Singapore stops foreigners from singing complaints
According to Yahoo!News:
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – A choir that planned to sing a list of complaints about life in Singapore cancelled its performances after the city-state banned its foreign members from singing, organizers said on Saturday.The 60-member “complaints choir,” a concept that originated from two Finnish artists, was scheduled to perform at a weekend festival but authorities granted a performance license on the condition that the foreigners would not participate.
“Our conductor is Malaysian, so how could the choir go ahead without him?” said Melissa Lim, the festival organizer.
Singapore’s Media Development Authority said the license was conditional because the lyrics touched on “domestic affairs” and it preferred only Singaporeans take part.
Some of the complaints that would have been sung included, “when a pregnant lady gets on the train, everyone pretends to sleep” and “when I’m hungry at the food court, I see people (reserve) seats with tissue paper.”
Singapore, which faces a low birth rate and a graying population, has turned increasingly to immigrants to boost its work force. It aims to add another 2 million people to the island’s 4.7 million people over the next 40 to 50 years.
The city-state is frequently criticized by human rights groups for its restrictions on expression and the media.
- They should add another line of the lyrics such as “Want to complain with a song also got banned!” haha… Anyway I bet local Mr. Brown version of comedy podcast is more acceptable instead of a public performances by people of other countries living in Singapore.
Recently saw many immigrants “speaking Chinese loudly” and throwing litter everywhere…where is the local litter police now? These immigrant can go back anytime and come back with open arms by our government as this is the “only” solution the government had come up with to solve the local population problem.
The government haven’t solve the root cause of the problem of low birth rate as many cite work related stress and bad living lifestyle the key cause of infertility and marriage problems. What kind of society are we looking for in our lives, a stressed working slaves that work round the clock or a human that have freedom to chose our lifestyles and working hours?
I bet this will be hard decisions for politician to promote among local Singaporeans to be hard core entrepreneurs instead of being cultivated by our education system to be specialized employees for different industry of “choice” or available “choice” of courses.
