Former senior civil servant Ngiam Tong Dow spoke candidly about past policy mistakes (of the PAP Singapore Government) in his speech to the Economic Society of Singapore last week. The
Straits Times of 21 Jan 2004 printed an excerpt of this excellent speech by a realistic and obviously intelligent man, un-blinkered by party ideology.
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/com...31194,00.html?
The final paragraphs of this excerpt are as follows:
“So, Singapore with a population of four million cannot play the (steel) numbers game alongside China and India with their billion populations.
But an educated four million population can endure, if we have some of the globally mobile talented, including our own, to be engaged, work, live, and stay in Singapore, perhaps not for a lifetime but in the prime of their lives.
In this way, the nation of Singapore will be larger than the country of Singapore. The little red dot will grow into a centre of world civilisation and not fade away into history.”
Whilst Ngiam Tong Dow referred primarily to graduate “globally mobile talent”, the principle still applies to high caliber, well experienced technical crew who are presently available globally for hire (by SIA).
Is the Senior Minister therefore not in danger of compounding his record of policy mistakes by adopting his present antagonistic stance towards pilots, thus strongly deterring the shortly to be required influx of “globally mobile talent” to SIA?