MP quoting ‘Gang rape is democracy in action’ on Facebook

Posted on May 9, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘MP Zainudin draws flak for posting ‘offensive’ quote’, 9 May 2013, article in Sg Yahoo news.

Member of Parliament Zainudin Nordin has drawn flak for posting on his Facebook page a fantasy author’s quote equating gang rape to the exercise of democracy.  The MP for Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC was criticised by people online for being rude, offensive and insensitive after he posted on Monday a quote from “Sword of Truth” fantasy series author Terry Goodkind with the line “Gang rape, after all, is democracy in action.”

The controversial statement prompted a flurry of over 140 comments, most of them expressing outrage. “Even if you did not say that yourself, it is still a very dangerous statement to quote. I simply do not understand why you chose to quote such a thing. Shame on you,” posted Facebook user Joel Yap.

Another Facebook comment by Pauline Leong called the quote “truly, highly offensive” and demanded an apology or explanation from Nordin, while Freya Cyen accused him of being “unable to differentiate democracy, human rights and freedom.”

Nominated Member of Parliament Lina Chiam of the Singapore People’s Party on Wednesday released a statement on the issue, asking Nordin to “retract his statement and apologise to women in Singapore.”

So is spray painting ‘Democracy’ on the Cenotaph. What the quoted writer intended was that no nation should be so ‘democratic’ that your right to free speech or thought turns into action that transgresses basic human rights. In fact, some of the world’s self-proclaimed ‘democracies’ are far from utopian societies. North Korea is the DEMOCRATIC People’s Republic of Korea. The Democratic Republic of Congo is the WORST place to be a mother. The world’s largest democracy India has her recent string of high profile raping, and both Congo and democratic South Africa have been termed ‘rape capitals’ of the world. It may be more accurate, however, to connect gang-raping with Anarchy than democracy, though the vandal who decided to exercise his free will to deface a war memorial clearly mistook one for the other. We may not have people raping others in huddles here, but we do get glimpses of unhinged anarchy at NATAS fairs and K-pop concerts.

But before we decide to ignore Zainudin’s Facebook post because he simply quoted someone else’s provocative analogy and people decided to zoom in on it because ‘rape’ and ‘democracy’ were in the same sentence, there have been people investigated by the POLICE for ‘quoting’ other people on their timelines, except that these were the kind of stuff that our government believes would incite race riots over the island and tarnish this whole ‘democracy’ thing. In 2011, NSman Christian Eliab Ratnam quoted Roy Egan on how ‘Islam is a cxxt that glorifies death’, while another blogger in the same year ‘shared’ a picture of a pig on the Kaaba. Would the police investigate an MP for equating the supposed pinnacle of political systems to the most despicable of crimes against humanity? That’s as likely as me being sodomised in an alley by a bunch of expat louts with a shisha pipe.

Terry Goodkind isn’t the first to allude democracy to gangs and violence. Here are some similar ones from the Quotes About Democracy website:

“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” – Thomas Jefferson

“The terrible tyranny of the majority” – Ray Bradbury

So perhaps using gang-rape as an example is simply a stark exaggeration of the beloved ‘majority wins’ rule, or what our PAP would call the MANDATE of the people. There are plenty of activities that can pass off as ‘democracy in action’ and yet flout all moral codes and decency known to man. Spitting in public, squatting on a toilet seat with dirty shoes, having the whole bus seat to yourself and ‘gang-raping’ your Facebook friends’ news feeds with daily updates on how many km you ran and calories you burnt, for example. Yet we remain cocksure of our ‘democratic’ aspirations, and we cherish those rare moments when we get to protest like a virgin landing a threesome on his first date, all this coming from a country languishing in the 149th place in press freedom,

Postscript 11 May 13: Zainudin soon apologised for offending anyone with Goodkind’s quote, though he’s not taking too kindly to a certain ‘Ganga’ who posted his photo with the controversial line next to his face, slamming the blogger for being ‘mischievous’ and selective in his abstraction of the quote. His latest FB post as of 11 May was:

Yesterday, I played football with our NYP colleagues for the ITIS-NUSS Staff Tournament. I played one half and managed to score a goal. We won 4-1 against TP. Congrats to our NYP Staff team.

No mention by the MP if it was in fact an OWN GOAL.

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Filed under: 2011, 2013, Bloggers, Politicians, Sex, Violence | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Khaw Boon Wan: So what if you have a degree?

Posted on May 5, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘University degree ‘not vital for success’:Khaw Boon Wan’, 5 May 2013, article by Toh Yong Chuan, Sunday Times

Singaporeans do not need to be university graduates to be successful, said National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan yesterday.

What is more important is that they get good jobs after leaving school, Mr Khaw told some 160 students and young adults in an Our Singapore Conversation dialogue.

“If they cannot find jobs, what is the point? You own a degree, but so what? That you can’t eat it. If that cannot give you a good life, a good job, it is meaningless,” he added.

Mr Khaw was responding to a participant who said the Government should set aside more university places for Institute of Technical Education (ITE) and polytechnic graduates.

Said Mr Khaw: “Can you have a whole country where 100 per cent are graduates? I am not so sure.

“What you do not want is to create huge graduate unemployment.”

I’m not sure what our Minister meant by ‘you can’t EAT it’. Did he mean you can’t physically eat a degree? Or is ‘eat it’ his way of saying ‘can’t endure suffering’ in the ‘bite the bullet’ sense? In any case, Khaw himself graduated from Australia under the Colombo Plan Scholarship as a Bachelor of Engineering with Honours Class I. In 2002, he was awarded a Doctor of Engineering honoris causa, which makes him DR KHAW according to the University of Newcastle website, though his Cabinet Profile retains the ‘Mr’.

The Minister’s daughter, Khaw Chun Ting, has apparently caught the engineering bug from her father, herself an Engine graduate from the Class of 2010.  Daddy looks as proud as any father would in his position in the picture below, and it’s not clear if he had the notion in his head then that a university degree is ‘no big deal, really’. I’m sure if Chun Ting wanted to skip uni altogether and join an NGO to save endangered turtles from extinction, Daddy would understand perfectly. (Chun Ting has a Facebook profile that you’re free to Google, where you can tell she likes performing on stage, has worked for ST Electronics and ‘Likes’ the PAP Facebook page. Obviously.)

It’s a given that extraordinary success stories have come out of individuals without stellar academic qualifications, but it’s tempting to ask a graduate Minister with a graduate daughter if he would have been OK with any of his daughters opting for a polytechnic education instead, or as his boss would call it, the JEWEL of Singapore’s educational system. It’s like asking Minister of Defence if he would send his sons to war, or the Minister of Education if he sends his kids for holiday tuition.

There seems to be a recent surge of calls for Singaporeans to be less obsessed with the paper chase and settle for jobs like hawkers or crane operators, by leaders who are the very products of the said paper chase no less. In contrast, we were all told in the mid sixties that a University education ‘will pay rich dividends’, the only place of learning which can produce not only ‘specialists, but also well rounded, cultivated men and women of learning…with analytical powers and WISDOM..who can be FUTURE LEADERS’. An article in 1966 ends with the following smarty-pants prediction:

Despite fears about their monetary value, a degree in time may well be regarded as the ONLY academic qualification for most jobs.

Then there’s the other problem about marriage and birth rates. Singaporean women, particularly graduates, have been found to prefer men with ‘higher qualifications’. The lack of a degree but a decent job may earn you ‘a good life’, but getting a ‘good wife’, or ANY wife, is another matter altogether if you’re not of a certain ‘calibre’. It’s an ugly truth that we all have to deal with every single day. I’d love to see the look on the Minister’s face when he finds out that his future son-in-law turns out to be a highly paid crane operator. Still, if you happen to be interested to know any of Khaw’s lovely daughters but do not hold a degree, I recommend that you save the article above and print for safekeeping, so that when the time comes to meet the parents and Khaw interrogates your educational qualifications or lack thereof, you’d know EXACTLY how to defend yourself.

I guess this guy’s face from the Sunday Times photoshoot of the Conversation event says it all. THIS FACE. My sentiments exactly.

Filed under: 2013, Kids, Politicians | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Polytechnics a Jewel in Singapore’s educational system

Posted on May 3, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘PM Lee: Polytechnics a jewel in Singapore’s educational system’, 3 May 2013, article by Robin Chan, ST

Getting a degree is not the only option for polytechnic students after they graduate, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Working for a few years or even starting their own business can offer important life lessons and help them go further in life, he said today as Ngee Ann Polytechnic celebrated its 50th anniversary.

“You will gain experience and understand yourself better and then be better able to decide what the next step will be. These life lessons will complement your polytechnic education and help you to go further in life,” he said.

Mr Lee praised the polytechnic education system calling it “a jewel in our educational system” that offers a first rate tertiary education to about 50 per cent of each cohort of students.

In 2008, it was reported that many bright students who could have qualified for JC opted for a poly education instead, which may explain our PM’s use of the jewel analogy to describe students who could SHINE bright as a diamond in a poly environment. Yet despite such lofty praises, our Government itself remains conspicuous by its absence of poly grads.  While the Workers’ Party have Singapore Poly grads in Png Eng Huat and Muhamed Faisal, Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC MP Charles Chong, who holds a Diploma in Aircraft Maintenance Engineering from the Sydney Technical College, was the only non-uni grad PAP MP in Parliament as of 2008. The lack of ‘jewels’ in Cabinet explains all the lacklustre policies, then. Some portfolios, like Housing for example, are probably better off managed by Bob the Builder than someone of university calibre but can’t construct a basic Lego house without an instruction manual.

The poly route was not always held in such high esteem. In 1984, the Educational Ministry were worried about the BRAIN DRAIN caused by smart students choosing to go poly instead of JC, mainly due to their fear of the General Paper. Minister of State (Education) Tay Eng Soon said that these students should ‘make the most of themselves‘ by choosing pre-U instead of getting a polytechnic diploma, short of saying that it would be WASTE that top scorers didn’t pursue their education in a more ‘prestigious’ institution. Which had several students actually changing their minds about a poly education thanks to Tay’s sage advice. A year later, our then Education Minister and current President Tony Tan ‘urged top O level students to go to junior colleges first’. A paragraph in the article ‘Top grads at NTI took indirect path’ deserves to be reproduced in its hideous entirety:

It (the government) wants BRIGHT O level students to join junior colleges, where they will get a BROAD-BASED education, and not deprive LESS ABLE pupils of a place in the polytechnics.

I suppose we all know who the shining star of the educational system was back then. But wait, in less than 2 years, we would see the same Minister Tay do an astounding about-face upon realising that there was a shortage of students doing mechanical engineering in the polytechnics, expressing concern of the ‘large number who have joined JCs’ and thinks ‘it may be better’ for the WEAKER students to do poly instead. All the university and post-doc education in the world will not save you from making atrocious flip-floppy decisions and sabotaging the careers of budding poly luminaries who went on to waste their lives with GP instead. A blind, amputee clown could do a better balancing act with a unicycle on a fiery tightrope than the highest paid of ministers.

So perceptions of poly have changed for the better. Or have they? Up till now, poly students still do not enjoy the same travel concessions as their JC peers, which was explained away by Transport Minister Raymond Lim in 2009 that ‘some polytechnic students are better off than others’ (and latter clarified by the minister’s press secretary that he meant poly students were a ‘large and diverse’ group, which explains NOTHING). His successor Lui Tuck Yew continued to defend depriving poly students of concessions, saying that fare subsidies would cost transport operators $28 MILLION more. In March this year, chairman of the Fare Review Mechanism Committee Richard Magnus stated in a blog post that ‘polytechnic students AND the disabled are being considered for improved concessions’. Where’s the segment of the President’s Star Charity that donates to neglected poly students then? Full fares AND frequent breakdowns. Oh the humanity.

Calling poly the jewel of the educational system, though well-intentioned, may very well be as patronising and almost apologetic as calling the child who’s not tall enough to take a rollercoaster ‘a growing, striking lad’. Let’s hope no one up there scrambles to keep university places filled while our most inventive minds pursue the Jewel path like what happened decades ago (though they probably have foreigners to make up for this ‘reverse osmosis’ already). Perhaps one shouldn’t take PM’s analogies seriously. After all, he’s somewhat the consummate joker and called some waterway in the North East of Singapore the VENICE OF PUNGGOL. Like a jewel, his wit and timing is totally PRICELESS.

Filed under: 1980s, 2013, Kids, Politicians | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Singaporean crane operators needed for BTO flats

Posted on May 2, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘More local crane operators needed: Khaw Boon Wan’, 2 May 2013, article by Charissa Yong, ST

More local crane operators are needed to boost productivity in the construction sector and reduce reliance on foreign workers, said National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan today. “Half of the (current 3,600) operators are Singaporeans. But we need more, a few hundreds more, as we ramp up our Build-To-Order programme,” he wrote on his blog. One crane is needed for each block under construction.

Mr Khaw said crane operators are crucial for prefabrication construction, a productivity-boosting strategy where building components are made in factories and transported to construction sites. They are then hoisted by cranes for assembly.

“This is a good job with attractive remunerations,” said Mr Khaw, noting that the relatively new crane operators can take home $4,000 a month including overtime pay and allowances, with more senior operators getting $6,000 to $7,000 a month.

Crane operators have been known to get up to $8000 a month as far back as 2007, when the nation was afflicted by construction frenzy. It’s easy to be seduced by such numbers to perform what appears to be a high stakes version of the claw-crane arcade game for a living, except that you’re hoisting steel and concrete instead of a plush Angry Bird toy. In the past you didn’t even need a licence or certification to do the job, and these soaring metal titans have become so commonplace a foreign businessman decided to dub them Singapore’s National Bird in the early 80′s, a pun that locals continue to use to death till this day. I believe Singaporeans are better at relaying this joke than remembering what our National Flower, or even what the National Anthem, are called.

And what a nasty Bird of Prey our ubiquitous crane turned out to be. Khaw thinks driving heavy machinery is a ‘good job’ but fails to mention that crane driving comes with its share of hazards aside from long hours alone in a cabin and that you’ll need at least 10 minutes to climb up and down just to take a piss. If you’re not careful, you may crush your fellow workers or innocent bystanders to death by dropping a load, or your entire vehicle may just topple over, maybe destroying someone’s house in the process. In 2008 alone, FIVE such incidents of cranes collapsing occurred, including one fatal accident in NUS. Plummeting to certain death aside, you may even fall head first and fracture your spinal cord after falling less than 2m from a cabin platform.

You’d need good hand to eye coordination, steady hands and plenty of confidence to pull off something deceptively simple 70 over storeys in the air. We don’t want to end up with unemployed men rushing to fill up forms and take up BCA courses upon the urgings of the Minister, only to realise they had acrophobia, claustrophia and sweaty palms all along. I’m also not sure if this is really a veiled attempt to hold HDB flat hopefuls at ransom or a bid to shirk responsibility: No crane operators, so too bad, NO FLAT FOR YOU.

The $6-7K monthly salary is not just there to prevent workers from staging crane protests. It’s a high-risk, lonely, low-prospects job that few young Singaporeans would pick up, and many would consider becoming a cabbie or even a hawker first before even considering construction work. If you tell your date that you’re a crane operator, she’ll be wondering if you wore yellow rubber boots to dinner. Our educational system, of course, is designed to push every kid AWAY from jobs that involve hoisting things on top of executive condos using joysticks. Damn you PSLE and O Levels! If I didn’t pass with flying colours I would have been heeding the ‘Khaw’ for more crane operators and help build someone’s dream BTO by now. Or at least help Spiderman catch some baddies.

Filed under: 1980s, 2000s, 2013, Money, Politicians | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Something is wrong somewhere with EC scheme

Posted on April 27, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Khaw:Something not right with EC scheme’, 27 April 2013, article by Woo Sian Boon, Today

A few months after some super-sized Executive Condominium (EC) units were sold at eye-catching prices, sparking a public debate on whether the EC scheme was being abused, National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan has signalled that the scheme will be tweaked.

Speaking on Thursday evening to participants at an Our Singapore Conversation (OSC) session focused on housing, he said that “something is wrong somewhere” with the scheme. “We cannot carry on the ECs with these current rules,” he said.

 …Referring to the qualifying income ceiling for ECs, Mr Khaw said: “Hence, there is a sense of inequity here. The lower-income groups are getting less subsidies than somebody who is earning S$12,000. So, something is wrong somewhere. Therefore, we cannot carry on the ECs with these current rules.”

khaw1713e

$2 million EC condos aside, Khaw Boon Wan remained a stout defender of the EC scheme up till now. During the Jan Parliament sessions this year, he called it a ‘wonderful’ scheme because it was like giving Singaporeans a ‘Lexus at a Corolla price’. He could have made the same analogy for Nparks purchase of a $2200 Brompton bicycle, except that something did in fact go terribly wrong with the Brompton deal. Chan Chun Sing would refer to buying an EC like eating XO sauce chai tow kuay in Peach Garden.

4 months since the EC grilling by fellow MPs and our MND Minister now realises that something is amiss, not sure WHAT that ‘something’ is and WHERE it is. Your guess is as good as mine, sir, but it’s not very reassuring to hear such U-turns from our leaders. It’s like undergoing emergency amputation surgery while still conscious and hearing your surgeon murmuring ‘ehhh, something’s not quite right’ when your bloody sawn leg is already dangling by its tendons.

Wavering confidence and uncertainty has inflicted many a politician, including LKY himself. At the launch of his book Hard Truths, he said:

The message I want to convey is a simple one: we are a nation in the making. Will we make it? Am I certain we’ll get there? No, we cannot say that. Something may go wrong somewhere and we’ll fall apart.

In response to a horrific rape of a 5 year old child, the Delhi high court said ‘something somewhere is wrong‘. If you hired a plumber to clear your shit-congested toilet bowl and he said ‘something is wrong somewhere’, you’d probably want to flush him down the loo too.

‘Something is wrong somewhere’ is the kind of doubt any lay Singaporean may express, and it’s a flaw we knew all along from the moment someone decides to build fountains and presidential suites for executive condos, or sells off a Queenstown 5-room for $1 million. We don’t need to hear this coming from an authority who’s supposed to be finding and fixing the problem. If they can’t, well, then there’s ‘something wrong somewhere’ with the kind of pay they’re getting to do the job.

Yet, there’s one thing that Khaw seems to be dead confident about: That the government loses ‘hundreds of millions’ of dollars just to build HDB flats.  It explains why you never hear reports of HDB making tidy profits these days, it’s like a monk announcing that he won first prize in the lottery. Not so in the past. In 1970, someone calculated that the HDB made an ‘enormous profit’ from rental of flats and shops. In 1982 it was reported that the board made a $7 million windfall off carparks. In 2002, they made reportedly $87 million from carpark operations, half of that from fines.

How HDB manages its finances today remains a mystery, though our ministers would love to brag about how the government is constantly in the red to justify its noble mission of ‘public housing’. I suppose with all this ‘deficit accounting’ to deal with, it’s only fair that HDB gives its staff the occasional treat, like a Dinner and Dance at MBS with Daniel Ong as MC, for example (more proof of that ever happening here). Did the government subsidise THAT as well?

Filed under: 2013, HDB, Money, Politicians | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Demon-cratic Singapore creator arrested for sedition

Posted on April 24, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Cartoonist arrested over complaint’, 24 April 2013, article by Feng Zengkun, ST

SINGAPOREAN cartoonist Leslie Chew, 37, was arrested last Friday by the police after a complaint was filed against him about one of his cartoons, his lawyer said yesterday. Mr Choo Zheng Xi, who is with law firm Peter Low LLC, said Mr Chew was held over the weekend and released on Sunday night after posting bail of $10,000. He will have to report to the police again on April 30.

…Mr Chew draws the cartoon strip, Demon-cratic Singapore, which is posted regularly on Facebook. According to a description on the strip’s Facebook page, it is “a totally fictional comic with entirely fictional characters based on wholly fictional events in a fictional country“.

Mr Choo said Mr Chew is being investigated for alleged sedition, in relation to a cartoon posted on March 27 regarding the Malay population. He added that Mr Chew was also questioned about a second cartoon which was not included in the complaint.

This was posted on Dec 14 last year, and was the subject of a letter sent by the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) to Mr Chew three days later, said Mr Choo. He said that in the letter, the AGC said the cartoon “scandalises our Courts through allegations and imputations that are scurrilous and false”. He added the cartoonist had not yet been charged.

Late last night, a cartoon depicting Mr Chew’s questioning by the police – whom he described as “very professional” – was uploaded on the Facebook page. Last night, the police said they were looking into the matter.

Chew’s cartoon was not discriminatory against Malays, but referred to the government of ‘Demon-cratic Singapore’ as a racist one. The strip that ‘scandalises’ the courts depicts a character called ‘Pinky’ Loong kicking a High Court Judge out of his office and also involves a cheating politician not so subtly named ‘Michael Phucker’. Other uncannily familiar characters in the Demon-cratic Universe include $8 KHAW,  Teo CHEE HONG, HAIRY Lee, THORNY Tan and Ho JINX. Incidentally, the evil party in Chew’s story is called ‘Party against People’. The entire cast sounds inspired by nicknames straight out of an EDMW or Sammyboy forum thread conceived by 13-year olds. Not exactly Mad Magazine material, I suppose.

Some authors have the nerve to do away with the ‘parallel universe’ angle and mock the PAP straight up. In 1971, 22 year old cartoonist Morgan Chua drew a cartoon of LKY riding a tank threatening to crush a baby symbolising the paper he worked for, the Singapore Herald. LKY’s also a favorite target of foreign humorists;  You can only purchase ‘Harry Lee Kuan Yew, A Pictorial Account of his Life and Times‘ online, a collection of lampoons by Rodney King, an Australian who worked here for more than a decade. In this book the ‘lovable old twerp’ ‘gets a good hand-bagging from Maggie Thatcher’ and ‘falls down a rubbish chute’. It would have been funnier if his caricature of LKY didn’t resemble the stereotype of a slant-eyed Asian.

You can, however, publish a book full of toon politicians here if you’re careful enough. Greg Nonis gave us ‘Hello Chok Tong, Goodbye Kuan Yew’ in 1991. Today, if you’re lucky, the authorities will tolerate your satire if you bypass the censors and post comics on your own blog or Facebook, provided you cover yourself with the appropriate disclaimers and give your characters names that would trigger a knowing smirk in your reader but not an angry lawyer’s letter. My Sketch Times features a DR ‘WOLF WU‘ who’s ‘helping to change the way traffic procedures are performed’. S’pore Says posted a cartoon of a ‘Mr Wong’ in a Monkey King head vice getting a headache when the mantra ‘Mas Selamat’ is chanted. The Cartoon Press, which I must say boasts some of the best pencilwork I’ve seen so far, has a turkey with what looks very much like Lim Swee Say’s head.  Some of this stuff is actually funnier than Demon-cratic Singapore, which has ‘episodes’ with too much text and one too many cringingly lame name-puns.

Anyway here’s a random picture of our Prime Minister in a pink shirt. Hmm..I wonder if anyone has made a caricature of this already.

 

Filed under: 2000s, 2013, Art, Cartoons, Justice system/Lawsuits, Police officers, Politicians, Racism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

PM Lee joking about pork soup

Posted on April 3, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Singapore PM draws laughs in US speech’ 3 April 2013, article by Matthew Peninngton, AP/Yahoo news

Singapore is well-known for its efficiency and order, but during a visit to Washington the city-state’s prime minister displayed a less advertised attribute — humor. In an after-dinner speech Tuesday to U.S. businessmen, Lee Hsien Loong made a couple of jokes that could pass for stand-up comedy.

He drew laughs — and some groans — with his quips, including one about China’s environmental problems.

“Beijing residents joke that to get a free smoke all they have to do is open their windows!” Lee said.

He then alluded to thousands of pig carcasses recently fished from Chinese rivers.

“(In) Shanghai, if you want some pork soup, you just turn on the tap,” he said.

His audience appeared doubtful if that was good taste, until he added, “That’s their joke, not mine!”

Ho, Ho

Our PM says the darnedest things. For years we have endured or been entertained by his light-hearted banter during National Day Rallies, when serious matters affecting the lives of Singaporeans are delivered with a dose of off-the-cuff, out-of-character humour. Dead pigs in the drinking water supply is no laughing matter of course, and it’s hard to believe the Chinese themselves would find it worthy of a chuckle, considering how their waters may be tainted with porcine circovirus. I suppose if the Chinese want to get back at PM Lee for taking potshots at the country’s air pollution and bak-kut teh in the water supply, there’s always Bedok Reservoir to make fun of.

China’s environmental woes have inspired comedy as much as their exported pandas inspire diplomacy. During the Olympics, celebrity talk show host David Letterman described the ‘air in China like the air inside Willie Nelson’s tour bus’. There’s a joke that you can ‘smell China’s GDP’ in the air. All this despite the astonishing statistic that more than 1 million die from pollution every year in China. There may be less casualties from drinking poisoned ‘pork soup’, but it’s hard to make any joke about environmental abuse without someone shifting nervously in his seat. Even in the spirit of April Fools’.

Here’s a sample of knee-slapping, rib-tickling gems from the man himself and how they rate in terms of LOLs.

On fertility (2012): “One Asian politician said why do you not have more blackouts? He has blackouts, he has high TFRs, does not mean I have blackouts, I will have high TFR.” Rating: LOLOL

Again, babies (2007): “I shall not discuss about the baby problem today. As Nike says, Just do it.” Rating: LOL

On ERP (2008): I have read a lot of the interesting things on the Internet.  Some are quite good.  I don’t have time to show you all of them but I’ll just show you one tonight.  This one says “Wah Piang Eh! the ERP has reached Pedra Branca”.  I sent this to Raymond Lim.  He says that’s his favourite one too. LOLOLOL

On getting Singaporeans to be less reliant on the government: “The government will try its best to solve problems big and small – whether it is a minister catching a cat or the Prime Minister saving the life of dog – but understand that some problems or disputes may not be best tackled by the Government.” Rating: lol

On social media (2011): Five years ago YouTube was insignificant, Facebook did not exist; all you had was mrbrown. Rating: LOL

A random joke on a BBC programme in 2003 (‘Top-level jokes’, Business Times, 28 Feb 2003) when he was DPM:

A drunk trying to cross the street was knocked down by a bus. A policeman helped him to his feet and said, “There’s a zebra crossing a few yards away from here.” “Well, I hope he is having better luck than I am,” replied the drunk. (Rating: LOL)

But of course the PM is funniest when the jokes are unintentional, especially when he talks about local food.

I suppose it’s OK for a politician to make a political joke at the expense of other superpowers, but poke fun at a PAP minister and you’ll be at the receiving end of a lawyers’ letter, i.e in hot (pork) soup.

Filed under: 2000s, 2012, Environment, Politicians | Tagged: , , | 3 Comments »

Lee Wei Ling is an atheist sent by God

Posted on March 31, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘ An atheist sent by God’, 31 March 2013, article by Lee Wei Ling, Think, Sunday Times

I have a patient, R, who has been under my care since 2006. In 2008, she ran into a serious non- medical problem. She worked for someone who ran tuition centres, and her duties included taking children from one tuition centre to another and calling the pupils’ parents.

She was paid only $750 a month, but had to spend her own money to ferry the children by taxi, and she was not reimbursed for the telephone calls made on her own cellphone. She was naive, and her boss exploited her. Strapped for cash, she took money from the fees paid by the parents to pay off loan sharks. She had intended to repay the tuition centre from her future earnings, but before she could do so, her boss found out.

He threatened to report her to the police if she did not reimburse him immediately. Although her parents repaid the money on her behalf, the boss lodged a police report anyway and she was charged.

I asked a senior psychiatrist to see her. After examining her, he agreed that she was in no medical condition to serve out a prison term.

The law firm I approached agreed to help her pro bono. Their representation and the medical reports helped reduce her sentence from a jail term to a fine.

…In this cynical world, there are still people who want to do what is right, even if doing so will not profit them personally, as my psychiatrist friend and the lawyers who defended R pro bono show. This gives me hope that we can develop into a compassionate society no matter what our religion, or whether or not we believe in God.

R praised her saviour as a ‘person sent by God’, which the latter thought was ironic since she did not believe in His existence. If Lee Wei Ling weren’t the daughter of LKY, this would have been a perfect ‘Letters to Heaven’ bedtime story for Christian kids. Although intended as a Easter-themed celebration of the human spirit and compassion without faith intervening, Lee Wei Ling’s account of how she got a patient off the hook is not so much Good Samaritan as it shows the benefit of having powerful connections, or how having a mental illness and good lawyers can help you escape prison time. Pro bono also happens to be a fancy legal term for ‘free of charge’. It is usually administered for ‘the public good’, legal assistance for an ‘indigent stranger’ without expectation of reward. I would imagine it given to say elderly, disadvantaged workers seeking compensation for unfair dismissal at work, or to bloggers getting threatened for commenting on famous politicians’ celebrity daughters.

Dr Lee would deny that her position and influence had anything to do with R having an advantage over anyone else caught in the same situation. Regardless of R’s mental state or financial difficulties, the fact is she STOLE from her company, a crime that warrants a jail term. Lee carefully sidesteps the details; if R was indeed ruled out of a prison sentence on the basis of illness, was there any rehabilitation program mandated in addition to the fine? What illness do you need to suffer from to be spared a jail term? How did this article get past the Sunday Times editor?

Lee concluded with a cloyingly hopeful reminder that there is still some humanity left in us after all, that altruism is alive whether or not you believe in God.  Yet, I’m not sure if it’s fair to say that saving R was the RIGHT thing to do; many people who have committed similar crimes out of desperation have landed in jail because they couldn’t afford expensive lawyers or psychiatrists to declare themselves medically unfit. Nor are they fortunate enough to have ‘atheists sent by God’ among their company. There is also too little information and too much sob-story from Lee’s perspective on R to say if she was truly deserving of the loving, unbiased touch of God. I also question if Lee’s doctor and lawyer friends did it out of genuine compassion, were returning a favour to ‘promote access to justice’, or acted simply because of who she was.

Maybe she should have written a story about volunteering in a tsunami-hit Third World country where the people believe in animal spirits instead of Jesus Christ, and then conclude that belief in a Man-God in a flowing robe and a halo over his head is not a prerequisite for miracles. Incidentally her father would call such disasters ‘Acts of God’, though he has been described as a man ‘agnostic’ in his approach to life.

Filed under: 2013, Justice system/Lawsuits, Politicians, Religion | Tagged: , , , | 7 Comments »

PM Lee: We can’t be the nanny

Posted on March 17, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Govt will need to be more open, says PM Lee’, excerpts from interview with Washington Post, 17 March 2013, Sunday Times

…In the last election, your party lost some seats. You will have to manage a political transition with a younger generation, which expects more.

It’s a different generation, a different society, and the politics will be different… We have to work in a more open way. We have to accept more of the untidiness and the to-ing and fro-ing, which is part of normal politics.

Is that hard for you?

It is a major change, of course, which we hope we will be able to navigate safely over a period of time and not suddenly.

To make Government more transparent and open to social media?

It’s completely open to social media. Previously, everything was orderly and predictable. Now there are many more voices, views and interests… and the outcome is a lot more difficult to predict, and the reactions are more difficult to judge.

You grew up as the son of the most famous man in this country.

I did not choose my father, but I am proud of him.

You decided recently to allow gambling in Singapore. Has it been a boost for the economy?

For a long time, we fought in principle against casinos. Finally, we were persuaded it’s big business and if we were not in it, someone else would be. It was becoming increasingly more difficult to shield our people from gambling. We can’t be the nanny.

Economically it’s worked out very well.

Very well. The social impact – we’ll have to wait a few years to see.

‘To-ing’ and ‘Fro-ing’ is a terrible phrase to use, though it’s been around since the mid 80′s. It’s the kind of piggybacking term that gives readers the impression that there is lack of a better word. But there ARE better words. How about ‘back and forth’, ‘fluctuation’ or if you want to be more technical, ‘oscillation’? To-ing and fro-ing sounds like it was plucked out of a Dr Seuss book, and the editor of this interview abstract forgot about the ‘slicing and dicing’ to make our PM’s response sound more, well, respectable. Nobody uses it when they chat online. Imagine: ‘Hey, what you doin’/ ‘I’m doing some to-ing and fro-ing for the big day’/ Wow cool!:)” Minus the hyphen and you have couplet that reads like an onomatopoeia for someone jumping on a broken trampoline. ‘Ding donging’, the current office term for back and forth communication (often the inefficient kind), doesn’t sound much worse than to-ing, fro-ing. The English language as we know it, used by politicians, is GO-ing. It’s ‘humpty-ing dumpty-ing’ towards its great fall.

But what really caught my attention from this feature is the ‘erm..’ moment when PM Lee remarked that the government was ‘completely open to social media’. COMPLETELY. Maybe it’s a classic show and tell to the American media to convince them that PAP’s becoming a more transparent and tolerant authority, but Singaporeans who have some inkling of the government’s REAL take on social media would know better. It’s a total about-face from what our PM said about cyberspace some years ago, that it was called a place for  ‘cowboy towns’ to fester. I think it’s quite obvious here that the government is still treading gingerly on new media with unspoken reservations, and ready to strike with the brute turn of the wrench when necessary. Just ask SDP’s Vincent Wijeysingha, who only recently had to pay damages to Tan Chuan Jin for defamatory FB postings. Or Alex Au, who had to apologise and post lawyer-crafted apologies countless times on his blog. Even commenting about a void deck wedding would cost you your job in a government organisation.

Maybe we need to consider what if the US isn’t that oblivious to our experience with social media as we assume they are, instead of telling them a goosebumps-inducing fairy tale like, well, a NANNY would at bedtime. ‘Open’ in the sense of having a Facebook and Twitter account perhaps, but not so when it comes to ‘free speech’, and no one knows more about free speech than the Americans. I’m sure there are other ways of skirting difficult questions than, well, telling people what they want to hear, that we’re less of the nanny-state that we’ve become renown for. I’m just surprised the interviewer didn’t bring up the existing chewing gum ban as an argument against that. But that would result in too much, ugh, to-ing and fro-ing.

Filed under: 1980s, 2013, Bloggers, Justice system/Lawsuits, Politicians | Tagged: , , , , | 4 Comments »

Economically inactive women not working hard

Posted on March 16, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Economically inactive women do contribute to nation’,  14 March 2013, and ‘Let’s help more women get back to work’ 16 March 2013, ST Forum

(Soon Hao Jing): PART of Nominated MP Mary Liew’s Budget speech on March 5 focused on encouraging more women to work. Citing government efforts since 2007, she emphasised the need to continue pushing women who are economically inactive to work, so as to increase the labour force participation rate.

She said there are about 272,000 adult women below the age of 60 who are “economically inactive”. In her concluding remarks, she suggested allowing six months’ maternity leave and stated a need to strengthen childcare facilities here.

Ms Liew is wrong to assume that those “economically inactive” women do not contribute to our economy. “Inactive” suggests they are idle, instead of working hard. That is a narrow view of things. Most of these women are presumably housewives; some of them may have disabilities or illnesses that force them to stay home.

Also, don’t housewives contribute to Singapore by tending to household chores and their families’ needs? We must not apply double standards to women by expecting them to work at jobs like men, while fulfilling their familial duties after work. This shows neither empowerment nor gender equality.

(Mary Liew):…In my speech, I quoted the statistics as well as the term “economically inactive” from the Ministry of Manpower’s “Labour Force in Singapore, 2012″ report, which it published on Jan 31.

The ministry defines one who is “economically inactive” as “neither working nor looking for a job“. This is the context in which I called for the Government and employers to do more to encourage women who choose to work, to stay in or return to the workforce, and at the same time, balance their need to fulfill familial roles.

Wouldn’t it have been simpler to say ‘women who are NOT working’ than use cluttered manpower jargon? NMP Mary Liew’s response on what it means to be ‘economically inactive’ raises more questions as to what ‘not looking for a job’ means. Are you too LAZY to do so, or want to but are unable to due to family commitments? How does one classify tai-tais then? That’s the problem with jumping on the trendy catchphrase bandwagon, you pile on all kinds of unintentionally offensive nuances when calling it like it is would have been the neutral, though boring, option. All this fancy talk in terms of dollars, but not making much sense.

‘Economically inactive’ may also be taken a euphemism for ‘unemployment’ or ‘joblessness’, like how ‘mentally challenged’ is a more polite term for ‘idiot’, or ‘visually impaired’ for the blind. Still, no matter what term you use it doesn’t make a MAN sound less of a BUM in the Asian breadwinner context if he, willingly or unwillingly, isn’t holding on to a job. Even if you’re not earning your keep by ‘working’, you may still be labelled a ‘discouraged worker‘. So the MOM can read our emotions now eh? What if I’m just, well, picky?

This blanket term was used even way back in the 80′s, when it encompassed not just women, but the disabled, children and retirees.  Well that includes babies then, which questions the value of using economic inactivity as a gauge of gender equality.  ‘Jobless’ and ‘Unemployed’ have become unpalatable terms these days, as they no longer imply ‘without a job’ but bear harsh connotations of personal failure. You could be the most miserable office-rat on earth but at least ‘you have a job’ and hence, thank God, ‘economically active’. You’re the Ant and anyone else who doesn’t work a Grasshopper.

Mary Liew’s intention, I suppose, was to portray these economically inactive women as an untapped ‘pool of talent and resources’, a view that has been held for almost 3 decades, but by her choice of labels alone, she may have exerted undue pressure on women who thrive on being ‘economically inactive’, like housewives, volunteers and those choosing to leave their jobs to look after aged parents. Or SPGs. But I doubt the latter would care anyway.

Filed under: 1980s, 2013, Money, Politicians, Singaporean women | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

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