Don't worry about me, I will surely comment. In fact, already gave away my bits to BBC Chinese yesterday but still, will write about it on TOC.
At the mean time, disappointed by what Locke has written. He should have higher standards than that. Will elaborate later.
Goh Meng Seng
P.S. If you read Chinese, here is the link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/world/2012/01/120104_singaporesalary.shtml
Gist of my view: The 30% reduction is within expectation but I am still puzzled why they could still get bonuses. (HK civil servants and political appointees do not get bonuses)
It is too narrow to use 1000 out of 3million people as the benchmark and to most people on the street, the income gap would be too great.
The 30% reduction may look impressive but in comparison with the US President's salary (US$400K), there is still a big gap in between.
They say the ex-Presidents of US could publish books and give talks to earn big bucks, but LKY did publish books and get invitations to give talks all over the world too.
Will such salary reduction appease Singaporeans? I believe that high ministerial salary is not the main issue which people are unhappy about. It is the matter of accountability or rather, the lack of it, which irks Singaporeans. Singaporeans would definitely have higher expectation on these highly paid ministers but when they made mistakes, eg. letting a dangerous terrorist to escape, they didn't take up the political responsibility to resign immediately and yet, gave all sorts of excuses. This is the main reason why people are unhappy.