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Straits Times’ outrageous opinion piece on homelessness
Mar. 10 | By Callan Tham The Straits Times, true to its form of operating as a government mouthpiece, publishes this gem of an opinion piece disguised as ‘Prime News’ entitled Life’s a beach but it’s no holiday (complete with the accompanying...
Why the vote is not ‘daft’
Feb. 17 | Sylvia Lim Last Nov, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak addressed APEC delegates in Singapore. When asked if he was confident that his economic reforms and stimulus packages would work for Malaysia, he quipped: “Well, it better work. Otherwise, you...
Mandate assured … as long as PAP remains incorruptible
Feb. 10 | trulysingapore Dear editor, I refer to the letter by Dr Yik Keng Yeong dated 9 Feb 2010. Dr Yik points to the unequal scaling of the economic peak by countries in the region to suggest that work ethic is not the same across countries. By extension, places...
Singaporeans seek asylum elsewhere
Feb. 7 | Ben Bland Asia Sentinel Given the Singapore government’s oft-repeated mantra that it has taken the city-state “from third world to first,” you would not expect to find refugees fleeing the island’s shores and gleaming skyscrapers. But...
S’porean bride requested for wedding’s price not to be revealed because of father’s political position
Feb. 6 | NY dailynews.com It’s the Wedding Planner vs. Bridezilla now. Celebrity party organizer David Tutera used the B word Tuesday against a woman suing him for bailing out of her lavish Singapore wedding. “Melissa Chin was looking to turn her...
A false necessity: Singapore’s maid trade
Feb. 3 | Jolene Tan The F-word Blog In my gleamingly modern home town of Singapore, trading in women has been refined to a stomach-churningly efficient art. The women in question are foreign domestic workers (FDWs), locally known as “maids”, who travel from...
Uniquely Singapore, F1 or F9: “Residents willing to pay more for service and conservancy”?
Dec. 2 | By Leong Sze Hian and Andrew Loh The following article was first published here in TOC on the 2nd of Oct 2007. The Straits Times has a report titled “New rule to safeguard council funds“, December 2nd 2007, which addresses some of the issues...
NMP’s views at odds with AIDS relief research paper
Oct. 27 | By Jinesh Lalwani and Choo Zheng Xi Safe sex awareness pamphlets censored as pornography. Information booths closed down for distributing “illegal” content. Awareness outreach funding stifled by choking off of charity fundraisers by homosexual groups. The...
Government using hyperbole to justify public protests ban
Oct. 26 | By Gerald Giam The Singapore Government has once again employed the use of hyperbole to justify its near-total ban on public demonstrations, whether peaceful or not. In his letter to the Straits Times and TODAY, the deputy director at the Ministry of...
TOC Feature: 377A – To prevent what harm?
Oct. 10 | By Michael Hor Curiously, the Penal Code (Amendment) Bill of 2007, proclaimed as the result of only the second comprehensive review of Singapore’s 136 year old criminal code, is likely to be remembered more for what it did not do than for what it did....
Is compulsory Longevity Insurance necessary?
Sep. 21 | SUMMARY (in italics, by Yeo Toon Joo, Peter): Contrary to the Manpower Minister’s protestations in parliament over CPF’s poor rates of return to members and the unpopular proposed longevity insurance scheme, the Government, if it so inclines, can...
Unanswered questions about CPF changes
Aug. 24 | By Leong Sze Hian This is in reference to media reports that the CPF Special, Retirement and Medisave accounts’ rates will be modified next year. The question that may be in every Singaporean’s mind is whether the peg to “an appropriate...
Myanmar regime belongs in the dog house
Jun. 6 | By Gerald Giam The extension of Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s imprisonment on 27 May 2007 was a widely expected move by the country’s military government which has already kept her under detention for most of...
Artificial Dynamism?
May. 7 | By Ned Stark “It’s not possible for us to be hermetically sealed and to close out to the world, and this is just a jewel box by itself because our people travel, millions of people come to Singapore, and even if you don’t travel, you’re...
The First Tier of The First World: Beyond the Bottom Line
Apr. 6 | By Leong Sze Hian & Choo Zheng Xi Like a responsible board of directors, we may have been constantly keeping our eyes on the bottom line, obsessing over the most cost efficient solutions to build up the solidly reliable Singapore Brand. Perhaps, keeping...
Why’re we like that?
Mar. 27 | By Zyberzitizen It is quite depressing to hear what has been said lately – by government officials and some others – about how so many are leaving the civil service, how we must essentially seduce them with money, and how much exactly (down to the...
Budget 2007 – Changes necessary in our fiscal policy
Feb. 9 | By Edmund PM Lee announced in November 2006 two significant fiscal policy changes in the first parliament session after the election in May. First, the Goods and Services Tax (GST) will be increased to 7%, up from the present 5%. The GST hike by two percentage...
Complicity in the senseless murder of a young boy
Jan. 27 | By Zyberzitizen Iwuchukwu Amara Tochi. Will we remember him – or even his name? Will it matter to us? Does it matter to us? Why should we care about a Nigerian who is convicted of trafficking drugs? Why should we care about him who is now dead –...
Singapore Swing
Jan. 22 | Excerpt from Newsweek International By Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop Jan. 29, 2007 issue – Tiny Singapore, with its population of 4.3 million, is often lauded for the way it has embraced globalization to maximum advantage. In the last decade, the city-state...
After the spending frenzy comes the reality
Jan. 20 | At just about this time last year (2006), we were inundated with dizzying and mind-numbing headlines after headlines (like the Straits Times headlines on the right) of billion dollar handouts & hundred-million dollar “5-year” upgrading plans,...
What happened to Singapore, the land of plenty?
Jan. 19 | This article is taken from Asiaweek (For Richer Or Poorer), to allow our readers to revisit the issues of welfare, the aged, foreign workers, and wages in Singapore. It is quite troubling to note that this article was first published in Nov, 2000. The...
Sir, may I have the can please?
Jan. 17 | This excerpt is taken from Yawning Bread’s website. I was having a late lunch at a hawker centre — just some fried noodles and a canned drink. In Singapore, one usually gets a cup of ice along with the drink, and the first thing...
2007 predicted to be world’s warmest year
Jan. 9 | This excerpt is taken from Reuters By Jeremy Lovell LONDON (Reuters) – This year is set to be the hottest on record worldwide due to global warming and the El Nino weather phenomenon, Britain’s Meteorological Office said on Thursday. The...
My neighbourhood… after dark.
Jan. 5 | By zyberzitizen In the heartlands of Singapore – and away from the glamour and glossy pictures we see on promotional brochures, advertisements and postcards – lies a question. A question which will be asked at the end of this essay. I took...
Review – The politics of Singapore’s new media in 2006
Dec. 31 | by Gerald Giam The year 2006 was a landmark year for the new media and citizen journalism in Singapore. The government’s “light touch” approach to regulating the Internet was probably one of the factors that emboldened many Singaporeans...
The Geopolitics of Asian Cyberspace
Dec. 21 | This article is taken from FEER. By Ronald Deibert What happens to your request when you click on a link to a website or send an email? For most surfers, the internet experience begins and ends with what happens on the computer screen in front...
Income gap tears at Singapore social fabric
Dec. 18 | By Geert De Clercq SINGAPORE, Dec 18 (Reuters) – When Wee Shu Min, the teenage daughter of a Singapore member of parliament stumbled across the blog of a Singaporean who wrote that he was worried about losing his job, she thought she’d give him...
Tough love
Dec. 14 | By Jonk Tuesday, 28 November, 2006 In light of the recent Home Special in the Straits Times some time back, ‘When Love Hurts’, the documentary of domestic abuse cases from the points of view of the victims, the guilty parties and wise by-standers...
A dash of tolerance and a big helping of smart power
Dec. 12 | By Catherine Lim Thursday, 7 December, 2006 The first C is Control WHAT was true of the past 40 years of PAP rule is true of the present, and impossible to rule out for the future. A tight control, both of the political opposition parties and of...
Being myself..
Dec. 12 | By Marilyn Lai Monday, 4 December, 2006 I need to write this down tonight before i lose the nerve to. I thought i knew myself very well, but i didn’t. I thought i’ve always loved myself, but strip away everything that i’ve...
Dismantling the bloggers vs journalists debate
Dec. 12 | By Mykel Yee “[If] you read something in the Straits Times or on CNA, you must know that it’s real, it’s quite different from reading this say on Talkingcock.com.” Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, (National Day Rally Speech, 20 August 2006). “Where...
Why do teachers stop wanting to be teachers?
Dec. 11 | By Choenix If I were as highly acclaimed as Steven Levitt, I’ll ask for the statistics of the number of teachers who have left the profession and check if the increased monetary incentives over the years have slowed down the attrition rates among teachers....
