Politics: Back to school
This year’s National Day Rally, fittingly held (again) at the Institute of Technical Education headquarters, resembled a lecture. Lawrence Wong, prime minister, shunned nationalistic fervour and motivational mantras for a mellow, and oftentimes soporific, policy exercise more befitting a professor. For instance, through a succession of slides, the techno-optimist narrated examples of AI’s impact in society, including transcription at government call-centres, automation at Tuas Port, and sophisticated diagnosis of anomalies in turbine components at GE Vernova, an American MNC.
The AI-with-Larry module ended with a dental x-ray on screen with Wong using a laser pointer to point out coloured blotches on teeth. “You want as little dark red as possible, because that means potential tooth decay,” warned the prime minister, perhaps causing his subjects to drop their Dubai chocolates. “And all this is done by AI in under a minute.” The technocratic delivery was all the more unusual given that we’re in the age of politics as theatre, not only in the White House. Still, it’s how most Singaporeans like our leaders. Not all were impressed though. “Halfway through watching the NDR, I turned to my Lego bricks to construct a mansion,” wrote Bertha Henson, an independent journalist, before a good analysis of several points.
Wong’s key announcements include: enhancements to the SkillsFuture Level-Up programme (meant to aid midcareer reskilling); new “Age Well Neighbourhoods” that will offer more accessible active ageing centres and healthcare services for the elderly; a dedicated campus in Rochor for the new Singapore College of Islamic Studies; a harsher crackdown on vaping (more below); and spanking new housing developments in Kranji and Sembawang (more below). The downtempo delivery worked less well when Wong called for a “We-First” society that puts “we” ahead of “me”. He cited examples of ground-up initiatives and called for more. His team believes in “doing things with Singaporeans” and wants to “open up more avenues for you to be heard and to get involved”, all of which will help “keep our Singapore spirit alive”.
All laudable goals, though Singaporeans have heard variants before. Some scepticism is warranted. The best way for Wong to demonstrate “we” over “me” is to begin with the civil service and politics. Reduce the drastic wage inequalities within government; and level the electoral playing field, so the ruling People’s Action Party can no longer be accused of acting in its own self interest. And if Wong’s team genuinely wants to involve all Singaporeans in shaping our future, they could liberalise speech, for instance on racial and religious issues, so we have a better sense for how to address injustices. It may be a hard sell for the elder Mandarins, so used to dutiful crowds in air-conditioned lecture halls.
Society: The march of progress
A “city as committed as anywhere on the planet to remaking nature for human ends”, is how historian Sunil Amrith described Singapore in The Burning Earth. Perhaps the most revealing lines from the National Day Rally were the ones where Wong renewed his party’s vows to the developmental state’s juggernaut.
“We have taken back the [Kranji racecourse] land and we will give it a new lease of life.”
“The homes will be nestled amidst lush green spaces.”
“We can capitalise on the [Sembawang] coastline to develop something special.”
“We can have new concepts for dining and shopping, as well as community spaces along the promenade.”
“In Singapore, you know that we do not just plan, we make things happen.”
“We are–and have always been–a nation that adapts, reinvents and dares to dream.”
Beneath the grandiose proclamations one can hear the creep of concrete, and the cries of secondary forests soon to be slashed. Wong and the PAP, to be sure, are in a bind. Young people want more, and more affordable, housing. Without a serious reworking of Singapore’s growth model, away from one dependent on high population growth, there seems little alternative to ever more construction. In any case, some two-thirds of the electorate have effectively voted for this future.
From our hyper-urban vantage point, the past is rendered irrelevant. “Nearly 20 years ago, we talked about Punggol 21. Back then, there was not much there,” said Wong. Contrast Wong’s impression of old Punggol with that of Kelvin Yap, whose family moved to the “almost self-contained seafaring settlement” after the second world war. “The isolation ensured that large parts of the north-east remained outside Singapore’s economic and cultural mainstream…Being isolated from the trappings of the urban mainstream also ensured that community remained a hallmark of kampung culture. Doors were always open; families cared for each other.”
Not much there. Just the same Singapore spirit and sense of “we” that Wong is trying hard to now cultivate in our newer concrete jungles.
Some further reading: In “One person's quest to save Dover Forest”, we examine the tension between building more housing and saving our secondary forests.
Society: Life in plastic, it’s fantastic
Search “plastic surgery Singapore” on Lemon8, a social media app by ByteDance, and you’ll see many posts of young women reviewing the procedures they have done—with one titled “MY FAVOURITE CHEAP AESTHETIC CLINICS 🇹🇭🇻🇳”. On TikTok, Shannon, a recent university graduate, posted a vlog that began: “Follow me to get a nose job at Bangkok, normal people during recess week go on holiday and just relax. I, on the other hand, decide to get my nose done.”
This is part of a growing trend in Singapore: more youths under 30 are going for plastic surgery, as reported by CNA earlier this week. Some plastic surgeons noted a 30 percent jump in demand for cosmetic works led by younger people where previously, clients were mostly above 40 and sought procedures to look more youthful. Over the years, there has been a rise of beauty influencers “un-gatekeeping” insider tips from the industry. Kylie Jenner recently revealed the exact details of her breast augmentation procedure. “445 cc, moderate profile, half under the muscle!!! Silicone!!! Garth Fisher!!!” she responded to a fan’s query in a TikTok comment. This democratisation of insider info has made it easier to aspire to some ideal beauty standard. Cosmetic procedures have become a form of self-improvement. Every imperfection, big or small, is something that can be “fixed” through plastic surgery. Experts worry about plastic surgery addiction; those who lack resources may seek out cheaper alternatives, causing a rise in botched surgeries.
Social media plays an important role. Algorithms can draw users into a whirlpool of videos centred around makeovers and cosmetic procedures, repackaged with euphemistic buzzwords such as “glowing up” and “looksmaxing”. Beauty filters found on these platforms may cause facial dysmorphia among users. Notably, the 2024 study by the Institute of Mental Health reveals a correlation between excessive social media use and the increased likelihood of having severe or extremely severe symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress. Separately, the report also found that women aged 20-29 are more likely than other groups to experience body shape and image concerns; and are more likely to experience severe or extremely severe symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress.
The decision to alter one’s appearance is an intensely personal one; it’s difficult to see any real benefit to shaming someone for how they choose to modify their body, or judging their motivations for doing so. That said, we cannot ignore the growing psychological toll on young women navigating unrealistic beauty ideals amplified by algorithmic echo chambers. In today’s world, the liberty to look how you want must be balanced with critical media literacy, a greater awareness of gendered beauty expectations, and mental health support.
Society: The vaping dilemma
Raid, blitz, crackdown, operation. The nation is at war against vapers. From the ITE ramparts, the prime minister issued the battle cry. Out streamed the troops to nab, seize, bust and nail—their exploits chronicled in loyal detail by reporters invited to be part of the fun, like groupies on a tour bus. But before this theatre of enforcement, the public shaming, and calls for neighbourly espionage; prior to universities threatening expulsion, employers being urged to draft anti-vaping policies, and parents soothed into reporting their children, the real questions were about public health. Are vapes, and other new nicotine delivery systems, less harmful than cigarettes? If so, can smokers be nudged into switching? And can this be done without tempting those, especially the youth, who had never smoked? In 2018, Singapore effectively answered No to all three. This meant no vaping data, and incentives for black marketeers to create the most high-value, addictive products. And so, kpods among youth and the Great Panic of 2025.
Since then, data from elsewhere suggest vapes help with cessation. Smoking rates in New Zealand—where vapes are legal and regulated—fell from 14.5 percent in 2016 to 6.8 percent in 2023. The UK saw a decline from around 15 percent to 11.6 percent under similar policies. These numbers exist alongside emerging but still wispy evidence that vapes are better than gums and patches for cessation. Japan, which bans vapes but allows heated tobacco products (HTPs), saw cigarette sales halve in seven years. Sweden’s snus—tobacco pouches that allow nicotine to be absorbed from their perch under the upper lip—helped make it the first smoke-free nation in the world.
Still, doubts persist. The UK’s Royal College of Physicians (RCP) recently reaffirmed that “e-cigarettes should be promoted” to help people quit tobacco but flagged inconsistent evidence on contaminants like cadmium, arsenic and mercury. Meanwhile, worrying new info about heavy metals has emerged elsewhere. Critics think that Japan and Sweden have been hasty in adopting therapies lacking long-term data and pushed by tobacco companies not known for their moral rectitude. In general though, it appears as if vapes do help in harm reduction (bad, just not as bad, as cigarettes), while the jury is still out on the risks of second-hand smoke.
It’s the last question that’s most perplexing. Most countries with new, legal nicotine therapies—vapes, HTPs, snus—have seen upticks in youth use. Nearly 10 percent of English secondary school students vape frequently, with a third at risk of becoming smokers, “meaning they are as likely to smoke as their peers were in the 1970s,” according to The Guardian. Yet, New Zealand’s experience doesn’t reflect this. Such bewilderingly diverse approaches and outcomes reflect public health’s dilemma: wait for certainty, and risk preventable deaths; or act on current evidence, and risk blowback later. The gains against smoking here have been slow and hard won, from over 25 percent of the population in the 1970s to less than 10 percent in 2023. The caution is understandable; though our failure to regulate vapes is partly to blame for the current crisis. There is perhaps a halfway house, one adopted by Australia after an epidemic of teenage vaping in the country: allow vape sales only in pharmacies. But before any rational discussion, the conniptions need to settle.
Earth: Used cooking oil takes on heavy-duty work on runway
The fat that fried the curry puff you scarfed down before take-off may have powered the very machines keeping Changi Airport’s runways safe. In a six-month trial, starting in May, used cooking oil (UCO) from airport F&B outlets was converted into renewable diesel to fuel heavy vehicles and specialised mobile equipment, such as runway sweepers and rubber removal machines. The former clears debris and the latter strips rubber left by aircraft tires that can affect braking. Viable electric versions don’t exist yet, said Changi Airport Group (CAG). The UCO is transformed at Finnish renewable firm Neste’s Singapore plant in Tuas, the world’s largest renewable diesel refinery. The end product is almost identical to fossil diesel, and can be blended with it in any proportion. In the trial’s second phase starting mid-August, the blend doubled to 100 percent renewable diesel, slashing up to 90 percent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over the fuel’s life cycle. It’s part of CAG’s wider environmental strategy. Its 60-strong airside fleet already includes fully electric baggage tractors. But the goal is more ambitious: to cut domestic aviation emissions 20 percent from 2019 levels by 2030 and reach net-zero domestic and international aviation emissions by 2050. Other initiatives include expanding solar power, and from 2026, charging outbound passengers a levy to help fund sustainable aviation fuel.
The need is urgent. Global carbon emissions from aviation have quadrupled since the 1960s. Aviation contributes 3.5 per cent of climate change from human activity, according to a 2021 study in Atmospheric Environment; and to roughly four percent of the global temperature rise since pre-industrial times. As air travel demand grows, the sector must improve energy efficiency and adopt cleaner low-carbon fuels—whether electrification, biofuels, hydrogen, or hybrids. Singapore has proven its chops as a potential green fuels hub. Besides hosting Neste’s renewable diesel and jet fuel (made from waste materials including UCO and animal fats) operations, Nanyang Technological University scientists in 2022 unveiled a method to transform plastic marine waste—collected from local waters—into hydrogen fuel using pyrolysis, a high-heat chemical process. Other recycled fuel projects here and abroad include creating alternative sand from CO2; turning plastic into NEWBitumen for road construction; and developing carbon fuels from non-recyclable plastic and industrial gasses.
But should we believe all the hype? A Straits Times and Climate Home News investigation in Malaysia found that soaring demand for UCO has sparked “ridiculous data and suspected fraud,” warning this could “hinder aviation’s green fuel hopes.” Some suppliers are passing off virgin oils like palm as “used” to capture the premium prices of supposedly green fuels. As the circular economy for recycled fuels heats up, ensuring the sustainability and credibility of supply chains is critical. Changi’s experiment shows one way forward, where yesterday’s cooking oil powers tomorrow’s flights.
History weekly by Faris Joraimi
1907: a cinema opens in Singapore, right by the sea. Like many others here, it was just a large circus tent, called the Royal. Others were makeshift canopies, but the likes of Matsuo's Japanese Cinematograph and the London Chronograph were decorated and equipped with electric lights and fans. But that same year, the Royal was bought and rebuilt as a brick-and-mortar structure called the Grand Cinematograph. It must’ve been forgettable, for a few weeks later the owner rechristened it the Alhambra. Evoking the home of Spain’s last Islamic rulers, Alhambra was a fitting name for a palace of dreams, where glory and tragedy, historia and fabula, blurred together. After changing hands twice, the Alhambra got into the hands of entertainment towkay Tan Cheng Kee, who hired artists to repaint the proscenium in opal, amethyst, and gold. Ten flags hung on the arch enclosing the screen, and above the word “Alhambra” was a bust of Shakespeare, like a storytelling god, surrounded by roses.
Business boomed, and less than a decade later the Alhambra was rebuilt to accommodate 1,500 patrons, with a special box for Malay royalty. Fine drapes, tiled floors, and telephone booths enveloped audiences who didn’t need dialogue. They had faces. A live orchestra led them through the scenes. The Alhambra was on Beach Road and so close to water that locals called it hai kee (‘by the sea’); one reporter wrote that “there we could hear the junks swaying and creaking with the tide as we watched the screen.” In the 1930s, it became Singapore’s first air-conditioned cinema, with sound equipment installed for the talkies. The Shaw Brothers took over and ran it until the war, which it survived. Two grand renovations followed in 1951 and 1966, before the Alhambra and its neighbour, the Marlborough Cinema were demolished in the early 1970s. The Shaw Tower, part of the “Golden Mile” stretch of mixed-use development, took their place.
The Alhambra grew so old; there were no chain multiplexes then. Singaporeans went to picture-palaces with marvellous names: the Taj, Galaxy, Capitol, Odeon, Majestic, Palladium, Queen’s, and Rex. What was it like? In Giuseppe Tornatore’s coming-of-age film Cinema Paradiso (1988), the screening venue is also a community space and institution, which people grow up with, make kin, and come home to. Now the screen goes dark at another beloved Beach Road cinema. As streaming shrinks the pictures around the world, we’ll always have our widescreen memories. At The Projector, I’ll remember getting shushed for laughing in Bosch: The Garden of Dreams (2016), weeping through The Florida Project (2017), and being improbably re-enchanted by Singapore, in Sementara (2020).
Arts: You know how to fill in the blanks
Over four decades ago, _____ was erected along _____ Road, one of the significant buildings of that period to exemplify the functional beauty of Brutalism in Singapore. Within its austere confines, the beloved _____ hosted not just the smorgasbord of _____ it was known for, but went beyond its remit to welcome events tackling _____ rights, the abolition of _____, and activist groups such as _____. As an independent space, it knew that a committed community was the core of its cultural mission. And so it also embraced _____ parties, _____ pop-ups and _____ festivals, drawing adjacent social planets into its dazzling orbit. And, unlike other shuttering _____, it seemed to be holding out, resisting the “cultural desert” label of the nation state and offering refuge to misfits, rebels and geeks, whether in the foyer or the stalls.
Yet, in a shock announcement, _____ revealed that it would be closing down after _____ years of operations. The Straits Times reported that _____ owed over S$_____m to creditors; shortly after, a listing for the site, marketing it as a potential “church” venue, went up on CommercialGuru for S$_____ per month. There was an immediate outpouring of grief. Some petitioned the state, collecting over _____ signatures in an effort to prompt a “rescue package”. “It feels…like the loss of a partner, a loss akin to an immediate family member or lover passing away unexpectedly and suddenly,” _____ mourned, encouraging the public to support those most affected by the closure. Others, such as _____, former _____ of the _____ Festival, lamented the lack of public and private investment in _____ spaces: “There is so much underutilised space in this city, while the _____ that have actually sustained us are left to collapse.” _____ wasn’t the only one making this observation. “We must treat _____ as cultural infrastructure, the way we do libraries or museums,” wrote _____, a long-time scholar of _____, “The Singapore public must advocate for continued cultural funding. Otherwise, closures will keep coming.”
_____, who specialises in arts and cultural policy, had written in 2021 that these situations often feel “like déjà vu”. She’d cautioned those who sought to rely wholly on state intervention: “...state assistance is also a double-edged sword as _____ remain vulnerable to bureaucratic intervention and have to accept the terms and conditions dictated by the state.” To stave off the repeated fates of _____ spaces, it’s clear two things must be done: the individual must support local creative production, and the state must loosen the strings it attaches to cultural support. In another instance of the redevelopment of an _____ space, the _____ council had stepped in, offering The _____ several options, including returning to _____ as a co-tenant, a downgrade from its operator status. This was met with fierce concern from _____, who felt that The _____’s independence would be severely curtailed, or compromised, under state custodianship. In this sense, _____ are frequently dispossessed of the spaces most significant to them.
Faris Joraimi, Abhishek Mehrotra, Sakinah Safiee, Corrie Tan, Tsen-Waye Tay, and Sudhir Vadaketh wrote this week’s edition.
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