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The Presidential Election Committee must grant a Certificate of Eligibility to a candidate before he would be able to contest the Presidential Election. So far we know that there are 3 serious contenders. Don't forget that there's a fourth chap who has collected the papers for submission, Mr Ooi Boon Ewe. He is likely to be rejected by the Committee (as he was when he applied to contest for the 2005 Presidential Election). I wonder if the PEC will grant the COE to all the 3 Tans. I believe that there is little doubt that the hardcore PAP supporters will go for Dr Tony Tan. I suspect that the hardcore anti-PAP voter would go for Tan Kin Lian. Dr Tan Cheng Bock is inevitably the one that could be the vote splitter. Would he split the PAP supporters or the opposition supporters? It would be interesting to see. Given the current political climate, I believe that if it was a straight fight between Dr Tony Tan and Tan Kin Lian or Dr Tony Tan and Dr Tan Cheng Bock, Dr Tony Ta...

Another Sunday, another bout of zmiana pogoda; should we make the Jerzmanowice trip and investigate Chochołowy Dwór ? Or not risk the threat of rain and instead stay local? Local won today, but a good time was had down on the bulwary by Wawel at this year's Jarmark . Jousting, real ale, medieval dancing and two small boys now equipped with wooden swords. What could be more perfect? Hey! Mind where you point that thing, ty maluch... Better retreat into the safety of the week gone by then, where we find but two items of interest waiting for us. The first was our semi-surprise(d) look at the over-use of scope . The second, scraped off our Facebook wall and re-fried here in some nearly-new oil is something altogether crazier... Promoting itself as "The mis-spelled Encyclopaedia", Wikipeetia is either a brilliant jape or some sort of self-recursive mental torture for anal retentives and proofreaders. It's the kind of thing that could keep you up all night, laughing at the...

Today, a wonderful celebration was held for Sophie Woods from Room 8 who has now graduated from Reading Discovery! Sophie, who was joined by her family, friends, and other Reading Discovery children, (Miracle, Jackson and Dante,) leaves the programme on Level Purple 19/20. Mrs Pat Watson, our Reading Discovery teacher, says Sophie has worked very hard to achieve such a wonderful result. A big thank you to everyone at home and at school for doing such a great job supporting Sophie's learning. Well done Sophie, you are a champion!!!

Dr Tony Tan is contesting in the Presidential Elections. I'm sure the Committee will approve his candidature. He fits the criteria stipulated for the Presidential Elections. I have reservations about Dr Tony Tan. He was amongst the Plaintiffs that sued Tang Liang Hong for defamation. He is currently the Chairman of Singapore Press Holdings. The combination of these two facts hardly qualifies him as a defender of free speech. He certainly is not and I am sure he would not pretend to be one. Freedom of Expression is one of the pet issues that I have against the present government and certainly any Presidential candidate that does not share a value system based on free expression would not get my vote. The Online Citizen has updated on their facebook wall the following: "you have to defend your name when slandered says dr tony tan in response to what he feels about using defamation suits to quell opposition" It indicates to me that Dr Tony Tan is essentially the sam...

Wow, I’m still in shock that we haven’t done this already. It should be in the Top Three Most Wanted of our Translators’ FBI. But we here at TFBI always get our man, and when scope foolishly stuck its head out on Sunday , well... Mr. Scope takes me back to my early days as a rookie ’reader. Back then I knew less than I know now, which is sort of like saying you know more about being smacked in the face after you’ve been punched a few times. The idea is firmly there, but the loose brain cells prevent you from fully cementing the idea before the next blow comes. Or something. Anyway, scope is a bad case of over-use. Despite Polish employing a great deal more specific words to describe slight variations of one thing or concept (as opposed to English which will happily recycle one word to mean five different things), some Polish words suddenly leap out at you with a gun, screaming and ranting about being versatile and having a half-cousin in London or Dublin. It is my suspicion that...

Under Section 5 of the Public Order Act 2009, a public assembly shall not take place unless notice of it has been given to the Commissioner under Section 6 and a permit has been granted under Section 7. Effectively, any public assembly without a permit would constitute an offence. So, what constitutes a public assembly? The Public Order Act 2009 makes the assembly of a single individual an offence. Although linguistically it seems impossible to evisage the assembly of one, the law can get away with the creation of fiction for convenience. Section 1 of the Public Order Act spells out the definition of an 'assembly': "assembly" means a gathering or meeting (whether or not comprising any lecture, talk, address, debate or discussion) of persons the purpose (or one of the purposes) of which is — (a) to demonstrate support for or opposition to the views or actions of any person, group of persons or any government; (b) to publicise a cause or campaign; or (c) to mark o...

"sometimes it seems to me that you are grasping ideas that I have tried to express much more fumblingly, in fiction. But you have gone much further and I can't help envying you”. This was written by Virginia Woolf to SF writer Olaf Stapledon. But SF has had some public relations problem since then, not least amongst writers. SF went through a growth spurt in the pulp zine era, then another in the UK during the 1960s. Andy Hedgecock in "From New Wave to SciFi Strange: thematic shifts in the SF short story" (from "Short Fiction in Theory and Practice" 1: 1) covers the genre's history from then to now " The new wave in British science fiction (SF) was a literary movement championed and guided by the London-based magazine New Worlds in the mid- to late 1960s ". He quotes Colin Greenland: " One of the strongest imperatives of Moorcock's editorial policy, ... was to bring sf back into the arena of contemporary fiction, first by incorpora...

Sleepy greetings from a silently stormy Kraków - the sky lies dark and heavy, ponderous, rain-stuffed clouds ready to explode at any moment. Today was the Smallest Proofreader's chrzest (christening), and I've been juggling anglik family and Polish relatives with copious amounts of food and drink. Finally though, the dust has settled and I have five seconds to spare before I plug on with an all-night quest to complete a bevy of interesting articles on various things. Ask no more. Nothing much actually happened this week, interesting-things-to-comment-on-here-wise, although Wednesday did see an old friend drop by for an unwelcome visit: 1a. Entries should be sent until September 12th 2012. 1b. Entries should be sent by September 12th 2012. He's often around, begging for attention and making a nuisance of himself, so let's bolt the door on this bugger once and for all. Now, send is a versatile girl. You can send on , send up , send for , send away , send away for , send i...

Right then ladies and gentlemen, pens down! Following last week’s scintillating batch of brain-busters, let’s have a look at the answers do some explaining. Onwards! Questions one and two were multiple-choice vocab tests. The correct answers are: 1) The pyramids in Egypt are a) monuments , b) statues, c) alien spaceships. (Although Stargate fans know that answer (c) also holds water). 2) Adam Mickiewicz in Kraków rynek is a a) menorah, b) memorial, c) statue . The sometimes subtle differences between memorials , statues and monuments can be summarised thusly: -         Monuments for super-large objects, Wonders of the World etc – think of the adjectival form, monumental . -         Statues for smaller objects ; figures of people etc. Think Lord Nelson atop his column in London’s Trafalgar Square, or Adam M. In Kraków rynek. -         Memorials for any size objec...

The debate on the President's powers is taking a healthy turn. I'm glad that netizens are weighing in with good arguments one way or the other. A truly heartening aspect of this discussion is that most views are expressed within the ambit of the current constitutional framework as set out in our written Constitution. Nobody has illusions about the powers that are provided for. The Ministry of Law's press statement is an accurate rendition of the relevant constitutional provisions. For those readers that don't plan to labour over the Constitution, I would recommend the MinLaw statement for a useful guide. http://www.news.gov.sg/public/sgpc/en/media_releases/agencies/minlaw/press_release/P-20110610-1/AttachmentPar/0/file/Press%20Statement%20from%20Minister%20%28Law%29%20-%20Elected%20President%20_10%20June%202011_.pdf We can potentially debate about whether the Constitution itself ought to be amended to give the President express powers in additional areas or to remov...

School will reopen tomorrow Thursday 16 June. Please bring a bottle of boiled drinking water. See you all there!

We will be closed tomorrow [Wednesday the 15 June] as we are waiting on an engineers structural report to be completed on our school buildings. We are hoping to open again on Thursday but will keep you informed via this blog.

Hey-ho folks, how's it going? Having fun yet, or hurrying to finish some outstanding work? I've always like the ambiguity of that word - is the work late, or really, really brilliant? Hmm... Speaking of brilliant, it's been a pretty fruitful week in terms of discussion-worthy things cropping up at work; in fact something just came up now, which reminded me that we had a meeting today! Let's look back at the action so far: On Monday , a passing academic article had this to say: "The environment meets an important role in the development of obesity." Two things are going wrong here. Firstly, meeting an important role is a non-functional mash-up of (possibly) two different phrases: 1) playing a role (or part ), i.e. 'X plays an important role in Y'; and 2) meeting the needs of , i.e. 'The new bus service meets the needs of the community very well.' The second thing is the definite article at the start of the sentence - it changes environment as a...

Recently our school leaders joined Addington Staff for a shared morning tea. Our eight leaders, two from each Whanau, enjoyed a large selection of savoury and sweet treats. Ms M was quick to point out to them that this was not our usual morning tea fare! Staff and the children enjoyed the opportunity for the social occasion.

Prior to the creation of the Elected presidency, the President of Singapore was pretty much a carbon copy of the British monarch. His constitutional role as the Head of State was largely ceremonial. However, the introduction of constitutional amendments in relation to the office of the President culminated in the adoption of a hybrid version of a Head of State. Is out President identical to the Head of State in the British system? My answer is: no. And of course, at the other end of the spectrum, our President is not at all like the American President whose executive powers are enormous. The Prime Minister and the Cabinet continue to be wielders of executive power in Singapore. I was reading a couple of blog posts on the nature of the President's powers. "Many things a President cannot do." from the blog: Thoughts of a Cynical Investor http://atans1.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/many-things-president-cannot-do/ and "Will a President that speaks up cause a SIngapore ...