By Clarissa Oon, ST Online, 09 Jan 2009

ST link

SINGAPORE will soon allow documentary and biographical party political films that are objective and do not distort facts, and an independent citizen panel will be set up to pass them.The Government on Friday morning announced its cautious acceptance of two-thirds of the recommendations made by a council it appointed to study the impact of new media.

It agreed to commit resources to engage the growing community of netizens, but said that for now, such exchanges would take place on the portal set up by Reach, the Government’s feedback unit.

On political content, the Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society (Aims) had recommended that the current wide-ranging ban on party political films be liberalised in stages.

Minister for Information Communication and the Arts Lee Boon Yang agreed. As a first step, films that ar[...]

 "Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith."~Paul Tillich

I spent the morning at the vet’s with Mac Our Dog, and it was a particularly busy morning there, with the receptionist at sixes and sevens, and though she was trying her humanly (and doggedly and cattedly) best to cope, Mac and I had to wait about an hour before we saw the vet, and when we did, the consultation rooms were all full so the vet actually came out to the reception area to see Mac.

Which was good of course, because Mac Our Dog has an understandable fear of the consultation rooms - he’s pretty happy in the reception area because he thinks it’s a wonderful place full of other people and animals. But once he’s in a consultation room, memories of needles and other cold and painful instruments assault his senses and he’s so stressed out you want to look for doggie cigarettes for him to calm his nerves.

The good thing with the wait was that Mac Our Dog got to [...]

MM Lee advises Singaporeans to work as long as you can : [Link]. Yes, work for as long as you can breathe. Why?....Many Singaporeans won't be able to retire at all. After all the tweaking of the CPF scheme for its use in HDB, Singaporeans are now at the bottom of a ranking of retirement income from pensions.



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Jan 9, 2009

Pension & retirement income

S'poreans ranked lowest

SINGAPOREANS are at the bottom of a ranking of retirement income from pensions in the Asia-Pacific region, says the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

And this is true at all income levels, according to the study, which covered 19 locations including Hong Kong, Taipei and Japan, The Business Times reported on Friday.

The Pensions at a Glance study, which also involved the World Bank, found that Singapore's average gross replacement rate - the value of the pension as a perc[...]