NUS and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) said they do indeed send acceptance letters to applicants before the closing dates.  NTU’s deadline is the same as NUS.  The closing date for applications to Singapore Management University (SMU) is 8 Apr, but SMU said it does not send out early acceptance letters.  Some applicants think that what NUS and NTU are doing is unfair. Miss Kwek Yi Lin, 19, had applied to NTU’s accountancy course during the week that applications closed, and has yet to hear from the university. She has one A and three Bs.  ‘I think it’s fair for the straight-A students to get early offers, since it’s likely they’d get accepted sooner or later anyway,’ she said.  

Source:  TNP

Apparently this is the first year that both universities are issuing early offers. Professor Lalit Goel, NTU’s Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, said the university does it to attract exemplary students who ‘may otherwise go to top universities overseas to pursue their tertiary education’.  He pointed out that many overseas universities make early offers to woo academically bright students.

At first read, I thought to myself, “another reason why our society is so kia si and kia su“.  After all, the system seems to be urging young Singaporeans to send in their applications early as vacancies are falling by the day even before the closing date.  Having read the Universities’ explanations, I do think they have valid concerns. 

However, I wonder if it could have been done better.  For instance, they could set aside a fixed number of vacancies meant for these straight A students that they do not want to lose to external universities, and separate this system from the usual mainstream one where all applications received before the closing dates are evaluated together based on merit.  This could be more palatable to the public.

Written by Arthur

No matter how rough the journey ahead of us may get, it can never stop the tripartite partners from staying united and pressing forward with our efforts to tackle the downturn.

Source; The Straits Times

Lim Swee Say needs to continue to talk in order to justify to his boss that he is doing work. But seriously, the Job Credit Scheme, which is really a wage subsidy for companies, puts workers under the control of their bosses, and does not directly help the worker. Who says the company cannot keep the wage subsidy and continue to slash salaries for its staff? Who comes up with this kind of “pro-worker” ideas?

If you want to help the workers, give them the subsidy directly.

Singapore has repeatedly revised down its forecast. Yet all our political leaders continue to hold on to their fat salaries and none has the conscience to say, “Look, I’ll cut my salary by 50% and give it back to the people”. The money is too good and no one wants to give that up. What happened to the supposed link between their pay and GDP?

So don’t tell me to “press forward”. Not coming from self-serving people without moral authority. I don’t want to listen and I don’t even want to spend time writing email to people like them.

In a bold campaign to help unhealthy animals at the Manila Zoo, four sexy animal rights group staffers willingly bared their skin on Tuesday to spread awareness about the ills of keeping animals in captivity.  “We need to do what it takes to get people to pay attention, and if it means showing some skin, that’s what we’ll do. We think it’s important to raise awareness on a very serious issue, and we thought using a fun, attention-grabbing way would be the best way to draw attention to the issue of these suffering animals in Manila Zoo,” said Rochelle Regodon, PETA campaign manager.  The trick worked, Regodon said, because their office phones were ringing off the hook from people eager to get more information about the Manila Zoo campaign and help their cause.

Source:  ABS-CBN News

The intentions are good, no dispute about that.  As a woman, however, I do think the means are questionable.  The effects of sex appeal do not last and after the initial excitement, it will be status quo again.  Who’s going to remember about the animals when the activists put on their clothes and get back on to the road?

I’m pretty sure AWARE would have their comments too (if not for their preoccupation in moving the association towards implosion).

Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd (ST Engineering) today announced that its land systems arm, Singapore Technologies Kinetics Ltd (ST Kinetics), has been awarded a contract worth about €8m (about S$15.6m) by the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration, Försvarets Materielverk (FMV), for the supply of 40mm ammunition.

Source: Defpro

Good news for our economy. I do wonder, however, in the sales of our ammunition and military equipment do we also check the intended use and re-sale of the items? Those who have watched Iron Man  may understand this point better.

Wayang Party and Choo Zheng Xi (Chief Editor of The Online Citizen) are quarreling in public.

We even see a person coming out publicly to disassociate himself from Wayang Party. Maybe Ng E-Jay has no choice but to take side with KJ, who is now writing as a columnist at TOC?

We are sad to see this type of things.

Civic Advocator has no problem in washing dirty linen in the public. That is why we have the greatest respect for both Wayang Party and The Online Citizen, because both of them provide great alternative source of information, rather than what the main stream media is doing, which we believe are just touting what they think their bosses like to read.

However, we would rather see issues being discussed, rather than personal quarrel in public.

Wayang Party has great investigative skills and appears to get access to information fast. The Online Citizen’s voice for the weak and vulnerable people of society warms our heart.

This is the big picture guys, our common objective: To let people know what is going on, so that they can make a better decision when they plan their future.

Maybe Choo Zheng Xi thinks it is inherently wrong for Wayang Party to “hide behind the cloak of anonymity.” Maybe Wayang Party thinks it is inherently wrong for Choo Zheng Xi to be linked to the establishment. Well, that means Civic Advocator is guilty on both counts, because we are certainly operating anonymously, and we are linked to Tan Kin Lian, who represented the establishment.

And so what, we ask? The more important thing is to write and talk about issues and the nonsense of some of the current politicians. There are only 24 hours a day. Let us use our energy on things that matter more to our readers. Let us not do things to allow the main stream media to laugh at us.

Therefore, Civic Advocator is buying a round of beer for the guys behind Wayang Party and Choo Zheng Xi, and hope that we all chill and look at the big picture, ie, write about things that the mainstream media no longer has the gut to write.

Enjoy our virtual beer

We recently exchanged email with Siew Kum Hong.
We produce them in full below for our readers.

Siew Kum Hong wrote:

just to be clear — HLP is not the be-all and end-all of off-line activitiy. i believe there is a greater need for more off-line activism to reach out to singaporeans, because there is already a lot of online activism, but precious little being done off-line. still, i agree that it is important to have a diversity of approaches to effect change, and that is why i did say that this is a worthy effort.

Civic Advocator wrote:

Dear Mr Siew

Thank you for your comments.

There are reasons why we like to do things anonymously, and we believe our strategy may not necessarily be “less good”.

To do things such as going to Hong Lim is not the only activity in life. We are also equally interested in changing mindset so that people know what to do when it comes to voting.

On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 2:26 PM, Siew Kum Hong wrote:
hi there, i’ve gone to the site and see that you are speaking out. that is great. however my point was that (1) it would be even better if done openly and non-anonymously, and (2) [and this point was not clearly brought out in the ST article] the work goes beyond just speaking, but also activities such as TKL had done in Hong Lim.

still, the site looks good and is a worthy effort. cheers.

kum hong

On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 4:53 AM, Civic Advocator wrote:
Dear Mr Siew

We refer to your comments, and would like to let you know that we are already speaking out.

Regards

Civic Advocator
civicadvocator.net

DPM Teo:  ‘It is important in Singapore that all groups make sure that when they have a point of view to put across, that they do so in a way which is tolerant of other groups… Know that other people have other points of view, that if you push your argument too hard, there will always be others who push back. So if we want to avoid that situation, we should operate in Singapore in a way that is respectful and tolerant of others’ views.’ 

While most Singaporeans are prepared to accept the views of others, they do not want to have other views pushed upon them, he said.  ‘We want to see a Singapore where we can live together and learn how to live together even when we have differences,’ he noted. He did not think the dispute was one of religion, he added.

Source:  The Straits Times

 

I wonder on which planet was our DPM Teo holidaying on.  How can the dispute be not one of religion when the key motivation by the new EXCO (and their spiritual links, by the way) was traced to the Church of our Saviour?  Brushing it away with such statements will not help.  

In truth, direct government intervention may be unhealthy (nanny state comes to mind).   Should the government tackle the matter head-on to ensure that liberals aren’t unduly put on the defensive (which may later cause a black-lash) and that other churches (or conservative religions of other faiths) do not join in the fracas in an counter-productive manner?  Or can we count on the community resolve this on its own?  Looking at the developments within AWARE, the latter does not seem forthcoming, at least not yet.

Another thing.  ‘Know that other people have other points of view, that if you push your argument too hard, there will always be others who push back.’  I guess one way to prevent others from pushing back would be to sue their pants off.

A strange series of events unfolded in the courtroom of Justice Choo, just the other day. Justice Choo was hearing the appeal of the hit and run killer driver Ms. Lim Hong Eng.

Justice Choo had no choice but to remove the $10,000 fine. However, he did not subtitute that with any added jail time, claiming that “in the circumstances, it will not be right to increase the custodial sentence to the detriment of the accused.” And he added that this was a one off case and not to be used as a sentencing precedent.
The end result is that Ms. Lim was jailed for 1 day and fined $2,000, an absurdly light sentence for taking the life of someone through negligence.

Source: Wayang Party

We come across even more curious things written about Choo Han Teck. We have no way of verifying anything there though.

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

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I don’t know

Our Singapore

As seen by people

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• Purpose

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