You talk a lot of nonsense without knowing what you are talking about.
You don"t even know the size of the UK"s economy. At 2,849 trillion dollars , a modest conversion at today"s rate into dollars will be £1,978 trillio ... read full comment
You talk a lot of nonsense without knowing what you are talking about.
You don"t even know the size of the UK"s economy. At 2,849 trillion dollars , a modest conversion at today"s rate into dollars will be £1,978 trillion not £1.1 billion
Now read about the practical common sense socialism applied by Lee Kuan Yew, on the same lines as Nkrumah"s Tema Township in alleviating slum dwellings. Then cut your crap in telling us that govt has no business in building schools,hospitals etc
The great housing project.
Singapore, which the colony’s founder, Sir Stamford Raffles, envisioned in 1819 as a “Manchester of the east”, had become a boomtown under British rule. It struggled to accommodate wave after wave of immigrants who settled there, growing haphazardly until Raffles ordered up its first proper urban plan – with gridded streets, commercial zones and ethnically segregated residential districts – in 1822.
But Singapore’s housing woes deepened for more than a century – up to the reign of Lee’s PAP and its establishment of the mighty Housing and Development Board (HDB) in 1960, the division of the Ministry of National Development charged with building public housing. It immediately began putting up 10 to 15-storey tower blocks, adding more than 50,000 units of housing to the city within the first five years of its existence.
Since its inception, the HDB has built more than a million flats on the island, taking the concept of social housing to a level unparalleled in any city. Today, more than 80% of Singapore’s population live in HDB buildings, and the organisation itself describes public housing as “a Singapore icon”.
First, though, the HDB had to tackle the issue of 240,000 squatters, many of them migrants from Malaysia, who had appeared in Singapore during the 1950s. Their presence necessitated, to the minds of the planners in charge, a programme of aggressive slum clearance, which provoked the kind of racially charged resistance typical of such sweeping urban-renewal efforts.
The HDB made it a priority to house low-income groups first, subsidising rents on the flats and later providing assistance from the Central Provident Fund, Singapore’s compulsory savings plan, to purchase them, creating a nation of stability-loving homeowners. But it couldn’t convince the squatters to vacate their informal settlements for the new high-rises as quickly as it would have liked.
Then came the still unexplained Bukit Ho Swee fire of 1961, which swept through the slum, killing four, injuring 85, leaving around 16,000 homeless, and providing the government with a chance to demonstrate the speed with which it could relocate the victims – which it did in just over two weeks – and build new housing on the site of the disaster, which it did over the next four years.
“Singapore must be one of the few places in the world where a statutory board satisfactorily completed everything it set out to do in its first five-year plan,” says the narrator of a triumphant 1965 Singapore Ministry of Culture-produced newsreel on the HDB’s first wave of buildings. “Nowhere in the world, except in Russia and Germany, is the rate of rehousing faster than in Singapore.”
The film cuts to a celebratory exhibition presenting renderings and models of the HDB’s plans for the next five years and beyond: “By far the most stimulating and exciting is the far-reaching scheme to rebuild a new city on the site of the old, dilapidated buildings and unhealthy slums.”
The footage shows Lee Kuan Yew himself amid these visions of ever-growing towers to house families and workers, and the narrator quotes Lee’s pronouncement: “The people of Singapore demand high standards of their governments, and they are prepared to work hard and are capable of higher skills. For them, the sky is the limit.”
Kay 8 years ago
From the beginning of Lee’s three-decade run as prime minister until its end in 1990, Singapore’s total number of public housing units grew from 22,975 to 557,575. They remain organised by ethnicity, but unlike in Raffles ... read full comment
From the beginning of Lee’s three-decade run as prime minister until its end in 1990, Singapore’s total number of public housing units grew from 22,975 to 557,575. They remain organised by ethnicity, but unlike in Raffles’ day, the PAP’s idea wasn’t to separate the Chinese, the Malays, the Indians and the rest, but to carefully integrate them – so the demographics of each block reflect the demographics of Singapore as a whole, in theory preventing the formation of volatile ethnic enclaves.
Philip Kobina Baidoo 8 years ago
Hello Mr Kay, I think you will do well to take your time to read what I write patiently. Because you were rushing you failed to recognised that I wrote budget and not GDP or the size of the economy you choose for your narrati ... read full comment
Hello Mr Kay, I think you will do well to take your time to read what I write patiently. Because you were rushing you failed to recognised that I wrote budget and not GDP or the size of the economy you choose for your narrative. Thank you.
Kay 8 years ago
In the fiscal year ending in 2015, total UK public spending, including central government and local authorities, was £748 billion. In the fiscal year ending in 2016, total UK public spending is expected to be £760 billion.
In the fiscal year ending in 2015, total UK public spending, including central government and local authorities, was £748 billion. In the fiscal year ending in 2016, total UK public spending is expected to be £760 billion.
GORGORDUTOR 8 years ago
Boom Baam Bimm. Spot on MassaKay! Misreh wu manisu tunu egu fem bio wai.
Boom Baam Bimm. Spot on MassaKay! Misreh wu manisu tunu egu fem bio wai.
Dessie 8 years ago
well if you based on your theory that if someone manage 2.78bllion pounds and so his take home should be 50milling pounds a year.what else does people working together to make that figure work take home
'..if 1 1/3 of that p ... read full comment
well if you based on your theory that if someone manage 2.78bllion pounds and so his take home should be 50milling pounds a year.what else does people working together to make that figure work take home
'..if 1 1/3 of that profit goest to one person,,what about the rest;this was as a result of Wall street collapsed,The cilapsed of WorldCom.corperate greediness..how many workers will live under poverty line like Malmart workers where CEO TAKE home around 50-100million a year where workers are paying 12$ and hour minimum wage.if you base you argument of the bigger you manage the more your take home,a sending signal to corperate fraud.Politicians like HILLARY Clinton and Bill Clinton association with Wall street because of special interest was as a result of NUCLEARONE of RUSSIA taking over most o fmost AMERICANS STATES for Urennium mining and fossil fuel companies donation to HILLIARY Clinton campaign and Bill Clinton foundation.if such thing as the bigger you manage the higher take home why Obama swiftly reform wall street financial malpractices..Capitalism is evil
You talk a lot of nonsense without knowing what you are talking about.
You don"t even know the size of the UK"s economy. At 2,849 trillion dollars , a modest conversion at today"s rate into dollars will be £1,978 trillio ...
read full comment
From the beginning of Lee’s three-decade run as prime minister until its end in 1990, Singapore’s total number of public housing units grew from 22,975 to 557,575. They remain organised by ethnicity, but unlike in Raffles ...
read full comment
Hello Mr Kay, I think you will do well to take your time to read what I write patiently. Because you were rushing you failed to recognised that I wrote budget and not GDP or the size of the economy you choose for your narrati ...
read full comment
In the fiscal year ending in 2015, total UK public spending, including central government and local authorities, was £748 billion. In the fiscal year ending in 2016, total UK public spending is expected to be £760 billion.
Boom Baam Bimm. Spot on MassaKay! Misreh wu manisu tunu egu fem bio wai.
well if you based on your theory that if someone manage 2.78bllion pounds and so his take home should be 50milling pounds a year.what else does people working together to make that figure work take home
'..if 1 1/3 of that p ...
read full comment
remit textual errors .thx