C h r o n i c l e s ...

Silly Survey & Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

73% of Singaporeans welcome tourists: survey
By Wong Siew Ying, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 26 September 2006 1858 hrs

A survey of over 900 Singaporeans showed that 73 per cent believe more should be done to encourage tourism, while some find sharing the city a little testing at times.

More Singaporeans - some three-quarters of them - also felt tourism brings benefits over costs, compared to respondents in Hong Kong (65%), Thailand (61%) and Indonesia (41%).

84 per cent of those surveyed said tourism helps create jobs and lifts the economy while 74 per cent appreciated the increased cultural exchanges.

However, nearly a quarter said there is a downside to tourism, including diluting Singapore culture, putting a strain on infrastructure and having too many foreigners around.

While most tourists are seen in a positive light by a majority of Singaporeans, some are not.

49 per cent of Singaporeans voted mainland Chinese as the least polite visitors followed by those from India (14%) and America (6%).

The survey was carried out by global market research company, Synovate. - CNA/ir



What benefit is accrued from conducting such a survey is beyond me. At whose expense was it carried out? Taxpayers?

"74 per cent appreciated the increased cultural exchanges”. Can any person in that percentage enlighten me what cultural exchanges tourists bring with them and what we give them in exchange?

Like everything else clothed as surveys and statistics, it is to be viewed with askance and interpreted according to the eye of the beholder. Depending on their construction and collation, they can do as much to lay bare the essentials as to conceal the real issues. Take, for example, the 3-hour moving PSI reading. By averaging it out over a 3-hour period, it mitigates particularly high reading in the western part of the Island. Looking out of my window, I find it hard to believe that the air quality is still in the moderate range less than 100 meters. The stealthily engulfing mist, seen in the distance, reminds me of a scene of inexplicable fear from the epic movie, The Ten Commandments, - the Passover of the Angel of Death striking all the Egyptian first-borns.

There can be no smoke without fire. Anyone for smoked salmon?

How convenient it is for An Inconvenient Truth to become A Convenient Lie if you know how.


The nostalgia of Jerome Kern's Smoke Gets In Your Eyes:

sung by The Platters, Margaret Whiting

and played by Verity Thirkettle on Aoyama Monarch Concert Harp

posted by Victor Lai @ 9:33 PM