THE idea that senior civil servants should not spend their money on certain items during a recession is not reasonable. If expensive holidays are on a list of 'non-permissible' items, what else would be there? Should top civil servants also not buy expensive property, or eat at expensive restaurants?

Full Story

You have got it wrong! Its the message of overpaid obscene salary that is being sent out to the people, when many deserving citizens are suffering, that is causing the problem, not how they spend their money or even flaunt it.

Actually, with so many letters on Tan YS, I am surprised no one wrote about the 'greater mortal' MP Charles's response...

The editors of Straits Times have in a way hanged the Perm Sec when they printed the cost of the cooking course. I think there will be no issues at all if people do not know the cost.

This society can never be fair and equal, but people have to come to terms that there will always be people better off than them. There will always be people who gripe about how obscene an amount top govt people are getting. People who earn more have a bigger capacity to spend more.

The crux of the matter is, if you are rich or worst still, filthy rich, just don't flout or boast about your wealth.
He should learn a lesson from "smart alec" like Mr Teo and other MPs or top civil servants ( given the fat pay package, I'm not too sure if the word "servants" is still applicable. More appropriately should be changed to "masters" while tax payers should actually be refered as "servants").

I suggest that you find out the key issues people are driving at before you make a whole chunk of comments. It's not about how a civil servant spends his money! It's more about the individual as a civil servant bragging about it in the papers!

This is especially so during a recession time when people can't even hold a decent job by being retrenched. It also puts into the lime light unnecessarily on how much a top civil servant can earn, to be able to spend $45K on a cooking course. To common citizens here, some don't even get to earn $30K a year. And here you have an individual being so insensitive, bragging about spending $45K for a cooking course in France!? I guess it clearly shows a great contrary from the core values of a civil servant. He deserves it when he was being reprimanded by our Minister, as he has clearly forgotten his grounds as a top civil servant. If he's from the private sector, I guess the general public reaction would have been different. Nobody would care.

I believe that the number of singaporeans who comdemn the perm sec is as much as (if not greater than) the number of singaporeans who condone him.

yet ST decides to publish 7 letters (including 5 online ones) defending Mr Tan, and choosing to publish none that criticises him.

oh i see, so this is one classic case whereby we fully understand why many people choose to label the ST as State's Times.

Please send as you like but not flaunt your spending and style in 2 big pages in the main national newspaper when one is the number 2 in a government ministry.

Putting his name to it is no no. Who cares if the wife or the son was the writer ot that beautifiully wirtten piece sharing the 5 weeks' of experience in a No. 1 cooking school? He should not his position in government and in society. He is no a small fly.

And the piece appeared at a time when the government has plans to freeze pay and has freezed the pay of ministers.

President Obama announced freezing pay of his team for those earning more than US$100000 per year, not per month. Our senior public officers earn that kind of money in one month.

He was rapped for writing to the press and bragging about it and not for taking personal leave or spending his own money. Infact, I thought civil servants were specifically told not to deal with the press and only through the public affairs department. So what he did was a stupid thing.

The 7 letters (including 5 online ones) defending Mr Tan publish and no letters that criticises are publish maybe could explain why no one wrote about the 'greater mortal' MP Charles's response... ; )