As Samuel Johnson might have put it, “Sir, a Singaporean’s protesting against the government or performing oral sex is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”
The docile people of the Lion City are finally getting uppity. Last Saturday some 4,000 of them gathered to protest against their authoritarian rulers’ dreams of demographically re-engineering the city-state to enlarge its capacity for economic production. In plain English: cram in loads more foreigners of working age. As with Hong Kong, currently inundated with tourist-shoppers from over the border, the ruling mentality is that the little island’s prime purpose is not to be a home for its people, but to serve as the location of a GDP and a headcount that must be grown as ends in themselves.
Unlike in Hong Kong, protests in Singapore – like free speech – are at best tightly restricted. And the turnout in Hong Lim Park looks puny out of a population of 5.3 million. However, the organizer of Saturday’s event notes some interesting phenomena: the fading of the euphoria following the big day, and the way people upload photos and feelings onto the Internet. All instantly recognizable to anyone who was on Hong Kong’s half-million-strong July 1 march in 2003. Everyone attending such a gathering comes away with a buzz – a new awareness that you can push the government around. It’s addictive.
To their credit, the Singaporean authorities seem to at least half-accept that the future is one in which they serve the people, rather than the people serving some demented old visionary eugenicist’s crazed experiment in nation-building. They have been coming to terms with this for some time – why, it’s the 10th anniversary of the Great Bartop Dancing Revolution!
If Hong Kong is anything to go by, the Lion City’s elitist, self-selecting leadership has to face the fact that the demand for liberalization and accountability won’t proceed at a steady pace: it accelerates. On the government website today, the box at the top contains a rolling list of headlines (pre-dating the protest) eagerly assuring the public that the plans to accommodate a 6.9 million population are in their interests. Meanwhile, shoe-shining People’s Action Party members of parliament elected through a rigged polling system are desperately trying to explain to voters why they have voiced support for the plan. Unlike in Hong Kong, constitutional reform does not have to be aligned with a distant and paranoid Communist Party’s need to maintain absolute control. You just need to push the door hard enough.
One of the protestors on Saturday held a coyly naughty slogan about 6.9 being a kinky number. Which brings us incredibly elegantly to the oral sex side of Singapore’s great awakening. Yet another government official is being done for being fellated. This follows the city-state’s year of lust in 2012. There was a time when oral sex was illegal in Singapore (or, if memory of a court judgement serves, illegal unless participants went on to have procreative sex – it was back in the time when the city’s leaders took an almost masochistic pleasure in making themselves a global laughing stock). It seems this is no longer the case. But even so, you get the impression that they still have a few things to learn about this particular form of intimacy. I mean, you can do it without a government defence contract.
I don’t know why revolutions surprise the experts so much. The economists and the sociologists and the CIA and MI6 never seem to be able to predict them (witness Arab Spring) but authors and even some bloggers can spot them a mile off.
I guess you need to sniff the air, see the expressions on people’s faces and even talk to them, not for what they say but for the expression in their voice. Fuzzy logic but as clear as a bell. Anyone with half a brain can see the end of Lee’s Singapore gang.
All the professionals are such duffers, aren’t they?
I think there’s a revolution coming to Hong Kong too. But pesky people like “Genetically Superior” Webb and Vampire Reformer Leung keep delaying the cataclysmic crash of capitalism in the frontier town thereof. Wish they wouldn’t. I’m getting on and can only wait another forty years (according to my family’s superior longevity genes, touch webb).
I mean. why else would you want to stay in Hong Kong if you can’t witness the Capitalist Apocalypse?
Song of the day: It Couldn’t Happen Here, surely?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SaHIulJYWE
Don’t knock fellatio from a Singaporean until you’ve tried it.
Capitalism, as a reflection of human nature itself (me, me, me), is the default socio-economic system. All others systems/ ideologies are fabricated and are therefore doomed. They are simply on the wrong side of history. So what’s apres-capitalism, Bela ? I ask you, since you seem to have all the answers, not unlike those insufferably boring types at the FCC bar.
I see that the Singaporeans were welcomng foriegners to join the protest. Clearly, they don’t have a Pierce Lam to remind them of how evil we all are.
We can all help – I will put $50 on Paypal towards his one-way fare.
JB
Revelation 2:17
” To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone is a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.”
2:28
“And I will give him the morning star.”
I don’t think he meant the newspaper.
A couple of points:
Growth for its own sake is bad; growth to enhance the quality of life for the general population is good.
Bringing a lot of foreigners in can be good – 300,000 domestic helpers enhance the quality of life for many Hongkongers, I suggest – if not necessarily for some of the helpers. Bringing in a lot of foreigners can be bad – e.g. too many tourists of any description, anywhere in the world.
But, there must come a point at which the local population cannot grow the economy sufficiently – diminishing returns – and the quality of life stagnates and then diminishes relative to growing countries. Then a choice has to be made – continue to stagnate or repopulate. Given the neither Hong Kong nor Singapore can make that choice democratically, what is left, except demonstrations – and possibly revolution?
Joe Blow: as a former habitué of the FCC bar (now an absent member), I can assure you that the FCC bar is anything but boring – you’re just talking to the wrong people there.
@ Headache
I agree
Defense lawyer Hamidul Haq told the court his client “categorically denies any allegations of corruption.”…Lim and Pang shared an intimate friendship and had a “one-off” encounter, Haq added, “but the friendship had no bearing on the outcome of tenders”
Love me tender, felate sweet , sweep me off my feet
I’m lovin’ it !
Didn’t I read somewhere that Minister Mentor Lee Kwan Yew (Harry) has just left hospital and he’s expected to live until he’s 150?
I imagine he’ll be mentoring his son about how to deal with this and it won’t be pretty.
I never thought I’d see the day when anti-Chinese protests came to Singapore…
Are they taking another leaf out of HK’s book? The 6.9 million just happens to be the number of people here, discounting if necessary various categories of unpersons.
No blind striving for growth! I’m off to Singapore.
RTHK 19-02-2013
The Chief Executive, C Y Leung, has pledged that Hong Kong will no longer blindly strive for growth in visitor numbers, but will try to ensure that future tourism development is sustainable. Mr Leung said that preventing the city and its resources from being overwhelmed would be the priority in policy making.
He said the mass influx of tourists – chiefly from the mainland – was becoming a problem. His comments followed Ocean Park having to suspend ticket sales because of the huge number of visitors during the Chinese New Year holiday. Disneyland also attracted record attendances.
The ethnic – Chinese SS ( Singapore Sheep) are so scared of being over-run by non- ethnic- Chinese SS ( the birth rate of the Chinese SS being barely 10% of the dreaded and obviously 10 x more randy brown-skinned SS) that the S’Pore govt has gone to endless lengths to encourage immigration of ethnic Chinese – starting with HK white collar workers, then HK blue collar , then no collar, and finally even the “dreaded Mainlanders” ( documented facts).
It’s quite clear that Harry Lee instead of promoting this kind of reverse ethnic cleansing should spend the remainder of his 150 years teaching his fellow Chinese SS that fellatio is NOT the correct way to procreate and that the PAP should all read the Kama Sutra before going to bed
(It must surely be significant that all these high level govt sex offenders are not being accused of normal genital sex, but rather the oral kind )
If a very controversial issue does not get out more than 4000 people (who in reality apparently were only about 2000 people according to AFP) on a Saturday afternoon, I don’t think anybody in the PAP has a reason to stop chewing even just for a moment.
Anthony Burgess was one of the first to point out the prevalence of oral sex amongst Straits Chinese in his Malayan Trilogy. I supect it goes back a long way, if you see what I mean.
I thought Hemmers might take a poke at Disney finally making a profit of HK109 million on a turnover of HK$4.3 billion. Net losses since 2008 being HK$3.8 billion on top of costs of HK$20 billion spent on building the damned thing – 10 billion coming from the HK taxpayers. What a fucking joke! Can we borrow a North Korean nuke to demolish it to make way for much-needed housing please!
As previously addressed in this blog, Singapore’s 3rd world social order maintained by government policy is cause of low birth rate. Similar to HK most young people cannot afford to set up home, thus delay marriage.
They need affordable housing. The government has allowed HDB housing (public supply, private ownership) to follow market prices.
It’s a wonder anyone is having kids there, apart from the rich elite and the Malay population (who generally have realistic aspirations and cherish family life/values ahead of economic success).
It’s an awful place to live if you’re not loaded.
Mind you, they do have The Singapore Grip to keep themselves amused.
@ Incredulous
A late night comment:
I COULD NOT AGREE MORE !
Nuke f******g disney land to make way for housing, then half the SZ tourists would stop coming here .
Kill two birds with one stone ( well, nuke)
I want my HK$10 Billion back, being one of those 5% of tax payers who pay 90% of HK salaries taxes
(I went to DL just once – it was during a pre-opening sort of “trial run” sort of promotion thing and my family had some free tickets. I lasted a couple of hours and then fled the f******g place NEVER to return there again)
_______________
PS : technical point of correction . You cannot “borrow” a nuke. Once used, it’s automatically past its use-by date
@ PD
Is your alter ego Deep Throat?
I had a dream….
I dreamed that Xi Jinping sat up late one night reading the BIG Lychee on his VPN and creased himself laughing
🙂
After he recovered and had a couple of G&T’s he called his propaganda chief and said:
“This Hemlock guy is damn good. He even exposed that f******g Henry Tang arsehole long before we did .
“And what he writes is not only totally hilarious but also OH SO true. Even the blethering idiots who comment on his blog make more sense than most of HK’s LEGCO , not to mention ALL the CCCP and at least half the guys on the Politburo
“Can we co-op this Hemmers guy to BJ ? No ? Why not?
Shit … he’s a bloody Laowai . OK I understand .
“But if everyone in China reads this BIG LYCHEE blog they will spend half the day on the internet trying to download it at snail pace (like me) and half the day laughing themselves to death (like me)
“This surely can NOT be good for GDP so I hereby declare the Big Lychee a BAD THING
“So tell our internet nerds to put a block on this Hemlock guy
“Except for my own VPN …. hey top guys like me do need to relax and laugh occasionally ”
I have a dream……..