Of house price increase and contempting the court ...

These few days, I come across a couple of amusing news. One is about how to prevent drastic increases in the price of houses proposed by the Minister of Housing while the other is about judges warning to us good citizens running the risk of being in contempt of court should they give "insulting" opinions on judges who pass bad judgments. 

While the former on  house price increase is a stale proposal that goes way back to the 1970s on how to curb house price increases, every Housing Minister since then never bothered to find ways to do it. Just imagine a DS terrace house that cost 30,000 in the 1970s now cost 700,000. The current minister shrinks away from proposing to enact a law to prevent house price increase because he thinks its for the market to determine. Instead he is proposing the outdated provisions to increase the capital gains tax, to impose limits between house transfers and so on. We have seen this before and it has never worked. All the house speculators need do is to under declare the transaction price and voila, he pays less tax or none at all.

The fault really lies primarily with the housing developers and the banks. A house developer initially develops a township at an average price a 100,000 say. Later he discovers that in the secondary market, the houses are actually sold at an average price of 200,000. Realising that his initial pricing was not "realistic", what the developer does that for the next township that he is developing, he doubles the average price to 200,000. Again he discovers that, in the secondary market, the average price of houses transacted is 400,000. Again the developer realises that, all along, he has been stupid for "under pricing". So, in the next housing development project, the developer swears that he would never be stupid again and markets his houses at an average price not at 400,000 but at 600,000, to ensure that at last he would not be labelled as stupid by the shareholders. Surprise of surprise, in the secondary market, the houses that he has developed, are transacted at 750.000.

And that's what the situation is now in the Klang Valley.

So far, have any Ministers of Housing in the past ever done anything to curb the drastic price increases of houses ? Most probably, they are all in favour of price increase because it means more tax for the government, directly or indirectly. Didn't it occur to any of them that one of the ways to curb price increase is enact a law preventing houses being sold while they are being developed. Make a law that only completed houses that have water and electricity and other amenities available can be sold. In other words, developers can only sell houses with certificates of fitness. Let the development of houses be entirely financed by the developers own funds and their banks before allowing the houses to be sold to the public - treat the houses like any other products like cars for examples. And let's see what the prices would be.

The banks are obviously in favour of price increases because it means more income from interests, service fees, and what have you they impose on the consumers. It also provides an opportunity for these banksters to seize houses when borrowers fail to pay, seizing them at low prices and re-selling at high prices to new buyers. Another group of professionals that like prices to go up are those from the legal profession because their fees would be a certain percentage of higher numbers. Who wants to get 10% of a 100,000 when a 10% of 700,000 means more for their pockets for drawing up a standard well worn document.

As usual, it's the consumer that's getting the shit end of the stick. The house buyer is the ultimate loser for getting a house that is smaller, on a piece of land that has reduced in size and for a price that's 7-10 times what his father paid for it from an income that has increased by 2-3 times compared to the 1970s.

Is this what the Minister of Housing is talking about ?

On another note, there is this Malaysia's chief justice who issues warnings to all citizens, politicians, ministers, and the common people alike, not to insult the judges, not to make heavy criticisms on them, or else drastic actions like being charged for contempts of court would be taken against them. Even outside the courts, they believe they can charge us for contempts.

The judges are not to be criticised since they feel that their status is well above the people, above the Prime Minister, and perhaps, only slightly below the level of a divine Being. To me, they are nothing but a bunch of government servants who should be criticised for making bad judgments and, come to think, can be sued in court ( the word used is impeachment, as though using any other word to mean the same thing is beneath them) if they make mistakes or blunders in administering justice.  They are employed to serve, first and foremost, the rakyat, the taxpayers, not the other way round. If personnels in the executive, legislative branch of government can be hauled to court why cannot the members of the bench ? What's so special about them that perhaps they can only be "impeached" in special courts if they failed to administer justice ? Remember the Teoh Ben Hock case wherein  3 officials of MACC were disciplined for being indicted indirectly to the death of Ben Hock who jumped from the MACC building in order to avoid further harassment. The 3 men were not charged in court but were charged following a royal commissioning of  inquiry. They were in fact doing their job.

to be continued ......

What's wrong with the Chinese people .....

A common trait among the Chinese is his selfishness. If he thinks that he has the right to do something, he will do it without realising that what he does may irritate or harm his neighbours. Let me explain what I mean by giving a few examples. 

One is if he is driving a car and cut in infront of you, oblivious to the fact that, by so doing, you are forced to brake your car in order to prevent an accident. If you complain to him of his callousness, his response would invariably be it his right to be on the road because he has the road tax to show for it. And, if you had not reacted in time to cause an accident, and challenged him, he would reply that, since you hit him from behind, it was you who are at fault, by law, insisting that it's his right to be on the road. 

Two is if a woman carrying a baby crosses in front of a car in a car park say, instead of being patient and allow the woman to cross completely, the driver would blast his horn to prompt the woman to hurry up. If you take a closer look at the driver, you will find a Chinaman behind the wheel. If you challenge him, he would reply that that's his right since he's paying for parking. 

Three is if you happen to be a woman working as a junior clerk in a small Chinaman company. A senior Chinese clerk would invariably attempt to bully you by asking you to do chores like washing her dirty cups, wiping her tin cans and so on when she could easily do it herself, even though its outside your job scope. 

Four is if you happen to be an Indonesian maid working for a Chinese family living in a high-rise apartment in Singapore. You will be asked, among other things, to clean the outside of apartment windows without any means provided to ensure your safety. You may end up like one of the nine maids that have fallen to their deaths in 2012 alone. When charged in court, the court tends to look the other way always agreeing and sympathising with the apartment owners saying that the maids are stupid enough to do what they have been doing. At best, the judge will impose a fine of S$500.

Now, at last the government has realised that prior to the 9 deaths in this year alone, there had been scores of incidents in the past wherein maids have plunged to their deaths when cleaning apartment windows and it's getting a bit embarrassing for only in Singapore that such incidents occur. It is now attempting, belatedly, to enact a law prohibiting apartment window cleaning by maids.