EXTRA EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!

This post is about a nation wide event, (Nation= New Zealand, not Singapore)

"University of Canterbury academic and general staff covered by collective agreements who belong to the Association of University Staff (AUS), the Public Service Association (PSA) and other combined unions have given notice of a nationwide one-day strike on Wednesday 20 July."

That was an email sent out by the Acting Vice Chancellor of the University of Canterbury. Quite exciting actually. The first Industrial Action i will be in.

My classes are still on though, darn, a ten to twelve class so no problem there. But there will be no HEATING!! Gasp. I will so freeze to death. Why, why oh why!!!!!!!!! That is like going into a freezer. Haiz.

ANyway so far so good. Life has been fun. Well, cept when i cook. Then it kinda is bad. THe cooking i mean. I cannnot cook. Stop laughing.

I am looking forward to the Industrial Action though. It is afterall interesting to see, although i agree with Old man Lee, that strikes should definately be banned, but the price of that is that the Government and the State MUST take the effort to listen to people, which a certain state refuses to to. Well actually it listens but ignores the opinions.

There are many things that are great with SIngapore. We have a working economy, a peaceful, safe haven, competition in many industries. Nice Airline. I think those are our strength. But we do have many weakeness.

One of which is that we do not have a Government that really listens to its people. To them, the people serves the government. Actually, that is not to be. The government is put in place by the people, given all its power by the people, to serve the people. The government is not given the right to abuse that power or to exploit it's 'powerful' position to better it's place. Because we are a one party government, dangerously close to being a one state party, we are really at the mercy of the incumbent. There is no strong opposition to curb their actions. And really why should that be? The government is our government. They are our leaders because we chose them to.

here is where praise must be given to PAP. They have done, to date, a remarkable job of leading Singapore. There is no doubt of it. They took singapore through hurdles like none other. Excellent job. The one reason why opposition cannot rise is simply because the PAP made only smaller, significant but not enough, for a strong opposition to rise. Made worse by the fact that our opposition can only raise problems, not solutions. (given time i am sure we can come out of solutions but with a lesson in half an hour time, not possible) Now that we are this stage, perhaps it is time to address the errors of the system.

We fail to distinguish between state and government. And that is seriously a problem. because the government now has another tool at it's disposal, state instruments to secure its power. State should always be free to act in the interest of the country, but when there is no distinguishment between the two seperate entities, there can be no such action. Every decision made is now a factor of two ideas, one for the best of the country and another for the best of the party. [Decision =F(Country,Party)]

Another problem i feel is apparent in Singapore is simply that our leaders cannot admit mistakes. Take the case of allowing SBS (Now SBS transit) to run the North East line (the mrt line) when the more efficient method would be to allow the incumbent SMRT to operate that. Afterall, they have the experience and the ability. But according to the Government, they wanted competition. Hello? The two lines serve different consumer groups. What competition? that is like saying fork sellers competing against spoon sellers. THE two consumer groups are totally seperate! No cross elasticity of demand there. And when there is the obvious problem of it not working out, the government chooses not to apologise. but gives some half hearted excuse.

I am a product of an education system that is generous to those whom the it regards as acceptable and hexes those whom it deems as burdens. Like the matrix, the system weeds out the problem cases too efficiently. SOme problem cases are not dealt well, actually most are not. The well handled ones makes it way to the front page of Straits Times. And this system must be corrected. Somehow.

There will always be problems with a country. No country is perfect. No one is near perfect. Nothing is near perfect. That is why we should never stop trying to improve our problems. DIfferent from progress. Now we have to regress to catch the flaws, and there are many, to patch it all up.

Hopefully, i will not end up like that poor chap who blogged and found himself disgraced. Afterall, blogs are personal opinions. No body listens to them anyway.

I am sure that people will see me as an immature child complaining about issues that i do not understand. That is true. Do not forget also that this child experienced the education system that wanted me to think, and i did. Those were my results. I do not beleive that the ends justify the means, nor do i belief that just because we have some material well being, there will be no need to pick on the small points. What is small to you, is the world to another who has to suffer that point. The people who think our education system is the best is usually those wo succeed. Ask any normal stream student how he feels. Cursed at the age of 10. WHAT UTTER RUBBISH.