I was at the Civil Service College last month to attend a course. Copies of PS21's Challenge magazine were available for free at the college. I picked up a copy and found an interesting article titled An Urban Cowboy's Riddle which was written by renowned journalist Ravi Veloo. The article is about urban planning in Singapore and explains to a certain degree why some changes in our landscape, though unpopular, are in fact unavoidable:

IT'S fascinating to think that the urban planning of the entire island was once in the hands of a 20-year-old, younger than some of our most famous laksa recipes.



And that nearly 200 years later, we still have our Central Business District and civic area located on both sides of the Singapore River.



The face of Singapore's landscape was then in the hands of one Lieutenant Philip Jackson, a young British Royal Navy officer who was ordered to [...]

The Sydney Morning Herald, 15 Mar 2010SINGAPORE Airlines will use Jetstar's aggressive push into Singapore as leverage to back its bid to be allowed to fly between Australia and the United States.Jetstar's decision early this year to make Singapore its Asian hub - instead of Bangkok or Ho Chi Minh - has given Singapore Airlines the ammunition it needs in its long-standing push to be allowed to

In 1971, the Ministry of National Development met officials from the major oil companies in Singapore to announce a major decision. All petrol stations within the Central Business District (CBD) were to be phased out over a period of 30 years, with some having to quit immediately. In 1970 there were a total of 150 petrol stations throughout Singapore; 30 still remained after 21 were re-sited away from the city area. SHELL the main oil company was the most affected by the government’s ruling to re-site the bulk of its petrol stations away from the city area.



Photo 1: SHELL station at Beach Road, opposite the former Beach Road Camp which would later become the future South Beach Hotel (circa 1968). Site is now occupied by Raffles LaSalle.



Ten years later, a public tender was called in 1982 for a petrol station at the Golden Shoe Multi-storey Car Park - bounded by Church Stre[...]

Please forward this information to your friends. The Court of Appeal (Supreme Court) will hear Vui Kong's appeal this coming Monday, 15 March at 10am.



Encourage your friends to come for the hearing and invite them to join this Facebook group for updates.

Link to the large flier to be printed out and passed around.

I have created a Facebook Group named as above. The reasoning is as below:





HDB used to be a very unique and successful socialist approach to provide basic adequate housing for Singaporeans. The HDB scheme was made possible by the power of Land Acquisition Act that allows the government of the day to acquire land at dirt cheap prices. It is a social contract between the people and the government to empower them to acquire land at cheap prices while in return, the people's basic housing needs are taken care of by the government providing HEAVILY SUBSIDIZED HDB flats to more than 80% of the population.



The break down of Cost price of HDB was made available back in 1981 when the government showed us how much COST SUBSIDIES have been given to the citizens.



However, since the introduction of "Asset Enhancement Program" in early 1990s and subsequently the introduction of "Marke[...]