Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Just when I was fretting about having nothing to blog about, The Straits Times provided me with some timely blog fodder. Flip to page 16 of today's issue of Digital Life and you will know why.
It's surprising, really, to be one of the three bloggers featured when countless others wrote on the same topic, many with better content and language. And how my post was found is beyond me. No one visited my blog by googling "GST" or other related keywords. I know that because of this uber cool website tracker. Perhaps someone who frequents my blog works for the ST? If not, any tech gurus can clue me in on this? And the funny thing is, I made some unflattering remarks about the local media in that post, and there are all of two media conglomerates in Singapore, one of them being the very company whose paper featured the post. Anyone else realised that?
Anyhow, there is something very disconcerting about the way my post appeared in that column. The heading read, "Analysing the true rea(s)ons" and the entire post was misleadingly abridged to the effect that I sounded like a total geek of a blogger brandishing Economics theories and trying to act smart. Let me clarify that it was, by no means, an analytical post, nor was I trying to appear educated by generously sprinkling Economics jargons, knowing full well how crappy 'A' Level Econs is to an economist/policy maker.
To prevent further misconstruction (TW and possibly many others did not catch the gist of my post), let me attempt to provide a better summary than what appeared on Digital Life.
“…I know the GST has to go up and that is the right way to go, but I get turned off when the hike is justified almost entirely on grounds of solving the widening rich-poor gap to sound morally appealing…”
And that is the whole point I was trying to make.
Never mind that I have been portrayed as a geek, I am now reveling in the limelight as my phone has been buzzing with calls and smses from friends since this morning. But at the same time, this incident serves as a poignant reminder that there is no privacy to blogging and there is something known as the Sedition Act so I better be doubly careful with I write here from now on.
It's surprising, really, to be one of the three bloggers featured when countless others wrote on the same topic, many with better content and language. And how my post was found is beyond me. No one visited my blog by googling "GST" or other related keywords. I know that because of this uber cool website tracker. Perhaps someone who frequents my blog works for the ST? If not, any tech gurus can clue me in on this? And the funny thing is, I made some unflattering remarks about the local media in that post, and there are all of two media conglomerates in Singapore, one of them being the very company whose paper featured the post. Anyone else realised that?
Anyhow, there is something very disconcerting about the way my post appeared in that column. The heading read, "Analysing the true rea(s)ons" and the entire post was misleadingly abridged to the effect that I sounded like a total geek of a blogger brandishing Economics theories and trying to act smart. Let me clarify that it was, by no means, an analytical post, nor was I trying to appear educated by generously sprinkling Economics jargons, knowing full well how crappy 'A' Level Econs is to an economist/policy maker.
To prevent further misconstruction (TW and possibly many others did not catch the gist of my post), let me attempt to provide a better summary than what appeared on Digital Life.
“…I know the GST has to go up and that is the right way to go, but I get turned off when the hike is justified almost entirely on grounds of solving the widening rich-poor gap to sound morally appealing…”
And that is the whole point I was trying to make.
Never mind that I have been portrayed as a geek, I am now reveling in the limelight as my phone has been buzzing with calls and smses from friends since this morning. But at the same time, this incident serves as a poignant reminder that there is no privacy to blogging and there is something known as the Sedition Act so I better be doubly careful with I write here from now on.
posted @ 1:04 PM