Peanut Butter

No it is not an allusion to groundnuts instead of peanuts being in the shops in Singers. It was 'cos I am watching the peanut conspiracy episode of American Dad.

Several people I know in Singers are getting elevator upgrades in their HDB blocks. Contrary to what I inferred from what I had previously read the bulk of the expense is being passed to the residents. For the people I know these range up to tens of thousands for PRs and more than ten thousand for citizens. For some of my friends it is nowhere near so much, but still more than ten thousand for PRs and thousands for citizens.

Now, most of the people I know in SG are Chinese Malaysian and PRs, their life plan being to live and work in Singapore and then retire back to Malaysia in their old age. But now under this financial pressure I have seen some take citizenship. It raises interesting questions. I always had difficulty with the idea of living in a country for over twenty years without taking citizenship, but that is because of my personal viewpoints. For me, my Australian citizenship means little to me, I am quite open about my desire to leave permanently. And as, what Singapore classes as a strategically desired skill set, I have the option of taking PR after only two years of residency, and then citizenship after two years of PR.

But what happens after the lift upgrade? Do they revoke their Singaporean citizenship and retake their Malaysian citizenship? Do they keep both? I know that the Singaporean constitution does not allow for dual citizenship, but such laws can only apply within a nation, a country may not acknowledge another nations claims of membership, but once you cross the bridge do you become a Malaysian citizenship again? Does Malaysian acknowledge your MY citizenship and deny your SG citizenship? As Australians we used to have a similar conundrum with dual Australian/US or Australian/UK citizenship. Australia changed its laws, but Singapores rule is set in the constitution.

And so to the subject I was going to write about a few days ago but was too tired; the Japanese election. What I want to know is just how much will change, or will it be a mere cosmetic alteration? I was raised with a solid programming of all things Japanese are unmitigated evil, but I have grown beyond that on my own. For example; Australians often say quite bad things about Japanese environmental policy, after all they murder dolphins and whales, and you need to understand - to Europeans that is murder, before Christianity it had the same death penalty as murdering another person. Asians have difficulty understanding this. But look at the bigger picture; 78% of Japans tree cover still stands, less than 2% of Australias trees are still here; Australia pumps millions of tons of pollution into our rivers, Japan spent decades cleaning up bays that were polluted by early mercantilism. We declare some species endangered and protected, but then destroy the environment that is critical to its survival, whereas in Japan they have declared whole valleys and their river systems untouchable to protect the giant salamander (and it is GIANT, two and a half metres long!). So who really has the better record?

But criminal organisations are allowed to have shop fronts in Japan, they appear to be allowed to engage in slave trading without any interference from government. Boys in colleges set up rape clubs. I could go on and on and on. I want to know if any of this will change. Will the new Japanese government actually outlaw criminal organisations? Because until they do I just cannot accept them as a civilised nation. I know that it is a terrible slight for most of the population, but it is the choice of the government, they can change this.

In a way it is like the water issue in Australia.
The government claims that we have a water crisis and yet they still permit people to drain our rivers to farm cotton and rice in deserts. If such things are permitted then they cannot truly believe that we do really have a crisis.

Ask yourself what was going through the minds of the Christmas Islanders that cut down the last tree to move their big head statues. With the loss of their tree cover they suffered terrible erosion and a huge drop in their farming output and they starved so much that they turned to cannibalism and most of their population vanished. To me that is where Australia is with its 'water crisis'. If it is real then stop farming cotton in the desert. I can't stand such two-facedness (another new word).

My Oriental neighbours are holding a rodeo in their apartment apparently, for the last few days it happens every day from 6:30 or 7:00 pm and goes for an hour or two, but it is pissing me off too much and is bringing todays blogging session to an end.