Some facts

Facts, as we know, are generally bad things as they can get in the way of opinions.

For some reason I had the opinion that Singapore would be quite a corrupt place. Well, it has got a governing party which plays very hardball indeed with the opposition. So, I suspected that their businesses would be similarly suspect.

Turns out that they rank number five in Transparency International's comprehensive list of un-corrupt countries.

That's impressive. The UK is eleventh and the USA is 18th. Finland is, of course, the least corrupt country in the world.

There's been a little bit of criticism in the last few months, years and even decades, about the Central Intelligence Agency of the US government.

But I can't fault them. When I want to find out about a country I go to their World Factbook and I'll get a very apt synopsis about the country in question. Today I found it very useful in finding more about Singapore.

Now, it doesn't give GPS co-ordinates of military bases for cruise missile attack, or infiltration/exfiltration sites for special forces use. But there's very little call for that sort of thing in my line of work so I can't complain. I'd imagine some US military personnel are a bit miffed about the lack of such information but I'd tell them to look at other countries' intelligence services. For example, the British Secret Service doesn't even have a web site. If you ask me that's taking secrecy a bit too far.