But this question, raised by Ang Mo Kio GRC's Dr Lam Pin Min, in Parliament, makes idle banter look serious.

HEALTH Minister Khaw Boon Wan was asked for his secret to looking young by Ang Mo Kio GRC MP Lam Pin Min in Parliament on Tuesday.

I wouldn't even entertain that question on my free time, but this is asked on the Parliament floor? On Parliament time? On taxpayers' dime? This is worse than frivolous. It is an utter disrespect for the people who elected (despite the many walkovers in the last election, Ang Mo Kio GRC was not one of them) Dr Lam to legislate and to represent them, and a disgrace to the country's legislative body.

Oh, and Mr Khaw choosing to indulge in his colleague's idle curiosity is just as indicative of the self-aggrandising and enabling behaviour of his peers.

Remember, we pay these people millions to ask one another how they manage to look young. There's a time and place for everything, and Parliament is not where I would expect such questions to be asked or entertained.

(h/t: Singapore Dino)

The answer is that it isn't. What happens between two willing adults is really none of our business. I would be more interested if Wendy Chong, Neo's mistress, was a signed artiste in Neo's company, since that would constitute sexual harassment, but this is not true. So what's the fuss about?

And while I understand the need for personal friends to support each other, George Yeo should be mindful that his very public position as a cabinet minister means his words have weight, and consequences. Lend your support privately, but speaking out publicly is just stupid.

We have allowed this silly story to distract us from more important issues, and that is a shame. We have PAP MPs boasting about firing old Singaporean workers and replacing them with young foreigners, proudly proclaiming they are deaf to all criticism, rejecting any idea from the opposition as "dangerous", insisting that public housing is affordable without providing the metrics of measurement, a Deputy Prime Minister who naps in Parliament while the other DPM speaks, and these people will be averaging an 8.8% pay raise this year.

All stories deserving of more play and coverage in the press. Even Temasek Review is covering this, tabloid-style, and I am sorely disappointed by that, given its roots as Wayang Party.

Time to move along, and I say again, this is none of our damned business.

Well, it seems that Republicans are going all in on the idea that a big reason we have high unemployment is that unemployment benefits reduce the incentive to seek work. Aside from the sheer cruelty, it’s really bad economics, but whatever.

You should read this too.

Imran sold his flat for a profit. With the money, he rented a bungalow in Johor Bahru and even bought a car. Two years later, his money was spent, and he was back in Singapore, homeless.

Imran could be what Senior Parliamentary Secretary (Education) Masagos Zulkifli and Dr Ahmad Magad (Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC) had in mind when they spoke in parliament on Tuesday about a segment of the Malay population who became homeless as ‘living beyond their means’.

“They do not think about buying a new flat or where their family is going to stay, even though they have young children,” said Dr Magad. Mr Masagos added, “We must not forget the real reasons as why they are stranded there and not be quick to point fingers.”

Finger-pointing or not, PAP MPs are quick to jettison any potential responsibility and place them on homeless Singaporeans, many whom, like Imran, did not deserve to be punished by society or governmental policy. The problem, it appears, is the stubborn refusal of this government to recognise it as such, and that government irresponsibility to its citizens is acceptable while personal irresponsibility is not.

Pot, meet kettle.

With electricity prices and maintenance costs going up, at least two town councils, Aljunied and Jurong, will raise their Service and Conservancy Charges (S&CC) next month.

The hike will impact flats, shops, offices and market and hawker stalls.

For Singaporean households in Housing Board flats, the hike per month will range between 50 cents for a one-room flat and $4.50 for a five-room flat.

While the two town councils were clear that they did not increase the charges due to botched investments in Lehman-linked financial products, they did not indicate any willingness to be more transparent in revealing their costs of maintaining the estates. What is clear to me is their need to meet performance criteria that were set after the blow-up caused by the ill-considered investments that cost a cool $16 million in public funds.

This was not lost on the residents that were interviewed.

Residents MediaCorp spoke to want more clarity. "Neighbours complain the estate is still dirty. With the increase, I hope for more transparency on the targets achieved," Aljunied resident Reynold Seah said.

Jurong resident JF Yeo said: "Any fee increase so soon after a recession cannot be good news. The town council should at least show us that our money will be put to good use."

Where public funds are concerned, there should be more transparency. Residents deserve to know where their money is being spent, and town councils need to be accountable to the residents by not using the funds in non-related investments. Setting a KPI for town councils is nothing but bureaucratic appeasement unless those indicators are revealed to the public, and paying residents are given the full picture in the running of the twon council.

The Straits Times, true to its form of operating as a government mouthpiece, publishes this gem of an opinion piece disguised as "Prime News":

MR I.B. YUSOF, a father of four young children, sold three Housing Board flats in nine years, netting $90,000 in profits.

Flush with cash after the first two sales, Mr Yusof, 44, took out a hefty bank loan and upgraded to a four-room flat in 2005. At the time, the sole breadwinner, who has a hearing-impaired wife, earned only $800 per month. He hoped to get a better job to pay for the new flat.

Unlike in some countries, where people are often too poor to rent - let alone buy - their first home, homelessness in Singapore is often the result of personal irresponsibility, stemming from avarice or divorce and dysfunction.

The story of Mr Yusof is true, but the conclusion is a swing and a miss. Miss Basu, the author of the opinion piece, made the conclusion that homelessness is self-inflicted in most cases when he can neither prove nor disprove the claim, and also manages to define divorcee as a "personal irresponsibility". ST publishing this as "Prime News" is just further proof that journalism is not practised at the paper that most Singaporeans "trust".

Aside from the willful redefinition of personal irresponsibility, it is also apparent to me that Miss Basu has failed to ask the right questions. HDB policies allowed Mr Yusof to sell his flats in order to realise a profit on his assets; this has been repeatedly heralded by the PAP government. If HDB confined itself to its original goal of providing functional and affordable public housing for citizens, this scenario might not have materialised.

Instead, HDB flats are marketed as "assets that grow over time", not the neccessity that a roof over your head is. This strategy has been largely successful, and we are now reaping the whirlwind with increasing costs of new and resale flats. The HDB policies do not encourage home ownership, but instead promotes the use of a flat as an asset that can be used to increase personal wealth.

Other policies such as denying access of rental flats to single parents, based upon the fear of "an explosion in divorce rates or illegitimate births", discloses the naivete in policy planning. Divorce is an unfortunate circumstance, but hardly an irresponsible move, and does not merit penalties. The undeserved social stigma is absurd enough without further punishment in national policies. And this goes without being questioned by Mr Basu but used as an unflinching justification of the policies.

This article is almost a personification of why the public remain largely uninformed and uneducated on policy issues due to dogmatic defense of the PAP's policies, and further evidence, if we need any more, of why a free press would do more to elevate political discourse one controlled by governmental interests.

(h/t: Gwee Li Sui)

Despite inconclusive climate change talks in December, the Republic is nonetheless pushing ahead with more spending for a greener Singapore. Within the Government's expenditure estimates, which were released yesterday, green schemes featured notably as part of the new spending commitments in the year ahead.

Salaries for political appointments - ministers, ministers of state and parliamentary secretaries - are estimated to be $58.28 million, or 8.8 per cent higher than last year.

Either that headline is poorly written or deviously devised to make it sound like another boring headline in boring Singapore. But wait, what did our "political appointments" achieve to deserve an 8.8% pay raise, which in money terms made the salaries paid a cool $58.28 million?

We are now number 2 in the world when it comes to income unequality. That's an achievement, right? Or take your pick from a very comprehensive list provided here. And let's not even talk about paper losses borne by GIC and Temasek. They're, after all, only paper losses.

Such great achievements surely deserve its own headline rather than hidden away into an inconsequential article about climate change.

(h/t: Mr Brown)

HOUSING is a perennial hot topic of discussion, especially in Singapore where it touches almost every segment of society - from the low to middle income in public housing to the middle and higher income aspiring to upgrade to private property.

What was not immediately apparent was that Associate Professor Yu Shi Ming, one of the writers, also sits on the HDB board, and is a member of the West Coast Town Council Executive Committee. Portraying that article as written by academics without full disclosure of the authors background is a damning failure of the press, which is not unique to this island.

What is unique is having an academic who serves on a partisan statutory board and a partisan grassroots organisation writing an article that is only taken at face value, while disregarding conflict of interest in the positions that the author holds.

(h/t: Gwee Li Sui, Mr Brown)

The Opposition leader pointed out that manual workers like cleaners and garbage collectors in developed economies are paid so much more than their counterparts in Singapore, attributing this to those countries’ more compassionate and effective policies to ensure that workers at the bottom of the economic ladder enjoy a decent and dignified life. Referring to the Government’s latest productivity drive, which is to grow productivity by 2 to 3 per cent each year over the next decade, Low wondered if low wage workers had to wait another 10 years for the wage increases which they had not seen in the last 10 years.

Low lamented that Singaporean workers are constantly told by the Government to “up-skill, re-skill, multi-skill, be cheaper, better, and faster”. He accused the Government of “squeezing every drop of effort and energy from our workers to achieve its desired GDP numbers”. He felt that the ‘growth at all costs’ strategy initiated since the late nineties resulted in the present state of our economy where low wage earners are growing dependent on state-funded handouts to subsist. He charged that for Budget 2010, the Government is using their same conventional wisdom to address the fundamental problems caused its policies of the last decade.

Low then proposed two separate policies: removing the foreign worker levy and use a dependency ratio for hiring of foreign workers, and a community college without age restrictions.

He reasoned that employers will save on the foreign worker levy they currently pay, and this could be used to benefit their local workers, including providing more training for them to improve their skills to become more productive.

Low suggested starting a community college for citizens of all ages, especially older Singaporeans.  He said the college should have no or minimum entry requirements, offering courses that are totally modular. This would allow senior citizens to earn credits towards a degree or simply for self-enrichment purposes.

I am not too sure of the viability of the former, but increasing the foreign worker levy is bad policy because it is easily exploitable by employers and could affect the performance of SMEs. Unless the language specifically bars it, employers can include the levy as part of foreign workers' salaries, much like how CPF contributions are part of a Singaporean's wage package, driving down wages of foreign workers. Whether this will affect hiring of foreign workers is debatable, but it will definitely make their lives worse, and Singaporeans will not gain an ounce of benefit for it. These jobs will still not go to Singaporeans because foreign workers will still be cheaper to employ.

A community college to cater for all ages, and especially for those who do not have the benefit of continuing their education at a younger age, is something that I believe will benefit Singaporeans. Both are viable policies when it comes to increasing productivity, which is the theme of the budget for 2010. They merit closer examination. Why it was not mentioned by any PAP MP when it can affect the productivity meme speaks volumes.

But instead of attacking the ideas, PAP's Mrs Josephine Teo decided to just decry the ideas as "dangerous".

Responding to Low, PAP MP Josephine Teo criticised his suggestion to remove the foreign worker levy. She said: “To try and introduce an alternative system to a pricing mechanism is a very dangerous suggestion to make. It opens up a whole pandora box (sic) of the difficulties we have to overcome.”

Teo was dutifully following the PAP’s modus operandi of labelling any bold idea suggested by an Opposition MP as “dangerous”. She said that without the levy, foreign workers will be cheaper and more attractive to businesses, and some will find loopholes to get round the quotas, to get cheaper workers, “affecting jobs for Singaporeans”.

In a flash of presumptuousness, Teo declared: “I can speak on behalf of the union leaders that we totally and firmly reject Mr Low’s disastrous suggestion that we remove the foreign worker levy as it will harm our workers’ interest.”

Though expected, this is very disappointing. Mrs Teo chose to use the bogeyman instead of addressing the viability of the policy suggestions and did not illustrate how the increased foreign worker levy will not depress wages and still not benefit locals. Mrs Teo chose to use big-sounding words to bully the opposition in submission, in a way reminding me of a certain retired US politician: all hot air and big words, zero substance. Ezra Klein's description is particularly apt, except maybe even a stupid person wouldn't think she's smart.

Mrs Teo, calling an idea "dangerous" does not make it so. You're better off examining the ideas before launching into a tirade that shows your lack of thought towards policy making that affects the country. This move has served nothing but to accentuate the difference between the PAP and the likes of Low Thia Kiang. It's not only bad politics, it's bad policy, and should be reported as such

The group ActionAid released a report about the shocking rise in homophobic attacks and murders in South Africa, especially Johannesburg and Cape Town where lesbian women are being raped as a “corrective” punishment for being gay.

Rape is fast becoming the most widespread hate crime targeted against gay women in townships across South Africa. One lesbian and gay support group says it is dealing with 10 new cases of lesbian women being targeted for ‘corrective’ rape every week in Cape Town alone.

I really, really, have no words.

(h/t: Kenneth Jeyaretnam)