Omigosh! He's Gone Mental!

"It is an act of God. Unless you want to lose half the roads and have canals." Doesn't that sound remarkably like the line from Transport Minister Raymond Lim when he said that 1.5 % GST increase is needed for a free transport system?

Whatever happened to the cut-to-the-chase no-bullshit champion of the people who booted out the Brits, crushed the Communists, neutered the Malaysian ultras, and sued the pants off his political adversaries? The One who made everyone stop at two, promoted graduate mothers, railroaded the learning of Mandarin? All with one hand on the steering wheel of his Studebaker, another tied behind his back, as in "Look, ma, no hands!"

Asked if he thought the Government's response to the flooding had been sufficient, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, in the inimitable style of Goh Chok Tong, answered the question with another question, "How can you say the response is sufficient?" His argument that the Government's best efforts are no match for Mother Nature can only hold water if the engineers at the Ministry of Environment spend less time on pastry cooking lessons, and more on fluid mechanics. Flowrate measurement for discharge over weirs is standard course material. And the statement that "no amount of engineering can prevent flooding" is just so lame. What about the gold coins that Lee gave to the engineers who cleaned up the Singapore river? Wasn't that for an engineering feat? The major engineering undertaking for the Marina Barrage - that a fiasco too? Yaacob Ibrahim said it was designed for water catchment, flood control and water recreation. So two out of three is acceptable for First World standard?

Agnostics really should not use the name of God in vain. A more appropriate expression would be, "what to do, it's happened". See, the apple does not fall far from the tree.