Campaigns

Over the years I have seen several campaigns in Singapore aimed at changing the way people think or behave. In the late 1980s there was a move to stop people spitting, which then was a popular Chinese pastime - better out than in being the traditional philosophy. Fine in the home perhaps, but the lung wrenching hoyk and gob were something of a hazard in the city’s streets. People were appointed to keep an eye on pedestrians and given the power to fine them on the spot.

In the early 1990s campaign posters asking “Have you given your ten smiles today?” went up around the city. Not before time maybe. They year before I had asked to look at a camera in Lucky Plaza. “You buy, you look”, I had been told. Somehow I managed to persuade the obnoxious sales clerk to show me the Nikon, which I then didn’t buy. He was furious and chased me from the shop, sticking two fingers up at me and shouting down the mall as I left.

I remember campaigns to persuade people to flush toilets, to stop chewing gum and to keep durians (strong smelling fruit) off the transportation system.

I have only been here for two days, but it appears that all those campaigns have enjoyed enormous success. Singapore is certainly a different place to the one I visited in 1989.

Years ago there was an article in the Times, I think, ridiculing the Singaporean government for banning chewing gum. The next time you walk down the main street of your town, look at the pavement. See all those black blotches of discarded chewing gum? There are none in Singapore. Perhaps the idea wasn’t so funny after all.