[If you agreed that 'Green ORG' needs to be audited and/or people should NOT be forced to donate for any cause, please share this post and drop an email to the following:
PM Lee: lee_hsien_loong@pmo.gov.sg
Mr Seah Kian Peng (Group Chief Executive Officer, FairPrice Group): braddell.heights.mps@pap.org.sg
Grace Fu Hai Yien (Minister for Sustainability and the Environment): yhmps@yahoo.com.sg
The following is what I had sent to them.]
Dear Sir,
With reference to the following:
and
Consumers should pay if they take 3 or more plastic bags at supermarkets: Citizen workgroup
I am writing to request that you kindly audit ALL 'Green Organisation' (environmentalist) accounts and also to inform your ministries to stop forcing people to donate to them!
Instead, please adopt a more well-thought-out approach, which seeks to enhance our social fabric rather than blindly adopting suggestions from activists which not only does not solve the underlying problems, it simply created more problems for everyone.
For a start, do you still remember "Suzy"? In case you don't, this is Suzy, an iconic donation box by the Cerebral Palsy Alliance of Singapore.
You can often find her standing at an isolated and deserted corner at NTUC FairPrice branches and Subway outlets, seeking donations. Are patrons of NTUC FairPrice branches and Subway outlets being forced to donate to Suzy???
No!!! Donations for any causes are NEVER forced upon people! So why are you and your ministries forcing people to donate money for 'green effort'? Are you trying to tell us that your perceived 'green effort' is more important than those children suffering from Cerebral Palsy?
The next important thing that you and your ministries had overlooked is "Accountability". You had forced people to give them money for the use of plastic bags, claiming that the money would be used for 'green effort'. Are you and your ministries going to audit which kind of 'green effort' those money would go to?
What if the 'green organisation' used the money to book a 5-stars hotel in Maldives, take a 1st class flight there, and book a snookering session, in the name of 'inspecting the impact of sea pollution to the coral reefs'. Is this type of 'green effort' acceptable to you and your ministries? Is this type of 'green effort' acceptable to the people who were forced to give their money to those 'green organisations' ?
Sir, Singaporeans are not stingy, but we have the rights to know where our money goes and decide how and when we donate. Do you still remember the NKF Saga? The yearly donation drive was such a great success, raking in millions every year.
I can still remember the advertisements, telling us how much each kidney dialysis cost, even down to how much each syringe costs; however, nobody tells us how much the "Golden Toilet" cost, how much the CEO was earning, and how often the executives took SIA 1st class flight! We also learnt in that episode that a peanut could cost $600K! If anyone needs more info, just check with GCT on how much problems the NKF Saga had created for him and Singaporeans!
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Kidney_Foundation_Singapore_scandal)
NKF is not a one-time event. We also have the Ren Ci Saga. It was revealed that Ming Yi had purchased property, a horse, a luxury car, and a golf-club membership in Australia over the years.
(https://www.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/Singapore/Story/A1Story20091008-172427.html).
Is that all? No! We also have City Harvest Church Saga, which ended with Criminal Breach of Trust, including funding of Ho's music career. Technically, there is nothing wrong with a church funding a music career, if the artist is spreading the Gospel of God, but this was the kind of music that was created:
(https://undertheangsanatree.blogspot.com/2013/05/woman-behind-beleaguered-city-harvest.html)
Do you think all the above are fair to the donors? In other words, if people were to know that their donations would go to fund a $600K CEO salary with privilege of 1st class flight, purchase of golden tap, pay for the abbot's property, a horse, a luxury car, and a golf-club membership in Australia, as well as funding a music career that is against conservative teaching, would they still donate?
Sir, the mega sagas above were bad enough, even though the donation was voluntary. Bear in mind that today, the so-called 'green effort', is a "forced donation", which means that your accountability is far greater than it was for the NKF, Ren Ci, and City Harvest Church. Are you and your ministries ready to take this responsibility if it turned South, again?
Nowadays, people are being forced to pay extra money claiming that it is meant for some charitable causes. Even for some pet stores, they are collecting extra money for the use of plastic bags, claiming that it is meant for some charitable cause. However, I do not see any permit displayed in the premises stating so! Is there any ministry monitoring this?
After all the sagas above, we now have "Commissioner of Charities", but is this Commissioner also overseeing those 'green effort' donations?
Sir, we voted you and your team not because you are handsome or whatever, but rather because of your academic profiles, and your team's capabilities. We believe we have a government who can think on their feets and can make tough decisions when it is required. For example, limiting the inter-mingling during Chinese New Year, when the situation calls for it, is a great example of your decisiveness!
On the other hand, there is no safeguard on the calibre of activists. In short, they do not need to have any academic profiles, minimum IQs, etc. They can be as bad as Mother Nature allows! All that is required to be an activist is just to find a cause (valid or not is irrelevant), and then finger-pointing everyone else for not adhering to the cause. This is exactly the nature of "activist" that is happening around the world. They are destroying the social fabric that Singapore had spent so many years to build and maintain.
Today, the whole situation is so irritating and disturbing, as if the whole world is now run by activists who are constantly blackmailing people into supporting and paying for their actions.
If you have problems empathising with this frustration, think of Roy Ngerng, as well as what he had said and done to you. Precisely! This is the kind of ridiculous feeling that people are experiencing from the so-called 'activists' today!
Thus, I urge you and your team to apply your intelligence and creativity, review the proposals against the social fabric of Singapore, and apply creativity to ensure that valid causes are fulfilled with enhancement to our social fabric.
I am not here to complain or to refresh people's memory of all the bad experiences. I am highlighting the past experiences to warn people of the devastating effect of all these, and why the 'green effort', as it is, could be a worse episode if not managed properly, especially when you and your ministries are forcing us to give them money!
Instead of blindly forcing people to pay for plastic bags and fund those 'green organisations', in which nobody knows exactly how the money would be spent, it is important to first understand the landscape of Singapore.
Take a look at this article to understand the difference between useful and useless plastics and why blindly extorting money from the people for the use of plastic bags is illogical (Please Stop The Plastics Bunkum!), and also try to appreciate where the majority of the useless plastics comes from.
(Useless Plastics)
Reflecting on the Government's stand to-date, what have you done so far on those useless plastics???
Nothing!!! All you have done today, is encouraging those organisations, in the name of 'green effort', to sell us plastic bags at a ridiculous profit! Take a look at the IKEA example within that article. IKEA claimed that charging for plastic bags was a 'green effort', but right in their 'backyard', they are using useless plastics in all their packaging like nobody's business! WTF???!!! If this is not hypocrisy and shamelessness, there are no better words to describe this!
(IKEA Still Uses Useless Plastics for Packaging, While Charging People for Useful Plastic Bags)
Once we have understood the background in Singapore from the article above, and when you take a look at this article again:
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/environment/less-demand-when-customers-have-to-pay-for-plastic-bags
as well as the 2 articles earlier above, you will know that the perceived reduction in the use of plastic bags is plain bunkum and not true! People are actually boycotting the unreasonable price of the plastic bags, and had to buy their own plastic bags to dump the food waste.
Doesn't this end up with a much worse situation? Plastic bags from supermarkets are no longer reused!!! Don't you think this is a super stupid initiative fueled by your team's ignorance of the situation on the ground?
Next, you should evaluate the impact of alternatives. For example, there is a push to avoid using plastic straws, stating that it takes years for plastic straws to decompose. The alternative suggested was to use metal straws! This is a worse suggestion, imagine the amount of extra water wastage and the detergent pollution just to wash those each time!
Given that water is very precious in Singapore, it is obvious that those idiots who suggested this did not have the slightest idea of what they were talking about. Apart from that, it will take centuries or even forever for the metal straws to decompose! (Again, you can't expect much from activists)
Taking a step back, the right approach to the straw issue is to apply creativity in the design of the cup, such that it would render straws unnecessary. Take a look at the following picture:
(Mac Coke and Coffee)
On the left, is a McDonald's coke, you cannot drink it without the straw, and if you were to remove the cover, there is a risk of devastating spillage. On top of that, what do you think is the user experience of drinking a coke with ices surrounding your lips whenever you take a sip?
On the right, we have a McDonald's coffee, no straw is needed, why? This is because I could simply flip the small opening and drink from it directly. Can't we simply get restaurants and suppliers to change the design of the cover for cold drinks too so that straws are no longer needed, like what we did for the hot beverages?
I am sure you and your team are way much smarter than us, as long as you do not bindly listen to activists' suggestions (btw, they are stupid), and I am sure you can come up with much more innovative ways of solving issues.
In summary, I urge you and your team to run the country on your feets, not run the country based on what activists said. Remember: Activists can only complain and they can be as stupid as Mother Nature allows, they are not of the calibre to provide feasible solutions. It is you that we have voted to run the country, and to prevent idiotic activists from destroying our social fabric.
I hope the example on the straws provided some insights on how we could solve environmental issues creatively and collaboratively. I also hope that you can get the "Commissioner of Charities" (or whatever), to ensure that permits are applied and the financial accounts of the 'green organisations' are audited to prevent any potential mega scandals once again.
Looking forward to you and your team stepping in to prevent another fraudulent saga and to protect our social fabric from the destruction of ignorance and incapable activists.
Regards,
XimplifyIt
BTW, can we have some oversight and certification exams for activists? Some of them are just plain stupid! When python appeared, we have activists saying that python does not attack unless provoked. Common sense tells us that python swallows its prey when hungry, not when provoked. Recently, there is news about a Pomeranian being swallowed by a python ( https://mothership.sg/2021/01/python-swallow-dog-holland-link/). Are we saying that the naughty Pomeranian had provoked the python so badly? Does this make sense to you? If activists' illogical logic is valid, then we should change our science syllabus to state that "lions and tigers are basically safe and fun animals to keep as pets, unless they are hungry". Please also bear in mind the context of the issue!!! It is the python that intruded urban areas, not the dog venturing into the forest! If you continue to let those activists mislead the public that having pythons within urban areas are safe and that your ministries are not going to do anything about that, one day, when a python swallows a baby, it would be too late!
