Jun 18, 2013
IT IS a mercy the irritable exchange between a state agency and a Workers' Party-managed town council over the cleaning of food centres appears to have ended. Members of the public were discomfited to witness the party's MPs and officials of the National Environment Agency slugging it out over interpretations of contractual obligations, amid recriminations of victimisation and breach of faith. Government leaders had little choice but to respond once a state agency was charged with being politically motivated, as it is incumbent on the authorities to uphold the integrity of public institutions. Besides, HDB residents and business operators would have cause to feel something is amiss if the politicisation of the role of councils results in an adversarial relationship developing between public service organs and certain town councils.
It is doubtful if many disinterested observers or constituents in the WP wards could keep up with the plot twists in what should have been an uncomplicated matter. Cleaning of hawkers centres has been carried out without controversy for years. The protocol for doing so should be well rehearsed. So, the endless rounds of who should be responsible, and disputes over who said what to whom, left many observers bewildered, to say the least.
The public expectation of national agencies and local government, each with its clearly defined remits, is that the former be scrupulously even-handed in its work while the latter discharges its functions efficiently and within budget. Where disputes arise over matters for which an agency has titular responsibility, contending parties ought to settle the differences by negotiating in good faith. Grandstanding never helps as any reflexive attempts to politicise issues might only turn off people, whatever their political persuasion. Stakeholders' main interest is in seeing things work well, in return for the conservancy charges and taxes they have paid. Voters here rightly expect things to get done, rather than to endure endless political bickering over who should get it done, or who is responsible if it does not.
The ugly spat comes soon after another contentious dispute over the managing of town councils, with many serious questions raised over the politicisation of local government. The review committee that has been tasked with looking into the role of town councils is therefore timely. Most residents want their town councils to be effective and accountable. As politics here becomes more keenly contested, voters expect that key players learn to work with other in good faith rather than be at constant loggerheads. They will not look kindly on those for whom residents' interests are secondary to political point scoring.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Why full-time NS can’t be shortened
18 June 2013
According to a government poll conducted in 2011, over 90 per cent of those surveyed said National Service (NS) is necessary. Arguments that it can be shortened, however, are regularly made.
These arguments typically rest on two assumptions. The first concerns time. Some argue the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) uses it too inefficiently. “Hurry up to wait”, or “wait to rush, rush to wait” is often used to describe one’s experience in NS. They reason that NS could be shorter if time were more efficiently used.
According to a government poll conducted in 2011, over 90 per cent of those surveyed said National Service (NS) is necessary. Arguments that it can be shortened, however, are regularly made.
These arguments typically rest on two assumptions. The first concerns time. Some argue the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) uses it too inefficiently. “Hurry up to wait”, or “wait to rush, rush to wait” is often used to describe one’s experience in NS. They reason that NS could be shorter if time were more efficiently used.
Thursday, June 13, 2013
From news hound to feral beast... [excerpt]
[Blast from the past. This is an excerpt from a longer speech given by Tony Blair shortly after he left office. He spoke of the media and how the job of govt has changed and become more difficult because of changing nature of media.]
June 14, 2007
by Tony Blair
... First, scandal or controversy beats ordinary reporting hands down. News is rarely news unless it generates heat as much as or more than light.
Second, attacking motive is far more potent than attacking judgment. It is not enough for someone to make an error. It has to be venal. Conspiratorial.
Third, the fear of missing out means today's media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack. In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits. But no one dares miss out.
Fourth, rather than just report news, even if sensational or controversial, the new technique is commentary on the news being as, if not more important than the news itself. So - for example - there will often be as much interpretation of what a politician is saying as there is coverage of them actually saying it. In the interpretation, what matters is not what they mean, but what they could be taken to mean. This leads to the incredibly frustrating pastime of expending a large amount of energy rebutting claims about the significance of things said, that bears little or no relation to what was intended.
In turn, this leads to a fifth point: the confusion of news and commentary.
Comment is a perfectly respectable part of journalism. But it is supposed to be separate. Opinion and fact should be clearly divisible. The truth is a large part of the media today not merely elides the two but does so now as a matter of course. In other words, this is not exceptional. It is routine. The final consequence of all of this is that it is rare today to find balance in the media. Things, people, issues, stories, are all black and white. Life's usual grey is almost entirely absent. 'Some good, some bad'; 'some things going right, some going wrong': these are concepts alien to today's reporting. It's a triumph or a disaster. A problem is 'a crisis'. A setback is a policy 'in tatters'. A criticism, 'a savage attack'.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Do SMSes, e-mail make the heart grow fonder?
Jun 11, 2013
By Jonathan Safran Foer
A COUPLE of weeks ago, I saw a stranger crying in public. I was in Brooklyn's Fort Greene neighbourhood, waiting to meet a friend for breakfast. I arrived at the restaurant a few minutes early and was sitting on the bench outside, scrolling through my contact list. A girl, maybe 15 years old, was sitting on the bench opposite me, crying into her phone. I heard her say, "I know, I know, I know" over and over.
What did she know? Had she done something wrong? Was she being comforted? And then she said, "Mama, I know," and the tears came harder.
What was her mother telling her? Never to stay out all night again? That everybody fails? Is it possible that no one was on the other end of the call, and that the girl was merely rehearsing a difficult conversation? "Mama, I know," she said, and hung up, placing her phone on her lap.
I was faced with a choice: I could interject myself into her life, or I could respect the boundaries between us. Intervening might make her feel worse, or be inappropriate. But then, it might ease her pain, or be helpful in some straightforward logistical way. An affluent neighbourhood at the beginning of the day is not the same as a dangerous one as night is falling. And I was me, and not someone else. There was a lot of human computing to be done.
It is harder to intervene than not to, but it is vastly harder to choose to do either than to retreat into the scrolling names of a contact list, or whatever one's favourite iDistraction is. Technology celebrates connectedness, but encourages retreat. The phone did not make me avoid the human connection, but it did make ignoring her easier, and more likely, by comfortably encouraging me to forget my choice to do so. My daily use of technological communication has been shaping me into someone more likely to forget others. The flow of water carves rock, a little bit at a time. And our personhood is carved, too, by the flow of our habits.
Psychologists who study empathy and compassion are finding that unlike our almost instantaneous responses to physical pain, it takes time for the brain to comprehend the psychological and moral dimensions of a situation. The more distracted we become, and the more emphasis we place on speed at the expense of depth, the less likely and able we are to care. Everyone wants his parent's, or friend's, or partner's undivided attention - even if many of us, especially children, are getting used to far less. Philosopher Simone Weil wrote, "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity." By this definition, our relationships to the world, and to one another, and to ourselves, are becoming increasingly miserly.
Most of our communication technologies began as diminished substitutes for an impossible activity. We could not always see one another face to face, so the telephone made it possible to keep in touch at a distance. One is not always home, so the answering machine made a kind of interaction possible without the person being near his phone. Online communication originated as a substitute for telephonic communication, which was considered, for whatever reasons, too burdensome or inconvenient. And then texting, which facilitated yet faster, and more mobile, messaging. These inventions were not created to be improvements upon face-to-face communication, but a declension of acceptable, if diminished, substitutes for it.
But then a funny thing happened: We began to prefer the diminished substitutes. It is easier to make a phone call than to see someone in person. Leaving a message on someone's machine is easier than having a phone conversation - you can say what you need to say without a response; hard news is easier to leave; it is easier to check in without becoming entangled. So we began calling when we knew no one would pick up.
Shooting off an e-mail is easier, still, because one can hide behind the absence of vocal inflection, and there is no chance of accidentally catching someone. And texting is even easier, as the expectation for articulateness is further reduced, and another shell is offered to hide in. Each step "forward" has made it easier, just a little, to avoid the emotional work of being present, to convey information rather than humanity.
The problem with accepting - with preferring - diminished substitutes is that over time, we become diminished substitutes. People who become used to saying little become used to feeling little.
With each generation, it becomes harder to imagine a future that resembles the present. My grandparents hoped I would have a better life than they did: free of war and hunger, comfortably situated in a place that felt like home. But what futures would I dismiss out of hand for my grandchildren? That their clothes will be fabricated every morning on 3-D printers? That they will communicate without speaking or moving?
Only those with no imagination, and no grounding in reality, would deny the possibility that they will live forever. It is possible that many reading these words will never die. Let us assume, though, that we all have a set number of days to indent the world with our beliefs, to find and create the beauty that only a finite existence allows for, to wrestle with the question of purpose and wrestle with our answers.
We often use technology to save time but, increasingly, it either takes the saved time along with it, or makes the saved time less present, intimate and rich. I worry that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts. It is not an either/or - being "anti-technology" is perhaps the only thing more foolish than being unquestioningly "pro-technology" - but a question of balance that our lives hang upon.
Most of the time, most people are not crying in public, but everyone is always in need of something that another person can give, be it undivided attention, a kind word or deep empathy. There is no better use of a life than to be attentive to such needs. There are as many ways to do this as there are kinds of loneliness, but all of them require attentiveness, all of them require the hard work of emotional computation and corporeal compassion. All of them require the human processing of the only animal who risks "getting it wrong" and whose dreams provide shelters and vaccines and words to crying strangers.
We live in a world made up more of story than stuff. We are creatures of memory more than reminders, of love more than likes. Being attentive to the needs of others might not be the point of life, but it is the work of life. It can be messy, and painful, and almost impossibly difficult. But it is not something we give. It is what we get in exchange for having to die.
NEW YORK TIMES
By Jonathan Safran Foer
A COUPLE of weeks ago, I saw a stranger crying in public. I was in Brooklyn's Fort Greene neighbourhood, waiting to meet a friend for breakfast. I arrived at the restaurant a few minutes early and was sitting on the bench outside, scrolling through my contact list. A girl, maybe 15 years old, was sitting on the bench opposite me, crying into her phone. I heard her say, "I know, I know, I know" over and over.
What did she know? Had she done something wrong? Was she being comforted? And then she said, "Mama, I know," and the tears came harder.
What was her mother telling her? Never to stay out all night again? That everybody fails? Is it possible that no one was on the other end of the call, and that the girl was merely rehearsing a difficult conversation? "Mama, I know," she said, and hung up, placing her phone on her lap.
I was faced with a choice: I could interject myself into her life, or I could respect the boundaries between us. Intervening might make her feel worse, or be inappropriate. But then, it might ease her pain, or be helpful in some straightforward logistical way. An affluent neighbourhood at the beginning of the day is not the same as a dangerous one as night is falling. And I was me, and not someone else. There was a lot of human computing to be done.
It is harder to intervene than not to, but it is vastly harder to choose to do either than to retreat into the scrolling names of a contact list, or whatever one's favourite iDistraction is. Technology celebrates connectedness, but encourages retreat. The phone did not make me avoid the human connection, but it did make ignoring her easier, and more likely, by comfortably encouraging me to forget my choice to do so. My daily use of technological communication has been shaping me into someone more likely to forget others. The flow of water carves rock, a little bit at a time. And our personhood is carved, too, by the flow of our habits.
Psychologists who study empathy and compassion are finding that unlike our almost instantaneous responses to physical pain, it takes time for the brain to comprehend the psychological and moral dimensions of a situation. The more distracted we become, and the more emphasis we place on speed at the expense of depth, the less likely and able we are to care. Everyone wants his parent's, or friend's, or partner's undivided attention - even if many of us, especially children, are getting used to far less. Philosopher Simone Weil wrote, "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity." By this definition, our relationships to the world, and to one another, and to ourselves, are becoming increasingly miserly.
Most of our communication technologies began as diminished substitutes for an impossible activity. We could not always see one another face to face, so the telephone made it possible to keep in touch at a distance. One is not always home, so the answering machine made a kind of interaction possible without the person being near his phone. Online communication originated as a substitute for telephonic communication, which was considered, for whatever reasons, too burdensome or inconvenient. And then texting, which facilitated yet faster, and more mobile, messaging. These inventions were not created to be improvements upon face-to-face communication, but a declension of acceptable, if diminished, substitutes for it.
But then a funny thing happened: We began to prefer the diminished substitutes. It is easier to make a phone call than to see someone in person. Leaving a message on someone's machine is easier than having a phone conversation - you can say what you need to say without a response; hard news is easier to leave; it is easier to check in without becoming entangled. So we began calling when we knew no one would pick up.
Shooting off an e-mail is easier, still, because one can hide behind the absence of vocal inflection, and there is no chance of accidentally catching someone. And texting is even easier, as the expectation for articulateness is further reduced, and another shell is offered to hide in. Each step "forward" has made it easier, just a little, to avoid the emotional work of being present, to convey information rather than humanity.
The problem with accepting - with preferring - diminished substitutes is that over time, we become diminished substitutes. People who become used to saying little become used to feeling little.
With each generation, it becomes harder to imagine a future that resembles the present. My grandparents hoped I would have a better life than they did: free of war and hunger, comfortably situated in a place that felt like home. But what futures would I dismiss out of hand for my grandchildren? That their clothes will be fabricated every morning on 3-D printers? That they will communicate without speaking or moving?
Only those with no imagination, and no grounding in reality, would deny the possibility that they will live forever. It is possible that many reading these words will never die. Let us assume, though, that we all have a set number of days to indent the world with our beliefs, to find and create the beauty that only a finite existence allows for, to wrestle with the question of purpose and wrestle with our answers.
We often use technology to save time but, increasingly, it either takes the saved time along with it, or makes the saved time less present, intimate and rich. I worry that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts. It is not an either/or - being "anti-technology" is perhaps the only thing more foolish than being unquestioningly "pro-technology" - but a question of balance that our lives hang upon.
Most of the time, most people are not crying in public, but everyone is always in need of something that another person can give, be it undivided attention, a kind word or deep empathy. There is no better use of a life than to be attentive to such needs. There are as many ways to do this as there are kinds of loneliness, but all of them require attentiveness, all of them require the hard work of emotional computation and corporeal compassion. All of them require the human processing of the only animal who risks "getting it wrong" and whose dreams provide shelters and vaccines and words to crying strangers.
We live in a world made up more of story than stuff. We are creatures of memory more than reminders, of love more than likes. Being attentive to the needs of others might not be the point of life, but it is the work of life. It can be messy, and painful, and almost impossibly difficult. But it is not something we give. It is what we get in exchange for having to die.
NEW YORK TIMES
Party monopoly = less competitive economy?
Jun 10, 2013
The jury is still out on whether party monopolies boost or impede a country's competitiveness
By Amit Jain For The Straits Times
THE post-election ruckus in Malaysia and the subsequent crackdown on opposition activists had investors in jitters. The business mood could easily have turned from rosy to gloomy if the acrimonious stand-off between the long-ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition and the opposition had continued on the streets.
For now though the crisis appears to have blown over. Last Monday, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim told journalists he will participate in Parliament, push for electoral reforms and contest the election results through legal petitions.
Perhaps it is time to revisit that old debate: is there a correlation between party monopoly and economic competitiveness?
The jury is still out on whether party monopolies boost or impede a country's competitiveness
By Amit Jain For The Straits Times
THE post-election ruckus in Malaysia and the subsequent crackdown on opposition activists had investors in jitters. The business mood could easily have turned from rosy to gloomy if the acrimonious stand-off between the long-ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition and the opposition had continued on the streets.
For now though the crisis appears to have blown over. Last Monday, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim told journalists he will participate in Parliament, push for electoral reforms and contest the election results through legal petitions.
Perhaps it is time to revisit that old debate: is there a correlation between party monopoly and economic competitiveness?
Sunday, June 9, 2013
COMMENT: Keep calm and carry on posting
By Calvin Cheng
From an article published on Yahoo.
6 June 2013
The drama that has unfolded over Singapore’s Media Development Authority’s decision to license some news websites in Singapore is tragic.
On the one hand, we have a government completely bewildered over the reaction towards what they see as a minor update to its regulatory laws.
On the other hand, we have freedom-of-the-internet advocates going apoplectic over what it sees as a major policy decision that amounts to curtailment of free-speech and the death-knell of alternative news websites in Singapore.
The two positions and the reactions are so far apart and so irreconcilable that the call for dialogue seems futile.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Rethinking Singapore’s housing policies
04 June
Public housing policies in Singapore have been highly successful in enabling home ownership for the majority of Singaporeans and in giving citizens a stake in the country. The provision of affordable public housing is perhaps the clearest manifestation of Singapore’s “growth with equity” story.
But the social contract that has enabled this is now coming under stress.
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