1984 marked the official demise of a free and independent press in Singapore though the nail was hit into its coffin way back in 1975 with the introduction of the Newspaper and Printing Act to control the ownership of news printing firms.

SPH is the biggest stumbling block to the emergence of a credible alternative party in Singapore to check on the PAP. In almost every general elections, the SPH spin doctors were called upon to demolish the opposition when they should be focusing on critical issues of national importance.

Source: Wayang Party

Again, we say, thank you Internet.

For its leaders, all this is vexing. Singapore did more than most in Asia to diversify the economy and reduce its vulnerability to slowdowns.
Having learned its lesson in the last recession — the 2001-02 dotcom bust, which bit into Singapore’s crucial electronics exports — the government launched a program to expand into new manufacturing sectors and beef up service industries. The results were surprisingly successful. Reliance on electronics was reduced with new exports of chemicals and pharmaceuticals, while the island became Asia’s leader in private banking. Yet these efforts have meant little in the face of the current downturn. “When the whole market has stopped for everything, it doesn’t matter if you’re diversified,” says Ajay Chhibber, director of the Asia bureau at the U.N. Development Programme in New York.

Source: Time

We are reiterating what we said earlier. There are some of us who know what we are doing. Singapore government should trust us and release resources to some of us to build up local capabilities.

This is the new war cry of Hsien Loong. He is calling on Singaporeans to work together to find solutions to the crisis. How real and relevant is such a call? The work together may be a bit real as everyone has to work to keep the machine running, the economy running. If everyone just plays his part be it a cleaner or a minister, things will continue to move.

Source: My Singapore News

We should stand united, in our call to get rid of lousy performers. Some of us don’t feel like slaving for them anymore.

SINGAPORE, March 29 – Taiwan’s double world pool champion Wu Chia-ching has decided: He wants to be a Singaporean.  Tomorrow, he will take the first step towards this when he picks up his blue identity card, making him a permanent resident here. The 20-year-old will become a playing member of the national squad, and it is likely to be just a matter of time before he gets his citizenship.  His decision comes weeks after Taiwan’s sports officials tried to persuade him not to leave.

Source:  The Straits Times

According to ST, Taiwan’s sports officials reportedly tried to match Singapore’s offer and even threatened to confiscate the cash incentives they had given him when he won the world titles in 2005.  Cuesports Singapore’s vice-president Ivan Lim said: “He is not just here to win medals. We want him to be involved with the schools and be a role model for younger players.” 

Clearly, Singapore must have given him sufficient monetary incentives that overshadowed that of the Taiwanese.  That was probably the clincher for Wu Chia-ching, and not the opportunity to be “role model” for Singapore players.  I wonder:

• How much is given to attract foreign talents to take up PR in Singapore
• How much has been ‘lost’ to date
• Or are the amounts not even assessed or recorded and merely written off as sunk costs

PRs are transient and can leave Singapore any time they want and reside in another country.  Even if such talents take up a blue IC, there’s no obligation on them to serve Singapore as a citizen would.  Any obligation is purely contractual and based on the talent’s morals.  I agree that these talents are indeed important to Singapore but given the uncertainty in managing them, there should be transparency in the financing of such high-risk ’projects’.

Wayang Party expressed fear. Read about their fear here.

Lesser Mortal expressed fear. Read about his fear here.

Lucky Tan expressed fear and even took down his site for a while. Read about his fear here.

We want to say this: We do not fear anybody because we believe we are consistently doing the right thing. We have got more than 1,200 people who signed our petition to get Tan Kin Lian to stand for election. 52% of our readers are outside Singapore. Most of our 745 twitter followers are Ang Mos.

Source: Alexa

We are sure some of them are watching closely what is bl***y going on here. We believe we are good at washing dirty linen in the public, we are doing this for a reason, and we make sure that the whole world witnesses what we are doing.

Read more

Written by Tan Kin Lian

Americans are outraged at the bonuses being paid to the top executives of AIG’s financial products. Here are people who took big bets, lost and felt that they should be retained with fat bonuses to clean up the mess. The public felt that this is so unfair.

There was another past incidents were the Americans were outraged. President’s Clinton’s plane, Air Force One, was delayed in taking off, as the President was having his hair cut. The barber has to complete the job, get off the plane, before it could take off. This caused a delay in the departure of many flights. The public was outraged. They felt that it was inconsiderate of President Clinton to cause so much inconvenience to other people.

Our leaders in the corporate world and in government has to learn to respect the ordinary people, and be considerate to them. They should display a sense of humility and fairness. They cannot act arrogantly and regard the ordinary people as “lesser mortals”.

Written by Arthur

The Straits Times forum published David Cheong’s letter about CPF. Someone posted it on Sam’s AlfrescoHeaven. Here is the full article (bold and emphasis is from me).

Read more

We help ourselves. Don’t expect others to help

Tom Wright painted a bleak picture of Singapore’s property sector going forward at The Wall Street Journal. His article ended with the following:
“I’m yet to see the light at the end of the tunnel [for Singapore],” says Mr. Tan, the high-end broker.
We would expect people to continue to dig the dirt and tell it to [...]



Our skin isn’t as thick as it should be

The Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) organised a seminar on March 4 to discuss Singapore’s political blogosphere.  Tan Tarn How, Senior Research Fellow and Research Assistant Tan Simin presented their paper on trends observed in the blogosphere.  As reported in the TOC, the researchers identified the following limitations:

The online-offline firewall, while somewhat alleviated by offline [...]



Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew – The answer to the African problem?

Recently, I followed a thread “Democracy and Economic Growth” which started in PoliticsForum.org.   Apparently, members there often question the role of democracy in a developing nation. “During the wave of democratization in Africa during the 90s, many people had renewed hope for the continent, immediately equating newly established democracies to economic growth. Are these democracies [...]



Tell Singapore government: Ask them a question or give a suggestion

We informed people about the “Tell Singapore Government” subsite and have received some interesting reaction at some forums.
See: 3in1 Kopitiam, Sam’s Alfresco Coffee, Singapore Kopitiam, SgForums
Our responses to some of the comments are listed below. If we are not answering some other specific questions, that is because we do not know how.
 

Petitions

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

I don’t know

Our Singapore

As seen by people

• 
  

• Purpose

To observe, analyse, present our position, and call for action. Read our articles, give your views, and learn together with us.