Mention the name Lo Hwei Yen and nearly everyone will know who she is, and perhaps even have a mental picture of her face.  Within Facebook, there are at least 3 groups dedicated to Ms Lo, with one group comprising 15,554 members. Now mention the names Noraini Kasim and Aminah Samijo and what do you get?

Ms Lo was Singapore’s first terror victim so that may explain the media interest and exposure given to her, versus the deaths of Madam Noraini Kasim and Mdm Aminah Samijo who died of food poisoning from eating Indian rojak. That is a story for another day.

For now, I am just amused by how much resources are put into national defence and security, versus public health. I do not know the numbers, but I am sure the total number of Singaporeans who have died from food poisoning is significantly large enough to warrant more and better ministerial oversight and a greater allocation of budget.

As a related point, anti-conscription activists may take issue with the number of servicemen deaths (and women; not forgetting the 4 who served on RSS Courageous) resulting from routine training or peace-time operations despite the huge investments made in perfecting a snazzy ‘3G’ army.

Singaporeans must be discerning on what this top class government ought to be offering its citizens and not be distracted by PAP’s weapons of mass distraction and shadow-play.

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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.
 
1. If you want [...]

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