you just gotta love the lion city

Quote of the day.
"No timing is good timing for fares to increase. But our transport operators here seem to have taken bad timing and elevated it into an art form."
- Ms Indranee Rajah (Tanjong Pagar GRC) who opposed the proposed fare hikes as transport operators SBS Transit and SMRT Corp had made record 2004 profits

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A while back I wanted to blog on smokers' rights.
Why don't smokers have rights?
We should have the same kind of rights that are accorded to people who drive big-ass SUVs that pollute the air as well as incompetent parents whose kids cause noise pollution with their screams.
Shouldn't we?
I always thought the logic is pretty simple.
We take the outdoors (and the merciless sun/pouring rain); you take the indoors with the air-con.
Young kids and pregnant women should not patronise places like bars and pubs (I'm not joking, I have witnessed both).
Never the twain shall meet.
But no. The solution is to ban smoking, eventually from all public places.
I have a question.
Why don't you ban cigarettes altogether then?
I know why, you know why. How hypocritical.

Sunday Times 15 May 2005
Learning when to butt out
by Ignatius Low

"...Relaxing outside with a coffee and a cigarette may also be a thing of the past, since the Government is considering extending the ban to include entertainment outlets, coffee shops and hawkers centres...
...The underlying message behind NPB's (National Parks Board) draconian move [banning smoking in four nature reserves], and all of the other anti-smoking edicts in Singapore, is clear: Smokers have been polluting the environment long enough, and it is time to stop tolerating this nasty habit.
The problem is that we often go too far in signalling out disapproval. And once we get on our moral high horse, we just don't know where to stop.
If second-hand smoke is bothering you while you are out picnicking in the park, isn't the solution simply to move to another spot? You are, after all, not in a confined space like a restaurant or a bar, so the possibilities are limitless.
I certainly do that when I am out in a park and encounter noisy children with their incompetent parents. In my opinion, they do far more damage to the peace and serenity of the surroundings than smokers ever will...
...Should we therefore make parents go for courses in child-control and brandish certificates whenever they enter a park? Or at least when they enter a library or a cinema, where society's hapless victims cannot move away from the noise pollution they create?
Perhaps we should just ban kids from these places altogether or muzzle them like dogs.
This may all sound ridiculous, but it will certainly be in keeping with out Nazi-style approach to clamping down on smoking over the years...
...It seems that once someone proves there can be a downside, there is an unhealthy instinct to immediately reach for the big "Ban" button, and push for an organised Government crackdown that will hopefully clean up Singapore's streets and its citizens' hearts and minds...
...In seeking bans and restrictions, moral conservatives in Singapore seem to want to take the easy way out. And a strong and decisive Government with a strong record of implementation has unfortunately abetted this laziness..."