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### A: “So what you’re saying now is this somewhat contradictory to the programme that you have here where you have the quotas? It’s really human nature, the people hang out with their own kind. Can you legislate that? Can you do anything about that?”### B: “It takes times. You can have a certain, as I said, concentric... |
### A: “Is it, will it be your goal to break down those barriers or it’s not worth doing, it’s just a waste of time?”### B: “I think we just leave it alone.” |
### A: “You just leave it alone.”### B: “You try to break it down, you’re going to cause a lot of unhappiness and the older generation vote solidly against.” |
### A: “As Singapore moves along, I mean, answer me this question, who has the hardest job?”### B: “Hardest job?” |
### A: “You or your son?”### B: “It’s to keep going at the same pace, same quality of governance at all levels, more integrated. I mean not assimilated but more integrated, more easy to get along with each other, a more cohesive society and a better-educated society at all levels, not just the few at the top at univers... |
### A: “Do you think that the world is more complicated now than it was when you were a young man, when you were in the 1960s when Singapore first became independent?”### B: “Of course, I mean everyday is more globalised and more complicated. You look at this swine virus. In the old days, it’d have died in the village ... |
### A: “That’s one thing I want to ask. As the country moves along, we won’t call it a nation, as the country moves along...”### B: “It’s a nation in the making. The optimistic view. We must have optimism.” |
### A: “Absolutely or else why bother to get up in the morning?” “Mark, MM has another appointment if you want to spare two minutes.”### B: “I give you 45 minutes, you carry on.” |
### A: “Carry on?”### B: “Yeah, yeah, it’s all right. If you’ve come all the way two weeks, I can postpone my appointment later.” |
### A: “I appreciate that very much. But I will stick to only the questions I have.”### B: “No, when you say you spent two weeks here, that means you’re doing a serious piece.” |
### A: “It’s a serious piece and also as I told you, I’m very anxious to give a realistic portrayal of the place that people have a lot of illusions about. So therefore, I want to find out really what’s going on. Let’s ask you a question about Singapore. One of the things that people say about Singapore is it’s too, li... |
### A: “It’s truly they keep on driving their motorcycles into the wall and then they get up and say, let’s do it again.”### B: “So there is this curiosity to find out about the world and it’s affecting how they live. I mean, she was 32-years-old. I said are you married. She said no. I said you shouldn’t leave it too l... |
### A: "Do you feel a complacency among the people here?"### B: "No, a complacency in the sense that their expectations are high and they expect their expectations to be met. But they want higher and higher opportunities, more and more opportunities." |
### A: "Why does Singapore have to be number one in everything? Why can't you just be one of the ten great cities of Asia? What's wrong with that idea?"### B: "If we don't strive to be number one, you won't be number ten. You will be number ten. You try to be number one, you might be number two or number three. Do y... |
### A: "You have got a good location."### B: "But you must have people with training, with skills, well-organized, disciplined and productive. I mean so if we didn’t have an efficient port, we wouldn’t be the biggest container port in the world. Where are the container TEUs from? We are not a big manufacturing China... |
### A: "I was there, I was very impressed. It was pretty cool."### B: "So they arrive, immediately work starts, cleared, loaded, off they go in four or five, six hours depending on the number of containers." |
### A: "Do you use a personal computer?"### B: "Yes, I do." |
### A: "And do you are really up on this stuff?"### B: "Well otherwise I'm out of the loop. I used to correct my copies and fax it back. Then I find the young ministers are all correcting each other's copies on the net. So I decided I better learn this or I'll be out of it altogether." |
### A: "What do you think really the overall effect that the internet is going to be in the general sense and especially in a government like the one that you have here where suddenly like there is this degree of personal freedom as given to people by using the internet and a lot of this stuff on the internet is not st... |
### A: "What can you do? Is that the answer?"### B: "You have got to decide as the Chinese have decided that they have to take the risk and they try to minimize the risk and censor this and censor that." |
### A: "Do you approve that?"### B: "No, but we cannot censor it because you just go to some server outside and you have got access, so it's a waste of time." |
### A: "And also no matter what you do, you are not going to be able to, these hacker guys, you can't beat them."### B: "You have got to leave it to the parents and the schoolteachers and peer groups, to say look don’t waste your time doing this." |
### A: "One thing that puzzles in Singapore is actually a very interesting place because of different paradoxes I find in this country. What would be, forgive me if this a little bit on the lewd side, why would you ban Playboy for instance and allow prostitution?"### B: "We banned Playboy in the 1960s when it was a di... |
### A: "I'm not going to ask you if you looked at it recently."### B: "No, you can't, I mean it's not possible. It's part of the globalized village we live in and we have got to learn to adapt and live a sufficiently wholesome life to succeed. If you become addicted to all this porn and drugs and gambling on the net,... |
### A: "I think that there is a lot of addiction in that, yes, there's no doubt about it. Speaking of that, so what made you decide to have these casinos?"### B: "When I was a student in England, the only casino in Europe was in Monaco." |
### A: "I remember that."### B: "The younger ministers have said look, we must have a casino, otherwise, we are out of the circuit of this fast set that goes around the world, with F1 and so on. And it will increase the tourist trade because the casino will pay for all the shows. Otherwise, the shows are too expensive.... |
### A: "I think it is a definite risk."### B: "Then I see the British having casinos and Switzerland having casinos. I said God, the world has changed. If I don’t change, we'll be out of business. So alright, we'll put up two casinos, so obviously they are not going to target Singaporeans because there are not enough... |
### A: "A person from that family."### B: "And the Singaporeans when they go in, they have got to pay $100." |
### A: "That doesn’t sound quite fair."### B: "No, they are going, driving up to a place called Genting, Star Cruises come in and they go outside the territorial limit and they gamble. So I said you do that because I do not want to be blamed and the Prime Minister doesn’t want, and his Cabinet doesn’t want to be blame... |
### A: "How do you, are you still morally opposed to them or does pragmatism always take precedence in your thinking?"### B: "Well, it is useless to resist when it is everywhere." |
### A: "Well, the fact that it's everywhere, maybe it is the reason to resist."### B: "No, you cannot stop it. You want to cut off the internet? You want to cut off your cellphones? You want to cut off satellite TV? Then you will become like Myanmar. It's not possible." |
### A: "No, thank you. That's interesting. I hate to be jumping around but I don’t want to take so much of your time. What do you do about this kind of thing? I would assume in a government, it is easier to legislate people having less children than it is to legislate having them more children."### B: "No, we can't ... |
### A: "Well, legislate is the wrong word but …"### B: "We encourage them with incentives. Yeah, we pay for full pay leave, we don’t burden the employer because the employer will then say look I'm not going to employ these women. So the government pays for them, the employer is entitled to two-three months, three mon... |
### A: "Four months now."### B: "No, no. Employer two months, we pay two months and it will become six months and so on." |
### A: "During the 1960s and the 1970s, you ran a programme 'Two is Enough'. Did the government succeed too well?"### B: "No, it has happened all over Asia. It has happened in Hong Kong, it has happened in Korea, they never had this Stop at Two, it has happened in Japan, it is the education that the women and equal job... |
### A: "Do you feel an urge to have more grandchildren or is it."### B: "I've got two boys who have got grandchildren but I feel sad for her. Because when my wife is gone and I'm gone, this hotel which keeps her going. She will have to manage it." |
### A: "I mean the thing is like, occasionally, it seems like the Singapore Government succeeds as I was talking to a gentleman today, he said in India, they propose a lot of things, and fairly high percentage are never going to get done right but in Singapore, things are proposed and you do it. And you finish it. Th... |
### A: "Matched off, what does that mean?"### B: "Father and mother will look for another father and mother with an appropriate background, no inherited diseases and similar social affluence and then they marry them off, they get them together and meet and no objections and then you are married. Then you love the man, ... |
### A: "There is this feeling that you want to keep the society going."### B: "Well, fortunately for us." |
### A: "And reproduction is an important part of that, right?"### B: "I've been urging them. The only developed societies that have succeeded are Sweden and France and that's not that they have succeeded, they have just about reached replacement rate. And we've studied their incentives and they are enormous. Crèches, ... |
### A: "That's true."### B: "Since we are small population and we can top up, we are topping up. The trouble is the moment they come here, they also have one or two children because they begin to think like Singaporeans. Why? I will lose my chance of promotion. So I'm out of business for six months, nine months, I co... |
### A: "Well, I think that's what I've heard. A lot of people say like well, foreign workers have come here and they've just come to work. That's what they do, they are here to work, so it's hard to compete with people who are just don’t have any other distractions. I mean I've heard this several times."### B: "Witho... |
### A: "I don’t know, probably not."### B: "Therefore, the one worker will move out rather than pay the heavy taxes. And move out and give remittances to his parents wherever he is." |
### A: "So, well, this is a question that came up several times when I have been driving around in the taxicab, all I have to do is say “how's business?” and then you don’t have to say another word. The Singapore people, they just start talking."### B: "The tourists have gone down." |
### A: "And they have all these life stories."### B: "Swine fever and so on." |
### A: "Then I would say I'm going to see the MM, what would you ask him? And he goes…and one thing did come up which is not, I don’t mean to…one of the things he said well, he's the father but he should let us go. Then with words like as a patriarch of the country, is there a point in which you should step away beca... |
### A: "I'm glad to hear that."### B: "I cannot work at that old pace. I can work with subjects that require contemplation, time, which really is backed up by my experience and my feel of how things will develop." |
### A: "Well, nobody knows Singapore better than you."### B: "I mean, I guess, supposing I had not intervened in the casino debate, the religious groups would fought tooth and nail to stop it and the Prime Minister and his Cabinet were in a lot of trouble, so I stood up and said look, I understand the views, I was of t... |
### A: "Singapore is always been about business. They say in America, business of America's business, I think it's true here too, right?"### B: "It has to be. Otherwise, we won't survive." |
### A: "When you look out the window, and you see all these big buildings, is this what you envision? Is this the world that you hoped to be?"### B: "After we were booted out from Malaysia, before Malaysia or during Malaysia, we thought we'll grow together as a commercial centre of the federation, the capital being Ku... |
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