Ms Sun Xueling
Blk 308B Punggol Walk
#01-364
Waterway Terraces 1
Singapore 822308
Dear Ms Sun,
Rules, Character & Morals
1. RULES
Extracts of all the issues from the most recent letters to MPs:
a) Noise from Neighbour
It would have been enough if he could live his life that way until he dies--watching the world, doing what is required of him and doing his own things. However, his upstairs neighbour was the trouble. They caused noise working a trade in the flat. He complained and the first occupier was evicted. To cover up the eviction, the flat was transferred to the next owner with the help of officers. Noise continued for a number of years, stopped for a number of years because of insiders, and continued with a vengeance for a number of years once they sought protection. They stopped only after intervention from within the government.
In the case he mentioned a possible break-in at his flat and the-people-in-the-flat-across-the-neighbour that watched out for the neighbour. He was not surprised after he sold his flat and moved to a new flat that his next door neighbour appeared to be monitoring him. After they left, it is possible the new neighbour still does.
b) CPF Account
The next letter Being Accountable To Parliament dated 22 Jul 19 was addressed and handed to you at MPS. The letter was in six pages and the petition writers did not know where to begin although I asked only that they read the first and seventh item. They had not written and when you spoke to me you said CPF had replied many times. Not much more was said because you had to attend to the others. I continued to talk to the person who was listening in to our conversation by referring him to the example of the refund to CPF Account, which officers disallowed. It is common knowledge that refund is required and it is indicated in 2012 CPF Act. The senior assistant director reference to Section 15(15)(e) for disallowing refund was incorrect because it required an application to be made on the occurrence of events as listed in 2012 CPF Act. No such application was made.
c) CPF LIFE
The Important Notes on CPF LIFE stated that only two deductions from Retirement Account (RA) were required. One upon purchased of CPF LIFE and the other two months before age 65. Payout started at 65. The two additional CPF LIFE that I was asked to purchase were not required.
The spreadsheets that I submitted showed the rate of return of the first purchase, the second additional purchase and the third additional purchase to be 4.082%, 3.216%, 2.944% respectively. On similar terms as the first purchase the rate of return of the two additional purchases were found to be lower and below the estimated lower range of 3.75%. Without the two additional purchases, the money left in the RA would have earned 4%.
Two other mistakes were found. One with the addition of interest earned for the year right after the second additional purchase. The spreadsheets showed the rate of return of the addition of interest earned to be below 0.001%.
The other with the transfer of available balance from RA to CPF LIFE two months before age 65. The whole of available balance was supposed to be transferred, but only part of the available balance was transferred. The record of the previous year showed the amount of the available balance and the Important Notes on CPF LIFE showed that the transfer of available balance was required. The officer I met agreed, but the officer who replied to my letter did not reply to the question.
d) Sale of Flat
In each of the processes mentioned above government officers had deviated from the rules:
i) Officers set up a situation where I committed my name to the studio apartment instead of our names to deprive us of SHB.
ii) Officers took away $5000 from the sale of our flat for no apparent reason. There was no proof that we had received the $5000.
iii) The 2012 CPF Act stated that refund to CPF Account was required unless members made an application stating the reason as listed in the Act. We did not make such an application.
iv)The two additional CPF LIFE I was asked to purchase gave low rate of returns compared to the rate of return from the Retirement Account. The purchases did not conform to what was stated in the Important Notes on CPF LIFE.
v) The property agent and his company were negligent in their duties with respect to the $5000 deposit and refund to CPF Account. They colluded with the Resale Section of HDB to conceal and misrepresent the issues.
vi) All issues started from the neighbour in 2007 although the noise from the working of a trade could be traced back to 1998. Then, I wrote to HDB Branch Office and sent a letter of appreciation to HDB Feedback Unit when the occupier was evicted. Not long after, officer facilitated the transfer of the flat to the neighbour who was to be the second owner to continue with their work. In 2010, I wrote to the Police that I suspected the-people-in-flat-across-the-neighbour were installed to protect the neighbour.
2. CHARACTER
Extracts from a search of the word “character” in an article at aeon.co:
Godless yet good
Many religious believers feel skeptical about modern secular ethics in part because they cannot see any possibility for this sort of integration between theory and experience, between moral principles and how life is actually lived. Such theories neglect the personal: they privilege rationality over emotion, the abstract over the particular, obedience to rules over individual judgment. And, on the whole, they have had little to say — and have sometimes actively resisted having anything to say — about such old-fashioned notions as character and virtue.
That’s the bad news for secular ethics. The good news is that this somewhat negative assessment of its strengths and satisfactions is based on a limited historical perspective. The dominant secular theories of ethics since the Enlightenment might be largely guilty of neglecting the personal — but there are exceptions. Theorists such as Samuel Butler and David Hume, for instance, saw moral character and virtue as significant, and John Stuart Mill attempted to make a place for it within his utilitarian system, as have some contemporary utilitarians. And in any case, there are other places to look for an ethics beyond religion, both more recently and in the distant past. Indeed, to my mind the most interesting work in secular ethics has been done by people whose project is inspired by and rooted in the distant past — and in particular, by the philosophers of ancient Greece.
For particularists, then, individual perception and judgment are always necessary to decide difficult ethical questions: there is no theoretical ethical system that can do the work for us. Principles are useful, perhaps, but only as rules of thumb, practical guidelines that hold for the most part, but to which there will always be exceptions. At the foundational level, ethics is built not on a system of rules, but on individual human beings who possess character, judgment, and wisdom.
Given this, it is not surprising that on Aristotle’s view the cultivation of virtue and wisdom — the development of one’s own moral character and powers of judgment — is all-important. Developing practical wisdom is, for Aristotle, a matter both of acquiring knowledge and experience and of training one’s responses, including the emotions. We begin by imitating the virtuous, and end up becoming virtuous ourselves. ‘The things we have to learn before we can do,’ he taught, ‘we learn by doing, for example men become builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.’ Since much of the formative work happens in the first years of life, early childhood education and training is of vast importance. ‘It makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one kind or another from our very youth,’ he tells us. ‘It makes a very great difference, or rather all the difference.’
This then is a secular ethics that emphasises the significance of self-cultivation, individual judgment, and emotions such as compassion, as well as recognising the usefulness of moral exemplars — teachers who are paradigms of wisdom, who inspire us and whom we can try to imitate. It is a secular ethics that shares some important common ground with religious tradition. The idea that morality stems from strong character rather than from obedience to a strict set of rules, for instance, is very much in line with the moral reorientation proposed by Christ in the New Testament, from a view centered on obedience to God’s commandments to one in which love and compassion take centre stage.
Moreover, the Aristotelian claim that morality is good for us actually turns out to be supported by psychological research. There is mounting empirical evidence that people who cultivate their ability to feel compassion for others, and who engage in projects that express altruistic commitments, tend to be more relaxed, more fulfilled, and happier. Altruistic feelings and behavior, it appears, really do have substantial psychological benefits. The ancient Greeks might have been on to something when they said that the virtues were those character traits that were good both for the person who possessed them and for society at large.
https://aeon.co/essays/rules-and-reasons-are-not-enough-for-an-ethics-without-god
3. MORALS
Facts and reason are not enough. If you want to understand politics, look to morals
If there’s one political idea most of us can agree on, it’s that we’re currently living through an age of immense ideological polarisation. Inspired by the hyperpartisan political climate in the US, the experimental social psychologist Peter Ditto at the University of California, Irvine set out to investigate how differing views of morality shape political judgments. Working from what’s known as ‘moral foundations theory’, which uses five categories – harm, fairness, loyalty, tradition and purity – as a framework for moral reasoning, Ditto created a survey website to learn to what extent different moral frameworks shape outlooks on political questions, and indeed the greater world. His findings were compelling, but likely unsurprising if you’ve ever had an irreconcilable political squabble at the dinner table: it’s our moral filters, not facts or rational thinking, that mould our ideological outlooks. You can read more about Ditto’s work at the University of California website.
https://aeon.co/videos/facts-and-reason-are-not-enough-if-you-want-to-understand-politics-look-to-morals
It will be of interest if officers apply the five categories of harm, fairness, loyalty, tradition and purity to themselves. Based on my case, I think loyalty would come up high and harm, fairness, tradition and purity low. If so, it will be an indictment.
4. Quotes from cna:
a) The People’s Action Party (PAP) “must never, ever be afraid to do what is right for Singapore”, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Sunday (Nov 10) at the PAP convention, a gathering of the party's members and activists.
b) The People's Action Party (PAP) does not hide from “difficult truths”, Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat said on Sunday (Nov 10) at the PAP Convention, a gathering of party members and activists.
“As the party in power, it is our responsibility to ensure the integrity of the system in Singapore. We must, and have taken a clear stand on this matter of principle,” he added.
5. Two days after my previous email Request 3 (72) of 21 Oct 19, you requested HDB to provide background on Item 1 to 5 of the email. On the same day of your reply, I heard noise from my next door neighbour at 10.00am for 45 min. It was a signal.
I have made a note of my next door neighbour in Item 1a) above.
6. After the parliament sitting of 4 Nov 19 and 5 Nov 19, I checked the parliament reports but found nothing related to my complaint.
7. Noise caused by the neighbour working a trade in HDB flat is an offence and officers in collaboration with the neighbour is corruption. The evidence in No Full Reply (78) of 5 Aug 19 , Request 3 (72) of 21 Oct 19 and Item 1 above are each summary that covered all the issues.
8. I spoke to you and your petition writers and this is the eight times I wrote to you. Each time I requested for an investigation through Parliament because writing to the government agencies has not worked through the years.
Please let me know when you could bring up the problem in Parliament so I could follow its resolution.
Yours Sincerely,
hh
cc
Mr Lee Hsien Loong
Mr Heng Swee Keat
Mr Teo Chee Hean
No comments:
Post a Comment