Dear Daniel, what stuff posted about him? All I said is he would not engage talk ABOUT HIM online. I thought it was very clear? I'm glad you seemed to understand from what you said to "not ps" fool, but you seemed a bit befuddled in your starting para to me. It has nothing to do with engaging the public or their interests. He is very passionate about public affairs and improving the lives of people, that's why he signed on to be an army regular.

Jeesuz... you know all the time, I really feel unjust for him and this incident is just one of a string of many that we don't even bother to keep count. Serving an ungrateful lot with all his earnesty, I feel bad for him and would tell him so.

Not engaging talk about him- means even when he surfs the net from gems to filth like the two blogs mentioned above- silly free-of-charge platforms set up by groups of unemployed people with agendas- he takes in the information, processes it and moves on. He may or may not use it for shaping his thoughts and ideas about public policy, depending on how he deems its worthiness.

Not engaging means even as he does this, he does not post "I am who you are talking about".

I thought I made myself plainly clear above, even complete with descriptive analogies about PM and perm sec. So the PM or perm sec does not read random stuff online and post "Hello I am your friendly perm sec in the hood", he does not care about the public?! I can't believe how stupid "not PS" is. He isn't just "not ps" level. I'm one million levels below PS standards and even I find this "confusion" ridiculous.

Not engaging simply means being like all the other 200+ PS, not saying a word and claiming in a post to be the PS on the net. As I said, ONLY you have, if you're not an imposter. On a macro level, you're the only one of 200+ in history. On a micro level, you're the only 1 out of the 5 this year. I still haven't discounted the possibility that you're an imposter, because cos you can't be verified. It's just logic on my part.

As for your insights above, yes i've taken them into account after reading. It's true that their positive impacts is most applied on males aged 18-21. But all Singaporean males have to go through that anytime from 18 to 21, don't they? So it's a rite of passage that all Singapore men identify and have in common with one another. So in effect every male at some point would have been impacted. Even if the impact is concentrated in that age frame. Moreover, it's most efficient, since that's the time when they are raring to begin their lives.

If you have ever commanded full time NS boys, you would know that it's untrue that they don't bring their personal lives into the borders of camp. They do, in varying degrees, with some bringing a whole lot of it.

I do agree that police interact with a wider cross section of society than the armed forces, for example they would interact with women more, whereas army officers hardly.

But my point remains that the police's interaction with the public as investigators, allows them to see what's happening (this much I concede), but their investigative role limits the interaction to be largely officious in nature, and at arm's length emotionally. Army units, especially at platoon and company level which he's done with, allow more emotional and closer ties to be forged. There is a brotherhood camaraderie present in army units that isn't present in police work.

As police officers investigate their charges, they function as observers and processors. Police officers and citizens in the course of police work, are less "on the same side" compared to army commanders and their men behind the same frontline.

Also, do note that defence policies impact the whole nation as well as foreign policies and bilateral ties with other countries whereas home affairs policies have a more domestic focus, which is rightly so because that is its role.
Also, they also impact reservist NS men.

I politely disagree with your generalisation of army generals. And I think I have met many more than you have, to say that I probably have a more accurate viewpoint because of a wider sample size.

Perhaps the army being significantly more regimented than the police has entrenched a stronger sense of tradition and emphasis on rank. It is after all the military, where units are commanded for wars vs the police whose power is over civilians.

You may have met a few generals who are like this, but you have yet to meet enough to say most army generals are like this, and then another step up: you've yet to establish a causal link between the attitudes of those generals you met with the military set-up. Here's something else for you to ponder about causal link which he taught me.

Most PSC civilian ones were in OCS (SAFOS and SPFOS no need to say). Say, we know roughly 7 out of 10 OMS were from OCS. Does this mean that PSC looks for "admitted to OCS" as one of its criteria? To the simple minded like me, that may be one of the first few conclusions. If you find 7 balls out of 10 in a box red, does it mean that the person filling up the box had stipulated the colour red when he asked for the box to be filled with balls (vis a vis a causal link)? Or does it mean that PSC and OCS look for the same qualities, or a large subset of the same qualities when they select candidates.