For one moment yesterday- I totally forgot about the pain in my swollen toe. The moment was when the doctor stuck a big fat needle into my vein to draw blood for the blood test. The sharp pain of having a needle stuck into me was able to actually shut out the dull pain from the swollen toe for a few brief moments.

And that is exactly how the elites in the government solve our problems these days. They create a bigger problem somewhere else so that you will forget about the current problem that you’re facing.

Take the increase in cab surcharge to meet taxi demand in the city. Does anyone even for one moment think that that is going to be the solution for our taxi woes? Its basically the same as implementing the midnight surcharge and the airport surcharge. What it does is to complicate matters and shift the problem from one area to the next. Because of the midnight surcharge, we now have this magical phenomenon where taxis suddenly disappear for 2 hours before midnight and then magically appear again as the clock strike midnight.

With the increase in city surcharge, what its going to do is to make it difficult for people living in the outskirts to catch a cab in the morning as all the cabs will now clusterfuck in the city center. Same thing as raising the airport surcharge where you see a whole bunch of cabbies clusterfucking at Changi Airport instead of meeting demand somewhere else in the city. So now, instead of people complaining of difficulty catching a cab in the city, what you’re going to get is people complaining about the difficulty of catching a cab at Choa Chu Kang Street 13. Then what are the fucking elites going to do? Raise the surcharge for cabs driving to the outskirts?

Fucking geniuses.

Solve a problem with another problem.

Some of the reasons given for the latest increase in cab fares is to regulate demand and that cab service should be seen as a luxury and not as part of our public transport system.

All well and good if the service given can match the standards expected of a luxury good. How many of us has encountered this circumstance where the cab driver has no idea how to bring you to your final destination and end up wasting your time driving around looking for the place that you want to go? If you want to raise cab fares, maybe you should try raising your service standard first.

You read about the problem everyday in the newspaper and no fucking journalist wants to come out to say the truth. Instead they give some lame comparison with Hong Kong.

Want to know why its some much easier to get a cab in Hong Kong? Is because they’ve got some much more options when it comes to public transport. They’ve got the regular bus service, the subway, the trams and the shuttlebuses which will stop anywhere along their pre-determined route and not just at a busstop. So there’s less reason to take a cab.

Let’s be honest here. The reason why we have this cab problem is because our public transport system sucks. Our public transport system is here to make insane profits. Providing reasonable service is the least of their concerns. People take cabs because its a pain in the arse to use the public transport system. If you live in the outskirts, there are instances where you have to take a feeder bus service, take the MRT, change lines, take another bus, then take one more feeder bus to get to where you want to go. And there are feeder bus services that makes you wait 20 minutes to take a 5 minutes ride in a bus so crowded you ass is cracking the front entrance door window.

To get to work everyday, I have to walk 800m to catch a 5 minute bus ride, get off and then walk another 1km to my office. Its 3 times faster for me to simply run to the office. In the past I could’ve walked 100m to the nearest bustop to take a bus and then walked another 500m to the office. Unfortunately the bus service was shutdown to maximise more profits for the bus companies. So now I am forced to use this alternative route. More money for the bus companies, more trouble for me.

And you wonder why people prefer to take cabs.

With this drastic increase in cab fares, what is going to happen is more people will now have no choice but to use the public trasport system. Anyone seen the MRT during rush hour? The last thing we need is more people taking the trains and buses. Again does the fucking elites care? No, they are happily zipping along our roads travelling in luxurious limosines going from one corner of the island to another in 20 minutes. Meanwhile the rest of us will be stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea.