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Last Friday, PM Lee Hsien Loong shared via Facebook an article by BBC about how the Singapore Hawker industry might be dying. In sharing the article, he wrote: "I hope Singaporeans try their hand at the hawker trade so that we can keep this unique aspect of Singapore life alive. - LHL". While he may have had good intentions in publishing it to 'encourage' youths it seems that, as usual, the words were simply said without any real intention to follow the 'encouragements' with any actions.

Last year in his National Day Rally speech, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had some good news for polytechnic graduates and their parents. After a year-long review, he said, the Government had decided to offer 3,000 more university places a year by 2020. The bulk of these places, which will be created by expanding the Singapore Institute of Technology and SIM University, will go to polytechnic graduates, many of whom increasingly aspire to have a degree. But even as the Government opens up more university places, it has been urging young Singaporeans, including diploma holders, to consider other pathways.

In the ST Forum page today (18 May), ST published a letter from a Mr S. Ramamirtham (‘Time for managing agent to come clean’), essentially attacking WP in the recent AIM saga in Parliament. In fact, WP has already come clean. Ms Lim has already explained in Parliament as well as in the follow-up media statements, stating how FMSS came about becoming the managing agent of Aljunied TC.

After a five-month-and- counting dispute between the PAP and the WP over town council management, I went away thinking that everyone had blood on their hands. And in a way, that's as it should be. What the whole time-consuming episode has shown us is that town council management is absolutely drenched with politicking. In one corner, we have the PAP, which sold its town councils' IT software to a $2 company owned by former MPs, which then leased its use back to the town councils, with a one-month termination clause should an opposition party take over.

Recently a resident from Chua Chu Kang, Serene Tham,  contacted us to publish her story about an injury she sustained on a faulty staircase and the total lack of support she received. [Original Story Here] Since then, she has indeed received a response from Zaqy Mohamad through his facebook page. Read the response here. 

The Tribunal to reinvestigate the investigation of the Shane Todd death is taking a different dimension. While the objective of all parties concerned is the truth, it has become a test of professionalism of our police force and the justice system. But that is not all. It is also a competition between our very best professionals and their skills in investigating a suicide/murder case against the expertise of the ‘best’ in the US..

The AIM/town council saga has continued with PAP’s Teo Ho Pin firing off round after round at WP even in the face of outright rebuttals by WP Chairman Sylvia Lim. The whole affair has degenerated into a squabble over numbers, as well as detailed comparisons between AIM and FMSS to see which company presents a greater potential conflict of interest.