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https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/social-inequality-lack-of-diversity-png-eng-huat-parliament-10239986 I really think it might work, secondary school admission based on each primary school highest performing students. I thought it is a brilliant out of the box thinking

Radical will be attending the Salon Prive this September and for the first time, they will display the new Radical RXC. The RXC is Radical's first ever enclosed car and marks an exciting new step in the development of the marque, by bringing genuine Le Mans engineering and aerodynamics to the road in a package that delivers incredible performance whilst remaining easy to own. The V6 engine and seven-speed gearbox configuration has been developed specifically for the RXC under the guidance of Radical's Managing Director Phil Abbott as well as Chief Designer Nick Walford and his development team. The Ford Mustang sourced engine is a 3.7-litre 24-valve V6 unit with twin-independent variable cam timing and sequential multi-port electronic injection, controlled by a bespoke Radical/AER Life engine management system as employed successfully on the SR3 SL roadster. The six-cylinder develops 380bhp and 434Nm of torque. Since the RXC only weighs 900kg, the power-to-weight ratio of the car is 422bhp/ton, which will provide a century sprint of 2.8 seconds before climbing to a top speed of 281km/h. The car's striking design elements include gullwing doors, with Radical saying the RXC has the most complex body it has ever produced, as it includes both composite and carbon fibre sections. "It's the car we've always wanted to make, and by applying our extensive knowledge and understanding we have produced a GT car that - just like our other products - will outperform machinery costing many times more. But more important than that it's going to be incredibly thrilling to drive," said Radical's Managing Director Phil Abbott.

Seriously never remember parents last time getting so uptight about the PSLE or exams in general. Maybe we were from a kampong and the common response of these mostly uneducated folks including mine towards exams was "buay tak chek to ker cho gang lo" (If one can't pass an exam, the next recourse is to find a job) But now being a parent myself, though not a very rich nor highly educated one, I am fully aware of the high stakes in our kids' education process nowadays because if they fail any national exams, they may be categorised as failures and end up as society discards sadly. Having said that I reluctantly agree with the authorities that the PSLE is necessary to gauge the ability of kids for their stage of the education. Maybe some tweeking will be nice but strictly not radical changes to the system such as what this parent advocated please. On a side note I did not remember having problems mastering my mother tongue those days. This is probably due to us kampong kids being fans of Jing Yong, Gu Long or Liang Yu Sheng last time From ST Forum: http://www.straitstimes.com/premium/forum-...needed-20120928 Radical changes to PSLE needed Published on Sep 28, 2012 I JOIN Dr Joshua Kua in calling on the Education Ministry to roll out concrete action plans to resolve unhealthy stress in schools and for parents to form a group to lobby for education reform ("Resolve unhealthy stress in schools"; Sept 14). The fundamental problem lies with the current "one size fits all" education policy, especially for primary schools. Every pupil takes four subjects: English, mother tongue, mathematics and science. How well the pupils do in the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) is based on the aggregate of all four subjects. The primary objective seems to be to produce top pupils. It does not take into consideration their strengths and weaknesses. If a child is weak in mother tongue but strong in the other three PSLE subjects, he is "penalised" as his aggregate is affected and thus his choice of secondary school. Mother tongue is the biggest cause of stress for pupils and their parents. Many parents believe mother tongue tuition is necessary and even critical to their children's ability to score good grades in the PSLE. Sadly, many pupils spend a disproportionate amount of time on mother tongue and still fare poorly, not because they are not clever but because of the lack of an innate linguistic aptitude. My wife and I have a daughter, 14, and a son, 16. We would have wanted them to learn Chinese and Malay because they are of mixed parentage. We chose Chinese for their PSLE and, fortunately, they performed well. But it was unnecessarily stressful; the time expended could have been better used for quality family moments. The PSLE need not be scrapped to fix the problem. Instead, change the current calculation of the PSLE aggregate from four subjects to the best three subjects. English must be a compulsory subject in the mix, and a pupil must pass mother tongue. In this way, a pupil who is not as innately talented in languages is not penalised as he can focus on his three stronger subjects. But if he is strong in mother tongue but weak in maths or science, he is also not penalised as his aggregate will be based on English, mother tongue and one other subject. In fact, with this change, parents may even be encouraged to have their children take two mother tongue subjects and not be concerned about the grades. Second, review the difficulty in maths. Currently, many children struggle with the very convoluted problem sums, which even many parents find extremely challenging. Education should not be just about the best, it should be more about the rest. Tan Poh Lam

Radical solutions can and have solved problems even the experts fail to resolve. For example: if you have only a tiny 'fun' dog the size of a kitten, how do you make it work for you stop burglers breaking into your house? Tiny dog against 200 pounder burgler, or even a noraml 70kg desparate drug addict trying to steal our money while you are sleeping? Impossible?? No, it's highly possible AND effective!! ............ you only need two things to turn this tiny dog into burgler-stopper, no need to swap it with a huge watchdog... you need: #1 an burgler alarm button where the tiny dog can reach easily (go NTUC hyper mart to get one, cheap), #2 the dog must not fall asleep (easy, they dont) Train the tiny dog to press the button whenever he sees stranger at night (most dog, 99% can be easily trained to do it) Ok, back to the topic. One radical solution I can think of also has the side benefit of reducing air pollution. Why do people need cars? Ans: to get from A to B (work, shop, leisure, see friends, etc). In tiny singapore, these journeys usually last not more than 10 to 40 mins and therefore it doesnt matter if you travel in a big (ie E or S- class merc) or small (1000cc or below) car. The comfort or lack of it on this relatively short trips is not going to be a big issue. So, let's make it a default mode of travel within Spore by, wait for it..... using a car-shareing system where the user can pre-book the use of such a small car and pay for the use based of length of use and whether it's peak or non-peak hours. A car-sharing system allows the costs of car ownership / maintenance etc to be shared amongst the users. This is more economical as compared of owning / maintaining one's own private car. After all, why pay for full costs of ownership if he only uses his car less than half the time?? The car-sharing system can have its fleet consists of mainly 1000cc cars (good enough for most users) and some larger models. It can have these cars parked at strategic locations for users to pick up and return. There are electronic systems available for booking, payments etc etc. In fact there are already a few such systems in Spore market, only thing is that they are not large scale. If somehow LTA can make it attractive thru its rules for the people to use such a system, plus making great improvements in MRT / Buses, we can see traffic congestions reduced in a big way. Why? for daily trips to work, more people will take MRT / buses, those who insist on driving, can use the car-share system and pay for it. But when he reaches his office and park the shared-car, the car can be reused by another user who will pay for the use. During the day. This way, we wont see car parks in office areas full of idle cars between 9am-6pm, the cars are being used by others who need them during office hours. Same for weekends and public holidays, the same fleet of shared-cars will be booked and used by families who need them for say between 1 to 8 hours whatever it is. The key advantages are: (a) Shared cost, (b) Cars are fully utalised instead of parked idling. Due to fleet ownership, the companies who operates these cars have the economy of scale to keep maintenance low. The roadtax / insurance costs are shared by many 'users' through rentals. So with the above system, we have low cost use of cars and if these cars are hybric or electric, our envirnment will be cleaner than it is now. You may ask: if I dont like the cars such a system offers, can I have my model of choice? Yes, you will have to buy and maintain one as per current situation, but LTA may up the COE / rdtax / ERP for such private car and use the money collected to off-set the costs of keeping such car-shared systems. ie you pay for the option of having the model you like. On the average, four 1000cc cars use the same road space of three full size cars, or even less. This certainly will help ease traffic congestions. For those who die die must have either big or high power cars, as explain above, they can have it but pay a high price. Yes, it's a socialists' concept, but due to our small land size and high population density, it seems to be a viable solution. The details can be worked out especially with electronic smart systems available in the global market. BTW, LTA can also rent out high power / big cars on requests, at a higher price as mentioned. I wont mind splurging and rent one once in a while. This way, i can still get to enjoy such cars (say on weekends, or once in a while) without having to buy and maintain one in full. I can even try out different models for each weekends. Overall, we can have a choice of MRT / buses or rent/share a car. It's more cost effective and we can have less traffic congestions and a cleaner environment.

Juan Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher got their first taste of the Williams FW26 on Monday when they completed the new car

Wow! So, this is how a T4 is supposed to look like.... Maybe SM Mtrs sold me a fake. see this radical new look at http://www.smmotors.com.sg/reviews/s40/newManOct02.pdf yoo hoo uncle foo, where art thou???