Singapore - enlightened model state or worryingly authoritarian nightmare?

[Roadkill]

I really hate rudeness and inconsiderate behaviour, but I hate the idea that the police should enforce good manners and consideration more.

Exactly.

 

[isitme]

Maybe it's time they started providing ashtrays on top of the bins.

I saw a bin billowing with smoke the other day where someone had decided to be neat and tidy

there is a really easy way to do it. give people free portable ashtrays which you can get easily for free anywhere and then fine the fuck out of them if they don't use em. like how there's much less dogshit since they provided bins...

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

there is a really easy way to do it. give people free portable ashtrays which you can get easily for free anywhere and then fine the fuck out of them if they don't use em. like how there's much less dogshit since they provided bins...

or they could just put ashtrays on top of bins

 

[isitme]

or they could just put ashtrays on top of bins

there aren't enough bins everywhere

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

there aren't enough bins everywhere

there are bins, it's just that some people (including non-smokers) can't be arsed to use them

 

[butchersapron]

Didn't stop the IRA

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

Didn't stop the IRA

exactly. They used tipper trucks instead

 

[fela fan]

I really hate rudeness and inconsiderate behaviour, but I hate the idea that the police should enforce good manners and consideration more.

Yes to that!

 

[nadia]

Well booze is very very expensive and the place is full of signs telling you what you are not allowed to do, a bit like Switzerland really

 

[maomao]

the most telling fact about it is that gay sex is still illegal there

Didn't know that. That would explain my Singapore colleague's reluctance to return. He does love going on about how much better things are in Singapore though. Odd, will have to tease him about it later.

 

[kyser_soze]

Very strange place IMO. It struck me as being very much like a country-sized version of Celebration. It's a bit plastic flowers IYSWIM.

 

[IMR]

It seems quite similar to the undemocratic, multiracial, no-bullshit meritocracy depicted in Starship Troopers, but without the militarism or the bug meteorites.

I wouldn't want to live there, but with one of the world's highest per capita GDPs, it's done pretty well for a country which only gained independence in the 1960s.

 

[ohmyliver]

William Gibson's summing up of it as "Disneyland with the Death Penalty" works for me.

 

[Diamond]

Most of the Singaporeans I have met exhibit a really deep seated, old school type of racism towards the Malays that is as far away from enlightened as you could possibly get.

 

[Diamond]

Daily Mail Island.

I think Singapore (and China) are like political laboratories, testing models of 'democratic' authoritarian capitalism. They are the future.

Don't forget Russia.

 

[Agent Sparrow]

Not time for a considered post or to read the thread properly through this morning, but just a couple of points...

Though it normally gets in the news for its extremely draconian law and order policy (chewing gum ban zealously enforced,

It's not that zealously enforced. Thanks to me being ditzy and forgetting the rule, and somebody on the bus thinking it would be funny to give me gum before the border crossing, they let me in whilst I unintentionally chewed away.

it has IMO some very admirable policies. Unlike the UK system, access to good schools is generally based on performance in exams.

Agree with the other good points, but I really don't think restricting good schools to those who pass exams when young is an admirable policy at all.

 

[gnoriac]

Haven't been there for about 25 years but I found it a dull, authoritarian place. Wouldn't go as far as calling it a nightmare though.

Last I heard one of my workmates from banking days had been posted there, he referred to the place as "Bangawhore", which probably tells you as much about banking people as Singapore.

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

It's got a great zoo and bird park though

 

[jusali]

I stopped off there for a week or so when travelling to NZ. I quite liked it, as a tourist. My wife who had been to Thailand Vietnam Malaysia in her travels before, called it SE Asia Light
As for the "draconian laws" maybe, for the majority, it works?

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

My mate's girlfriend is Singapore Chinese by descent, and they often go there to visit her family. He quite likes it, says it's quite well run and generally actually quite socialist and egalitarian, good public transport etc

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

Daily Mail Island.

I think Singapore (and China) are like political laboratories, testing models of 'democratic' authoritarian capitalism. They are the future.

You really think the Daily Wail would endorse a regime which restricted and taxes car ownership like Singapore does?

 

[DotCommunist]

My mate's girlfriend is Singapore Chinese by descent, and they often go there to visit her family. He quite likes it, says it's quite well run and generally actually quite socialist and egalitarian, good public transport etc

Those things are nice, but if it takes capital punishment and the lash to produce them, then I consider that a cost too expensive

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

It’s like the Japanese, crazy symbolic customs and social etiquette and yet you can buy used schoolgirls knickers from vending machines in stations. I think this is what is know as Capitalism with Asian values, same with what’s happening in China, (Deng Zhou Peng nicked most of his economic reforms off Singapore after a visit there ) which appears to be authoritarianism mixed with a big dollop of perversity.

Comparisons with China are way off. China is like the Wild West. Singapore is pretty controlled, clean, tidy and in many ways socialist

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

Those things are nice, but if it takes capital punishment and the lash to produce them, then I consider that a cost too expensive

I think those are more to do with asian ideas of justice than the actual pervading political ideology

 

[DotCommunist]

I think those are more to do with asian ideas of justice than the actual pervading political ideology

well I bow to you greater knowledge in this. I still find it a repugnant way to behave though.

 

[fela fan]

Haven't been there for about 25 years but I found it a dull, authoritarian place. Wouldn't go as far as calling it a nightmare though.

Last I heard one of my workmates from banking days had been posted there, he referred to the place as "Bangawhore", which probably tells you as much about banking people as Singapore.

I had 24 hours there about five years ago or so on a stopover. I stayed at a mate's apartment. I had been recommended to visit 'the four floors of whores', and with an evening to kill, why not!

It turned out i found a very nice drinking establishment inside this kind of shopping mall place, and there were several on the same floor. A premier league match was on later on in the evening, but leading up to that i found myself in a conversation with a ship's captain and somebody who mentioned more than once he had killed people before (i think in vietnam, can't recall now). It was interesting, and not your normal kind of drinking evening. Later on suddenly the pub had more than a few thai girls in there, making the name four floors of whores more understandable. Speaking thai, and being pissed, i was able to have a memorable third stage to the evening.

I stumbled home to my mate's place (alone) and after a good sleep walked into the middle of town and really enjoyed my walk, and a visit to border's book and cd shop.

Not so straitlaced really.

 

[Stigmata]

A (female) Singaporean friend cryptically advised me that i'd need a stick to defend myself from the fairer sex if I visited her city. I hope that's not what she meant!

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

well I bow to you greater knowledge in this. I still find it a repugnant way to behave though.

I understand that. But it's a common feature of all asian countries pretty much, whether they're sort of liberal democracies like South Korea, neo-primitive communistic regimes like the Khmer Rouge or whatever. They generally have a very different idea viz a viz the individual and society.

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

A (female) Singaporean friend cryptically advised me that i'd need a stick to defend myself from the fairer sex if I visited her city. I hope that's not what she meant!

i've been desperately trying to find the cartoon showing a geeky westerner going to asia and becoming brad pitt...

 

[feldbach]

interesting thread. i often go to singapore for work. (also lived in HK for 7 yrs before) singapore is more a hub for asia. so if you are there for work, and the pay is good, it's a tolerable place to be. - so ie. as an expat. but i know the govt & political scene is a nightmare. for the singaporean locals, afaik - many of them wish to emigrate over seas...
for a tourist, it is perfect (clean,safe,sterile...) good for food + shopping.
not sure how long this "model state" will last as it is running out of land + space. but will be interesting to see when the 2 casino projects are finished over there