I’ve read a couple of posts from Chris J Reed and this one practically takes the MCDYS to dinner, dancing, and an erotically-charged fumble while parked in Changi Village.
This bloke has clearly drunk the Kool-Aid. Or has never spent time in the ‘heartlands’. Or is deliberately trying to piss me off. Yeah. Me. Just me.
Is it just me or does ‘dating partner‘ sound like a really bizarre phrase? Yes, the Singapore government is still trying to get the peeps together to get married and push out babies.
Loads of strange stresses and contradictions in this. Apparently PM Lee has asked citizens to ignore the Chinese zodiac and shag for Singapore (tigers are… what? Fierce, I take it, so that means people born in the year of the rabbit should be able to take up the slack). That calls for a new patriotic song:
#Shag hard for Singapore
Do the best you can
Reach out for some poontang
You’ve got to get with the plan
Recognise you must play your part
Let it come right from your (nether) parts
Be prepared to give a little more
Shag hard, shag hard for Singapore#
The next verse involves doing it with a smile (lie back and think of LKY?). Heh.
But anyway. I thought we were all about embracing China as the next great power? Are we only embracing the bits we like (i.e. cheap labour, manufactured goods, questionable political freedom, and tourists)? It’s highly unlikely that an ad campaign is going to encourage adult Singaporeans to date, especially if they were discouraged from dating in adolescence in favour of achievement, achievement, achievement. The message is messed up, yo.
SM Goh wants us to focus on a “good Career, live in Comfort, surrounded by Children, and be Considerate and Charitable.” I take it the first two Cs cover the original five Cs. So actually it’s the eight Cs. Inflation, I guess. That’s a fantastic message for all of us on National Day…
I can only cling to an unrealistic hope that Alan Shadrake won’t be used as an example of what happens when foreigners ‘interfere’ in internal affairs. He may be defiant and continues to speak out, but unless he has some serious health issues, I expect the judiciary to show him no leniency.
Everyone knows that living comfortably in Singapore comes at a price. I’m glad that there are activists beyond the now-tragic figure of Chee Soon Juan willing to take some hits to highlight this. Not that I think it will make a whit of difference to foreign investors. We live under too benign a regime to cause any real political embarrassment.
(Previously.)
Whaddaya mean, if? (Previously.)
Alan Shadrake’s out on bail, he is not free, as the headline of the article in the Guardian implies. If the government thinks someone is rightly or wrongly making them look bad, they will never bow to pressure to give up.
Maybe I’m way too cynical, but this smacks of a publishing publicity stunt purely for an international audience (and motivated Singaporeans); it’s not as though the news media in Singapore will report it in any real depth. I know I sound like a typical realist these days, but I do worry about the paranoia of the Singapore government in trying to contain this desire to speak and express opinions.
I disagree with the stance that foreigners don’t have a right to comment on ‘internal’ matters, as it’s all a matter of context. It’s as though the government hasn’t mastered the putting of things into context — they don’t want to add any complexity to their message, perhaps (my mother always said that all the government’s public communications are written for an educational level of Primary Three).
(Previously.)
Par for the course publicity stunt, I reckon – British author gets arrested in Singapore for writing a book about the Singapore judiciary and the death sentence. In any other officially democratic country, there would be real outrage. In Singapore, it’s practically a yawn-fest and clearly designed by the author or publisher to grab headlines. Sad, but true.
Oh dear.
Apparently, possession or distribution of this video in Singapore is punishable by a two-year jail term and a S$10,000 fine. This paranoia is nothing new. If a speech — factually accurate or not — by a former political prisoner could really cause ‘disunity’ or ‘trouble’ amongst the public, one must wonder how stable our society really is. Surely the public should decide what’s in the public interest.