Law of the Underdog.

Several interesting perspectives were tendered at yesterday's session of the Committee of Inquiry (COI) into the Little India riot, as reported in TODAY and ST (March 12). The most intriguing was the notion of a street culture -- a "hierarchy of reactions" underpinned by a "Law of the Underdog" that swept up the mob of rioters that fateful night. The notion that drunkenness was a contributory factor was brought up again, by a foreign worker himself:

Law of the Underdog?

Drunkenness?

NGO representative Russell Heng also offered his take, and what can be done, citing the need for "cultural awareness" on the part of the authority figures:

I thought the most soundbite-worthy assessments came from a resident of Little India, Mr Pereira Martin. His turn probably came after the NGO rep had given his views:

How careful he was!... "these Indian ladies are not normal ladies". But his most robust remark -- one I would have used for a pluck-out quote (unlike the one about looking for someone walking along Orchard Road; see Monday's blog entry) was this delightful riposte to a question put to him:

Meanwhile, it seems clear that every word uttered at the COI is being scrutinised by observers:

I will not comment on this story above, except to say that I am impressed with DAC Lu's "give as good as he gets" rejoinders.
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Grate Expat-tations

All I'll say here too is, another one...

Hmmm, I hope the police clarifies Ms Ho's assertion that "as no broken [nose] bones were found, the police told her they could not arrest Mr Jeremiejczyk". Even my funny bone found this very strange.
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Shame on the checkers who let this slip through....

ST had -- correctly -- made the decision to use parking spots/parking spaces/carpark spaces instead of the illogical parking lots/carpark lots (ie, unless you were in America). Now this!...