If you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people.

"What democracy did is to give the poor a vote. And it moves power from the market place to the polling station; from the wallet to the ballot."

~~ Tony Benn, former UK MP and minister.

Kudos to both Decentguy1 and Disgruntled for sharing these interesting clips.

There we watched a Taiwanese talk show (in mandarin cum hokkien dialect) commenting our democracy system. You are unlikely to find that being telecast in our national TV.

You may be more familiar with some of the arguments presented in the show if you regularly surf around the local socio-political blogosphere.

The next video is pretty enlightening about the history of democracy:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

While we savour the show, we have to ask ourselves this question: what is the price of democracy?

Le HongYi Fracas

"..the term ‘white horse’ was used to identify sons of influential persons to ensure that such enlistees were not given preferential treatment, and that medical classification and vocational assignment are scrupulously fair."

~~ Cedric Foo, ex Minister of State for Defence, 12th Nov 2003, explaining the classification for national servicemen in the Singapore Armed Forces, alleged for according certain special privileges to.

A junior Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) officer mass-mailed his letter of complaint to the top management in SAF, not forgetting to copy almost everyone else in some of the organization's internal mailing lists and was reprimanded for breaking the chain of command.

This caused an outbreak of discussions, be it online or around coffee tables recently.

He was touted as a self-less whistle blower. It is admirable he has the guts to speak up against the behemoth and escalate his grievance to the people up there.

But one little thing proves unfavorable against our princely hero.
He is the son of our leader.
He is supposed to be one of the elites.
That distant him a little bit from the common mass.

Then there were the critics of the young conscript, whom was considered brash and haughty for his action.

I would like to highlight some interesting points, beside the heavy local accent, found in come-back-kid, Rockster's blog .

It amazed me how careless and reckless some of our SAF officers are and was prompted to cast some doubt on them holding up the plots of our nation's defence.

To end this with a note of lighter mood, please enjoy Mr Brown's podcast.

Somber Irony

手术很成功,不过病人已经死了。

~~ 电影 《流氓医生》 (梁朝伟饰) 的一句台词。


I was filled with a sense of injustice after viewing Channel 8 News video about a mother losing her life after giving birth recently.

Is this a case of bureaucracy directly or indirectly causing harm to the common people?

According to our leader, we have an efficient health care service, albeit one which is not free, that is expected to be top class in the world.
Why would saving a person's life be obstructed by red tape?

However there are always two sides to every coin.

The concerned hospital has shed some light on the tragic event from their perspective in the official press and it is suggested the mother was suffering from complications after giving birth and the medical staff had put in their best effort to save her.

The official news reports can be found in CNA and TodayOnline.