Came across this piece on X, unfortunately through a groyper account run by an individual who would be deported from Singapore (funny they don’t realise that and think it’s a dark enlightenment Mecca). It’s an informative essay with novel observations that could’ve only come from an outsider, because Singaporeans are famously reluctant to publicly opine on matters of race and religion, but I would like to correct some inaccuracies below. I trust that my comment will see the light of the day in the spirit of the pro-truth and anti-censorship ideological bent of this publication.
1. The Little India riot in 2013 was not, as the author put it, a ‘race riot’. The author might be desensitised to the magnitude of the term in Singapore because of the ubiquity of communal disturbances in his homeland, but in modern Singapore, a race riot is the equivalent of a black swan event. The Maria Hertogh riots and the Chinese-Malay clashes of 1964 and 1969 were the last communal riots to have afflicted Singapore, and these occured amidst the backdrop of merger and separation from Malaysia. The foreign workers who rioted in Little India were inebriated boors frustrated by their lot in life, not pogrom participants seeking to lynch out-groups on sight.
2. The author made a critical error of judgement by using Indian immigration to the likes of Canada as an analogy for Singapore’s immigration dynamics. Perhaps the comparison was necessary to contextualise things for a Western audience, but there’s a better analogy. Old-stock ethnic Indians in Singapore are more akin to the Québécois by way of their nature as a foundational ethnic minority group. New-stock Indian immigrants are certainly not part of the core demos, but their presence is a second-order effect of the government’s insistence on keeping the prevailing C-M-I-O ethnic mix static. The fresh-off-the-boat Indians are a necessary counterweight to the mass importation of ethnic Chinese FOBs to the tune of millions. Without this foil, Singapore would become a Chinese settler-ethnostate within a decade, with their percentage of the population eclipsing 80%, and the “Israel of Southeast Asia” allegations from Sinophobic Malaysian and Indonesian Islamists would dominate the national psyches of Singapore’s neighbouring nations. This would spell trouble for the country.
3. To reiterate, this is in no way analogous to the situation in Canada or other Western countries. Claiming that Indian immigration to Singapore has resulted in ‘reputational damage’ to old-stock Singaporean Indians is as asinine as making the same claim for the PRCs vis-a-vis old-stock Singaporean Chinese, and there are a lot more of the latter around. I don’t begrudge the author, who is a racial outsider, for lacking familiarity with how Singaporeans self-identify, but Singaporeans are pretty good at spotting other Singaporeans of different racial backgrounds and treating them accordingly. There are certain visual and behavioural tells that the author simply isn’t privy to. The author may seem them as generic ‘Chinese’, ‘Malays’, and ‘Indians’, but these groups have had centuries of familiarity with each other and have collectively assimilated to a common civic identity. Not to mention the common accent.
4. For someone who admires Singapore and the system of governance that keeps it exceptional and an oasis of tranquility the author is surprisingly blasé about the importance of adopting stringent penalties against the communalisation of politics. The author’s insinuation that the allegations of racism against Singapore’s marginal opposition politicians (who are dyed in the wool Chinese chauvinists, the sort LKY sought to eliminate) were frivolous is not only without merit (because, as mentioned above, Indian immigration is a second-order effect of Chinese immigration) it leaves the door open to Western-style communal strife that would decimate the country from within. Should Singaporean MPs be allowed to discuss the Israel-Palestine affair at length, perhaps even issue condemnations of either entity? No, and for good reason, because it’s radicalising Malay Singaporean youth as we speak. Most Singaporeans accept the soft-authoritarian curbing of their FoE privileges. There is no room for majoritarianism AND minority grievance-mongering in Singapore. Anyone who seeks to excuse one or the other is no friend of the country or its people.
Harry Yew here. Let's clarify your position. You think that the ~30% increase in the Indian proportion of the population since 1970 (despite having low birth rates compared to Malays, and roughly similar to Chinese), most of which came 2010 onwards, 5 years after CECA was agreed, is a 'necessary counterbalance' to Chinese racial hegemony and part of the maintenance of Singapore’s demographic mix?
I think you should look at the facts (a table is provided in the article) before gracing us with your opinions. It's very concerning that LKY's highly pragmatic acceptance (but not support) of multiculturalism is being retconned to quash reasonable opposition against CECA among (non-chauvinistic) Singaporean people whose parents and grandparents helped to nation-build in such a way that the three races Singaporeans, as you say, are genuinely integrated. I have even met Singaporean Indians who are against CECA. This is a national issue, not a sectarian one on the level of Israel-Palestine (this was poor analogising on your part).
Look at LKY's term in office, correspond it with the table provided, and tell me what happened to the Chinese proportion of the population during his tenure. Bonus points for telling us what he said about what Singapore would be like if it was 100% Chinese. You may be an ‘insider’, but your fingers are not on the pulse. Your assumption that the name Harry Yew is a straight copy of LKY’s name, rather than a play on it (Yew is a rare but nice British surname), tells me you are here to be a smartarse rather than say anything constructive.
Thanks for responding Harry. Unfortunately this is a somewhat antagonistic riposte to my minor corrections of an otherwise directionally correct and even enjoyable exposition on Singapore’s demographic profile, but I have to remind myself that this publication is patronised by chronically online Western commentators who lack geniality because of the corrupting nature of anonymity, and who have stores of pent-up anger to expend over the sobering state of affairs in their home countries, so I’ll let the snark slide, because it’s not personal. I suppose I’d have the same neuroses if Singaporeans were being blown up in concert arenas and mowed down in Christmas markets and my politicians were too impotent to respond with proportionate force.
I wouldn’t know a thing about Yew being an English name because Britain is a diminished nation that does not feature prominently in my imagination. I’m indifferent to the country and its issues; I’m only engaging with this publication because of this particular piece. I assumed you were another one of those angmohs befuddled by the naming conventions of Chinese people, but my apologies if that’s not the case.
It is factually correct that Indian immigration must keep pace with the supermassive scale of Chinese immigration relative to the proportion of their respective racial silos, so I’m not sure why my use of ‘counterbalance’ is in contention. You’re right that some Singaporean Indians aren’t very comfortable with FOB immigration; I was once antagonistic myself before mellowing with age. I’m a fence-sitter myself because of the cultural dissimilarities between our respective Indic groups (we’re Anglophone and de-casteified, they’re Indophone and retain caste), but there’s a way to put a stop to it, and that is to turn off the Chinese FOB tap altogether so that a proportionate increase in the other letters of the alphabet soup won’t be warranted.
If you want to talk numbers, the actual resident population, that is Singaporean Indians + PRs, has hovered at around 5% since the 1970s. There hasn’t been an actual increase in that figure. The increase comes down to the non-resident population, that is expats + transient migrant labour, which has spiked from 2% to 4%. This is how the collective resident and non-resident population went from 7% to 9% of the whole. This spike coincides with the increase in transient migrant labour from the collective subcontinent post-2000s to support massive infrastructure works in Marina Bay, Tuas, and beyond. I say the ‘collective subcontinent’ because non-Singaporeans are largely unaware that Indian and Bangladeshi construction workers are collectively lumped under the ‘I’ of the CMIO categorisation system. It is the catch-all category under which the likes of the Ceylonese Tamils and the microminority of Sinhalese Buddhists and Nepali Gurkhas fall. It is synonymous with ‘South Asian’, a recent contrivance alien to Malayan parlance.
To paraphrase Vivian Balakrishnan, who infamously described angmohs as ‘ballast’ when a bunch of angmoh expats flouted Covid containment rules at Robertson Quay in 2020 and provoked considerable ire, the 4% of Indians within the 9% are ballast. By the way, I was resolutely opposed to his remark, because I’m not a xenophobic bigot. I even had to console an angmoh expat acquaintance who was so offended by Vivian’s act of pandering to the xenos that he wanted to quit the country and move himself and the kids back to his previous base of Japan.
LKY’s 100% Chinese remark is irrelevant. If Singapore were demographically 100% Chinese, it wouldn’t exist. A Sino-Israel in the heart of the Nusantara, one that expelled its indigenous population to become a full settler state, would’ve been too contentious a polity for Sukarno’s and Suharto’s Indonesia and Mahathir’s Malaysia to tolerate. Their electorate wouldn’t have allowed it; they literally pogromed Nanyang Chinese as recently as 1998. There’s an excessive emphasis on what LKY said rather than what he actually did. The old man may have called Islam a venomous religion, but Singapore retains a separate Shariah court and runs a network of highly competent state-administered madrasahs. Islam additionally has special status under Article 152 of the constitution.
Speaking of which: the Israel-Palestine affair is exceptionally relevant, and no, it isn’t a sectarian matter, but a racial one. Context is once again king. The modern Malay racial identity is inextricably married to Islam; one may even argue that the process of Malay ethnogenesis was kickstarted by Islam, which is why the Filipinos are a separate national group despite being racially identical. When the Japanese invaded Malaya the Malay regiments that fought back declared Jihad against them in defence of Tanah Melayu. There’s no line between the two identities. Any act perceived to be in opposition to Islam is injurious to ‘Malayness’, which is why Singapore’s pro-Israel slant has resurfaced unprecedented racial angst against the ethnic majority. Comparisons between Nanyang Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jewish Olim are rife on Malay-language social media circles around the region. Regardless of what one thinks about the plight of the Palestinians it’s an unsettling development and there’s a steady stream of people being summarily detained under the ISA if you’ve been paying attention to the news. Might wanna check out the recent debacle at one of Shanmugam’s meet the people sessions.
For what it’s worth, Little India may be shabby in parts (by Singapore standards), but it isn’t Tower Hamlets or worse, Rotherham. Little India houses the Land Transport Authority’s HQ and several HDB blocks. It’s as normal a district as any. The pretty shophouses on the fringe house bars and acclaimed bistros, and Mustafa (which is a sensory overload for even me, to be fair) is exceedingly popular with middle-class Singaporeans of all races. The Indian Heritage Centre is pretty exceptional with some avant-garde architecture. I’m not sure what you’re trying to insinuate by proclaiming that you’d never visit the place. I sympathise with your angst over Britain’s downfall, but Singapore isn’t the sort of place to vicariously bandwagon us-vs-them politics by insinuating that cherished districts are no-go zones filled with undesirables. That energy would be better expended in Britain.
and my fingers don’t necessarily have to be on the pulse. We’re notoriously apolitical, remember? ;)
"although East Asians have a higher average IQ than Europeans, the distribution tends to cluster around the mean".
There's no good evidence for this AFAIK and this seems to be a misconception. The standard deviation of East Asian countries on the PISA tests are just the same as in Western countries. So, the East Asian distribution is not narrower.
The American IQ standard deviation may be wider than that of e.g. Japan, but that would in the first place be because the US is a more diverse country with large racial minorities with different IQ distributions. Lynn and Hampson (1986) said so themselves: "Japan does not have the range of racial minorities that are present in the U.S. and increase the heterogeneity of the American population. The greater homogeneity in Japan is shown by the lower standard deviations on the McCarthy scales, where the Japanese standard deviations are approximately 85% of those in the U.S." (https://doi.org/10.1016/0160-2896(86)90026-7)
"Malay criminality centres around what might be called ‘market crime’ [...] This type of crime is not primarily violent"
Is there any stats that you could refer to? Groups that are overrepresented in crime tend generally to be overrepresented in all types of crime, and nonviolent crimes generally constitute a large proportion of crimes in all groups. I suspect that even if much of Malay criminality is nonviolent, there should still be a difference between Malays and Chinese when comparing violent crime rates.
Hi, these are very fair comments/questions. Noted regarding the IQ distribution - but I still think it's fair to say that there is greater variation in personality and behaviour among Europeans. Whether this is due to social tolerance for variation or relative genetic heterogeneity is another question entirely. Either way, I believe this has second-order effects regarding phenotypic presentation of eccentricities and divergent thinking, which leads to innovation. That said, this was only an analogy, and my point about Singapore, that it is *not* as you would typically imagine of a primarily East Asian country, still stands.
Regarding your second point, I could not find granular race-based statistics for things like this, but I disagree with the implicit assumption (correct me if I'm wrong) that Malay violent crime must be proportionate with nonviolent crime. Besides the fact that crime is generally low anyway, violent crime does not facilitate nonviolent crime in Singapore in the way that it does in many other countries. In both Malay and Chinese gangs (the famous 'triads') it is thought that violent crime is not worth the attention it brings from the very diligent police.
As a side note, most cases of serious violent crime seem to be non-premediated domestic disputes, or petty disputes between older uncles at coffee shops. It's amazing how petty, overblown disputes are more often reported on than actual murders are in London's newspapers, such is the difference in crime between the two cities.
Came across this piece on X, unfortunately through a groyper account run by an individual who would be deported from Singapore (funny they don’t realise that and think it’s a dark enlightenment Mecca). It’s an informative essay with novel observations that could’ve only come from an outsider, because Singaporeans are famously reluctant to publicly opine on matters of race and religion, but I would like to correct some inaccuracies below. I trust that my comment will see the light of the day in the spirit of the pro-truth and anti-censorship ideological bent of this publication.
1. The Little India riot in 2013 was not, as the author put it, a ‘race riot’. The author might be desensitised to the magnitude of the term in Singapore because of the ubiquity of communal disturbances in his homeland, but in modern Singapore, a race riot is the equivalent of a black swan event. The Maria Hertogh riots and the Chinese-Malay clashes of 1964 and 1969 were the last communal riots to have afflicted Singapore, and these occured amidst the backdrop of merger and separation from Malaysia. The foreign workers who rioted in Little India were inebriated boors frustrated by their lot in life, not pogrom participants seeking to lynch out-groups on sight.
2. The author made a critical error of judgement by using Indian immigration to the likes of Canada as an analogy for Singapore’s immigration dynamics. Perhaps the comparison was necessary to contextualise things for a Western audience, but there’s a better analogy. Old-stock ethnic Indians in Singapore are more akin to the Québécois by way of their nature as a foundational ethnic minority group. New-stock Indian immigrants are certainly not part of the core demos, but their presence is a second-order effect of the government’s insistence on keeping the prevailing C-M-I-O ethnic mix static. The fresh-off-the-boat Indians are a necessary counterweight to the mass importation of ethnic Chinese FOBs to the tune of millions. Without this foil, Singapore would become a Chinese settler-ethnostate within a decade, with their percentage of the population eclipsing 80%, and the “Israel of Southeast Asia” allegations from Sinophobic Malaysian and Indonesian Islamists would dominate the national psyches of Singapore’s neighbouring nations. This would spell trouble for the country.
3. To reiterate, this is in no way analogous to the situation in Canada or other Western countries. Claiming that Indian immigration to Singapore has resulted in ‘reputational damage’ to old-stock Singaporean Indians is as asinine as making the same claim for the PRCs vis-a-vis old-stock Singaporean Chinese, and there are a lot more of the latter around. I don’t begrudge the author, who is a racial outsider, for lacking familiarity with how Singaporeans self-identify, but Singaporeans are pretty good at spotting other Singaporeans of different racial backgrounds and treating them accordingly. There are certain visual and behavioural tells that the author simply isn’t privy to. The author may seem them as generic ‘Chinese’, ‘Malays’, and ‘Indians’, but these groups have had centuries of familiarity with each other and have collectively assimilated to a common civic identity. Not to mention the common accent.
4. For someone who admires Singapore and the system of governance that keeps it exceptional and an oasis of tranquility the author is surprisingly blasé about the importance of adopting stringent penalties against the communalisation of politics. The author’s insinuation that the allegations of racism against Singapore’s marginal opposition politicians (who are dyed in the wool Chinese chauvinists, the sort LKY sought to eliminate) were frivolous is not only without merit (because, as mentioned above, Indian immigration is a second-order effect of Chinese immigration) it leaves the door open to Western-style communal strife that would decimate the country from within. Should Singaporean MPs be allowed to discuss the Israel-Palestine affair at length, perhaps even issue condemnations of either entity? No, and for good reason, because it’s radicalising Malay Singaporean youth as we speak. Most Singaporeans accept the soft-authoritarian curbing of their FoE privileges. There is no room for majoritarianism AND minority grievance-mongering in Singapore. Anyone who seeks to excuse one or the other is no friend of the country or its people.
5. Lee is the surname, not Yew.
Harry Yew here. Let's clarify your position. You think that the ~30% increase in the Indian proportion of the population since 1970 (despite having low birth rates compared to Malays, and roughly similar to Chinese), most of which came 2010 onwards, 5 years after CECA was agreed, is a 'necessary counterbalance' to Chinese racial hegemony and part of the maintenance of Singapore’s demographic mix?
I think you should look at the facts (a table is provided in the article) before gracing us with your opinions. It's very concerning that LKY's highly pragmatic acceptance (but not support) of multiculturalism is being retconned to quash reasonable opposition against CECA among (non-chauvinistic) Singaporean people whose parents and grandparents helped to nation-build in such a way that the three races Singaporeans, as you say, are genuinely integrated. I have even met Singaporean Indians who are against CECA. This is a national issue, not a sectarian one on the level of Israel-Palestine (this was poor analogising on your part).
Look at LKY's term in office, correspond it with the table provided, and tell me what happened to the Chinese proportion of the population during his tenure. Bonus points for telling us what he said about what Singapore would be like if it was 100% Chinese. You may be an ‘insider’, but your fingers are not on the pulse. Your assumption that the name Harry Yew is a straight copy of LKY’s name, rather than a play on it (Yew is a rare but nice British surname), tells me you are here to be a smartarse rather than say anything constructive.
Thanks for responding Harry. Unfortunately this is a somewhat antagonistic riposte to my minor corrections of an otherwise directionally correct and even enjoyable exposition on Singapore’s demographic profile, but I have to remind myself that this publication is patronised by chronically online Western commentators who lack geniality because of the corrupting nature of anonymity, and who have stores of pent-up anger to expend over the sobering state of affairs in their home countries, so I’ll let the snark slide, because it’s not personal. I suppose I’d have the same neuroses if Singaporeans were being blown up in concert arenas and mowed down in Christmas markets and my politicians were too impotent to respond with proportionate force.
I wouldn’t know a thing about Yew being an English name because Britain is a diminished nation that does not feature prominently in my imagination. I’m indifferent to the country and its issues; I’m only engaging with this publication because of this particular piece. I assumed you were another one of those angmohs befuddled by the naming conventions of Chinese people, but my apologies if that’s not the case.
It is factually correct that Indian immigration must keep pace with the supermassive scale of Chinese immigration relative to the proportion of their respective racial silos, so I’m not sure why my use of ‘counterbalance’ is in contention. You’re right that some Singaporean Indians aren’t very comfortable with FOB immigration; I was once antagonistic myself before mellowing with age. I’m a fence-sitter myself because of the cultural dissimilarities between our respective Indic groups (we’re Anglophone and de-casteified, they’re Indophone and retain caste), but there’s a way to put a stop to it, and that is to turn off the Chinese FOB tap altogether so that a proportionate increase in the other letters of the alphabet soup won’t be warranted.
If you want to talk numbers, the actual resident population, that is Singaporean Indians + PRs, has hovered at around 5% since the 1970s. There hasn’t been an actual increase in that figure. The increase comes down to the non-resident population, that is expats + transient migrant labour, which has spiked from 2% to 4%. This is how the collective resident and non-resident population went from 7% to 9% of the whole. This spike coincides with the increase in transient migrant labour from the collective subcontinent post-2000s to support massive infrastructure works in Marina Bay, Tuas, and beyond. I say the ‘collective subcontinent’ because non-Singaporeans are largely unaware that Indian and Bangladeshi construction workers are collectively lumped under the ‘I’ of the CMIO categorisation system. It is the catch-all category under which the likes of the Ceylonese Tamils and the microminority of Sinhalese Buddhists and Nepali Gurkhas fall. It is synonymous with ‘South Asian’, a recent contrivance alien to Malayan parlance.
To paraphrase Vivian Balakrishnan, who infamously described angmohs as ‘ballast’ when a bunch of angmoh expats flouted Covid containment rules at Robertson Quay in 2020 and provoked considerable ire, the 4% of Indians within the 9% are ballast. By the way, I was resolutely opposed to his remark, because I’m not a xenophobic bigot. I even had to console an angmoh expat acquaintance who was so offended by Vivian’s act of pandering to the xenos that he wanted to quit the country and move himself and the kids back to his previous base of Japan.
LKY’s 100% Chinese remark is irrelevant. If Singapore were demographically 100% Chinese, it wouldn’t exist. A Sino-Israel in the heart of the Nusantara, one that expelled its indigenous population to become a full settler state, would’ve been too contentious a polity for Sukarno’s and Suharto’s Indonesia and Mahathir’s Malaysia to tolerate. Their electorate wouldn’t have allowed it; they literally pogromed Nanyang Chinese as recently as 1998. There’s an excessive emphasis on what LKY said rather than what he actually did. The old man may have called Islam a venomous religion, but Singapore retains a separate Shariah court and runs a network of highly competent state-administered madrasahs. Islam additionally has special status under Article 152 of the constitution.
Speaking of which: the Israel-Palestine affair is exceptionally relevant, and no, it isn’t a sectarian matter, but a racial one. Context is once again king. The modern Malay racial identity is inextricably married to Islam; one may even argue that the process of Malay ethnogenesis was kickstarted by Islam, which is why the Filipinos are a separate national group despite being racially identical. When the Japanese invaded Malaya the Malay regiments that fought back declared Jihad against them in defence of Tanah Melayu. There’s no line between the two identities. Any act perceived to be in opposition to Islam is injurious to ‘Malayness’, which is why Singapore’s pro-Israel slant has resurfaced unprecedented racial angst against the ethnic majority. Comparisons between Nanyang Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jewish Olim are rife on Malay-language social media circles around the region. Regardless of what one thinks about the plight of the Palestinians it’s an unsettling development and there’s a steady stream of people being summarily detained under the ISA if you’ve been paying attention to the news. Might wanna check out the recent debacle at one of Shanmugam’s meet the people sessions.
For what it’s worth, Little India may be shabby in parts (by Singapore standards), but it isn’t Tower Hamlets or worse, Rotherham. Little India houses the Land Transport Authority’s HQ and several HDB blocks. It’s as normal a district as any. The pretty shophouses on the fringe house bars and acclaimed bistros, and Mustafa (which is a sensory overload for even me, to be fair) is exceedingly popular with middle-class Singaporeans of all races. The Indian Heritage Centre is pretty exceptional with some avant-garde architecture. I’m not sure what you’re trying to insinuate by proclaiming that you’d never visit the place. I sympathise with your angst over Britain’s downfall, but Singapore isn’t the sort of place to vicariously bandwagon us-vs-them politics by insinuating that cherished districts are no-go zones filled with undesirables. That energy would be better expended in Britain.
and my fingers don’t necessarily have to be on the pulse. We’re notoriously apolitical, remember? ;)
"although East Asians have a higher average IQ than Europeans, the distribution tends to cluster around the mean".
There's no good evidence for this AFAIK and this seems to be a misconception. The standard deviation of East Asian countries on the PISA tests are just the same as in Western countries. So, the East Asian distribution is not narrower.
The American IQ standard deviation may be wider than that of e.g. Japan, but that would in the first place be because the US is a more diverse country with large racial minorities with different IQ distributions. Lynn and Hampson (1986) said so themselves: "Japan does not have the range of racial minorities that are present in the U.S. and increase the heterogeneity of the American population. The greater homogeneity in Japan is shown by the lower standard deviations on the McCarthy scales, where the Japanese standard deviations are approximately 85% of those in the U.S." (https://doi.org/10.1016/0160-2896(86)90026-7)
"Malay criminality centres around what might be called ‘market crime’ [...] This type of crime is not primarily violent"
Is there any stats that you could refer to? Groups that are overrepresented in crime tend generally to be overrepresented in all types of crime, and nonviolent crimes generally constitute a large proportion of crimes in all groups. I suspect that even if much of Malay criminality is nonviolent, there should still be a difference between Malays and Chinese when comparing violent crime rates.
Hi, these are very fair comments/questions. Noted regarding the IQ distribution - but I still think it's fair to say that there is greater variation in personality and behaviour among Europeans. Whether this is due to social tolerance for variation or relative genetic heterogeneity is another question entirely. Either way, I believe this has second-order effects regarding phenotypic presentation of eccentricities and divergent thinking, which leads to innovation. That said, this was only an analogy, and my point about Singapore, that it is *not* as you would typically imagine of a primarily East Asian country, still stands.
Regarding your second point, I could not find granular race-based statistics for things like this, but I disagree with the implicit assumption (correct me if I'm wrong) that Malay violent crime must be proportionate with nonviolent crime. Besides the fact that crime is generally low anyway, violent crime does not facilitate nonviolent crime in Singapore in the way that it does in many other countries. In both Malay and Chinese gangs (the famous 'triads') it is thought that violent crime is not worth the attention it brings from the very diligent police.
As a side note, most cases of serious violent crime seem to be non-premediated domestic disputes, or petty disputes between older uncles at coffee shops. It's amazing how petty, overblown disputes are more often reported on than actual murders are in London's newspapers, such is the difference in crime between the two cities.