TR EMERITUS

Tan Kin Lian Most of our ministers and top civil servants are quite myopic and narrow in their thinking. They follow the practices adopted a few decades ago, and often do not review how these practices should be changed. One example is the ban on musical instruments on procession for Thaipusam. A second example is the double... 

It is Budget time again and part of our good old PAP-controlled state media’s job is to prepare Singaporeans not to expect too much from their government. Then, when the Budget is finally released Singaporeans will forget that yet again they have not been told how many hundreds of millions or billions of dollars our government... 

Talking about Western liberal democracies, the Economist wrote sometime back it is worth remembering that in the distant and not-so-distant past, the authorities took it as read that certain ways of thinking and speaking were so manifestly dangerous and disruptive to society that they should be prevented in every possible way....