/you're a little off center
This year has been one teeming with hikes: the GST hike, ministrial pay hikes, temperature hike. I shall attribute my abrupt string of self-centred epidemics to the punctured ozone layer. Having said that, I do not claim to be in any way pro-environment. My daily paper consumption must have cleared half the Amazon and I use water like the Pacific's mine. To excarbate my environmentally suicidal habits, I do not even try to avoid walking on grass patches.
Anyhow, as adapted from
http://samaryn.com:
In 2011, the General Elections will be held and the ruling party will again claim the people’s mandate. In a similar vein to MM Lee Kuan Yew’s scare-mongering tactics, this is a possible scenario of the immediate years after 2011:1. Hikes for GST, transport and healthcare manifest yet again. Cascade effect causes daily necessities and food to rise in cost again; CPI increases but statistics will be massaged.2. Prolonged, strenuous debates on welfare and workfare benefits eventually see another grand $30 increase, maybe double or triple that even. Income gap continues to widen and the Gini coefficient continues to rise.3. The Newspaper Printing Presses Act is amended a few years before GE 2011 to include measures on new media. Mainstream media, especially the stable of SPH newspapers, improve in the subtlety or blatancy of their pro-establishment reportage. Counter-insurgency measures become more sophisticated.4. Retirement villages are promoted; those situated in nearby Johor and Bintan are especially lauded and recommended by ministers for financial cost reasons. In the oldest precincts, one-room flats and two-room flats are slated for demolition to make way for new HDB flats. In some precincts nearer to town, the old three/four-storey flats that are converted into boutique hotels, like those in Tiong Bahru.5. Residents, and not HDB, bear the increasing cost of IUP and LUP for their housing estate. Other burdens of the State begin to be transferred to the citizens as the population’s age pyramid bulges towards the old age bracket.6. Ministerial salaries are due for review 6 years after 2007’s increase. The benchmark will not vary much from the previous review and ministers are expected to receive at least half a million more in annual salary. First world countries elsewhere begin to adopt Singapore’s best practice.7. GLCs continue to have a stronghold on the economy and acquire significant stakes in regional countries’ assets. Ruling party members and affiliates continue to be rotated amongst the different ministries and GLCs.8. The PMETs of the generation born in the 70s and 80s continue to leave the country in large droves. Emigrants join their families and friends already settled in Australia, USA and Canada. Australia records a new high of 60,000+ emigrants from Singapore in 2015, compared to the 50,000 in 2007. Some emigrants seek new lives in nearby ASEAN countries and China. Overseas undergraduates and graduates especially, sink new roots in the country of their choice. The exodus begins to surpass the influx as more citizens make their decision to leave.
2:26 AM
