Many of our government policies are quite complicated and baffling, e.g. public transport, foreign workers, housing, medical care. A good term to describe it as "convoluted".
Instead of addressing the root cause of the problems, the government has been applying the approach of "tweaking" and "calibrating", which often led to worse outcomes.
I read a statement from a government leader that it is not easy to "re-nationalize" public transport. Many people may not realize that some parts of the system are already under central control, e.g. setting of fares, and funding of capital expenditure on buses. So, we are already partly under central control and partly under privte sector control. By continuing our current structure, we are getting the worse of both systems.
I wanted to find a word to describe our approach, and the word "oxymoron" comes to my mind. It is defined as "A rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined, as in a deafening silence and a mournful optimist."
I will be writing more about these issues.
Instead of addressing the root cause of the problems, the government has been applying the approach of "tweaking" and "calibrating", which often led to worse outcomes.
I read a statement from a government leader that it is not easy to "re-nationalize" public transport. Many people may not realize that some parts of the system are already under central control, e.g. setting of fares, and funding of capital expenditure on buses. So, we are already partly under central control and partly under privte sector control. By continuing our current structure, we are getting the worse of both systems.
I wanted to find a word to describe our approach, and the word "oxymoron" comes to my mind. It is defined as "A rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined, as in a deafening silence and a mournful optimist."
I will be writing more about these issues.
2 comments:
What do you call it, if the Govt uses taxpayers money to fund a subsidy of 1.2b to SGX listed Transport Companies to purchase new buses, and every year use their profits to pay dividends to shareholders, largely benefiting their largest shareholder, SWF Temasek Holdings.
It's like the Govt using taxpayers money to make profits for Temasek, so the wool still comes from the sheep's body.
May as well buy over all their shareholders' investments and NATIONALIZE SMRT and Comfort Delgro.
Mind you, we are shareholders too, but dun mind being bought out for commuters' sake for a better and much cheaper transport system. The despicable treatment of foreign recruited drivers and the expensive fares we have to pay, all thees just piss us off.
From my observation:
The root cause of the problem for Oxymoron - lack of political will to resolve the issues and the reluctance to put 'National Interest' above the prolonged life of political party. In this case, the PAP.
I stand to be corrected!
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