In America, at Harvard Biz school, there is a wicked saying:-

“Only Turkeys join the US Government.”

Why must civil servants be civil to “uncivilized” and “unreasonable” people?

Worst many of these “uncivilized” and “unreasonable” people pay no taxes in Singapore at all!

Yet dare to pontificate that they “also share the same desire that the taxpayers’ dollars allotted for that purpose are well spent.”

These “u and u” chaps who are still wet at a US graduate school (and may not even graduate!) dare to lecture A*STAR on how to select talent.

An ex PSC bond breaker who suffers from a deadly serious disease: Illusions of Extreme Grandeur.

The Head of the Singapore “Civil Service” should replace the awful title of “civil servant (CS)” to that of “government executive (GE)”. Then his title becomes a respectable Head of the Singapore Government Executive.

That would differentiate him/her from the Head of Singapore Elected Government.

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Ian Timothy SINGAPORE // Mar 26, 2007 at 1:38 pm

Sigh… Now I know why Mr Yeo came over to my blog and made the comment on the phrase Civil Servant and that it is demeaning.

Firstly, I believe it is a noble calling to be a civil servant. And that the people there are really trying their best. It can’t be easy to make sure the best for Singapore. To continue bashing civil servants and the organisations is doing them a great discredit. We can disagree with what they do and how they do it but there is a limit I think to how much we want to beat them down and dismiss them.

Another thing, why bash Singapore and its institutions if you aren’t here trying to make it better. Does it do your ego so much good to maintain that sort of superiority. I’m not saying that don’t criticise and don’t discuss. By all means, do so, but for what purpose?

I’ve taken altogether 21 courses during my 4-year ph.d. study and my GPA is 4.0. Although I am proud of my perfect GPA, I understand that there is such a thing called GPA inflation. It is not too diffcult to get A from a graduate class nowadays, especially from a small class. As long as you do your homework and projects, the professors will be very kind and generous to give you an A.

Having said that, I always believe there are two types of good students: one is with good academic results and the other is those students who drop from the schools. The second type of students normally are so smart that they don’t want to waste their time at school and instead go directly to the society and set up their own companies. If you believe you are the second type, don’t apply any scholarship in the first place. If you are the first type, don’t cry after you fail 3.8.

Elia Diodati UNITED STATES // Mar 5, 2007 at 9:43 am

“I undertake not to repeat the statements, or make further statements of the same or similar effect in this or any other forum or media. I further undertake to remove any such posting anywhere that has not been deleted.”

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Aaron,

under the terms of what I had agreed to, I must ask you to remove the excerpted statements from this blog post and the relevant comment on the post dated Feb 27th, since I do not have the direct power to do so.