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I am not going to waste any time blogging about whether Kong Hee and the 'gang of four' had indeed committed criminal breach of trust.  That matter is now clearly before the court.  If they are innocent, let them be cleared.  If they are guilty, let them be punished.  At this stage, without any indication of the extent of evidence at the Prosecution's disposal, it is hard to make any rational assessment of the strength of the Prosecution case.  There is something about this saga that I find rather amusing:  the Pastor's wife and the "Crossover Project".  I know that sex sells and most marketing agencies will vouch for the effectiveness of sex appeal in advertising.  However, there is a certain incongruity when the conceptual underpinning in the "crossover project" is to appeal to baser instincts in man in order to spread the message of God. The claim being made by apologists of the Crossover Project is that the music career of Sun Ho is inten...

Much was debated during the Presidential Elections in 2011 about the power of the Elected President in Singapore.  There were those that argued for a fully intrusive and almost combative role for the President in scrutinising the executive arm of government.  There were those that argued that the Elected President's role was no more than that which is fulfilled by the Queen of England as the Head of State (with the exception of a constitutionally reserved discretion when it came to the use of our reserves).  Others (like myself) contended that where the constitution was silent, the President could take a pro-active role and that this may be politically necessitated by the fact that the President could carry the mandate of the electorate (giving rise to the evolution of a constitutional convention).  Whatever the shades of argument, one thing was very clear: There was no dispute as to whether the President had discretionary powers in relation to the matters specifical...

Recently I've come across two lengthy interpretations of this poem, one on Edmund Prestwich's blog and another in Widdowson's "Practical Stylistics". The poem's new to me. Here is it Memory One had a lovely face, And two or three had charm, But charm and face were in vain Because the mountain grass Cannot but keep the form Where the mountain hare has lain. The structure of the reasoning is " X Because Y ", but the connection between the parts isn't clear. Nor are the parts themselves simple - there's artifice in the language, certain words are emphasized, and the imagery can be read in different ways. In particular, the hare/grass image suggests that memory has less permanence than charm has, but there's also a suggestion of memory being involuntary. As an experiment Widdowson re-orders the lines then tries a prose version, but as he points out, doing so only makes the contradictions more evident. Changing "Cannot but" to ...

Dino Eli Gallery, 81 Hester Street, June 22-30, 2012 Katherine Daniels  Tine Kindermann Meghann Snow These days there are no more secrets. Everyone announces everything that’s on their mind, whether on a Facebook status, a Tweet, or an IM. The very texture of our lives has become the basis for both communication and entertainment, and art is left waiting its turn in line. Any form of organized artifice is immediately suspect, like TV shows, media coverage of political and social events, and even the humble novel.  Yet even as we seek to expose ourselves, we do so in a fashion that is revelatory of only the most accessible and mainstream aspects of human character; like the bawdy shows of the Victorian Era that became Vaudeville—overacting and slapstick—the everyday can only show what wants to be shown. Every one of us contains secrets that can never be public, and it takes an artifice born in secret to express this. The artist traffics in versions of truth, such as an image t...

The issue of whether punishment fits the crime has been the flavour of the week for me with two previous posts dealing with the question of corporal punishment for vandalism. Hot on the heels of that we have Dr Woffles Wu being fined $1000 for abetting in providing misleading information to the police in relation to a traffic offence. The facts as reported in the newspapers seem to suggest that after Woffles Wu had commited speeding offences, his elderly employee had admitted to the commission of the offences. When I first read that I assumed that Dr Wu would have been charged under the Penal Code. The obvious provision that I had in mind was s.182 of the Penal Code. False information, with intent to cause a public servant to use his lawful power to the injury of another person 182. Whoever gives to any public servant any information which he knows or believes to be false, intending thereby to cause, or knowing it to be likely that he will thereby cause, such public servant to use...

The UK Sports Minister Hugh Robertson has revealed that the expenses for the London Olympics would be within the budget allocated for the games. A budget of 9.3 billion pounds was set in 2007. Hugh Robertson has indicated that about 500 million pounds would be returned to the Treasury as they are within the budget. This is how you come out smelling like a rose. Set a high budget with a huge contingency in the budget (2 billion pounds) and then keep your spending within the budget. You get lauded for your fiscal responsibility. Compare that to the heat receieved by Singapore's former Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports, Vivian Balakrishnan. The budget set for the Youth Olympic Games was $104 million and the spending went up to $387 million. Although the Olympic Games cannot be compared with the Youth Olympic Games in terms of logistics and expenses, I am trying to draw a comparison with the way expectation management is done. The organising committee for th...

Whilst the sticker lady issue rages on, I think this is an appropriate time to reconsider our sentencing philosophy. I blogged about this two days ago. In the course of reading the Parliamentary debates in relation to the Punishment for Vandalism Bill 1966, it is clear that one concern was playing itself out. It appears that there were widespread instances of vandalism in Singapore and it is also evident that political slogans (anti-colonial, anti-american and pro-vietcong) were surfacing. I did not live through that period and it is hard to say if the events were as widespread as alleged or if this was just exaggeration to gain leverage for insisting on caning as a punishment. Unrelated to the debate on the Vandalism Bill, other debates in Parliament in 1965 to 1967 reveal references to acts of vandalism that are politically motivated. There are references to Barisan Socialis being responsible for instigating these 'anti-nationalist' actions. However, in the debate on t...

Dino Eli Gallery, 81 Hester Street, June 15-21, 2012 Amanda Browder Rachel Dwan Megan Hays These days there are no more secrets. Everyone announces everything that’s on their mind, whether on a Facebook status, a Tweet, or an IM. The very texture of our lives has become the basis for both communication and entertainment, and art is left waiting its turn in line. Any form of organized artifice is immediately suspect, like TV shows, media coverage of political and social events, and even the humble novel.  Yet even as we seek to expose ourselves, we do so in a fashion that is revelatory of only the most accessible and mainstream aspects of human character; like the bawdy shows of the Victorian Era that became Vaudeville—overacting and slapstick—the everyday can only show what wants to be shown. Every one of us contains secrets that can never be public, and it takes an artifice born in secret to express this. The artist traffics in versions of truth, such as an image that is presented...

The sticker lady might get charged and eventually convicted under the Vandalism Act. But, one thing is for sure: She will not be subject to caning. Whilst caning is provided for an offence under s.2 of the Vandalism Act, women are exempted from corporal punishment generally. Caning is not the norm for most offences in Singapore and it is reserved for very specific crimes. Whether sticker lady (Samantha Lo) should be let off the hook or punished for vandalism is an issue that has been raging on blogosphere. There are those that take the view that this is a form of artistic expression and the state must give a little bit of leeway and that she should be let off with a warning. There are still others that take the view that a law has been infringed and there is good reason for having laws against vandalism and exceptions cannot be made (for fear of a descent into chaos.) My view on this? As much as I believe that artistic expression needs to be spontaneous and not contrived and as...

School will be open today at the usual time. Please make sure that children have warm clothing and footwear as there is still a lot of snow on the ground. Please drive safely.

School Closed again, Thursday 7 June as conditions are too dangerous.

Fear. It cripples you. It makes you a lesser being than what you are capable of. It causes you to watch your step and avoid paths, though noble, are known to have contained traps in the past. Fear. It envelopes your consciousness in ways that few human emotions are capable of. It operates unseen and seeks justification in the most rational of arguments that mind can conjure. (After all, don't we often claim close links between bravery and foolhardiness. Conversely, we never do really state that the so-called rational man is often a coward for he seeks to cover up his fear with the respectable cloak of reason.) On 2nd June 2012, I did something which seemed simple enough. I turned up at Hong Lim to show my support to the cause of the ex-ISA detainees, their families and friends. I had work commitments that day and didn't think that I could make it. But since the event was scheduled to end at 7 pm and since I was able to rush out of the office at 5.30pm , I thought skipp...

This is an old piece I did for the 22nd anniversary of the Marxist conspiracy detentions. Today, 2nd June 2012, Maruah has organised an event at Speaker's Corner, Hong Lim Park to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the detentions. So, I think it is appropriate for me to resurrect this piece.... Chng Suan Tse v Minister for Home Affairs (1998) SLR 132 The case involved Operation Spectrum and the primary issue was over the court’s ability to review the Executive’s decision to detain under the Internal Security Act. It proved to be a landmark decision as the Court of Appeal chose to apply an objective test in assessing the discretion of the Executive instead of applying a purely subjective test as the courts had done in the past. Prior to this case, the position of the courts was to adopt a subjective approach as in the case of Lee Mau Seng v Minister for Home Affairs [1971] 2 MLJ 137. What was the implication of the Chng Suan Tse decision? The Internal Security Act demands that th...

Coleridge's writing showed a keen interest in psychology, which at the time was developing from a branch of philosophy to a more empirical science. The implications for poetry remain relevant today. In "Poetry Review" (Autumn 2011) Maitreyabandhu wrote that for Coleridge, Imagination " is a faculty that unites and transcends reason and emotion and points us toward a deeper understanding of life beyond the limitations of the rational " and that it " unifies the contents of experience by discovering something within them, some underlying meaning or significance, inaccessible to ordinary consciousness ". In such discussions non-rationality, unity, and deep/fundamental truths are commonly combined, and not just under the banner of Romanticism. For example, in "ARTEMISpoetry" (Nov 2011) M.R. Peacocke wrote " I believe that my rather formal upbringing and a rigid kind of academic education modified and manipulated me to a considerable extent; ...