Optimist, sunshine, nature, apples, clouds, animals, walking, being me, air-rifle, sketching, music, laughing with friends, reading, living each day to the fullest
'On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.

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To be updated.

Freaking 78 pages on pdf ): Makes me feel like scrolling through everything in 5 secs and say:
I FINISHED READING THE WHITE PAPER!!!!!

I shall be a lazy girl and find a summarized version if it exists, if not i'll just plough through the pages or read just sections relevant to what im interested in...

Please note: I have no particular inclination to any political party as of now, i'm just taking a look at things in a neutral manner.


From people:

Quote. from a person called larry yeung 
Regarding the latest land use planning, as one of the young singaporeans, I am just disappointed that after so many years, the URA is still generalising green spaces as mere man made park connectors and roads with trees... Is this really nature?


building a healthy environment also includes the well being of the mind. One can achieve high density and efficiency, but at the end of the day, without all these nature in a city, we can only call ourselves a efficient city, but not a livable one. hope that the authorities can relook into the masterplan planning and not just roll it out blindly without consideration of the context.

I really hope these thoughts which i believe is not only shared by msyelf, but also many from my generation could help to perhaps make the government take a step back to really think carefully of the future.

The path is not easy, but I firmly believe that there are still alot of other alternatives than just a blind solution of importing talents from elsewhere.


Quote. from Mr. Tan Ah Kow from PAP confessions 
Virtually all your PAP grassroots leaders and members were taken aback by the White Paper. And it became obvious very quickly that so were all the PAP MPs. Seah Kian Peng said he’s skeptical about the White Paper and thought the targets should be scaled by to 80% (how's that different from WP's 5.9 million?). Jessica said that she, and a few other MPs, would not have been able to support the White Paper in its present form. Even Tin Pei Ling said she supported the amended proposition with a heavy heart.  [really?]

...ESM Goh, Mah Bow Tan and Wong Kan Seng to speak in defence of the Paper? the very guys who are most associated with Singapore’s “lost decade” – a decade where we seemingly pursued GDP growth for its own sake, where the social fabric of Singapore was put under tremendous (and some say, irreversible) stress, where you yourself said to have “lacked 20/20 vision” in infrastructure planning. And yet, you actually got these people to speak? Do you know what message you are sending – you are essentially thumbing your nose at Singaporeans and saying, “So?”.     [personally, I don't understand why you said they lacked a clear vision in infrastructure planning. In my opinion, singapore being one of the densest city population in the world has various mixed land use and planning for the various sectors of the society to function normally. ie, education infrastructure, public housing, sanitation and health care amenities, hospitals,central business districts and secondary hubs, transportation, and more. There are definitely limitations to which an ever-changing population size can affect the capacity, the optimal use, accessibility and the provision of infrastructure for the citizens. it is definitely unfair to call them blind because all across the world problems such as this will occur. As learnt from objectivity in science, you cannot predict or expect accurate results when all the parameters are not kept constant.] 

Sub-Quote. from WP's population policy paper.

We would probably not be experiencing the current degree of angst over overcrowding if the Government had presented the White Paper to the people much earlier, instead of allowing population growth to surpass their planning target and failing to ensure that infrastructural development kept in tandem with population growth. [oh i finally see...]
 

Did it have to be handled in such a – pardon my language again – incompetent way? And how do you think we, your faithful foot-soldiers, feel ? You put us in the difficult position of having to defend something we did not agree with. (I like this.) How do we answer to our family members and friends, who asked what are we fighting for, what's wrong with today's PAP leaders?   [the writer bombarded his letter with the use of emotive language. This is fallacious - appeal to emotions. But, maybe I think understand his strong feelings.] 

“Growth is not for its own sake. But growth is not unimportant. If you are in the top 5, 10% of the population, you may say, well, I have enough, I can manage .. (but) if you are in the bottom 10, 20% of the population, ..it would be patronising for us to say growth is unimportant… Our experience has shown that in fact when the economy is growing, the low income Singaporeans get benefits, their incomes go up.”

Mr PM, do you know that in the last 10 years, the bottom 10% and 20% didn’t see their real income rise at all? If the last 10 years of growth, with 1 million increase in population, didn’t increase their income or make their lives better, how do you expect Singaporeans to believe you that the next 10 years of growth will be different?


Singaporeans feel divided, not united, when the China-imported table tennis team won medals in the London Olympics. It became a symbol of the "instant tree" mentality of the Govt. And I guess you now no longer cite the example of Feng Tian Wei as a unifying factor because she'd said bye-bye to Singapore and moved back to Beijing. [I personally do not feel unified. It was just like any other news that happened. It seemed to me a bit like.. using the analogy of during Nationals competition, when you watch your competiting school take a medal, you watch, acknowledge and congratulate them but there are no warm feelings or emotions attached. Same for the people around me, my family and friends. I don't think we ever feel strongly for them. Perhaps, we might not be interested in sport in the first place (ie. as i'm not interested in movies, whoever won the oscars award, what nominee, i have nary a clue to what is happening). Perhaps, we as busy singaporeans preoccupied with being stressed - over work, school and anyother thing that we can be stressed of - have no time to bother about such 'National' issues. Perhaps, NE lessons were limited in its abilty to influence (lol). Perhaps, we really don't care about these players whose roots are not attached to this land you and I call home. (my dad would readily agree with this)] 


And the worst part is this – nobody is going to believe you that 6.9
million is not real. Because come 2016, as long as the population increases from today’s 5.3 million to 5.6 million, the WP can easily say : See, the PAP is going along the trajectory in the White Paper. Ignore all their talk. Its already happening. If you vote PAP, you will have 6.9 million people. In other words, you have fallen onto a trap that you dug yourself. How sad. [erm, a little unfair. no one can expect how the population trajectory would be extrapolated in accurate figures, i believe. not WP nor PAP. it is at best an estimate created by studying various trends shown in society and made by policy makers and population experts..] 

At this rate, you will continue to erode the trust (yes, trust) and support of the people. Including people from the older generation who remembered and are eternally grateful to what LKY did for Singapore. In fact, the White Paper had turned out to be a big wake up call to Singaporeans - they better think twice about putting the PAP in such a dominant position in Parliament, if they want to maintain the Singapore they know. [yes i agree, i have encountered many conversations with older generations who expressed such sentiments] 


So what do I want from you, other than “listen to us”? A hallmark of a successful, good leader is not his charisma, or his heart, or his eloquence, or his intelligence. The starting point is always this – who is he listening to? Whose inputs do he value, whose has he learnt to discount?
Some of the lousiest emperors in China surrounded themselves with eunuchs who told the emperor what he wanted to hear. Some of the best, like Qian Long, disguised himself as a commoner to understand the true situation on the ground.

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