littleworkpage

2011 was a watershed year in the politics of Singapore.  With the General Elections and Presidential Elections sending strong signals to the ruling PAP and with the empowering effect of social media, the scene was set for an interesting 2012. Much has happened in the political arena.  The PAP would probably place emphasis on the National Conversation as a major political highlight.  Most citizens would probably remember this year as the year of sex in politics and the civil service.  I am sure there must be plenty of other mainstream and social media perspectives on the year that has just whizzed past us.  I don't plan to cover the same ground.  Perhaps a survey of Constitutional developments might be of some interest. From a Constitutional standpoint, this has been an interesting year.  There have been some developments in the law and not all of them are positive from the perspective of citizens' rights.  THE HOUGANG BY-ELECTION CASE This was a c...

Social media has been abuzz with questions relating to the role of Action Information Management Pte Ltd in the leaseback agreement with 14 PAP Town Councils.  There have been suggestions by some netizens that there should be a CPIB investigation and other suggestions that AIM is but an example of profiteering at the expense of citizens.  Based on information that is so far available: 1.  The 3 directors of AIM are PAP members. Two of those 3 are also shareholders of AIM 2.  Dr Teo Ho Pin, the coordinating chairman is reported to have claimed that AIM is a PAP owned company. (technically, the company is owned by Chandra Das and Lau Ping Sum and not PAP, the political party.) 3.  The company has a paid up capital of $2. 4.  Dr Teo has stated that there was a tender process for the sale and leaseback of the computer systems and that only AIM made a bid even though there were 5 companies that collected the forms. 5.  Dr Teo also confirmed that only the so...

Jon Stone frequently uses repetition - within and between his poems. His poems also repeat phrases from other sources. Repetition's a technique I rarely use, so I thought I'd use his School of Forgery book to examine the effect. Repetition Various technical terms are described on the Wikipedia page on rhetorical repetition (Anaphora - repetition at the start of lines, Epistrophe - repetition at the end of each clause, etc). The list of effects below comes from Al Filreis' Repetition page and elsewhere. Sound/ritual - "Primitive religious chants from all cultures show repetition developing into cadence and song" (Filreis) Providing structure - "a refrain, which serves to set off or divide narrative into segments, as in ballads, or, in lyric poetry, to indicate shifts or developments of emotion. Such repetitions may serve as commentary, a static point against which the rest of the poem develops, or it may be simply a pleasing sound pattern to fill out a f...

When readers engage with a poem, they pump in effort and attention. Where does that energy go? Usually it seeps out as paraphrasable meaning and emotion, having soaked up through the words. Sometimes the words are less permeable, so the reader might need to do some fracking - initiating small, controlled explosions under the surface to release the content. But suppose that route to the surface is blocked - where does the thwarted energy go? Readers might simply give up, cutting their losses. Alternatively, attention might spread sideways, focusing on the language, so that sound is given the role of generating meaning - not the same type of meaning obtainable through paraphrase, more the effect of a musical phrase (from now on I'll use "meaning" and "music" to distinguish the 2 effects). This "music" is often present as a secondary effect in paraphrasable poetry. Take for example the following from Eliot's "Prufrock" Of restless nights ...

Palmergate is yesterday’s news.   Let’s move on.   He’s human.   He erred.   He has resigned.   This is now a personal issue for him to deal with his family.   What remains to be sorted out is the vacant Parliamentary seat.   Even though the current judicial interpretation of the Constitution would result in a full discretion for the PM to decide whether or not to hold a by-election in Punggol East, it would be politically prudent for the PM to call for one in order to avoid the further hardening of moderate voters against the PAP.   Amidst all this, and amidst online discussion about the undesirably close (though not necessarily improprietous nor unlawful) relationship between PA and PAP (with Michael Palmer and Laura Ong providing the useful metaphor of being in bed with each other), the Workers’ Party’s   Sylvia Lim has revealed that a certain Action Information Management Pte Ltd manages the computing and financial system for PAP run To...

I read the following article online: http://www.todayonline.com/Singapore/EDC121215-0000040/Punggol-East-back-in-the-spotlight The Headline is "Punggol East back in the spotlight."  The sub-headline reads: "Many residents aren't thinking of a by-election yet; they're still in shock over the loss of an MP who was clearly popular." My first reaction in reading the sub-headline was to think that unfortunately most Singaporeans don't seem to appreciate the need for Parliamentary representation in a democracy.  As I read further, I came across the following:  "...for many of the residents, the thought of going to the polls again has not sunk in yet. They are still reeling in shock over the loss of an MP who was clearly popular among the residents." The impression that was building in me was that a majority of Punggol East residents are uninterested in the issue of having a by-election.  Further down in the article comes the following: "Among th...

The Speaker of Parliament and MP for Punggol East, Michael Palmer has resigned from his post as Speaker, his position as the member of Parliament and his membership in the PAP.  It appears that he has had a relationship with a member of the Peoples' Association.  I had blogged earlier this year about the Yaw Shin Leong affair and my stance on the extra marital affairs and the duties and functions of elected representatives.  I don't think that Parliamentarians and ministers should be judged on the basis of what goes on in their private lives.  What is important is the way in which the public official conducts his duties.  http://www.article14.blogspot.sg/2012/02/politics-of-affairs.html Now that Palmer's seat is vacant, we again get to visit the question of whether a by-election should or would be held.  After Yaw Shin Leong's resignation, several members of the PAP made public statements about how the calling of a by-election is entirely at the discretion ...

It has been quite some time since the High Court delivered its judgment in the Hougang by-election case. I haven't found adequate time to read through the judgment in order to write about it. Thanks to a couple of hours of waiting time at the Hong Kong airport last month, I penned down a few quick thoughts. Finally, I have added some finishing touches and here it is. Better late than never, I guess. Firstly, let me recall what I stated about the Constitutional position on vacancy of seats in Parliament in an earlier blog post way back in February this year: "Anyone that states that a by-election in Hougang is not mandated by law is talking stark nonsense." http://article14.blogspot.sg/2012/02/by-election-when-not-whether.html Now that the High Court has decided that "there is no requirement in the Constitution to call elections to fill elected Member vacancies" and that whether "to call or not to call an election to fill an elected Member vacancy is a decis...

(Hopefully this doesn't completely break  the page) Wow, new material on the Bad Article that isn't totally irrelevant to our purposes here! Well, I did say that although it was 'the end', we might still sometimes post new things. So, here we are. Now then, I do see some confusion between what bolts and screws are, how they work, and how they're used linguistically. Russian seems to have a hard time doing this in English, but it's a universal problem. The words nut and screw also have loads of idiomatic meanings too, most of which are dirty, some of which are mentioned above. By the way, if you have any trouble reading the picture (!), I think you can click on it and see a larger version. Or, you could go and stare at it on our Facebook page where you'll definitely get a larger version. Well, that's it for now. Back to work! Any questions, put them down below or over at BA HQ . :)