I'm very happy with clean and I like Singapore very much. But where's the baguette, the beach, the clean stream. I can do without the social carnage of NZ [go to herald.co.nz for daily gore and insanity.
Sterile city is good. Sterile "disciplined" minds are not. People seem happy to cross against the pedestrian lights if there's no traffic coming - to me a good sign of unrepressed people in that it's a completely victimless crime but antithetical to autocrats. There's a good joke about a train full of dead Germans who were found dried out years after a train stopped 100 metres from the platform and they didn't have the initiative to get out and walk.
Using this measure of societies as one of freedom, India is highly free, Belgium is highly repressed, USA is very repressed, Singapore is repressed, Britain is loose, France is free, I can't remember Germany.
An even better guide is driving across an intersection when no cars are coming but the light is red. Another victimless crime. In some places, people would stay parked at a red light all night rather than risk police catching them "running a red light" which many mindless people think is a bad thing to do.
I remember years ago in Madrid I think it was, where the light would go red and cars would keep going until the crossing vehicles got in their way and made them stop, in a gradually clearing process.
I bet you don't drive through a red light in Singapore and not in the USA. Other than that excellent free turn at red light that they have and everyone should adopt.
Red lights should be treated as stop signs. Stop and if you can go, then go. No need to waste the world's resources and pollute the atmosphere and waste time parked for no reason, other than that the IQ of traffic lights is lower than most car drivers and I suspect all of them, though that's lowering the bar a long way.
Mqurice |
