New developments to deal with population increase concerns:
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1251352/1/.html
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1251363/1/.html
Still our Orchard roads and gardens will be jammed with people during festivals.
Posts made by Rational_Parent
-
RE: Are you ready for 7 million people on tiny Singapore?
-
RE: Lazy & Low Attention Span Kid
There is a counsellor in the primary school where my DS used to get his education. Many school counsellors have connections to other professionals such as child psychiatrists, education specialists, and so on.
You might want to check with your respective schools to get counselling from the school counsellors and perhaps also get proper recommendations. It might be a better route than going to a polyclinic where most doctors are general practitioners and interns who will probably refer you to counsellors based in GH anyway. -
RE: What to do: Fighting in School
I think this is only me…
Boys fighting, to me, is a process of growing up. This is where a boy learn how and when to draw a line between right and wrong, learn not to cross certain boundaries, learn that aggression benefits no one, learn to stand up to bully and protect oneself, and learn to defend the weak if necessary.
But too much fighting means a boy has a character flaw, may be anti-social, may have a superiority complex and so on. Conversely, if a boy does not get into fights at all could mean that he’s anti-social, has inferiority complex and so on.
Bottom line fighting to me is not all that wrong if within reasons (e.g. was constantly provoked, had to stand up to a bully) particularly when playing with others. It also gives me opportunities to educate the child and find out traits I might not know if DS doesn’t gets into a fight. I rather my DS fight and learn when young than when they have a mind of their own. I’ll be more worried if a boy has never once fought during his childhood.
As for punishment, it’s still the ‘Carrot and the Stick’ method for me. Deny the child what they love to do most for a period is my preferred punishment. For example, one of my children love to play computer games and chat with other gamers. Depending on the reason for a fight, teachers input and frequency of occurrences, the duration of the computer ban is imposed accordingly. I’ll be lenient if my boy fight in defence of himself or others, and will teach him other ways to deal it given the same situation.
Surely we all fought before and learn something when we were kids, don’t we? -
RE: Tragic accident at Tampinese - pls wear cycling helmets!
All these online chatters from different social medias do help. It can help to prompt the authorities to act immediately. Not really sure whether what HSK announced today would help much though.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1250865/1/.html -
RE: The PM now admits.........
Dora1:
You're genuinely truthful, rational, and impartial in your views. Admirable! :salute:Actually ST is one of the better MSM, esp after GE2011. To give them credit, they are improving the coverage on the other side of the fence, although it's still not totally impartial. But I'm happy that there is some improvement. Seriously, after Sat's results, what else can MSM report besides the hard truth that people are seriously pissed off.
But if you look at the other MSM, e.g. CNA.... did anybody catch the commentary on CNA on Sat night?? The so-called analysis??!
And anyone reads lian he zao bao? When I read it at my IL's place occasionally, I sometimes doubt that I am reading the newspaper of another country - why is what is written so different from my own experience, or even ST! -
RE: Punggol East By-Election coming ? MP steps down
Dora1:
An excellent and valuable feedback from someone within the know. Thank you for this enlightenment. The civil servant you spoke about reminds me of Dr. Toh Chin Chye, the caring type that is very in touch with folks in the street. It's this type of stateman we want most in the government. Apparently, he was sidelined by his party for siding with the people.3boys
I totally agree that we are very fortunate and SG is indeed a lot better than many other countries. However, we are where we are because of the hardwork if the old PAP in the 70s and 80s, and of course our grandparents and parents. The PAP of today cannot take the credit for what we have today. In the stat board that I'm working now, I have the privilege to work with an ex super scale civil servant who was still mentoring us until he passed away at 81 years old. According to the stories that he shared, the emphasis was always about the people, think of ways to save tax payers money. Also, the senior civil servants were rises from the bottom so they can make sound decisions very fast. But the senior civil servants of today are scholars, dun dare to make decisions as they are not familiar. Also, there is always the cost recovery that we have to bear in mind so all the stat board and ministries have to find ways to increase income to meet the cost recovery KPI.
So yes, we should be grateful to PAP for making SG as successful as it is today, but dun misplace the gratitude. It's not the current office holders.
And the reason ppl are in favour of WP is exactly that, we can see that the new PAP is going downhill and is bringing SG with it. That's why we need and opp like WP to slap them and put them back on track. And I agree with LTK, WP dun have the resources to replace pap so this is our best way out now -
RE: The PM now admits.........
ChiefKiasu:
Well, one thing is certain - many, including politicians have been reading posts from this forum! Can't kill a source where valuable feedback can be derived. And licencing will stifle inputs. My reckoning, KSP is safe; and so is your job, chief. :evil:This sounds ominous. Sounds like they are planning to turn on more screws on social media. Licensing on the cards? I wonder.
-
The PM now admits.........
SINGAPORE: Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has admitted the government did not have 20/20 foresight, resulting in problems with inadequate infrastructure in the country.
He was speaking at the “Singapore Perspectives” conference on governance organised by the Institute of Policy Studies on Monday.
Acknowledging the problems of insufficient housing and inefficient transportation network, Mr Lee pointed out that the government was blind-sided by the outcome of some international events.
He elaborated that in 2000 and 2001, the 9/11 terrorism attack on the United States plunged countries into recession. Singapore was dealt with a slow economy with minimum population growth and local housing prices went down.
But by 2005 and 2006, Mr Lee said the mood changed and the economy started picking up.
So, he said, the government did what it thought would have been appropriate then. It decided to make up for lost time by growing the population and boosting the economy.
He acknowledged that infrastructure like housing and transport didn’t keep up with that growth.
Mr Lee said: "I decided that we should try and make up for lost time because you want the economy to grow. You want Singapore to make progress and you don’t know how long the sun is going to shine. As it turned out, the sun remained shining for longer than we expected. So the population grew faster than we expected, our infrastructure didn’t keep up.
"The strains showed up…They didn’t show up gradually, progressively but quite suddenly. When the global financial crisis came at the end of the decade, 2007/2008, we expected to go for a very deep dive.
"In fact in one quarter, we had minus 10 percent growth. Nobody talked about house prices, there was no shortage. HDB - we watched the market every day, the resale market was dead but we did the right thing with our Jobs Credit and other measures. We avoided a bullet, the world economy recovered faster than expected.
"In the middle of 2009, the wind changed…those of you in business, you would remember that in the course of two weeks, during one or two private property launches, somehow the wind changed. It’s like the spring breeze touched your face and the market was off. By August, we were thinking of measures to cool things down and we’ve been trying to cool things down ever since.
"So we lacked that 20/20 foresight. Next time, we will try to do better, certainly to have a bigger buffer and not to cut things so fine. But I think it’s very difficult to know, 10 years from now, how many you will need.
“Even if you know how many persons there will be in Singapore, you can’t say how many houses they will need. Will they buy it? Or will they say, ‘oh, I’m not certain because the economy is not looking good or the politics are not certain, well, I’ll hold off’? But when the market goes up, it goes up with a vengeance and we’ve paid the political price, we learn from it.”
In the 90-minute question and answer session, Prime Minister Lee also tackled a number of issues which included whether the wide-ranging social nets in Singapore would encourage citizens to become more dependent and if Singapore needs more space for discussion.
Mr Lee is of the view that the government needs to do more but he wants the government to be helping from behind the scenes, as opposed to Singaporeans expecting the government to jump in all the time.
On why there is still a need to moderate social space involving social media, for example, Mr Lee said the online community in particular is not moderating itself.
Extreme views are put out and responses and disapprovals are also extreme. So this cannot be left to itself.
Mr Lee said: "We don’t believe the community in the social space, especially online, moderates itself. It doesn’t happen anywhere in the world.
"You have views going to extremes and when people respond to their views, they may respond in an extreme way, and when people decide to disapprove of something which was inappropriate, the disapproval can also happen in an extreme way.
“It’s in the nature of the medium, the way the interactions work and that’s the reason why we think it cannot be completely left by itself.”
- CNA/ir -
RE: giving haircuts at home
I used to do this - cutting hair for folks back home. This is because I’m pretty good with the scissors, having master cutting hair during school days when a couple of friends my mine would cut each other hair.
These days I no longer do it because of travel commitments. But its a good thing because you really need not worry about cost of haircut going up or about changing of hairstylists, and you can do it anytime you wish.