Source: Channel NewsAsia
GST to be raised to 7%: PM Lee
By Lee Foong Ming, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 13 November 2006 1832 hrs
SINGAPORE: The Goods and Services Tax will be increased to 7 percent, up from 5 percent presently - this was announced by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in Parliament on Monday.
Mr Lee said more details will be given in next year's Budget Speech which has been scheduled for 15 February.
The Prime Minister made the announcement when responding to the issues raised by MPs over 4 days of debate - among them the widening income gap in Singapore as a result of globalisation.
Stressing that globalisation is here to stay, and Singaporeans will have to deal with its impact, Mr Lee said this is something that could strain the country's social compact, and this is why it is essential that there will be a whole set of measures to tilt playing field in favour of lower income group.
Adding that the GST increase will help finance enhanced social safety nets to help this group, Mr Lee said it was better to raise the GST when the economy is doing well. - CNA /dt
More: Zaobao.com
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So let's see, after the WTO and IMF hoo-ha, with some news of the upcoming IR on the papers, we've a new stunt pulled out!
Have we forgotten how long (or short) ago it was that bus fares just rose, citing increased oil prices and other reasons? Or are we Singaporeans running on RAM which is so dynamic, that we forget the past to only remember the present?
And GST has to increase to 7%. So the last time that the government removed 1 cents to facilitate the 5% GST, so will they round up all the costs from now on? How much more will it be costing us to have a simple meal, when the prata shop just downstairs charges GST for SERVING you?! What has the world (or specifically, Singapore) become?!?!
And whilst we think for ourselves...how about those who are not that financially able? Wont this be even more taxing to them, considering that the job market is still on the upturn, but seemingly our pay doesnt increase as fast as that of cost of living...
So buy more, before the GST 7% hits our shores after D-Day February 14? Maybe...
Till then, it's back to mugging. Got booted out of school super early cos they needed to close the 6th level for cleaning. Geez.
P.S. At least certain things will remain GST-free, like our trips. HAHAHA.
Not much time to blog...so I'm gonna share this nice MV! :D
Mug hard all!
Oh mans...how long has it been since our comm came together to chit chat and crap? Well, barely a week ago only, and that's during the chalet we had for the 26th, the Appreciation Dinner which the 27th did for them.
And we did it just again, albeit with half the comm only. This time round, it was to celebrate Wanling's birthday in advance, together with Jorin, Heng Hong, Laiyee, Peiyu and Shuanghui.
Judging from the attendance, Wanling did make sense on one point - that is, those who are attached aint around. So coincidental? Maybe. I did not realise it till she pointed it out.
Went to Thai Express and sat down staring at numbers which faintly reminded us of module codes - I saw a 1401 and it was immediately linked to the LSM module which I'm currently taking. Pengs. Well, well...enough of the menu, now the food. The Phat Thai was wonderful (as usual), and the Curried Soft Shell Crab (what's the Thai name for it??) was fantastic! I personally felt that the chicken broth smelt nice and the chicken tasted good, but oh wells, it's dependent on one's taste and liking for a particular type of dish ;)
After we settled the bill - Shuang was basically doodling about and playing with food - we moved over to Coffee Club and had desert! Mudpies, Triple Chocolate ala mode, tea infusions and more! And it was there that we celebrated ling's birthday with a candle on top of the mudpie (cos her Triple Choc cant take the candle), and had her blow the candle out without blowing the chocolate powder at us (tough feat aint it?)
The dear ger, on achieving her tough feat, was then rewarded with a card, followed by a present...which looked wonderful on her! Hope she smiles to sleep tonight. Haha. It seems so long...yet only a year has passed since Jorin and I pulled that surprise on her at the very same area - Holland Village. And this place definitely holds fond memories for me/us.
And we shared experiences. Chit chat. Small talk (no hawker woks). Funny moments. Memories.
It was great, really. Missing the 26th already. But it was fun! And I hope we can meet up more together? Was the only guy there today though, but the rest put me at ease nonetheless!
Looking forward to more outings! Whee~
Current Mood: 
Happy
A much hyped up dinner cum supper outing to Thomson's Prata Place turned out to be an agonising (but fun) 2 hr wait in a super jam along Lornie Road, towards Upper Thomson Road, near MacRitchie.
The cause? A fallen tree which had blanked out almost 2 and a half lanes of the 3 lanes present there.
Result? A jam stretching all the way to Bukit Timah Road that area. Superb aint it?
The evening started off great, Esther, Huiyan, Jinyao, Mark, Weili and I were celebrating Anqi's birthday at Vivocity, and we were deciding on the next course of action, when JY proposed Thomson's prata. Good suggestion to me, since I live nearby, and we tuang-ed awhile at Vivocity (including a banana cake cutting celebration! Not to forget also, Toys'R'Us!) before proceeding on a 93 to MacRitchie. Well, normally it would take about 30-45 minutes to get there, but today was totally different...
The bus moved fast along the majority of the route, till the PIE flyover, where traffic slowed to a mere snail's pace. Or maybe that of a sloth. Feelings of something bad happening ahead was reaffirmed by the ambulance which passed our bus.
The jam was really bad. Okay, maybe really wasn't such a great word to describe it after it. It was utterly disgusting in fact. Numerous buses sped past us on the other side towards Bukit Timah, whilst ours were stationary. And the number of buses on the opposite side started decreasing, decreasing, decreasing...till we saw none at all. My hypothesis: No buses at interchange liao. lol.
And we were talking all sorta crap, playing cards, playing finger games, wondering what had happened...2 possibilities in my opinion - 1) Car accident (which explains the presence of the ambulance) taking up 2 lanes and therefore the jam can be attributed to 3 lanes converging to one; 2) Tree fallen and block off most of the road.
There was little movement, and for long stretches of time we were forced to wait and see whether the bus would even get to inch forward...so much so that in the end we decided to just get down the bus, cross the road and see what is happening while on top of the bridge. Walked all the way to the front where we could see that there was seemingly some flashing lights and...a completely empty road ahead. Inquisitive as we were, the 7 of us proceeded ahead to check what's up.
We counted: 4 93s, 4 157s, 3 74s, 3 855s and a whole lot more buses stuck along that very stretch of road, so much so that I thought we were at a new type of interchange - the MacRitchie Road Interchange.
And when we arrived at the scene, we were greeted by a scene of greenery - a tree had fallen and blocked off 2 lanes and a little of the outer lane also. Small cars and motorcycles could pass it, but because the front of the pack were 2 buses and a trailer, it was impossible for any of the 3 to proceed further, thus the jam!
How many men does it take to remove a fallen tree?
Possibly 3 angmoh volunteers, 2 EMAS recovery people, 4 photographers, a policemen and many more bystanders.
Quite a number of bystanders were around, and I could see 3 angmohs trying to help out. Possibly residents around the area. One was armed with a saw, which seemed too puny compared to the size of the tree branches and trunk. Was wondering how long it would take for him to make an impact on the branches.
On top of that, there were 2 EMAS recovery personnel and their small towing truck, which was attempting to pull the branches at strategic locations so as to break it down further, allowing vehicles to clear through the outer lane at least. But going by the rate of progress (one woman resident nearby told me that it has been 1.5 hrs since it has been like that), and the scene of a tow truck which tried to move pull the branches apart but failed time and again (probably due to not enough horsepower?) almost convinced me that it might take longer to clear the trouble. At that time, it was about 2240 already, and we had spent about 30 mins in the 93 from the PIE flyover to where we got off.
Things changed when a policeman arrived with a chainsaw (now that's something) and proceeded to make quick work of the branches. It allowed the trailers and buses to clear, which meant that the jam was slightly resolved, and also helped in the ease of removal of the rest of the tree. By then, we had gone our separate ways - Esther and I towards AMK, the rest towards the Bukit Timah site. Buses were few and afar, but on the road towards AMK, all the buses which cleared the bottleneck were speeding like crazy, and the same could be said of the other vehicles as well.
Wow, the meters of the taxi uncles must be jumping like mad.
Took us about 20 minutes to walk to the MacRitchie bus stop, and I managed to hop on one of the 157s which came from Upp Thomson Road (possibly to beat the jam?)
A very interesting and lively encounter! Too bad, no cameras...pictures I'll try to get them...haha. Maybe it'll be reported in the news tomorrow la :)
Current Music: 潘美辰 - 最冷的夏天
I like this song! Been listening it on 93.3FM recently. Hmms...Hebe mah, what to do, think Zhan will like it! Haha!
Ok I'm officially finding this song: Lovers In Paris - Ending. Nice song also :) (Though I've absolutely no idea with the lyrics...ugh)
What THE heck? What's up with THE (pronounced by some as TE-ER)? A scan through movie times and THE Life! section of THE Straits Times uncovers many movies which are hitting THE shores.
Here are some of THEm:
THE Black Dahlia
The Covenant
The Departed
The Guardian
THE O in Ohio
The Prestige
THE Sinking Of Japan
THE Tiger And The Snow
I know THEre is already THE Chinese High School (now known as HCI, can be mistaken as hyrdochloric acid at times also). Is it just me, or is THE word "THE" giving more prestige and a higher-classed meaning to THE thing? Sounds plausible, but why do THEy want to start with THE word "THE"?
U can hear people say "Duh?!" and it still sounds THE same as "THE". Interchangeable? Seems true. HAHA.
I've gotta stop THE-ing else THE people up THEre would come and THE me for THE-ing my whole blogpost. THEz outz...
Current Mood: 
Awake!
Current Music: Christian Bautista - THE Way You Look At Me
An almost 24-hour marathon of activities - well just 2 only, but I'm really satisfied and happy with that already! It's been some time since I've last enjoyed myself with back-to-back activities away from school work, rovers work, running and other what-nots. Just a day with friends - any friends will do.
Started off yesterday, after the CN2123 weekly test, I gathered my class guys for a K-ing session...but before that we hit the Macs in school to get a 'cheap' brunch and sat there talking cock and playing the 'finger game', 动得到动不到 game, and some other lame stuff...proceeded on to Clementi K-Box where Zhansheng, Jialiang and I checked in first to start our warm-up session. K-Lunch seemed the cheapest for us, even though we had already had our meal. Just asked for the people to serve our food later on, which worked out perfectly fine.
Ghim Song and Gongyu joined in the action soon after, with Ghim's rapping songs (think: 潘瑋柏) and Gongyu's unbeatable renedition of some 周杰伦 raps sure makes me become envy of them...I can NEVER sing so fast, probably 'cos my mind doesnt move as fast as my mouth does, so I cannot process the words I see fast enough to let the mouth voice out something...that's why I'd prefer more of the slow songs, those songs with beats, those without great variations in tune (aka easy to listen and sing).
However, we still had fun. Despite having to leave at 3pm, we managed to hold out till 4, then we got our butts out, and proceeded to the nearby arcade to play...DAYTONA!
Imagine 5 young adults going into an arcade full of teenagers glued to the computer screens. How we varied in our dressing certainly showed. Well, had fun in being in the driver's seat again (and no it's not like normal driving), and we had a (rather short) play with the Time Crisis 4 machine. Just din feel that the shooting scope was accurate. Ugh.
Played pool later on, it was pretty good I must say, though for 5 people to play within an hour at a pool table, it was kinda slow. Nevertheless, we had fun, and Wenyong came shortly after to meet Ghim before they went off together for their meeting - the rest of us just continued for a while more. My skills...rusty already, long time no play. Geez. Reminds me of the times in my army camp when we went to the Mess to have pool 'practice' after lunch. Cool aint it? Relaxing, chit chat, yet enjoyable. Old times? Hmms...hope we have more of such stuff!
Went over to Yihui's house after that, 2 hours earlier for the Okailer gathering! Went over to Bukit Batok and to his house, played LOTR on his PS2 for about and hour plus, HwiBee came over, then we went down to meet the rest of the people - Celina, Haiping, Jianlong, Pei Geok, Shuying - at West Mall for dinner. Proceeded back to his house with food and other stuff...then mahjong-ing session is officially open and started!
Just played throughout the night of mahjong (w/ some PS2 cos 8 people cant play mahjong, rite???) Haha. But, lost momey. Jialut. It was bad enough cos it was late (will 6am???), it was even worse when u dun get to even win!!! From the minimum 3 台 I usually have, I had to get myself satisfied on just 1 or 2 台! Oh wells. But we had fun. It was night where we saw Geoks do a full flower set, Yihui doing a 大三喜 and continuing being 庄 for 4 conscutive games when it's almost the end of the game!!! Ugh.
Then we lazed around, had MacDonalds' breakfast....and home now. :)
Gonna sleep...zzz...
Current Mood:
Sleepy
Driving a Ferrari in LT23? Attending your lecture is like watching Indian Die Hard & Indian Bruce Willis...*rolls about in laughter*
Simply hilarious. U guys just gotta watch it to understand it.
I'd think the class is totally uber cool. Maybe if we can get teachers like that who conduct such surveys and actually PUBLISH the findings to us. *lol* Wonder what answers they usually get too :P
YouTube? No longer...well, after being bought over by Google that is.
Apparently, YouTube has deleted 30000 Japanese videos after a request by some Japanese companies. And that pricked a nerve in people all around the world. YouTube started out being one where all could share videos with their friends, and it seems that it could not stop itself from falling prey to major entertainment companies and their censorship. So, try finding Ayumi Hamasaki, and maybe several other well known Jap singers' MVs, and you'll most likely turn up with no hits. Source: p2pnet.net, Googlified
How pathetic. The very essence and meaning to YouTube has disappeared. We just can't insulate ourselves from the greedy and bossy entertainment companies, can we??
(Read up on the Creative firmware update which prevents recording of FM in their players. That's equally pathetic too.)
Whilst YouTubing on a cloudy Sunday, I've come across a video on YouTube which gives the following statistics:
Views: 16,704,613
Comments: 22252
Favorited: 55438 times
I immediately went o_O" when I saw what the video. Pathetic!!! (but funny? eh...NO.)
Please kill us. *lol* Aliens, you listening up there??
Current Mood:
PensiveCurrent Music: Zhang Liang Ying - Midnight, Goodnight