Latest TODAY column: For more babies send women to NS
Excerpt:
This week, we learn that our zoo has too many staff, and our country does not have enough babies. All the staff of the zoo are being offered a golden handshake to eliminate areas of duplication.
I guess we cannot have too many zookeepers cleaning up after the same animal. So perhaps the guy looking after the hippos can also double up and look after the rhinos too.
I recommend that the next phase of this exercise be extended to the animals as well, because we do not want any duplicate elephants, tigers or giraffes, as they add to cost and offer very little value-add.
Furthermore, there is more shit to clean up.
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Full column:
For more babies send women to NS
This week, we learn that our zoo has too many staff, and our country does not have enough babies. All the staff of the zoo are being offered a golden handshake to eliminate areas of duplication.
I guess we cannot have too many zookeepers cleaning up after the same animal. So perhaps the guy looking after the hippos can also double up and look after the rhinos too.
I recommend that the next phase of this exercise be extended to the animals as well, because we do not want any duplicate elephants, tigers or giraffes, as they add to cost and offer very little value-add.
Furthermore, there is more shit to clean up.
A tiger is a tiger, whether it is a regular striped one or an exotic white one. If you are able to prove that you are a 2-in-1 tiger, both a white and striped, you have a better chance of being asked to stay.
We’d like you even better if you are a tiger breed with your own unique name. We do not want to be accused of stealing the name of another tiger in the United Kingdom or another country, so please use Google to check online first.
Animals who have been with the zoo for more than three years will be offered a month's food for every year served, if they volunteer to be culled or to retire, with the payout capped at 25 months.
Animals who have served in additional money-making capacities like posing for photos with zoo visitors, offering paid rides, and performing tricks will get an extra half-month bonus.
In addition, animals with their own daily shows will be getting an additional one month.
Singaporeans are the other non-performing animals.
People, you are not breeding enough. Who is going to serve NS, or fill the many jobs that our unemployed locals do not know we have, or make the North East Line profitable, if you do not breed?
I know Korea has figured out cloning, but that will probably be risky and expensive in the short term, and we may only be able to use cloning to replicate key leaders and some wealthy businessmen.
Look what happened in Star Wars Episode 2: The Attack of the Clones. The idea bombed, as did the movie, and the good-guy Clone Army ended up becoming the evil Stormtroopers in Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope.
With cloning not being an option for the time being, we need to rely on the messy natural method, that is, having unprotected sex. For married people, of course.
After plotting many charts, Minister in the Prime Minister's Office and Second Minister for Finance, Mr Lim Hng Kiang, and his baby-making committee have identified that the three groups most likely to produce the babies we need are:
a. Singles who have been persuaded to get married
b. Childless married couples
c. One-child families
What a finding! The research probably found the following groups unlikely to help add to the numbers significantly and will not be worth “incentivising”:
a. Families with more than one child already (no point preaching to the converted)
b. Singles who plan to sleep around for the rest of their lives (hard to identify the biological fathers to give the benefits to)
c. Childless married couples who prefer to have many dogs (unlikely to have space in their homes)
d. Singles who plan to not get married but have children out of wedlock or by accident (too much left to chance)
e. Gay and lesbian couples (technical problems)
Couples with two or more children should not feel slighted if the incoming benefits are not geared towards them.
Let me explain.
Most of you own handphones. When you have been the longtime customer of a mobile company, you should not be upset that the company offers new customers a nicer phone for free.
You are already their mobile customer and since it is a pain to change your mobile number — the current lame number portability implementation in place does not count — why should the mobile company try so hard to keep you, since you will stay put anyway?
In the same way, you already have two kids, or three. It is not like you can “un-have” them, or export your children (you could, but the paperwork will be a little troublesome).
No point incentivising you. Plus, you have already met your quota of the national average needed, and any extra kids you have is inconsequential.
So why should you feel bad when more benefits are given to new parents?
You should have held out longer, and waited for the Government to court you with more goodies. Instead, you got carried away and signed up for your two-year plan too early, missing out on the special offers.
I think we need to explore other ways of encouraging births, beyond incentivising people.
Go for a broad-based approach, like making school less of the meat-grinding child-consuming rat race that it is now. Reward companies that have work-life balance policies in place.
Make women serve NS.
Women of childbearing age, 18 and above, should be made to go for National "Service".
Two and a half years of it, starting with three months BMT (Baby Making Training), then followed by nine months of OCS (Ovulation and Child-bearing School).
Yes, women of Singapore will be introduced to time-honoured military commands like “Pumping position down!” and “Stand by Bed!”
After their full-time stint, these fine specimens of child-bearing will return as NSWomen.
Every year, for up to three weeks, they will be required to return for ICT (Increased Child-bearing Training) to trade war stories, and participate in joint marriage and baby exercises, like Exercise Dragon Stork and Exercise Night Shoot.
The medically fit will also need to take their IPPT (Intercourse and Procreation Proficiency Test).
And if all these measures fail, we may need to look to the zoo, to see if any of the out-of-work animals can help.
Maybe the retired monkeys can.
mrbrown is the accidental author of a popular website that has been documenting the dysfunctional side of Singapore life since 1997. He belongs to one of those inconsequential groups who have already produced their share of two children.
