Temasek Review Emeritus address him in his first name, as "Jee Say...." Business flexibility with a social conscience Last Friday, I met one of the rising stars in Oxford, Professor Ngaire Woods, Dean of the newly established Blavatnik School of Government. I first met her four years ago when she was Director of the Global Economic Governance programme at Oxford. Then the global financial collapse engaged every one’s mind. This time, I decided to pick her brain on 2 hot issues in Singapore, social safety net and economic competitiveness. She did not see one being achieved at the expense of the other. On the contrary, an extensive social safety net with unemployment benefits, free education and healthcare, allows companies to make flexible and sensible business decisions such as job cuts and retrenchment without having to worry about their adverse social effects on employees and their families. The Nordic countries have shown that they are able to achieve high rankings in world competitiveness despite their high taxes and generous welfare benefits for the common people.These thoughts are reassuring and give us added confidence in pushing for a robust social safety net for ordinary Singaporeans while maintaining our economic competitiveness at the same time – a win-win for Singapore individuals and businesses. Political campaign work Earlier in the morning, my nephew Derek came over to my hotel in London for breakfast. I was impressed with his working experience at Saatchi & Saatchi, the global advertising agency network which shot to fame after conducting a very effective campaign (“Labour isn’t working”) that swept the Conservative Party into power in 1979 and put Margaret Thatcher into 10 Downing Street as the first lady Prime Minister of a major Western power. Derek is fascinated by work in image building and values promotion and hoped to go over to the US to gain experience in political campaign work where building the right image and promoting the correct values of the candidate and party are key ingredients of a successful campaign. Well if he does so, he will have lots of ideas to offer his uncle in the run up to 2016. How about a campaign slogan “PAP isn’t working”? Tan Jee Say * Jee Say was a Presidential candidate in the 2011 Presidential Election. The article first appeared on his facebook: http://www.facebook.com/TanJeeSay.