life can be found in the following report by Reuters.

https://www.reuters.com/world/mikhail-gorbachev-who-ended-cold-war-dies-aged-92-agencies-2022-08-30/  

 


 Say what you like about the world before and after the Soviet Union but Mr. Gorbachev was by all definitions of the word, a transformative figure. What makes Mr. Gorbachev so unique is that unlike his Cold War contemporaries, his achievements came about from his failure. Ronald Regan and Margaret Thatcher are credited for reviving morbid economies (Regan can be credited for “Making America Great Again” long before Trump considered politics as a career). Helmut Kohl presided over the reunification of Germany. Gorbachev on the other hand presided over the dismantling of the Soviet Union into a multitude of nations in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

In a way, you could say that the dismantling of the Soviet Union made life more complicated. The world moved from playing off two superpowers against each other to one where there’s only one hyperpower and a myriad of other players including non-state actors who play by different rules. Whilst the initial hope at the end of the Cold War was for a safer world, one could argue that quite opposite has happened. The superpowers knew they had the capabilities to destroy each other many times over, so avoided situations of direct conflict and kept their respective camps under control. These days, the worry is no longer about world leaders but about the possibility of non-state actors with qualms about killing people smuggling lethal weapons in the most sensitive spot.

For Russians, the dissolution of the Soviet Union was not the paradise they expected it to be. Soviet oppression was replaced by the “gangster” capitalism of the Yeltsin years. The “Champion of Freedom” that replaced Mr. Gorbachev spent the better part of his presidency drunk and allowed his cronies to rob the nation blind. The chaos of the Yeltsin years is a more recent memory than the Soviet Union. There is a reason why a good portion of the Russian population like their current president, Vladimir Putin despite invading Ukraine.

Yet, when all that is said and done, the dissolution of the Soviet Union was probably inevitable. When Mr. Gorbachev came into power at the age of 54, he was a breath of fresh air compared to the host dull apparatchiks that preceded him. Like FW De Klerk in apartheid South Africa, Mr. Gorbachev grew up and believed in the Soviet system and wanted to reform it rather than to dismantle it. His signature policies of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness). Mr. Gorbachev understood that the Cold War was draining the Soviet Union as it tried to keep up with the US in developing more and more advanced weapons and keeping the population in the republics that formed the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Eastern Europe under control

Unfortunately for Mr. Gorbachev, the system was so rotten that instead of getting a population grateful for the chance to say a few more things, he ended up unleashing pent up feelings of nationalism is the republics. Nation after nation broke away.

Given that my mother had moved to Germany to settle with my second stepfather in 1989, I can say the biggest moment of that era came with the fall of the Berlin Wall, which had been the symbol of the divide between the Western world and the Soviet sphere. Berlin provided the example of what was wrong with the communist system. One only had to compare the Berlin neighbourhoods of Kurfürstendamm, which is the purple area on the EU version of monopoly and Alexanderplatz. It was like a beauty contest between Tom Cruise and the cast of Monsters Inc. The Western part of Berlin is dynamic and impressive. The Soviet side is downright miserable.

The system relied on a mixture of oppression and propaganda and by the time Mr. Gorbachev came into power, it had become expensive to maintain and unlike their Chinese counterparts, the Soviets did not have the financial means to maintain this. Mr. Gorbachev’s attempts to open-up only released these tensions.

Admittedly, not everything has gone well. Russians started to yearn for a strong man. Many parts of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are oppressive places. In many places, the local communist apparatchik merely stopped reporting to Moscow and continued to brutalise people as they had been for ages. Belarus under Alexander Lukashenko comes to mind.

However, there have been parts of Eastern Europe that have thrived. Today, Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states all have forward-thinking governments and dynamic economies. This would not have been possible when they were Soviet satellites.

The Soviet Union could not have been restructured and openness only created bitterness. Mr. Gorbachev was criticized for making Russia look weak on the international stage and his name is not a good one for politicians in totalitarian states to be associated with.

However, what was the alternative? How long could the system have lasted had Mr. Gorbachev maintained the status quo of his predecessors? Whilst things may have gone better had he followed the Chinese model; they could always have ended up a lot worse.

Mr. Gorbachev is a hero because he played a bad hand as best as he could have. Mr. Gorbachev formed a genuine relationship with his ideological opposite, Ronald Regan to reduce tensions that could have ended the world. By giving up on a system that he had given him so much power, he opened up opportunities for many to have better lives than their parents could have dreamed about. He failed to maintain the Soviet system, but he achieved so much for so many. There is a reason why he is one of the heroes of my generation.

© BeautifullyIncoherent
Maira Gall