Originally posted by LazerLordz:

Go back and read your Military Nuts posts..boy they sure made a huge stink...You can start by cleaning up that mess

Not just Military Nutz. Speaker's Corner also.

Originally posted by 14_boy:

Does anyone of you have problems with your mother tongue, and is there anyone who feels that Singapore should ban a 2 lang.? And How many of you take the 'B' syllabus?

You want to ban the mother tongues in Singapore just because you have problems learning it?

Come'on. Get real.

Side tracking abit, but my view is that irregardless of whatever revolutionary changes to the language curriculums, the children in schools would only preceive such changes as mere shortcuts or easier routes towards getting better grade.

The prevaliant emphasis towards improvement in Education has always been based on extrinsic factors, such as curriculum re-structuring, teachers' training and developments, introducing and implementing more and more sidelining committies, programmes and activities for the students.

While the above can indeed help raise GRADES to certain extend, why has the intrinsic focus been largely left unfocused.

A child's personal interest remains the primary motivator for his/her own learning - be it a language, science or maths subject.

Learning takes place under both formal and informal settings.

Nobody needs to teach a child about BayBlades or Pokemons - they'll memorize everything about these cartoon characters simply because the children held an interest in them in the first place.

By using terms such as 'Mastery' or even worse, percentage-based breakdowns to vaguely assign how much 'portion' a language should be learned, this approach is certainly quite some way off apart from what the spirit and essence of true education should be.

Grades are good only when they are used as vague measurements for assessment on Learning.

They should be not used in the current continuing fashion as specific end objectives for Education no more. But sadly, we all know this day is not going to come anytime soon.

Originally posted by SibeiSuayKia:

Singapore could , well , reclaim artificial islands on international waters...
well we can keep on going like....creating a few singapore "shaped" cities..
all around South East Asia...

commercially attack? don't get it, all i know is that when you commercially attack a country...you don't make the most...Take the Suzhou industrial park for example ...
a very bad investment =/

International waters are called international waters specifically because the territories DO NOT belong to any country.

And you want to splunge billions from the country's hard earned national reserves to buy rocks and soil, dump them into some spot in the international waters to create an artificial man-made obstruction in the middle of the international shipping route to further kill off our maritime industry?

What else can I say? You're a genius.

Originally posted by :

You're real smart peni's. You made such an interesting observation, did you think it was a casino because the building was built in the shape of C A S I N O? Or did you see the form of black jack table or maybe jack pot machines being installed? Or maybe they were making the world's biggest roulette table cast in concrete?

If you bothered to look for a huge white sign board posted at the front of the construction site, you will be able to tell who is the developer, who is the main con, who are the architects, type of project and project duration.

The new development you said, is lemme see about 5 stories high with a huge basement? Its the new bus terminal in sentosa.

Originally posted by yeebas:

Very well said. *claps hands* actually you're no difference from the government who gives one sided views of the casino, except that you're full of exaggerated problems. HEY, anyone wanna crap out the exaggerated benefits?

Okay.the casino itself should be a multi-entertainment resort. The casino should have cheap attractions, super dangerous rides, super cheap food, super cheap lodging. However, the casino room itself is restricted to a 10X10 metal container box. In this case, it is the father who goes to gamble while the other part of the family splurge on the cheapo attractions and so on. Wouldnt this plan work? Here, profit will start coming in due to tourists screaming cheap ah cheap ah.

Nobody can fully predict or quantify on negative social effects that will be created should the casino idea gets through.

Let's just say mine is a prudent estimate.

When 35% of your population becomes hopeless gambling addicts, 10% of the population requires IMH consulation for gambling related complusives, family violence cases rise by 300% due to gambling related cause, marriage divorce cases goes up by 150% from the cause and banruptcy numbers goes up by 500%, and crime rates increase by 50% after being TIRELESSLY suppressed and curbed down by the police, you will know that we have a world class casino in our very own backyard.

As with my stand in the past casino related threads, my vote's still a big 'NO' towards that bloody casino.

If short term casino profits benefit CAN actually be prioritized over the detrimental long impact of addiction and related social problems spin-offs here in Singapore one day, that day will mark the begining of a new black era for society.

Forget about civics and moral education in schools, cos it will be simply impossible to justify to our kids will not be able to see the justification on why the police in the anti-vice branch in the CID is busying chasing after bookies and gamblers on one end of the island while red carpets are being rolled out on another to warmly welcome yet another similar class of gamblers in on the other.

I believe this is the first birthday thread in Speaker's Corner?

Anyway, happy birthday.

Hi Goh Meng San, thanks for your correction.

Typical Sammyboy forum post.

Scrapped??

I think not.

With even cities in China experiencing heavy traffic congested to send official over to Singapore to study the COE system, the mechanism has literally became yet another 'beautiful' masterpiece creation in the field of statecraft.

The scheme I supposed, can be described to be a national pride - from a statecraft point of perspective.

If there's any consolation, at least we can be assured that more people overseas will get to know about the us.

Just mention the 'COE' word and we'll have the car buyers all over the globe grumbling 'There! Singapore's the place which started this idea lor!'.

Originally posted by The Barracuda:

But how abt they way money is raised and how it is spent ? I think the public has the right to know since these organisations runs on public funds.

Ok. Let me just break up the series of questions that you have just asked.

First, concerning the way monies are raised.

All public donation activities have to acquire a CID permit before a fund raising activity is legal. In the process, a proposal detailing with the required information would be reviewed. Hence, there is at least one check on the manner in which fund raising activities can be monitored.

Your second question concerns how the funds are spent. The answer for this will be the standard management answer - 'It Depends'.

Different charitable organizations operate under different circumstances, size, and with different financial backing, resource avalibility as well as level for a start. Their target receipients and the type of attention and care required will also vary very significantly, and a treatment/welfare offered by one charitable organization may also differ widely from another charitable organization focusing on another segment of the population. Most importantly, the vision and direction from the steering Directors and Management team will play the ultimate crucial factor in determining how best limited resources should be spent.

The complexity of actual operations vs environmental vs resource and organizational aims, direction and manner of achieving is simply too big to be governed by a rigid set of protocols or doctrines.

However, this will result in exploitable loopholes especially for organizations with weak or inadequet financial controls - which is why the Board of Directors and the Internal Audit Committee would have come into the picture again playing a very major role in a somewhat self-defending sequence should we ever have a case of mismanagement taking place.

I share the view that the general public has and should be entitled to their rights to have a transparent understanding on the areas and ways that their donated monies have or would be spent out later.

A member of the public has in fact written in to the Straits Times with the suggestion that to best balance between a charitable organization's concern with the cost of printing out thick volume of audited annual reports against the rights of doners to understand where and how their monies have been utilized, an online version of the finacial statements should be posted online in the organization website for public scrutiny.

Sad to say, we have seen very little number, or prehaps even zero figures from the charitable organizations to take up this call.

If the general voice from society intends to urge the government to move away from a draconian style of commanding and regulatory dictations, then I express my diappointment in their lack of proactiveness in their actions to increase public awareness on fund utilization which can be achieved both effectively and efficiently throught the adoption of the Straits Times contributor's suggestion.

Maybe we should even go one step further, and that is to have a senior journalist, editor or executive personnel from a news reporting media / organization to sit in on the Board of Directors or Executive Committee as well.

This way, at least we would be able to have better assurance on the level of transparency through the presence of a supposed ethical and professional tasked with the role of a knowledge and news disseminating figure.

Well... If memory serves me correct, charity organizations have to spent out a percentage of their collected donation or fund raising proceeds in a Financial Year. Think this percentage is 50% or something.

For the remainant proceed collected in say, FY2003 and not utilized in charity related areas, there is also a limited timeframe for these sums to be used in the following FYs.

Failure of fund utilization on the stipulated percentage amount for under both current collected proceeds and carried forward balances would then render an organization on the loss of their charitable organization status. Any remaining amounts will then be subjected to tax.

I'm not too sure if public auditors are mandatory. But one thing for sure, the board of directors and the Internal Audit Committee are ususally the frontline check for guard against discrepencies.

It is however important to note that the term 'public organizations' would also be subjected to differences in procedures, dependent on whether an organization is classified under business or associate organization.

At the most extreme end of the scenario, the Commercial Affairs Dept (CAD) or CPIB could also get involved in the event of suspected fraud cases or mismanagement complaints.

The above are based from many donkey years ago lectures. If there are any mistakes/inaccuracy, someone please kindly point them out. Thanks.

Originally posted by robertteh:

Singapore needs hinterland which will provide greater resources, cheaper labor and water to provide for our needs of a projected 5 million population.

If Malaysia is to suspend or cancell the causeway bridge project, well we may leave it at that to avoid incurring higher costs to our economy.

On the other hand, if they are serious on building a causeway bridge, we can capitalize on it and try to propose an MRT system to link up the whole peninsula up to Thailand in a bigger rail system to integrate Singapore to the whole hinterland.

Conditions for agreeing to causeway bridge can include: Future linking of MRT of Singapore to rail or fast-speed monorail which will join to Thailand, Indo-China and China. It is then worth our while to pay for additional costs due to causeway bridge.

It will of course, be in Singapore's best interest and advantage if we could really gain access into the Malaysian's rail system share of pie.

However, considering the importance and economic attractive of such lucrative projects, I doubt any firm apart from one which bears a Bumiputra nature will be 'qualified' to get the contact.

America, China, Taiwan and Japan.

Singapore has so MUCH investments in these countries. If these nations really decide to go to war, we will really be in the soup then.

Originally posted by Qitai:

Did we ever propose that? Got source?

Come think of it, I'm not sure myself if the proposal had been formally announced. I learnt about the plan for the extension across the bridge from someone who was directly involved in the MRT electical system's design, construction and maintenance.

Apparently some hitches from the Malaysian side obstructed the process. Otherwise, the extension might have been build also during the time when the NS line got extended to Woodlands. Even now if you look out of the window towards the Causeway's direction when you are on the NS line, you can still see a plot of land where infrasture pillars and rail can be constructed over still being left vacant as part of a small neighbourhood park.

Originally posted by burntan:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Fcuknig amzanig huh?

Hmm. Ok let me correct myself on my earlier post.

The above demonstration of another alien form typing is also out.

As long as the essential points and ideas gets thru, why should we be over particular?

This is a forum, not a grammer school.

But of course, I'll draw a clear line at those 't3chn0' kind of alien typings some forumites like to use everynow and then.

They finally realized how silly and negative that curved bridge's construction is going impact on bilateral ties.

It's funny how we can all benefit from a significantly cheaper method of easing the daily tranffic on the Causeway when all the Malaysian Government needs to do is to agree for our MRT line to be extended from either Kranji or Marsiling straight into the JB City district.

Oh well.

A great general?

For his massacre of millions and launch of genocide, the term 'Great Butcher' would be more fitting on Hitler.

Originally posted by paperduck:

while u'll ppl still fighting in this thread.........Temasek already gains control of more than 50% of NOL today liao..

Dun worry. We're just sharing opinions. I dun reckon anyone in this thread has plans for a Temasek fan club just yet.

Originally posted by paperchicken:

next time kids will play in the carpark.

No worries.

Maybe LTA will then follow what town councils are currently doing and put nails on the carpark ground too...

Originally posted by Qitai:

The world should really move towards flexi-hours and flexi-weekchoice - i.e. you can choose to work nth hours and which day of the week you want to work.

This way, everyone gets to decide how he/she wants to balance between work and living. Also, flex-weekchoice will allow services to be available 7 days a week and possibly early in the morning or late into the night if enough people wants to work those hours.

And then you get paid according to your output.

Just my ideal world where everyone has a choice to live the way he/she likes.

I wish this could be so too. But reality check, this might only be more commonly accepted in 'family-friendlier' countries such as the States or European countries.

Singapore or even any of our surrounding SEA neighbours?

Quite hard to see it coming on in large scale.

I saw that talk show too. Personally I find the whole issue ridiculous.

Instead of fortifying up the neighbourhood with nails, why dun both parties - the town council and kids come to a compromise solution?

Dun use the real soccer ball and substitiute with it with those softer plastic toy types available in any shopping centres lah.