editorial comment Now, paraphernalia suggests a defamation law suit, the tool used by this old twit to harrass his opponents. Free speech for me, not for you......Respected by who anyway?

Singapore’s founding father says today British society has become “rougher” over the past half century, and the country’s politicians and media now denigrate excellence.

“Their media and politicians are anti-elitist, denigrating excellence, wanting to dumb other people and institutions down to the lowest common denominator, to avoid anyone being inferior,” Lee Kuan Yew said, according to a report in The Straits Times.

Lee, one of Asia’s most respected elder statesmen, was speaking at a ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of the city-state’s long-ruling People’s Action Party.

In his address, which was reprinted in the newspaper, Lee named several societies he said he knew well that had changed over the party’s lifetime. He listed former colonial power Britain, Japan and China.

“The people of Britain of the 1940s where I was a student were a cultivated people, polite and well-mannered,” Lee said.

“Now the texture of British society is rougher. Courtesy is less evident. Everyone demands his right to a higher place in society, and a bigger piece of the economic pie.”

Lee, who has the title minister mentor, said British politicians were no longer polite but instead shouted at each other in parliament. Social and sexual mores were “no longer prim and proper”, he added.

Lee said Britain’s top universities – Oxford, Cambridge and London – were under pressure to accept students from state schools. This left students from privately-funded schools at a “disadvantage”.

Under Lee’s stern leadership Singapore was transformed from an unexceptional Asian port city in the 1950s into one of the richest countries in the region today.

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