Established!
Thank you very much for your wonderfully revealing post of 20 Feb 2001. I believe that it could not be bettered even if submitted as a spoof! May I therefore develop the themes that you have opened up plus those contained in other replies posted by my colleagues and also ask you to tell me if any part of my post is in any way inaccurate in respect of factual content or derived conclusion? Titan/sia sniffer – thank you very much for your support plus your spot-on postings.
Established! your first paragraph is particularly valuable for it allows me to make the point that if indeed I had submitted this thread’s original posting through the medium of the ALPAS e-forum and used the form of words which matched my true feeling, then I would be able to guarantee that shortly after publication I would have received a summons to 4th floor STC where an explanation of my feelings would have been demanded and, I’m afraid, being who I am, I would have stood by everything that I posted and gratuitously added further colour to my narrative. The next event would then have been a terse communication from the Department of Immigration to the effect that there now seemed to be a problem with my work permit and that I was, hence, obliged to leave the country in the next 48 hours. The effect on both my family and finances would, needless to say, be devastating but entirely consistent with the now enshrined methodology when dealing with any form of dissent in Singapore - for dissent read informed opinion that varies with received orthodoxy of both the company and the regime. As a corollary, if I was Singaporean or Malaysian
PR I would be hauled off by the ISA boys with a view to possibly receiving psychiatric treatment.
Outside readers may be surprised that this sequence of events may be postulated as likely, following the airing of views, hardly revolutionary, in a nation which daily trumpets membership of the “first world” and exhorts the population to think “globally” but such is the feeling that it could happen that the all important “control” is maintained nationally through fear as indeed it is maintained within SQ, a microsm of the larger nation. As it is, my anonymous posting on Pprune serves to allow the airing of these views and, as the 4th floor would find it a little difficult to establish my identity, would be unable to sanction me – hence the all important “face” can be saved and my views dismissed as “rubbish”, so everyone is happy. As a footnote to this paragraph, my comments on “first world” and “globally” should not be misinterpreted. Singapore is indeed a miracle and there are many (and I do mean many) fine attributes of both the nation and the population, to be found on a daily basis. Unfortunately, the required tough measures instigated 35 years ago by the father of modern Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, to form the state, remain to this day and have set their stamp on attitudes and behaviour which, I believe, SM Lee is now wisely attempting to change. As ever, smaller men are unable to immediately grasp the overview provided by such mercurial intelligence!
Still on your first paragraph, you mention that “there will be a time to go public”. Far be it from me to attempt an analysis of mind sets but is this not revealing of a long established culture of both secrecy and paternalism whereby a course of action will be decide by a conclave of cronies and the derived decision will be handed down to the masses and deemed to be “for their own good”. Again, I do believe that SM Lee is attempting a sea-change of institutional thinking and moving away from this approach, to one that encourages careful individual thought and analysis coupled with a framework that encourages the voicing of such opinion as produced by this process. You may be interested to note a prime example of this SQ secrecy/paternalism culture in the covering up of the fairly recent 744 stalling incident. Rumour had it that this had occurred on a Europe-Singapore flight following the ambitious climb to a far higher altitude than the aircraft’s current weight could sustain – I know it as a fact as a highly experienced friend and colleague was positioning on that flight and recognised the violent buffet and immediate sense of altitude loss so produced, for what it was. Needless to say, the local captain, who obviously plays golf with the right people was not required to account for his actions and the only way the “masses” were able to divine a possible recent event was by the unprecedented alacrity with which stalling exercises were introduced to recurrent and base check sim sessions and conjunctive, didactic buffet margin lectures were received from 12 year old SIPs to “teach” us all how to avoid these situations – OIC is that how its done? Established! – is this really the way we should be doing things?
Moving to your next paragraph, I do believe that my colleagues have made convincing explanation of the nature of web sites but may I further say that there really can be no such thing as a “foreign” site. It matters not a jot where the site’s server is – it could be set up by a Singaporean on the north pole but still be used by members of all nations – would it then be a “local” site or a “foreign” one?
On the matter of “fear”, well yes this is indeed a very important issue. Titan makes the point that most of the pilots would be afraid of making any posting on this site and expressing support for an obviously “ex-pat” suggestion. I would say, in fact, that the average Singaporean ALPAS member is frightened of his own shadow (I’m only half in jest!) – for all the reasons previously expounded by countless contributors to Pprune. The importance, however, is that this fear takes itself into the flight deck and prevents any serious challenge to a captain intent on pursuing a potentially dangerous course of action. All of which both validates Titan’s hypothesis suggested in your posting and makes a mockery of the effort and expense put into countless ARM courses.
Moving on, every FO I’ve spoken with on the subject maintains that, far from the vote (show of hands, by the way) being based on a matter of “principle”, it was one based on emotion and frustration, directed at both SQ for their continued and traditional obduracy and ALPAS Executive Council for their failure to fully explain the details and ramifications of the SQ offer.
Finally you rather cryptically say “the door is always open”. Well perhaps you should make it a little more obvious to all the ex-pat pilots in SQ – they have a collective wealth of both professional and industrial experience and can be of great assistance in raising benefit and welfare status for all pilots in SQ.