This is a good post, as are your other posts. I would however, like to comment on the following excerpt: Although, really, having a BN government in place is probably much more in the interest of this country. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t, you know?

I believe many people have come to a point where, anything but BN is good. In this light, the sentiment is as follows: The devil I know is so terrible, that the devil I don’t know can’t be worse than the one I know.

You will see from independent news coverage and loads of facebook notes, that people increasingly no longer (want to) care about race. They’re increasingly interested in true meritocracy, the future of our land (not to be confused with the gahmen in power), how we can continue to compete in this borderless world and most of all, they want fair play in all aspects of life and meanings of the phrase.

I do leave it to you and the readers of your blog to judge whether the Malaysia’s PM’s words – and not just on this issue – promote solidarity, whether they are symbolic of giving the people what they want and if this is what’s good for the country, regardless of race, religion and creed.

The G had not choice. The fact is that a significant number of Singaporeans seem unhappy. These Singaporeans were going to vent their anger in one way or another. The Speakers’ Corner allows for such expression of frustration to be “controlled” (for now). It is obvious that the rapid transformation of Singapore’s society in the last decade has created the conditions for such growing frustration. I just hope this discontentment does not grow too rapidly. At least we have universal suffrage that allows for changes to be made if necessary (but too drastic a change is probably not a good thing too). And I agree that Singaporeans are generally not xenophobic; but rather disoriented by the rapid transformation that has occurred around them.

Nobody reading the Straits Times today will care that the PM says that an expanding economy will create better wages. The way that the government is trying to develop the economy, it won’t.

The government’s on-going obsession with the “knowledge-based economy” will really hurt us in the long run. One of the most worrying global trends is rising youth unemployment, which is especially severe in university-educated youths who refuse to work “beneath them”. The US and China are two very different economies, and yet share a 15-20% youth unemployment rate. This number is much higher when you consider only college educated youth.

By working to increase the university intake and the PMET proportion – already the highest in the world – we’re causing problems for ourselves. Wages will stagnate when there is an oversupply of university educated students, all with the exact same set of skills. Apparently, 30% of our university students major in business administration, which is ironic.

What we could and should be doing is to improve the prestige of our vocational schools – and we do have some very good ones. But we’re not. We’re demeaning them, telling them that they should work in an office or risk being poor. More than half of Germany’s students choose the vocational route because there’s no inferiority complex attached to it. Compared with the US and China, Germany’s youth unemployment rate is barely 8%.