2009 Singapore Budget - I do not comprehend.

Out of curiosity, I decided to take a look at the basic form of the Singapore budget - Revenue and Expenditure. These can be found here (with explanatory notes, which I didn't find particularly helpful):

http://www.singaporebudget.gov.sg/revenue_expenditure/toc.html

Here is the press announcement about the budget in Singapore mainstream media:

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/sgbudget09/

My confusion lies with the figures ... according to the news report, we are drawing on S$4.9 billion from the reserves to fund the extra ("Resilience Package") programs. Yet, unless I've misread the whole thing, we're expected to have an income of S$55,322,614,000 and an expenditure of S$66,280,667,000. Shouldn't we be drawing on S$11.0 billion from the reserves? or do we have a S$6.1 billion surplus in FY 2008 we could use? Or have I totally misunderstood the definition of national reserves?

It would really be nice if someone knowledgeable with national economics would help me out here ... I've only looked at the 4 most basic summary documents. Will looking at the individual annexes shed more light on the matter?

Mr Tan Kin Lian and his bid for political office.

I am pleased to have discovered (I had intended to ask him on ToC) that Mr. Tan had a small (I assume?) group of volunteers working to help him manage his bid - first, I assume, on his attempt to gather 100,000 signatures and second, on an actual platform for either contesting the Elected Presidency or as an MP.

Here's the link to his volunteer blog (as part of their effort to publicize this):



So, please do visit the site (read my comments - I'm not encouraging you to go to his site and blindly sign up, I'm encouraging people to find out more about him and engage him).

A few personal comments:

1) What has impressed me about Mr. Tan is his willingness to engage with people, even with people he does not agree with. So, feel free to study his statements and leave comments for him and his volunteers.

2) I've signed the petition. I had initially indicated that he ought to go for the Elected Presidency, but I've thought further about it and realized that the office is really a basket-case. Even if Mr. Tan succeeded in overcoming the number of ridiculous barriers set up to even qualify for running for the office (International readers would be aghast at this!), he would be effectively handicapped if he were successfully elected (Mr. Ong Teng Cheong, the first elected President, was a former ruling party stalwart and even he was shut out when he tried to do his job as President.

Now I think he is better off forming an independent team of MP candidates to contest a GRC.

3) Decide for yourself if he is worth supporting. I am encouraging him to run because he is a breath of fresh air in Singapore politics. Someone who is willing to listen, willing to talk (rather than talk-down) to people, willing to be civil (rather than defensive) about disagreements and shows an active empathy with people in trouble (rather than stay silent and praying the problem "goes away").

Am I out-of-touch?

I just read "Not the time to flaunt your riches" by Seah Chiang Nee of the star online (Malaysian newspaper) which described the recent insensitive revelations of one of our top civil servants.

What I had not known were the following incidents, also described by the author (but not attributed):

A bigger controversy flared up four years ago when Wee Shu Min, the teenage daughter of a Member of Parliament, came across the blog of a Singaporean who wrote that he was worried about losing his job.

She called Derek Wee “one of many wretched, under-motivated, over-assuming leeches in our country.

“If you’re not good enough, life will kick you in the b***s ... Our society is, I quote, ‘far too survival of fittest’,” said Shu Min, who hailed from the elite Raffles Junior College.

“... Unless you are an arm-twisting commie bully, which, given your whiny, middle-class, under-educated penchant, I doubt,” she added before signing off with “please, get out of my elite uncaring face”.

This, I knew about. Here's the wikipedia article that archived and documented the event.

Raffles JC, which has produced several state leaders, had another brush with student snobbishness.

When a student found that a Raffles girl was dating a boy from a lower-achieving neighbourhood school, he hit out at him and had a message for lower-ranking students everywhere.

“Quit trying to climb the social ladder by dating students from top schools.”

I found two sources, unfortunately one written by the above author -

1) from https://www.termpaperslab.com/term-papers/96455.html

Last year, ‘Big boy' posted on an internet forum, claiming that he knew of somebody from a neighbourhood school dating a girl from top school Raffles Girls' School (RGS).
Four months and 500 postings later, it is clear that the responses to this issue can be classified into positive and negative sides. For example, ‘kennys8' supports this relationship, saying that ‘love has no barrier'. However, there are people such as ‘Cynic' and ‘RJCdude' were adamant that the relationship would be doomed. RJCdude even posted, "Quit trying desperately to climb the social ladder. The higher you go, the more you will feel your inferiority."
RJCdude may have a right to express his feelings, but it is obvious that he is discriminating against students from neighbourhood schools. He is most probably from the top school Raffles Junior College.......

2) and from http://www.littlespeck.com/content/education/CTrendsEdu-040215.htm (by Seah Chiang Nee).

The original sources seem to be from forum discussions long gone.

Finally,

A reporter recounted how her friend was shaken when her young daughter came home one day and mentioned in passing that poor people were “stupid, obviously”.

Coming from RI/RJC back in the late 80s and early 90s, I never knew (or realized - if it were true) of any of my peers who felt this way. Sure ... we felt like "gods" and creatures of superior intellect (I know I did), but I never got the feeling that any of us ever looked down on others (at least, to this extent)!

So, are these the odd extreme (albeit high-profile) cases? Or is it the start of a disturbing trend? More importantly, am I so out-of-touch to be so blissfully unaware of these cases?