Wind In My Hair wrote:
Good info. Out of 596, that makes 5% of the US Olympic contingent foreign-born. Singapore's is almost 100% foreign-born and that is the issue most people are having. Funnily enough, I don't hear anyone complain that almost 100% of our maids and construction workers are foreign. There are just some things that Singaporeans can't or won't do and we either forego these as a country or we do the pragmatic thing - import.
I'm not so sure about that WIMH. If domestic help and construction workers are being paid the same amount as they would be in western countries, maybe Singaporeans won't be so hesitant to pick up these vocations.
Wind In My Hair wrote:
Still, when you look at things in perspective and assuming I got the figures right, the budget allocated to our national sports is $43.5m which is 3.26% of the budget of the sports ministry, which in turn gets only 3.6% of the national budget. So although the absolute figure is in the millions, we are really talking about 0.1% of the total budget for the Games at most.
Really? The sports ministry gets $1.3 billion? And to what avail? Olympic standard pools and stadiums in every suburb? While relegating sports to a secondary activity only to be encouraged if the individual shows not just promise but results? That doesn't sound like very good public fund management to me.
Wind In My Hair wrote:Comparatively, we spent $100m to upgrade Changi Prison - hmm, I certainly think our top athletes working their butts off deserve more support than criminals causing us trouble. And the figure is elusive but the closest estimate I found for the cost of the National Day Parade is $190 million which in the same 4-year span works out to $760m. And my bet is that many more Singaporeans were riveted to the TV and felt strong emotions for Singapore watching the Olympics than they did the NDP.
I know the talk in the streets is "we spent millions on these girls" but cost and benefit are relative. I hope the homework I did above puts the amount into perspective. It really isn't that much to spend on something that impacted a lot more Singaporeans than things we spend a lot more on that don't.
And by the way, the old lady picking cans and those in her position got about S$1 billion of our budget which works out to 2300% more than what we spend on the national team. So when all's said and done I think you will agree that the government's priorities seem about right.
Gosh, I've done enough research and math tonight to last me a month! Don't shoot me if the figures are wrong, it was the best I could do late at night from publicly available sources.
I don't think anyone has problems rewarding athletes for performing well. Rather, the problem is, as you said, the team is almost 100% foreign. Meaning we might as well have bought that medal. Does it reflect well on Singapore? Perhaps, if medals were all that mattered. What it also implies is that the incumbent government can now say "see, we got the country a medal, therefore we have done a good job" when they have simply purchased it with the people's money rather churn it back into nurturing sportsmen within the people.
I can see why some expats can't relate to why some locals feel that way. It is very telling of their true colours.
As for that little old lady picking up the cans, if we're spending $1 billion a year on her and her friends but yet they are picking up cans every year, doesn't that suggest something is wrong somewhere? Perhaps they enjoy picking up cans? Or we drink too much? Garbage disposal not quick enough maybe? (I'm being sarcastic, in case some dimwit civil servant is reading this)
To say this is getting our priorities right is like saying it doesn't matter if a teacher is a paedophile as long as his class passes with flying colours.