40. Salient Points 2
Second set of documents to be submitted to Parliament:
Content
1. Submission to Parliament (Covering Letter, CL1)
2. Salient Points 2 (SP1-SP16)
3. Summing Up (SU1-SU26)
4. Explanation (EX1-EX4)
5. Prime Minister (PM1-PM3)
6. Annuity Premium Deduction (AP1-AP7)
7. Resolution (RS1-RS10)
8. Sales Agreement, First Salesperson (ST1-ST7)
9. Resale Checklist For Sellers Who Engage Salesperson (RC1)
10. Sales Agreement, Second Salesperson (ND1-ND7)
11. Sales Agreement, Third Salesperson (RD1-RD7)
12. Resale Checklist For Sellers Who Engage A Salesperson, Acknowledgment (CA1-CA3)
13. Option To Purchase (OP1-OP10)
14. CPF LIFE, Spreadsheet (SS1-SS3)
The texts are numbered separately and dated in reverse order. Contractual documents and spreadsheet are after the texts.
40. Salient Points
Part of the covering letter to MP listing the documents to be submitted to Parliament:
Salient Points (45 sheets) are arranged in chronological order with comments in italics that referred to the texts below:
1. Neighbour (68 sheets)
2. Sales Agents (60 sheets)
3. CPF Refund (52 sheets)
4. SHB (33 sheets)
5. CPF LIFE (37 sheets)
6. Miscellaneous (81 sheets)
40. Parkinson
Observation Are there other cases similar to the owner's? Complaints against officer are not uncommon. If complaints are valid, shouldn't there be reparation?
Officers (3), Item 16, refers to such an instance.
Posts under Bureaucracy in Category (80) are on non-action.
39. Morality
2. Applying Moral Foundations Theory to the owner's case:
Care/harm--Noise from the neighbour could cause the owner to have a nervous breakdown.
Fairness/cheating--The neighbour carries on a trade in their flat. HDB could act against such wrongdoing but took no action.
Loyalty/betrayal--Officers and their contacts collaborate with the neighbour. They see the owner as outgroup and take advantage of him.
Authority/subversion--Government is too centralised, there is no room for dissent. Any shift from official position spells one's downfall. For a long time no action was taken. It was largely because of insiders that there could be a resolution.
Sanctity/degradation--Principles and rights are ignored. Principles as in justice, equality and accountability, and rights as in feeling safe, being able to go on with one's life and belonging to a nation.
Liberty/oppression--The owner has practically no voice. Since '07 he brought his complaint to HDB, to MPs, to other authorities, and he blogged, but no direct action is taken to stop the noise.
3. Item from Teletext on 1 Sep 12:
Legal framework to curb unneighbourly acts?
Singapore's Law and Foreign Affairs Minister K Shanmugan has said that the country may need to consider new ways of dealing with conduct seen as a social nuisance. He said this may require a legal framework which sets out what Singaporeans should avoid doing, so their behaviours do not unreasonably impact their neighbours. In his latest Facebook post, Mr Shanmugan spoke of a recurrent issue he's come across, when what happens in the HDB flat impacts the others.
Observation Our Singapore Conversation's committee could consider the six foundations of morality listed above. Such values are from an evolutionary past and there are data to support it. These values provide a sound understanding of what people are really like.
Item 5 in Petition (17), Item 7 in Integrity (25), Item 6 in Deliberation (37) and Part 1 of The Righteous Mind are on the importance of reputation.
Officers (3) and Neighbour (4) are on events to do officers and the neighbour respectively. Ethics (12) is on the cover-up by officers.
38. Switch
Observation Does the owner have a case against the officers and neighbour? If so, what could be put in place to prevent the officers from having such extensive network of contacts. It is their ring of Gyges, its wearers become invisible.
Prospect (6) presents such a case.
37. Deliberation
2. The contrasting points:
Civil Trial
a) preponderance of evidence
b) liability
c) monetary damage that may include punitive damage
d) private matter
Criminal Trial
a) certainty beyond a reasonable doubt
b) guilt
c) punishment
d) public matter
40. Parkinson
Observation Are there other cases similar to the owner's? Complaints against officer are not uncommon. If complaints are valid, shouldn't there be reparation?
Officers (3), Item 16, refers to such an instance.
Posts under Bureaucracy in Category (80) are on non-action.
39. Morality
2. Applying Moral Foundations Theory to the owner's case:
Care/harm--Noise from the neighbour could cause the owner to have a nervous breakdown.
Fairness/cheating--The neighbour carries on a trade in their flat. HDB could act against such wrongdoing but took no action.
Loyalty/betrayal--Officers and their contacts collaborate with the neighbour. They see the owner as outgroup and take advantage of him.
Authority/subversion--Government is too centralised, there is no room for dissent. Any shift from official position spells one's downfall. For a long time no action was taken. It was largely because of insiders that there could be a resolution.
Sanctity/degradation--Principles and rights are ignored. Principles as in justice, equality and accountability, and rights as in feeling safe, being able to go on with one's life and belonging to a nation.
Liberty/oppression--The owner has practically no voice. Since '07 he brought his complaint to HDB, to MPs, to other authorities, and he blogged, but no direct action is taken to stop the noise.
3. Item from Teletext on 1 Sep 12:
Legal framework to curb unneighbourly acts?
Singapore's Law and Foreign Affairs Minister K Shanmugan has said that the country may need to consider new ways of dealing with conduct seen as a social nuisance. He said this may require a legal framework which sets out what Singaporeans should avoid doing, so their behaviours do not unreasonably impact their neighbours. In his latest Facebook post, Mr Shanmugan spoke of a recurrent issue he's come across, when what happens in the HDB flat impacts the others.
Observation Our Singapore Conversation's committee could consider the six foundations of morality listed above. Such values are from an evolutionary past and there are data to support it. These values provide a sound understanding of what people are really like.
Item 5 in Petition (17), Item 7 in Integrity (25), Item 6 in Deliberation (37) and Part 1 of The Righteous Mind are on the importance of reputation.
Officers (3) and Neighbour (4) are on events to do officers and the neighbour respectively. Ethics (12) is on the cover-up by officers.
38. Switch
Observation Does the owner have a case against the officers and neighbour? If so, what could be put in place to prevent the officers from having such extensive network of contacts. It is their ring of Gyges, its wearers become invisible.
Prospect (6) presents such a case.
37. Deliberation
2. The contrasting points:
Civil Trial
a) preponderance of evidence
b) liability
c) monetary damage that may include punitive damage
d) private matter
Criminal Trial
a) certainty beyond a reasonable doubt
b) guilt
c) punishment
d) public matter
6. What about shame? Unlike guilt it is felt only in the context of other people. Its purpose is to regulate social behaviour and serve as a forewarning of punishment. It is a public sentiment that also affects reputation of institutions. Where shaming alone is not enough to bring behaviour into line, the government needs a system of punishment.
7. The owner alone was not able to change the neighbour's mind. HDB, Police, Community Centre and Residents' Committee could have talked to the neighbour. Face to face interaction is still the most impressive form of dissent.
8. But the case is really about the officers and supervising authorities. If the press could take it up, it would have kept the authorities honest.
Observation There were less noise after Standpoint (34) was posted just before the National Day Rally speeches. But more noise after a month. It started when, for half an hour at about 12 pm on Saturday 29 Sep 12, there was a heavy thump followed by loud drilling and knocking. Then the noise continued at a lower level. It appeared event behind the scene caused the neighbour to warn the owner or to show defiance.
Except for a noisy period due to demolition/renovation works at a flat below, there was further lowering of noises starting Saturday 13 Oct 12. Could this be the solution? Less noise.
Work has been ongoing. It has always been less noise after a complaint and more noise later. They did for over five years until Standpoint (34). Unless the authorities take action to the officers involved, the neighbour is not going to stop.
Comment (14) and Evidence (21) are the result of personal connection and a network of contacts.
Discovery (9) lists facts that could prove "certainty beyond reasonable doubt", and Meritocracy (41) explains the problem.
36. National Day
2. The owner knew of an eviction at the neighbour's flat in '99. In '08 he deduced from what HBO (Head, Pasir Ris HDB Branch Office) said was a recent transfer of the flat to the neighbour to be untrue. Saying the transfer was recent hid the fact the transfer was soon after the eviction. The intent to cover up and maintain a relationship with the neighbour led them to force the owner into selling his flat. If they had stopped instead of abetting the neighbour, the problem could have been corrected without the risk of exposure.
It was elitist that no investigation was conducted because of HBO's connection in the administration.
3. Cambridge Dictionary of American English
Elite: those people or organizations that are considered the best or most powerful compared to others of a similar type.
Elitist: often disapproving characteristic of the elite, and especially not caring about the interests or values of ordinary people.
Observation The government could place more emphasis on good behaviour with ethics code, ethics law and ethics committee. It would prevent what is happening to the owner.
Encounter (13) and Comment (14) list the events.
Posts under Observation in Category (80) are on events as seen by the owner.
35. Punggol East
Observation The owner's case was not mentioned during the election rallies. The preceding three posts and the next two posts showed it could have been.
To get the public attention the owner timed his posts just before the General Election, Presidential Election, Hougang By-election and National Day. The Punggol East By-election was another opportunity. He did not at the time because noise came down after the previous post Standpoint (34).
Perhaps the issue could be raised under other circumstances depending on how or whether the problem is corrected.
34. Standpoint
15. It is important that the President know. The posts President (26), Ombudsman (29) and Dissent (30) let him in on the situation. Nevertheless, the Minister-in-Charge of Civil Service does. He is aware of the bcc between HBO and the Chairman (Residents' Committee) that was sent to the owner. It indicated they met in the-flat-across-the-neighbour. Some time later the Minister met the owner at a MPS that was supposed to be scheduled for the area's MP but, before the meeting, a Community Centre member (CC member) introduced the owner to another CC member who lived in the same block of flat as the owner to discuss the noise. As in this first and on two more occasions, the owner showed this other CC member has been in contact with the-people-in-the-flat-across-the-neighbour. They in turn ensure things do not get out of hands.
16. The owner explained the purpose of the-people-in-the-flat-across-the-neighbour in separate correspondence to the President and the Singapore Police Force. Both correspondences were acknowledged by Bedok Police Division and Neighbourhood Police Centre (NPC). Bedok Police Division noted the concern raised and referred it to NPC. NPC wrote they were unable to find evidence of alleged noise or criminal offence, yet nowhere in the letter was the-people-in-the-flat-across-the-neighbour mentioned. When the owner wrote again to the President after the presidential election and the matter was referred again to Bedok Police Division, they did not reply. Bedok Police Division already knew of the situation. In News (31) the Minister-in-Charge of Civil Service and Head, Civil Service, spoke of issue not falling within neat domain and of issue not falling neatly into any one agency's work respectively. The owner thinks the speeches fit his case.
Observation Noise started up for two days on the fourth day after the posting of News (31) and Citizen (32). On and off there were many more days where noise was obvious. By the eighth week noise was adjusted down but the difference came with more noise in length of time heard, at least for a few days.
Now into the sixteenth week their works are still continuing. Some noises are muffled, others are heard clearly. Noises are continual, mostly in the morning and afternoon. At times noises are frequent and annoying.
Some things remain the same. Message from the administration to the officers who collaborate with the neighbour causes the neighbour to reduce noise. No action taken to the officers, who are still in their places including the-people-in-the-flat-across-the-neighbour, serves the neighbour. The officers guide the neighbour on what to do.
Compare that to the insider who was able to stop the neighbour for about four years in Item 2 above.
33. By-Election
Observation
1. News items between Nomination Day, 16 May 12, and one day after Polling Day, 26 May 12:
a) The Workers' Party candidate for Hougang, Png Eng Huat, said the composition in Singapore Parliament is "too lopsided".
He said democracy is about political and social equality and it is something he doesn't see in Parliament as the majority of MPs are from the People's Action Party.
Mr Png made this point in response to comments by his PAP opponent, Desmond Choo. Mr Choo had urged voters not to "mix up" the democratic process with the need for alternative voices in Parliament.
2. The owner had hoped his case could be mentioned during the by-election. But earlier, the potential office of ombudsman was raised in parliament and the CUTS filed in the Prime Minister's Office. The CUTS is at www.wp.sg of the Workers' Party dated 7 Mar 12.
3. Ombudsman: official empowered to investigate individual complaints of bureaucratic injustice.
32. Citizen 2
Observation
Treat people as citizens
How a generation of political thinkers has underestimated the abilities of ordinary people and undermined democracy
Nicholas Tampio is associate professor of political science at Fordham University in New York. He is the author of Kantian Courage (2012) and Deleuze’s Political Vision (2015). His latest book is Common Core: National Education Standards and the Threat to Democracy (2018).
In early 2017, Scientific American published a symposium on the threat that ‘big nudging’ poses to democracy. Big Data is the phenomena whereby governments and corporations collect and analyse information provided by measuring sensors and internet searches. Nudging is the view that governments should build choice architectures that make it easier for people to pick, say, the more fuel-efficient car or the more sensible retirement plan. Big nudging is the combination of the two that enables public or private engineers to subtly influence the choices that people make, say, by autofilling internet searches in desirable ways. Big nudging is a ‘digital sceptre that allows one to govern the masses efficiently, without having to involve citizens in democratic processes’. The symposium’s authors take for granted that democracy – the political regime in which the people collectively determine its common way of life – is better than epistocracy, or rule by experts.
Democrats acknowledge that some people know more than others. However, democrats believe that people, entrusted with meaningful decision-making power, can handle power responsibly. Furthermore, people feel satisfaction when they have a hand in charting a common future. Democrats from Thomas Jefferson and Alexis de Tocqueville to the political theorist Carole Pateman at the University of California in Los Angeles advocate dispersing power as widely as possible among the people. The democratic faith is that participating in politics educates and ennobles people. For democrats, the pressing task today is to protect and expand possibilities for political action, not to limit them or shut them down in the name of expert rule.
Pateman gives other examples of ways to involve more people in the policymaking process, including citizens’ assemblies to review the electoral system in Canadian provinces, or participatory budgeting in the city of Porto Alegre in Brazil. In these instances, citizens assembled in mini-publics and, given time for discussion and research, became knowledgeable about public matters. Just as importantly, ‘the empirical evidence from mini-publics shows that citizens both welcome and enjoy the opportunity to take part and to deliberate, and that they take their duties seriously’.
In The Death of Expertise, Nichols contends that it is ‘ignorant narcissism for laypeople to believe that they can maintain a large and advanced nation without listening to the voices of those more educated and experienced than themselves’. Of course, the ‘best and the brightest’ led the US into the Iraq War, the subprime mortgage crisis, and a raft of bad education policies; the track record of epistocracy in recent years is, at best, mixed. Furthermore, the elitist stance clashes with the fact that many people demand a say in how we lead our personal and collective lives. Many people today value autonomy, or self-governance, and suffer when it is denied.
One reason why is because of a certain progression in the history of ideas. In The Invention of Autonomy (1997), Jerome B Schneewind shows how the idea of autonomy developed from an intimation in Paul’s Letter to the Romans, to Jean Jacques Rousseau’s conception of freedom as following a law that one gives oneself as a member of the general will, to Immanuel Kant’s practical philosophy that makes freedom its keystone. Other historians have continued this work up to the present, showing how the ideal of autonomy informs modern thinking about economics, race, gender and so forth. Many people share the sentiment of the international disability movement: ‘Nothing about us without us.’
Guerrero, a philosopher at the University of Pennsylvania, thinks that direct democracy cannot work because most people lack the time and ability to understand the complexities of modern public policy. Democrats have responded to this situation by creating a system of representative democracy where people vote for politicians who act as our agents in the halls of power. The problem is that most people cannot pay sufficient attention to hold their representatives accountable. Citizens are ‘ignorant about what our representatives are doing, ignorant about the details of complex political issues, and ignorant about whether what our representative is doing is good for us or for the world’. To make matters worse, powerful economic interests have the knowledge and resources to capture representatives and make them serve the rich.
The time for electoral representative democracy has passed, argues Guerrero. Rather than waste people’s votes in elections, political systems should create a lottocracy that randomly selects adults who can perform modified versions of the jobs that elected politicians presently do. Right now, US congresspersons are predominantly white, male, millionaires; a lottocracy could instantly raise the number of women, minorities and lower-income people in the legislature, and take advantage of each group’s epistemic contributions to policy debates.
Guerrero envisions single-issue legislatures whose members are chosen by lottery and serve three-year staggered terms. At the beginning of the legislative session, experts set the agenda and bring the legislators up to speed on the topic, then the legislators draft, revise and vote on legislation. Guerrero dismisses the possibility that experts ‘would convince us to buy the same corporate-sponsored policy we’re currently getting’.
On the contrary, the wealthy and powerful could easily manipulate a lottocracy. Think tanks and lobbyists, funded by economic elites, would welcome the opportunity to educate lottery-chosen legislators. Those who set the agenda make the most important decisions. This is the democratic critique of plans that tightly regulate the ways that people may participate in politics. Democracy means people exerting power, not choosing from a menu made by elites and their agents.
The remedy for our democracy deficit is to devolve as much power as possible to the local level. Many problems can be addressed only on the state, federal and international level, but the idea is that participating in local politics teaches citizens how to speak in public, negotiate with others, research policy issues, and learn about their community and the larger circles in which it is embedded. Like any other skill, the way to become a better citizen is to practise citizenship.
Jefferson articulated the democratic faith in a remarkable series of letters in the early 19th century. He first denounces the idea, shared by fellow American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton and the French philosophies, that elites should govern from the capital. Concentrating power in this way enervates citizens, and opens the door to aristocracy or autocracy. Jefferson envisions a system of ward republics that empower people to handle local affairs, including care of the poor, roads, police, elections, courts, schools and militia. Jefferson sees a role for counties, states and the federal government, but he wants substantial political power to be dispersed to every corner of the country. When people participate ‘in the government of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the year, but every day’, Jefferson explains, they will protect their rights and fight the accession of a Caesar or a Bonaparte.
The way to learn how to walk is to walk; the way to become a citizen is to exert some kind of power in the government or civil society. There is no technological quick fix to make our society more democratic. To learn what Tocqueville called ‘the art of being free’, people must have a hand in the governance of common affairs.
32. Citizen
Observation
6. It is unconscionable to allow the neighbour to carry on. For a long time noise was undisguised, which forced the owner to consider alternative before selling his flat. He went to see the MPs about ten times then wrote a blog. In it he lined up facts, including actions by insiders, to show officers and the neighbour collaborated. These were listed and explained under various contexts, but the problem continued to be left unattended. The neighbour continues with their work because HBO (Head, Pasir Ris HDB Branch Office) is in a position to use his influence and the-people-in-the-flat-across-the-neighbour watches out for them.
9. It may seem the administration in government is overly legalistic by being silent, but it implies more. The connections between the officers, the-people-in-the-flat-across-the-neighbour and the neighbour are telling. If there were nothing, the authorities would have said so and put a stop to an issue the owner had brought up many times to support his case. Silence means not disclosing, which muddles the issue, shields the officers and allows the neighbour to go on.
12. Democracy is supposed to create the conditions where ordinary citizens could find their voice. There is no freedom when its citizens would not speak up against wrongdoing because they have reservation about speaking up.
13. Citizenship Richard Bellamy, A Very Short Introduction series
Now any reasonably stable and efficient political framework, even one presided by a ruthless tyrant, will provide us some of these benefits. For example, think of the increased uncertainty and insecurity suffered by many Iraqi citizens as a result of the lack of an effective political order following the toppling of Saddam Hussein. However, those possessing no great wealth, power, or influence - the vast majority of people in other words - will not be satisfied with just any framework. They will want one that applies to all - including the government - and treats everyone impartially and as equals, no matter how rich or important they may be. In particular, they will want its provisions to provide a just basis for all to enjoy the freedom to pursue their lives as they choose on equal terms with everyone else, and in so far as is compatible with their having a reasonable amount of personal security through the maintenance of an appropriate degree of social and political stability. And a necessary, if not always a sufficient, condition for ensuring the laws and policies of a political community possess these characteristics is that the country is a working electoral democracy and that citizens participate in making it so. Apart from anything else, political involvement helps citizens shape what this framework should look like. People are likely to disagree about what equality, freedom, and security involve and the best policies to support them in given circumstances. Democracy offers the potential for citizens to debate these issues on roughly equal terms and to come to some appreciation of each other's views and interests. It also promotes government that is responsible to their evolving concerns and changing conditions by giving politicians an incentive to rule in ways that reflect and advance not their own interests but those of most citizens.
Above all, the appeal of a society of civic equals who share in fashioning their collective life remains a powerful one. Citizenship informs and gives effect to central features of our social morality. It underlies our whole sense of self-worth, affecting in the process the ways one treat others and are treated by them. It stands behind the commitment to rights and the appreciation of cultural diversity that are among the central moral achievements of the late 20th and 21th centuries. It has become fashionable to try and detach these effects of citizenship from any involvement in politics or democracy. What I hope to have shown in this book is that that is not possible. Citizenship and democratic politics stand and fall together. To seek to divorce the two undermines not just the possibility of political citizenship, but the values associated with the very idea of citizenship itself. The reinvigoration of citizenship, therefore, depends on revitalizing rather than diminishing political participation and with it the sense of belonging and the commitment to rights that are its prime benefits.
31. News
Observation
1. In the Straits Times of 28 Mar 12:
Govt must not shy away from hard decisions: DPM
Engagement is part of policy process but there are trade-offs, he says
Mr Teo, who is also the Minister in charge of the Civil Service, Coordinating Minister for National Security, and Home Affairs Minister, was speaking at the Administrative Service dinner during which 74 Administrative Service officers received their promotion certificates.
Rather than grapple with whether to do more or less, Government should "focus on doing the right things, and doing these things right", he said.
But the greater challenge as Mr Teo saw it was in performing these roles in the right way. This called for civil servants to take a long-term perspective, and ensure whole-of-Government coherence when complex issues no longer fell within neat domains.
3. There were evasions. After trying to call up the Branch Office, the owner called OIC (Officer-in-Charge) who said the office did not receive his second letter. The owner then went to the office with a draft of the handwritten letter, asked for an acknowledgment and insisted on a meeting with HBO (Head, Pasir Ris HDB Branch Office). The acknowledgment was a signed photocopy of the letter but two lines were missing from the photocopy. The lines pointed to OIC having an arrangement with the neighbour. During the meeting with HBO and OIC, HBO asked the owner whether he knew of a recent transfer of the neighbour's flat to throw him off. The owner was able to determine that the transfer was not a recent event but happened nine years ago in '99 after an eviction.
30. Dissent
Observation
2. The case has features of whistleblowing. I would not have noticed the-people-in-the-flat-across-the-neighbour if someone in the same flat had not stopped the neighbour many years earlier, and someone sent me a bcc from HBO (Head, Pasir Ris HDB Branch Office) to the Chairman (Residents' Committee) that indicated they met in the flat. At a Meet-the-People Session, a CC member (Community Centre member) introduced me to another CC member who lived at my block of flat to talk about the noise and two other meetings with the latter indicated he had contact with the-people-in-the-flat-across-the-neighbour.
10. The President may be unaware. In a reply two weeks after I emailed the President, an officer referred me to the relevant authorities without giving his name. It was followed by a reply from a police officer from SPF Customer Relation Branch who referred me to Bedok Police Division. Another two weeks later another police officer from SPF Customer Relation Branch, instead of Bedok Police Division, replied. He stated "the matter had been adequately addressed before", which would be the investigation by Neighbourhood Police Centre that did not mention the-people-in-the-flat-across-the-neighbour. (It reminded me of another police officer who, in reply to my email to the Commissioner of Police, stated "HDB had investigated thoroughly the matter and there was no unnecessary noise nor misuse of flat" in Sep 09.) Bedok Police Division did not reply because they were aware of the issue the first time I wrote to the President. The officer from the President's Office and the second police officer who replied may have took over the case in that my email never reached the President.
5. King (1999) stipulated that variation in organizational structure would have a direct impact on organizational dissent, particularly whistleblowing. He postulated that in centralized-vertical-bureaucratic organization where dissent is met with retaliation or ignored, fewer channels exist for expressing dissent and employees believe they can exercise little influence. As a result employees tend to express dissent externally. Conversely, in hybrid structure, where decision-making is decentralized among business units while administrative functions remain centralized, communication and exchange of information flows without difficulty between divisions and upper management. King stipulated that in these arrangements, dissent should be expressed internally within organization.
Accordingly, we can see that dissent may be ineffectual and risky, fundamental to participation, key to shaping organizational culture, reflective of organizational discourse, or instrumental to identity enactment.
Dissent in Organization Jeffery Kassing, Pg 132 and 70.
29. Ombudsman
Observation
1. The Straits Times printed "a national ombudsman" under a reply from Mr Tony Tan Keng Yam during the presidential election. He says ombudsman is an established method when citizen is wronged. Mr Tony Tan is now the President.
7. The following questions need asking:
a) Who is accountable for the-people-in-the-flat-across-the-neighbour?
b) After the SPF (Singapore Police Force) was informed, why didn't they investigate?
c) PSC and HDB are official channels of complaint, what keeps them from giving a reply?
c) PSC and HDB are official channels of complaint, what keeps them from giving a reply?
12. In 22 May 09 Minister-in-Charge of Civil Service said the government was on a lookout for bold and visionary leaders to raise the quality of public service. The statement was made one to two weeks after the owner posted his complaint at civicadvocator.net Later, PM said it was difficult to get leaders from the private sector into the public service due to different culture and mid-career changes.
28. Overview
Observation
9. After I wrote to the President and posted it in the blog, there was an indirect reference on Teletext the same day and a meeting with an intermediary three days later. He was an old friend who met the owner on four other occasions although he did not say he was one. Noise was much reduced the next day after the meeting with him and for a time afterwards, but the situation remains unchanged. Work is still heard each day. It has worsen on a number of days over the past few weeks, and the next owner would face the same problem when I leave.
10. The indirect reference over Teletext on 15 Sep 11 and 16 Sep 11 referred to a survey by Institute of Policy Studies. It states the level of political cynic in Singapore is low compared to other countries, but is a cause for worry if it rises and people cannot trust politicians. PAP MPs say if people doubt their credibility and trustworthiness, it would be difficult to act in the interest of the country.
11. Mr Low Thia Khiang says in the first session of 12th Parliament his party's MPs will scrutinise policies for any loopholes and gaps that may affect people adversely and will act as a voice for the people in the House. This may be related to the previous post Committee (27).
12. At the onset, HDB could have disciplined the officers and enforced compliance of the neighbour. By stationing the-people-in-the-flat-across-the-neighbour to protect the neighbour, the officers violate my rights as a citizen. The Singapore Police Force was informed but they did not refer to the-people-in-the-flat-across-the-neighbour in their correspondence to me. There is, therefore, a need for a neutral body to investigate.
27. Sortition
Observation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
In governance, sortition (also known as allotment or demarchy) is the selection of political officials as a random sample from a larger pool of candidates. The logic behind the sortition process originates from the idea that "power corrupts."[citation needed] For that reason, when the time came to choose individuals to be assigned to empowering positions, the ancient Athenians resorted to choosing by lot. In ancient Athenian democracy, sortition was therefore the traditional and primary method for appointing political officials, and its use was regarded as a principal characteristic of true democracy.
Today, sortition is commonly used to select prospective jurors in common law-based legal systems and is sometimes used in forming citizen groups with political advisory power (citizens' juries or citizens' assemblies).
27. Lottocracy
Observation
The lottocracy
Elections are flawed and can’t be redeemed – it’s time to start choosing our representatives by lottery
Alexander Guerrero is an assistant professor of philosophy, medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The celebrity comic Russell Brand is gesticulating wildly, urgently, in a hotel room, under the bright lights of a television interview. ‘Stop voting, stop pretending, wake up. Be in reality now. Why vote? We know it’s not going to make any difference. We know that already.’ He is responding to his interviewer, Jeremy Paxman, who is taking him to task for never having voted.
In the modern world, we often find ourselves in the following situation. I know that whether I do X rather than Y won’t make a difference by itself. I also know that everyone else knows this about me and about themselves. I also know that if all of us do X, rather than Y, it will make a difference. And everyone else knows this, too. So it’s striking and surprising that a celebrity such as Brand would come out and say, to millions, ‘Don’t vote,’ rather than ‘Vote for X.’ That was the revolutionary part of the interview. A thousand lefty celebrities have gone on TV and advocated for causes. Very few have gone on TV and said ‘Don’t vote.’ Very few have gone on TV and said, essentially, X and Y can both go fuck themselves.
Brand’s view is clear: ‘I’m not [refusing to vote] out of apathy,’ he says. ‘I’m not voting out of absolute indifference and weariness and exhaustion from the lies, treachery, deceit of the political class that has been going on for generations.’ Brand says that many of us don’t engage with the current political system, because we see that it doesn’t work for us, we see that it makes no difference. ‘The apathy doesn’t come from us, the people,’ he says. ‘The apathy comes from the politicians. They are apathetic to our needs. They are only interested in servicing the needs of corporations.’
...Here’s one approach, which I am in the process of developing, that I call lottocracy. The basic components are straightforward. First, rather than having a single, generalist legislature such as the United States Congress, the legislative function would be fulfilled by many different single-issue legislatures (each one focusing on, for example, just agriculture or health care). There might be 20 or 25 of these single-issue legislatures, perhaps borrowing existing divisions in legislative committees or administrative agencies: agriculture, commerce and consumer protection, education, energy, health and human services, housing and urban development, immigration, labour, transportation, etc.
These single-issue legislatures would be chosen by lottery from the political jurisdiction, with each single-issue legislature consisting of 300 people. Each person chosen would serve for a three-year term. Terms would be staggered so that each year 100 new people begin, and 100 people finish. All adult citizens in the political jurisdiction would be eligible to be selected. People would not be required to serve if selected, but the financial incentive would be significant, efforts would be made to accommodate family and work schedules, and the civic culture might need to be developed so that serving is seen as a significant civic duty and honour. In a normal year-long legislative session, the 300 people would develop an agenda of the legislative issue or two they would work on for that session, they’d hear from experts and stakeholders with respect to those issues, there would be opportunities for gathering community input and feedback, and they would eventually vote to enact legislation or alter existing legislation.
No pure lottocratic system has ever existed, and so it’s important to note that much could go wrong. Randomly chosen representatives could prove to be incompetent or easily bewildered. Maybe a few people would dominate the discussions. Maybe the experts brought in to inform the policymaking would all be bought off and would convince us to buy the same corporate-sponsored policy we’re currently getting. There are hard design questions about how such a legislative system would interact with other branches of government, and questions about the coherence of policymaking, budgeting, taxation, and enforcement of policy. That said, it’s worth remembering the level of dysfunction that exists in the current system. We should be thinking about comparative improvement, not perfection, and a lottocratic system would have a number of advantages over the current model.
The most obvious advantage of lotteries is that they help to prevent corruption or undue influence in the selection of representatives. Because members are chosen at random and don’t need to run for office, there will be no way for powerful interests to influence who becomes a representative to ensure that the only viable candidates are those whose interests are congenial to their own. Because there is no need to raise funds for re-election, it should be easier to monitor representatives to ensure that they are not being bought off.
Another advantage of lotteries over elections is that they are likely to bring together a more cognitively diverse group of people, a group of people with a better sense of the full range of views and interests of the polity. Because individuals are chosen at random from the jurisdiction, they are much more likely to be an ideologically, demographically, and socio-economically representative sample of the people in the jurisdiction than those individuals who are capable of successfully running for office. As a point of comparison, 44 per cent of US Congresspersons have a net worth of more than $1 million; 82 per cent are male; 86 per cent are white, and more than half are lawyers or bankers. Recent empirical work by Scott Page and Lu Hong has demonstrated that cognitively diverse groups of people are likely to produce better decisions than smarter, or more skilled, groups that are cognitively homogenous.
Perhaps the most urgent issue we face is climate change, a complex collective action problem that will almost certainly require a political solution to solve. But many of the worst effects of climate change won’t be realised for decades, and so politicians are unlikely to pay the short-term political cost given that they won’t see the longer-term political benefits. Even when there are clear steps that need to be taken, many elected officials will avoid acting out of fear of the immediate consequences. Individuals chosen at random won’t be hamstrung by these skewed incentives. If there is agreement on a viable solution, to climate change or to the myriad other issues that affect our children and grandchildren, lottocratic representatives will have the luxury of looking beyond this week’s poll or next week’s fund-raiser.
This task of radically redesigning government is usually dismissed as utopianism, but there is no reason to think that electoral representative democracy can’t be improved upon, just like every other kind of technology. Of course, one must be aware of limitations in the materials; we must think critically and carefully about what we know, what we have learned from psychology, economics, history, political science, law, and philosophy. And we have to be mindful of the dangers that attend our tinkering. Some of the worst horrors of the 20th century were the result of political design projects gone terribly wrong. So, we must tread carefully and take small steps. But we can’t continue to stand still.
27. How to Choose
Observation
How to choose?
When your reasons are worse than useless, sometimes the most rational choice is a random stab in the dark
Michael Schulson is an American freelance writer and an associate editor at Religion Dispatches magazine, where he helps produce The Cubit, a section covering science, religion, technology, and ethics.
In the 1970s, a young American anthropologist named Michael Dove set out for Indonesia, intending to solve an ethnographic mystery. Then a graduate student at Stanford, Dove had been reading about the Kantu’, a group of subsistence farmers who live in the tropical forests of Borneo. The Kantu’ practise the kind of shifting agriculture known to anthropologists as swidden farming, and to everyone else as slash-and-burn. Swidden farmers usually grow crops in nutrient-poor soil. They use fire to clear their fields, which they abandon at the end of each growing season.
Like other swidden farmers, the Kantu’ would establish new farming sites ever year in which to grow rice and other crops. Unlike most other swidden farmers, the Kantu’ choose where to place these fields through a ritualised form of birdwatching. They believe that certain species of bird – the Scarlet-rumped Trogon, the Rufous Piculet, and five others – are the sons-in-law of God. The appearances of these birds guide the affairs of human beings. So, in order to select a site for cultivation, a Kantu’ farmer would walk through the forest until he spotted the right combination of omen birds. And there he would clear a field and plant his crops.
He followed Kantu’ augurers. He watched omen birds. He measured the size of each household’s harvest. And he became more and more confused. Kantu’ augury is so intricate, so dependent on slight alterations and is-the-bird-to-my-left-or-my-right contingencies that Dove soon found there was no discernible correlation at all between Piculets and Trogons and the success of a Kantu’ crop. The augurers he was shadowing, Dove told me, ‘looked more and more like people who were rolling dice’.
...chance makes its selection without any recourse to reasons. This quality is perhaps its greatest advantage, though of course it comes at a price. Peter Stone, a political theorist at Trinity College, Dublin, and the author of The Luck of the Draw: The Role of Lotteries in Decision Making (2011), has made a career of studying the conditions under which such reasonless-ness can be, well, reasonable.
‘What lotteries are very good for is for keeping bad reasons out of decisions,’ Stone told me. ‘Lotteries guarantee that when you are choosing at random, there will be no reasons at all for one option rather than another being selected.’ He calls this the sanitising effect of lotteries – they eliminate all reasons from a decision, scrubbing away any kind of unwanted influence. As Stone acknowledges, randomness eliminates good reasons from the running as well as bad ones. He doesn’t advocate using chance indiscriminately. ‘But, sometimes,’ he argues, ‘the danger of bad reasons is bigger than the loss of the possibility of good reasons.’
Thinking about choice and chance in this way has applications outside rural Borneo, too. In particular, it can call into question some of the basic mechanisms of our rationalist-meritocratic-democratic system – which is why, as you might imagine, a political theorist such as Stone is so interested in randomness in the first place.
Around the same time that Michael Dove was pondering his riddle in a Kantu’ longhouse, activists and political scientists were beginning to revive the idea of filling certain political positions by lottery, a process known as sortition.
Advocates of sortition suggest applying that principle more broadly, to congresses and parliaments, in order to create a legislature that closely reflects the actual composition of a state’s citizenship. They are not (just to be clear) advocating that legislators randomly choose policies. Few, moreover, would suggest that non-representative positions such as the US presidency be appointed by a lottery of all citizens. The idea is not to banish reason from politics altogether. But plenty of bad reasons can influence the election process – through bribery, intimidation, and fraud; through vote-purchasing; through discrimination and prejudices of all kinds. The question is whether these bad reasons outweigh the benefits of a system in which voters pick their favourite candidates.
In the novel The Man in the High Castle (1962), the American sci-fi maestro Philip K Dick imagines an alternative history in which Germany and Japan win the Second World War. Most of the novel’s action takes place in Japanese-occupied San Francisco, where characters, both Japanese and American, regularly use the I Ching to guide difficult decisions in their business lives and personal affairs.
As an American with no family history of divination, I’ll admit to being enchanted by Dick’s vision of a sci-fi world where people yield some of their decision-making power to the movements of dried yarrow stems. There’s something liberating, maybe, in being able to acknowledge that the reasons we have are often inadequate, or downright poor. Without needing to impose any supernatural system, it’s not hard to picture a society in which chance plays a more explicit, more accepted role in the ways in which we distribute goods, determine admissions to colleges, give out jobs to equally matched applicants, pick our elected leaders, and make personal decisions in our own lives.
Such a society is not a rationalist’s nightmare. Instead, in an uncertain world where bad reasons do determine so much of what we decide, it’s a way to become more aware of what factors shape the choices we make. As Peter Stone told me, paraphrasing Immanuel Kant, ‘the first task of reason is to recognise its own limitations’. Nor is such a society more riddled with chanciness than our own. Something, somewhere, is always playing dice. The roles of coloniser and colonised, wealthy and poor, powerful and weak, victor and vanquished, are rarely as predestined as we imagine them to be.
Dick seems to have understood this. Certainly, he embraced chance in a way that few other novelists ever have. Years after he wrote The Man in the High Castle, Dick explained to an interviewer that, setting aside from planning and the novelist’s foresight, he had settled key details of the book’s plot by flipping coins and consulting the I Ching.
27. Inquiry
Observation
Parliamentary Select Committee / Presidential Commission of Inquiry 1. At the closing address in Parliament on 38 Oxley Road dispute, PM said:
The accusers may not be in Parliament but that should not stop MPs from talking to them to get their story, nor would it stop the accusers from getting in touch with MPs, including opposition MPs, to tell their story so that the MPs can raise it on their behalf in Parliament. That is, in fact, how the MP system is meant to work. Those are the MP’s duties. That is one reason why Parliamentary Privilege exists. So that MPs who have heard troubling allegations or news, can make these allegations and raise the matters in the House even if they are not completely proven and may be defamatory, without fear of being sued for defamation. That is how Parliaments are supposed to function.
But none of this has happened over the last two days. No one says there is evidence of abuse of power. Even the Opposition is not accusing the Government of abuse of power. So it is not a case of oneself defend oneself. Why do we need in these circumstances, a Select Committee or COI, and drag this out for months? It would be another Korean drama full scale serial. Should we set up Select Committees to investigate every unsubstantiated allegation, every wild rumour? It is as Mr Low Thia Khiang says, “vague allegations,…based on scattered evidence centred on family displeasure”, as a basis for ordering a Select Committee or COI? That’s not a basis. But if there is evidence of wrongdoing that emerges or alleged evidence of wrongdoing which emerges, then I and the Government will consider what further steps to take. We can have a Select Committee, we can have a Commission of Inquiry, I may decide to sue for defamation or take some other legal action, but until then let’s get back to more important things that we should be working on.
2. Over the many years since 2007 that I wrote to HDB Branch Office, Meet-the-People Sessions, HDB Hub, Town Council, PSC, MOM, MND, SPF, CPIB, President, Prime Minister and, since 2009, in my blog, I basically asked for an inquiry. However, there was no reply that dealt directly with the complaint which was noise from the working of a trade from an upper floor neighbour. Noise was reduced substantially only after posting Standpoint (34) in 2012, which meant the neighbour had tormented me for five years. When I decided to sell my flat I found that estate agents were not honest and CEA did not give a reply after I officially submitted my complaint. Other instances where transactions were made difficult for me were at banks, hospital, government agencies, companies and shops. So long as I continue with the complaint, there is no end.
7. At first I was asking for an inquiry from the authorities, then I was appealing to sentiment from the public, now I am asking for an investigation from Parliament. The problem could only be resolved in Parliament.
27. Select Committee
Select Committee On Fake News
1. Why the complaint in my blog is not fake news and why the Select Committee on online fake news should classify it under one of the various categories of information disseminated to the public. 3. Similarly, news media would only refer to the complaint indirectly. My blog listed many such instances. The complaint was collusion between a neighbour and officers to carry on a trade in HDB flat and, after reporting to the police, the neighbourhood police did not conduct a full investigation. Should not the authorities give a reply when informed of the wrongdoing? The right to silence is to prevent self-incrimination, but should it apply to authorities when we talk about rule of law for the citizenry? 6. The Select Committee may avoid my questions. Fake news is headline news in US and Europe and the Select Committee could fine-tune what legislation they come up with. But lawmaking is peculiar to country. If my case was reported by major news media, the problem would have been resolved. As it is, officers still cause trouble. After my last posting on Sep 17 there was intention to cause trouble. When will the trouble be over? Considering that the authorities did not reply to me nor to the MPs when I asked for their assistance on issues raised, it is officers (people) on the ground who are in such strong positions that the problem is kept unresolved at my expense. 10. An independent regulatory authority that monitors fake news could say my blog is probably not fake. They could also determine it to be fake for whatever reason and ask for the blog to be taken down. They could work with and persuade corporations and authorities in government. Being set up to be an independent body free from the influence of corporations and government, they could publicise and protect the weak. In this way, they gain trust for the work they do. Of course they could be sued, but they are reputable. Could such an authority help in the complaint? The reasons the complaint is unresolved over a long time is in Item 2 to Item 6 above. 27. Tradition Observation The argument for ethics in the second article is similar to Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue quoted in Quote (20) and Behaviour (23), and to Julian Baggini’s Complaint in Committee (27). Written in Chinese, the writer also wrote Enlightenment (25). The third article, also in Chinese, is on the importance of following rules. 27. Committee Observation 1. The owner refers to ethics committees. Public Service Commission (PSC), Presidential Council for Minority Rights and Presidential Council for Religious Harmony are of similar nature. They consist of people from inside and outside government with public duties. The President's Office and the Attorney-General's Chambers too have public duties. All represents fair-mindedness of the State.
Select Committee On Fake News
1. Why the complaint in my blog is not fake news and why the Select Committee on online fake news should classify it under one of the various categories of information disseminated to the public. 3. Similarly, news media would only refer to the complaint indirectly. My blog listed many such instances. The complaint was collusion between a neighbour and officers to carry on a trade in HDB flat and, after reporting to the police, the neighbourhood police did not conduct a full investigation. Should not the authorities give a reply when informed of the wrongdoing? The right to silence is to prevent self-incrimination, but should it apply to authorities when we talk about rule of law for the citizenry? 6. The Select Committee may avoid my questions. Fake news is headline news in US and Europe and the Select Committee could fine-tune what legislation they come up with. But lawmaking is peculiar to country. If my case was reported by major news media, the problem would have been resolved. As it is, officers still cause trouble. After my last posting on Sep 17 there was intention to cause trouble. When will the trouble be over? Considering that the authorities did not reply to me nor to the MPs when I asked for their assistance on issues raised, it is officers (people) on the ground who are in such strong positions that the problem is kept unresolved at my expense. 10. An independent regulatory authority that monitors fake news could say my blog is probably not fake. They could also determine it to be fake for whatever reason and ask for the blog to be taken down. They could work with and persuade corporations and authorities in government. Being set up to be an independent body free from the influence of corporations and government, they could publicise and protect the weak. In this way, they gain trust for the work they do. Of course they could be sued, but they are reputable. Could such an authority help in the complaint? The reasons the complaint is unresolved over a long time is in Item 2 to Item 6 above. 27. Tradition Observation The argument for ethics in the second article is similar to Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue quoted in Quote (20) and Behaviour (23), and to Julian Baggini’s Complaint in Committee (27). Written in Chinese, the writer also wrote Enlightenment (25). The third article, also in Chinese, is on the importance of following rules. 27. Committee Observation 1. The owner refers to ethics committees. Public Service Commission (PSC), Presidential Council for Minority Rights and Presidential Council for Religious Harmony are of similar nature. They consist of people from inside and outside government with public duties. The President's Office and the Attorney-General's Chambers too have public duties. All represents fair-mindedness of the State.
2. Complaint Julian Baggini
The return to ethics. The overall thrust of my argument about the grievance culture is that it places law above ethics, and this leads to three bad consequences: responsibility being denied in some places and inappropriately ascribed in others...
What we cannot and should not have is a return to authority-based morality. Politically and socially this will not work, since the world has become far too pluralistic for any authority to hold sway in a sustainable way.
Moral philosophy has the potential to be a help or a hindrance in this regard, and the way the subject is usually taught, it looks more like a hindrance. Most people who study it are presented with a standard trio of moral frameworks: consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics. On this view, consequentialists believe that actions are right or wrong solely in terms of whether they produce good or bad outcomes; deontologists believe that some acts are right or wrong in themselves, regardless of their consequences; and virtue theorists say that being good is not about following strict rules but about developing the moral character to make ethical choices. To give these caricatures a concrete example, consequentialists would say that whether torture is wrong depends on whether, in balance, it leads to more goods than harms; a deontologists would say that torture is wrong in itself; and a virtue theorist would say that torture is not something one can imagine a virtuous person doing, but who knows there may be exceptions.
However, there is another way of looking at moral philosophy which has more potential. Although there is no consensus as to which moral theory is the right one, there is a tacit acceptance of a common procedure for thinking through moral theories. This can be summed up as the view that moral discourse is a democratic, rational activity. It works by assessing the different reasons given for or against a particular course of action in a way that defers to no authority. This is the way in which ethics committees work: they do not require everyone involved to subscribe to the same fundamental theory of ethics. Rather, they demand that people effectively set these aside and offer only such reasons as can be assessed and judged by the common standards of rationality. It is democratic, not in the sense that it necessarily follows majority opinion, but in the sense that contributions to the debate are assessed on the merits of the arguments, not on the status of the person offering them.
3. The owner wrote to PSC, which administers the code of conduct, and to HDB, which has its rules and regulations. A principled approach is to reply, but there is none. Where an ethics committee comes to a decision from contributions based on fact-finding, the-connection-of-the-officers chooses the status quo of doing nothing. The questions that need asking: a) Does the neighbour carry on a trade in the flat? b) Did officers collude with the neighbour? c) Why were people stationed in the-flat-across-the-neighbour? d) Why did insiders assist the owner? e) Were there no reference of the case in the media, if only indirectly?
26. President
Observation
8. From the neighbour's viewpoint, they need not stop because they have dealing with officers. The tactic has been to reduce noise for a time after a complaint. Such is the case for the month after the last posting. Noise is generally reduced, but rumble, knock, thump, heavy sound and dropping of bead are heard. Noises are over many hours each day.
The return to ethics. The overall thrust of my argument about the grievance culture is that it places law above ethics, and this leads to three bad consequences: responsibility being denied in some places and inappropriately ascribed in others...
What we cannot and should not have is a return to authority-based morality. Politically and socially this will not work, since the world has become far too pluralistic for any authority to hold sway in a sustainable way.
Moral philosophy has the potential to be a help or a hindrance in this regard, and the way the subject is usually taught, it looks more like a hindrance. Most people who study it are presented with a standard trio of moral frameworks: consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics. On this view, consequentialists believe that actions are right or wrong solely in terms of whether they produce good or bad outcomes; deontologists believe that some acts are right or wrong in themselves, regardless of their consequences; and virtue theorists say that being good is not about following strict rules but about developing the moral character to make ethical choices. To give these caricatures a concrete example, consequentialists would say that whether torture is wrong depends on whether, in balance, it leads to more goods than harms; a deontologists would say that torture is wrong in itself; and a virtue theorist would say that torture is not something one can imagine a virtuous person doing, but who knows there may be exceptions.
However, there is another way of looking at moral philosophy which has more potential. Although there is no consensus as to which moral theory is the right one, there is a tacit acceptance of a common procedure for thinking through moral theories. This can be summed up as the view that moral discourse is a democratic, rational activity. It works by assessing the different reasons given for or against a particular course of action in a way that defers to no authority. This is the way in which ethics committees work: they do not require everyone involved to subscribe to the same fundamental theory of ethics. Rather, they demand that people effectively set these aside and offer only such reasons as can be assessed and judged by the common standards of rationality. It is democratic, not in the sense that it necessarily follows majority opinion, but in the sense that contributions to the debate are assessed on the merits of the arguments, not on the status of the person offering them.
3. The owner wrote to PSC, which administers the code of conduct, and to HDB, which has its rules and regulations. A principled approach is to reply, but there is none. Where an ethics committee comes to a decision from contributions based on fact-finding, the-connection-of-the-officers chooses the status quo of doing nothing. The questions that need asking: a) Does the neighbour carry on a trade in the flat? b) Did officers collude with the neighbour? c) Why were people stationed in the-flat-across-the-neighbour? d) Why did insiders assist the owner? e) Were there no reference of the case in the media, if only indirectly?
26. President
Observation
8. From the neighbour's viewpoint, they need not stop because they have dealing with officers. The tactic has been to reduce noise for a time after a complaint. Such is the case for the month after the last posting. Noise is generally reduced, but rumble, knock, thump, heavy sound and dropping of bead are heard. Noises are over many hours each day.
9. From the my viewpoint, there is aspect of bullying. Justice has to be seen.
10. The problem is plain in a way. Insiders and MPs do their best to assist while Residents' Community members and high officials stay by the sideline.
25. Ancient Thought
Observation
(Extract from the book Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power)
Political hegemony stresses that moral influence is of capital importance. Moral influence comes from the merit and self-cultivation of the ruler and his important chief ministers and the policies that derive from this. Virtuous conduct is the basic requirement of the lord of the covenants, or rather of the hegemonic lord: “A great state determines by justice and thereby becomes the lord of the covenants.” And, “Without virtue how can one be lord of the covenants?” Duke Huan of Qi “relieved poverty, and paid the worthy and capable” and undertook to “examine our borders, return seized territory; correct the border marks” and to “not accept their money or wealth.” In this way he secured the hegemony for Qi. Duke Wen of Jin “revised his administration and spread grace on the ordinary people” and in this way realized the hegemony for Jin. Qin had a wealthy state and a strong army but, because the virtue of Duke Mu of Qin was inferior, in Qin “laws and commands were constantly issued.” “Laws was severe and lacking in mercy, only relying on coercion to keep people submissive.” Therefore, “it is fitting that Mu of Qin did not become lord of the covenants. Political hegemony holds that fidelity is the most important constituent component of moral influence: “fidelity so as to implement justice; justice so as to implement decrees.” Xunzi notes, “Huan of Qi, Wen of Jin, Zhuang of Chu, Helu of Wu, and Goujian of Yue all had states that were on the margins, yet they overawed all under heaven and their strength overpowered the central states. There was no other reason for this but that they had strategic reliability. This is to attain hegemony by establishing strategic reliability.”
25. Non-Negotiable
Observation
The Observer
‘Reason is non-negotiable’: Steven Pinker on the Enlightenment
In an extract from his new book Enlightenment Now, the Harvard psychologist extols the relevance of 18th-century thinking
What is enlightenment? In a 1784 essay with that question as its title, Immanuel Kant answered that it consists of “humankind’s emergence from its self-incurred immaturity”, its “lazy and cowardly” submission to the “dogmas and formulas” of religious or political authority. Enlightenment’s motto, he proclaimed, is: “Dare to understand!” and its foundational demand is freedom of thought and speech.
Foremost is reason. Reason is non-negotiable. As soon as you show up to discuss the question of what we should believe (or any other question), as long as you insist that your answers, whatever they are, are reasonable or justified or true and that therefore other people ought to believe them too, then you have committed yourself to reason, and to holding your beliefs accountable to objective standards.
That leads to the second ideal, science, the refining of reason to understand the world. That includes an understanding of ourselves. The Scientific Revolution was revolutionary in a way that is hard to appreciate today, now that its discoveries have become second nature to most of us.
The idea of a universal human nature brings us to a third theme, humanism. The thinkers of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment saw an urgent need for a secular foundation for morality, because they were haunted by a historical memory of centuries of religious carnage: the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch-hunts, the European wars of religion.
“Mankind will be reborn,” they theorised, and “live in an ordered relation to the whole.” Though these developments were sometimes linked to the word progress, the usage was ironic: “progress” unguided by humanism is not progress.
Rather than trying to shape human nature, the Enlightenment hope for progress was concentrated on human institutions. Human-made systems like governments, laws, schools, markets and international bodies are a natural target for the application of reason to human betterment.
Exchange can make an entire society not just richer but nicer, because in an effective market it is cheaper to buy things than to steal them and other people are more valuable to you alive than dead. (As the economist Ludwig von Mises put it centuries later: “If the tailor goes to war against the baker, he must henceforth bake his own bread.”) Many Enlightenment thinkers, including Montesquieu, Kant, Voltaire, Diderot and the Abbé de Saint-Pierre endorsed the ideal of doux commerce, gentle commerce. The American founders – George Washington, James Madison and especially Alexander Hamilton – designed the institutions of the young nation to nurture it.
This brings us to another Enlightenment ideal, peace. War was so common in history that it was natural to see it as a permanent part of the human condition and to think peace could come only in a messianic age. But now war was no longer thought of as a divine punishment to be endured and deplored, or a glorious contest to be won and celebrated, but a practical problem to be mitigated and someday solved. In Perpetual Peace, Kant laid out measures that would discourage leaders from dragging their countries into war. Together with international commerce, he recommended representative republics (what we would call democracies), mutual transparency, norms against conquest and internal interference, freedom of travel and immigration and a federation of states that would adjudicate disputes between them.
For all the prescience of the founders, framers and philosophers, Enlightenment Now is not a book of Enlighten-olatry. The Enlightenment thinkers were men and women of their age, the 18th century. Some were racists, sexists, antisemites, slaveholders or duellists. Some of the questions they worried about are almost incomprehensible to us, and they came up with plenty of daffy ideas together with the brilliant ones. More to the point, they were born too soon to appreciate some of the keystones of our modern understanding of reality, including entropy, evolution, and information.
They of all people would have been the first to concede this. If you extol reason, then what matters is the integrity of the thoughts, not the personalities of the thinkers. And if you’re committed to progress, you can’t very well claim to have it all figured out. It takes nothing away from the Enlightenment thinkers to identify some critical ideas about the human condition and the nature of progress that we know and they didn’t.
25. Reserved Presidency
Observation
1. In The Singapore presidential (s)election: A monumental miscalculation, Cherian George raised pertinent questions about the first reserved presidency.
2. There is one more question. Does the president speak up when government failed?
3. The presidency was the subject of Integrity (25) Item 10 and Committee (27) Item 4 because a problem was left unresolved. Thereafter, noise from the neighbour continued for about a year more until after Standpoint (34) was posted. About a year later when he tried to sell his flat the problem with officers cropped up again, and when he again started to blog about it officers continued to cause trouble.
4. In Constitution (61) under Observation, extracts from The Constitution of Singapore A Contextual Analysis and Presidency are starting points whether the president could speak publicly when there is failure.
5. Head of State (61) and Wrongdoings (61) are letter to the present and former president respectively. Items under Observation are worth a look.
6.Also refer to Foolproof (50), posted at the same time as the letter to the former president in GE 2015 (50), on related items under Observation.
25. Civil Service
Observation
1. The first article is on the civil service in Japan and Australia with regard to the civil service in Singapore while the second article is on multi-parties coalition in Germany with regard to single-dominant party in Singapore.
The first writer emphasised “Civil servants are ‘political’ because they advise on and then execute political decisions. All public administration is political, despite whatever theoretical fictions we have contrived.” The second writer identified “the consequences of prolonged dominance by the People’s Action Party (PAP): complacency, disconnectedness from the public, and groupthink.”
Please also refer to relevant topics in Evidence (21) Item 6, Parkinson (40), Public Service (48) and Governance (51).
2. The apex court in City Harvest Church case had reinstated the reduced sentences, stating “The fundamental consideration was that a hard case should not be allowed to make bad law – in this case, to undermine the principle of separation of powers which is one of the very bedrocks of the constitution.”. Therefore, Parliament will amend the law for Criminal Breach of Trust to take care of such cases in future.
Will the Government similarly make a ruling on his case? It could be a hard case if what the Minister in charge of Civil Service and Head of Civil Service were reported to have said about “complex issues no longer fell within neat domain” and “issues that do not fall neatly into any one agency's work” respectively in News (31) were indeed referring to his case.
Is it a hard case? Right Men (25), Bully (71) and Endgame (71) are generally about his case.
Where is the failing? Discovery (9) has a list and letters to prime minister and president are in the category Complaint. A case that sketched back to ‘98 is still open in ‘18.
Is there rule of law in his case? The authorities may have gone against a principle of law by keeping silence. If it was one of reason including that of national interest, then what could be the reason. Please refer to Singapore Chronicles Law in Rule of Law (61) and Why bureaucrats matter in the fight to preserve the rule of law in Rule of Law 2 (61).
25. Gene
Observation
Quotes from The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee:
6. It is nonsense to speak about “nature” or “nurture” in absolutes or abstracts. Whether nature--i.e., the gene--or nurture--i.e., the environment--dominates in the development of a feature or function depends, acutely, on the individual feature and the context. The SRY gene determines sexual anatomy and physiology in a strikingly autonomous manner; it is all nature. Gender identity, sexual preference, and the choice of sexual roles are determined by intersections of genes and environments--i.e., nature plus nurture. The manner in which “masculinity” versus “femininity” is enacted or perceived in a society, in contrast, is largely determined by an environment, social memory, history, and culture; this is all nurture.
11. There is nothing about genes or genomes that makes them inherently resistant to chemical and biological manipulation. The standard notion that “most human features are the result of complex gene-environment interactions and most are the result of multiple genes” is absolutely true. But while these complexities constrain the ability to manipulate genes, they leave plenty of opportunity for potent forms of gene modification. Master regulators that affect dozens of genes are common in human biology. An epigenetic modifier may be designed to change the state of hundreds of genes with a single switch. The genome is replete with such nodes of intervention.
* To understand how genes become actualized into organisms, it is necessary to understand not just genes, but also RNA, proteins, and epigenetic marks. Future studies will need to reveal how the genome, all the variants of proteins (the proteome), and all the epigenetic marks (the epigenome) are coordinated to build and maintain humans.
25. Feud
Observation
1. Singapore “could benefit from more robust democratic debate” in “Singapore and the Fighting Lees Will squabbling in the ruling family lead to more political debate?”: an opinion piece by The Wall Street Journal.
2. First, I am of the view that the correct platform to settle the private dispute is the Court. Individuals who made less serious allegations that undermine the reputation and authority of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Ministers have been brought to task for libel. There is no reason why this time it should be different because it is from the Lee family; and the allegations are much more serious.
Given the past track record, not doing so would risk the Government giving the impression that it is afraid of what the Lee siblings might say or reveal. This will taint the trust Singaporeans has placed on the Government and compromise the high standards that the Government prides itself on achieving and aspires to maintain.
(Extract from Speech by Workers’ Party Chief Low Thia Khiang on 38 Oxley Road Dispute.)
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If the Prime Minister had sued his siblings, he could have been cross-examined on other issues such as why the complaint in this blog could not be resolved. Would such a complaint have been irrelevant and out of context?
25. Right Men
Observation
The following quotes are in the sequence as underlined in the article above:
1. Mencius says: “Only people who are humane are suitable for high office. People in high office who are not humane, they are a bad influence on people.「惟仁者宜在高位，不仁而在高位，是播其惡於眾也。」”
2. A saying: “Superiors with ethics are like the wind, while their subordinates are ethical like the grass that bends to the wind.「君子之德風，小人之德草，草上之風必偃。」”
A proverb: “Superiors set the example that subordinates follow.「上行下效」”
3. A folksong: “Females in the city style their hair high, females in the suburb style it higher; females in the city draw broad eyebrows, females in the suburb draw it broader; females in the city wear big sleeves, females in the suburb wear it with more silk.
「城中好高吉，四方高一丈；城中好寬眉，四方且牛額；城中好大袖，四方全匹帛。」”
4. In the Doctrine of the Mean, one of the Four Books: “With the right men in office, government and people flourish; with the people poor, the government ceases to exist.「為政在人，其人存，則其政舉，其人亡則其政息…」”
5. Confucius says: “Masses are led, they cannot be explained to.「民可由之，不可使知的。」
6. Confucius says: “Trueful and trustworthy words, honest and respectful acts, who then will misbehave like barbarians!「言忠信，行篤敬，雖蠻貊之邦行矣！」”
Mencius says: “A person who respects others is respected by all!「敬人者，人恒敬之！」”
7. Mencius says: “If you are polite with them and they are not, ask yourself whether you treat them with respect. If your actions do not bring results, in every case ask yourself whether you conduct yourself in any way inappropriate. When you are upright, everything is in place.
「礼人不答反其敬。行有不得者，皆反求诸己，其身正而天下归之。」”
8. Mencius says: “Neither virtue nor law that is insufficient by itself should be put into practice.
「徒善不足以为政，徒法不足以自行」”
9. A saying: “If there is a law, then according to the law; if not, then by precedent; if not, then by custom; if not, then by people sentiment.「有法依法，無法依判例，無判例依習俗，無習俗依人情…」”
10. Mencius says of the Warring States: “People lacking official positions are uninhibited in the expression of their views; feudal lords do as they please.「處士橫議，諸侯放恣」”
11. A saying: “The best way of finding the truth in a situation is by being practical.「實踐是檢驗真理最好的方法」”
12. A proverb: “Possession of facts is better than high-sounding argument.「事實勝於雄辯」”
25. Enlightenment
Observation Confucius said of the three: food, soldier and trust, trust of the people is the most important「足食、足兵、民信。」. Mencius said “It is important for a person to feel shame. He who practises fraud, he could not be shamed. He is of no shame, what is there for him to compare with others?「恥之于人，大矣。為機變之巧者，無所用恥焉。不恥不若人，何若人有？」”. Also using other sayings and proverbs, the writer illustrated it with past and current events.
25. Integrity
Observation
8. It would be disappointing if the government is quiet. Loyalty to person or group has to be reasonable. Officers are citizens in government, citizens at large will be in trouble if they shield one of their own above all else.
10. The owner hopes his case come up during the Presidential Election. The President appears to be one able to help. Being elected, he has independence. Although he has only custodian power in specified areas and not executive power in policy matters, he is one to ask question of the government when he thinks there is failure. In principle he could defend values that are in the public interest. In all he is a citizen, but one with much moral authority.
His view, if accepted, may be debated in Parliament.
24. Proving
Observation
1. Why is there no inquiry? It would have provided a record and resolved a problem. When insider stopped the first owner with an eviction of an occupier, the flat was transferred to the neighbour who was stopped by insider again four years later. Now, a network of contacts prevents insiders from helping the owner. Should not the authorities at least find out whether there is some truth?
2. The owner spoke to the neighbour several times:
a) When noise restarted in Jun 07, the owner left the door of his flat opened on random days so he could take note of the people going to and from the neighbour's flat upstair. On the second day of his watch he went up to the neighbour's flat because of loud noise. A women answered the door. She could be the wife's sister whom he saw the first day when he started watching. When asked to speak to the husband, she said he was not in. One evening some time later the neighbour approached the owner to ask where the noise was heard inside his flat so he could make adjustment. He asked the owner to compromise, but when the owner refused, he said their conversation never took place. The owner also remembered him saying if the owner could get his name from HDB he would not have asked him. By then the owner had watched for a month, knew what was going on, wrote two letters to HDB Branch Office, had a meeting with HBO (Head, Pasir Ris HDB Branch Office), attended a MPS (Meeting-the-People Session), and knew that the neighbour came to speak him because a few days earlier there was a force-entry into the neighbour's flat.
11. On 13 May 11 after the General Election, Minister-in-Charge of Civil Service said politicians were forced to admit they need to connect to the people, and Public Service was forced to re-look at the way in which it formulated policies with respect to citizens.
12. On 18 May 11 PM announced his cabinet lineup. PM said it was a comprehensive reshuffle and Ministers would have a free hand to rethink and reshape policies.
13. Someone may have helped on 28 Jun 11. This followed Behaviour (23) published a week earlier on 20 Jun 11. The number of viewers doubled when it was posted. Noise is down now, but work is day long. After a time, noise would be up again as has happened many times before.
23. Singpass
Observation The owner could not help his mother changed her password at Singpass website because he was blocked. As this was her first log-in, upon submitting user name and password the next screen was the updating of account details. He selected email as preferred mode of contact and filled in two security questions, but when he clicked “Update” it was back to the same screen. Nothing happened.
He tried “Get password via mail” as indicated by an officer, but again nothing happened. Although “Get password via mail” reset password, which is not what he wanted, he was blocked too.
Two of his emails to an MP were failed delivery, in other words, also blocked. He would have to visit to an CPF Office with his mother to ask them to unblock the website since the officer who corresponded with him had repeatedly avoided giving a direct reply.
23. Assurity
Observation From Assurity’s email auto acknowledgement if pin mailer for Singpass 2FA (two factors authentication) is not received, it will take within 3 working days for verification of mobile phone number, NRIC number and registered address before the sending of a new pin mailer. But it took him 7 weeks to activate Singpass 2FA after he informed that no mailer was received because of dodging by officers. The delay was the result of an email to MPs in Defect (23), Item 17.
In Item 8, after having written to MPs, he wrote that he preferred an email on what was needed for the pin mailer to be sent to him because the pin mailer was required as showed in “SMS ‘Activate Token NRIC Pin Mailer Password One-Time Password’ to 78111”. There was no returned phone call or email, but he managed to activate Singpass 2FA through Singpass website using the OneKey token without the need for the pin mailer. He did the same for his mother who does not have a mobile phone. Although mobile phone number is mandatory, she could fill in later when she has one. Why didn't an officer inform him when it was indicated in their email they would call? The matter resolved itself only because insider accommodated him when he found out that Onekey token was only required by accident.
In Item 3 he SMS “Resend pin mailer NRIC postal code” to 78111, and the returned reply was they were processing the request for a new mailer and confirmation SMS would be sent in two working days. When he again wrote that no mailer was received, there was no direct reply on what to do.
In Item 2 it would seem that Singpass could have re-sent the mailer upon receiving name, NRIC and mobile phone number they requested.
23. Defect
Observation Installation defect caused the fluorescent fitting to drop in the owner’s studio apartment. As the accident could happen in the other studio apartments, the owner presented his case to Punggol HDB Branch Office. The area’s MP also wrote to the General Manager of the Branch Office with copy to the Resident Community, but there has been no appropriate response.
In a separate case (CPF/HDB [78]), the Branch Office charged a fee of about $200 to include the owner’s mother as co-owner of his studio apartment all because of an application form that was concealed from him.
Also refer to the Observation under Foolproof (50).
23. Behaviour
Observation
1. No crime without intent. The converse is crime with intent to cover-up as in the case.
9. It was somewhat of a relief when the President's Office asked the Police to investigate, Ministers responded indirectly through the media, and insiders assisted. It is clear the problem cannot be resolved without the cooperation of high officials. A characteristic of a bureaucratic organisation is that if they do not want to act, they could find ways not to do it. It then depends on the top people to uphold good practice. Practice is the first part of a three-parts virtue. The other two are narration and tradition according to MacIntyre.
10. Insight. The term 'political culture' refers to an underlying set of values held by most people living in a particular country concerning political behaviour, one important aspect of which is the degree of trust which citizens have in their political leaders.
Alternative views concerning political culture. Liberal theorists suggest that a country's political culture is fashioned by its unique historical development and is transmitted across the generations by a process termed 'political socialization'. Agencies such as the family, schools, the media and political parties are responsible for instructing citizens in such beliefs and values.
Marxists, however, tend to view political culture as an artificial creation rather than the product of history. They view political culture as an ideological weapon through which society is indoctrinated to accept views which are in the interests of its dominant classes (defined as those who own the means of production).
Understand Politics Peter Joyce, Teach Yourself series.
22. Reason
Observation
1. The case is about profit, influence and wrongdoing. The neighbour has not stop a day since they began four years ago because of an arrangement with officers. MPs, who wrote on behalf of the owner, did not receive a response from HDB. The non-action explained the problem MPs had with HBO (Head, Pasir Ris HDB Branch Office) who continued to reply to their letters even when the owner's complaint was about him. HDB has the power of investigation, yet everything stopped at the Branch Office.
8. In individualism one look out for oneself. It is for the strong. A community-based government, however, recognises its has both strong and weak members and looks at solution from a larger perspective. In the case if it is true that officers colluded with the neighbour, they should be stopped. If not, the owner should be stopped from complaining. The community benefits in a long run.
9. At a General Election Rally on 3 May 11, PM said:
"No government is perfect. We can have our best intentions, make our best efforts, but from time to time, mistakes will happen. We will make mistakes. We made a mistake when we let Mas Selamat run away. We made a mistake when Orchard Road got flooded. And there are other mistakes which we have made from time to time, and I’m sure occasionally will happen again – I hope not too often. But when it happens, then we should acknowledge it, we should apologize, take responsibility, put things right, if we have to discipline somebody we will do that, and we must learn from the lessons, and never make the same mistake again."
The owner hopes PM was also referring to his case.
21. Evidence
Observation
1. Types of evidence pertaining to the case are testimonial and documentary. Proofs are "preponderance of evidence" and "clear and convincing evidence". Although evidence may be indirect and circumstantial, these included insider, admission against interest, omission, correspondence and government record.
2. Proof of "certainty beyond a reasonable doubt" is possible with an inquiry. The question is whether an offence is committed, the owner is a victim and public interest is at stake.
3. "A preponderance of evidence" may be restated as "the balance of probabilities". The weight of evidence is one of increasing probability from "preponderance of evidence" to "clear and convincing evidence" to "certainty beyond a reasonable doubt".
4. Evidence:
a) During a meeting with HBO (Head, Pasir Ris HDB Branch Office) and OIC (Officer-in-Charge), HBO agreed to give the name of the neighbour. But two days later when OIC visited the owner, he refused to give the neighbour's name from his fact sheet. However, he voluntarily gave the name of a person at the-flat-across-the-neighbour in another meeting. The meeting at the owner's flat was with a police officer, a counsellor, an estates officer and the OIC after Discovery (9) where the owner blogged that the-people-in-the-flat-across-the-neighbour watched out for the neighbour. Throughout the case, the authorities would not acknowledge the issue of the-people-in-the-flat-across-the-neighbour although it was an important evidence.
6. There are two different things to Government: ministers who represent general will and legislative capacity and high officials who represent executive and administrative power. As noted elsewhere, three ministers responded in their own way through the media. Also, the Minister for National Development requested the owner to acknowledge receipt when he replied he would ask HDB to look into it in an email to the owner on 1 Feb 10 (Item 3, Discovery [9]). But HDB has been consistent in not responding precisely because they understood the problem. Would the Minister open an inquiry since the Ministry of National Development is the parent of HDB?
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