Don't believe everything you read in the papers....
Or should I....?
Given the current political situation in Manila...reading the papers is interesting, although by the time the news is in the papers it is old news and new rumours have replaced what I am reading. There are enough Philippine bloggers commenting on the situation that I don't need to...MLQ3 has the best and most up to date commentary and he has linked into other bloggers that have intelligent input...so that leaves me to pick up the 'ridiculous'!
So to the papers...
the first paper I looked at today is The Manila Times...
on the front page...there is a photograph of GMA swearing in two people...the new Finance secretary and the new Budget secretary....underneath the photo is the headline "Two more key Arroyo advisers resign"....now even using my bad mathematics...gaining two and then losing two is a fairly high rate of staff turnover.
in amongst all the news about the present political situation and the rumours and known facts printed in the paper, I found one article headlined
"Hands off MMDA tells MRT"
"The Metro Manila Development Authority and the Metro Trail transit have locked horns again, this time for the unauthorised gardening by MRT employees on MMDA plants"
...in a nutshell...the MRT have been trimming the plants planted around the MRT posts...and the MMDA is not happy saying only MMDA staff are allowed to prune the plants....now this is all well and good...but surely the MMDA has more worrying things to concern itself with than who trims its plants...
Moving on to The Manila Bulletin
there seems to have been a very bad car accident on on EDSA last night...fortunately it seems no one was killed (otherwise I wouldn't be writing about this). The reason I am highlighting this article is that it seems that the accident involved the most bizarre set of circumstances....to give you some idea the headline of the article is....
"Three injured as corn truck, fish van sandwich chicken pickup"
it seems that three roast chicken shop employees were on their way to work when a cargo truck filled with corn made a sudden turn, causing their vehicle to brake which caused the van behind them to rear end them...the van behind was carrying fish. Now, I ask you...is that not a headline writer's dream occurence?!
Still in The Manila Bulletin I see that my friends at the MMDA are planning on building ladies urinals around town...now for the unitiated, along quite a few of the busier thoroughfares in Manila there are these metal stands by the side of the road which curve round and inside are men's urinals (picture here)...and they are painted bright pink...now the two times I have seen them being used...I have really seen them being used...if you get my drift! So as a woman, there is no way I would be seen using one of those, although, allegedly they will make the ladies version more enclosed to preserve our modesty! Still..the words 'hell' and freezing over' spring to mind!
The Manila Bulletin has an international section and on the back page they have a section called 'Odds and Ends'...basically snippets of 'entertaining's news....and in this section today I find something that those at home will be interested in/worred about....apparently 'more than one in 10 condoms sold in Hong Kong is likely to leak or burst'....now there's a worrying thought!
Moving swiftly on........
to The Philippine Star.
Now it seems (allegedly...I use this word a lot here!!) as if the recipient of GMA's now infamous '1 million votes' phone call, Mr Virgilio Garcillano (aka Garci), has flown the coop...to Singapore (wise man,..someone ought to let him know that breakfast at the Tiffin Lounge at Raffles is the best ever!) ...he apparently left on Sunday from Subic on one of Asia's low cost carriers...the rumours about his departure seemed to stem from two text messages...(SMS is big here). Now the point being raised in the today's paper is that the Department of Foreign Affairs is saying that apparently they cannot cancel his passport...now...all this guy did (so far, remember innocent until proven guilty and no charges have been laid) was answer the telephone!
According to the Star...opposition members of the House of Representatives are about to launch an anti-GMA website where unhappy citizens can 'make their sentiments' known and find out more information about the corruption occuring in the government.
This impeachment 'thing' seems to be gathering pace as the 'fall back' option. It will be interesting to see how this turns out...if Clinton was not impeached...I find it hard to believe that GMA will be...but only time will tell.
And that's my daily round up from the papers...nothing intelligent, nothing of substance and I know that I am oversimplifying incredibly complex issues but it's just the news that made me raise an eyebrow!
Given the current political situation in Manila...reading the papers is interesting, although by the time the news is in the papers it is old news and new rumours have replaced what I am reading. There are enough Philippine bloggers commenting on the situation that I don't need to...MLQ3 has the best and most up to date commentary and he has linked into other bloggers that have intelligent input...so that leaves me to pick up the 'ridiculous'!
So to the papers...
the first paper I looked at today is The Manila Times...
on the front page...there is a photograph of GMA swearing in two people...the new Finance secretary and the new Budget secretary....underneath the photo is the headline "Two more key Arroyo advisers resign"....now even using my bad mathematics...gaining two and then losing two is a fairly high rate of staff turnover.
in amongst all the news about the present political situation and the rumours and known facts printed in the paper, I found one article headlined
"The Metro Manila Development Authority and the Metro Trail transit have locked horns again, this time for the unauthorised gardening by MRT employees on MMDA plants"
...in a nutshell...the MRT have been trimming the plants planted around the MRT posts...and the MMDA is not happy saying only MMDA staff are allowed to prune the plants....now this is all well and good...but surely the MMDA has more worrying things to concern itself with than who trims its plants...
Moving on to The Manila Bulletin
there seems to have been a very bad car accident on on EDSA last night...fortunately it seems no one was killed (otherwise I wouldn't be writing about this). The reason I am highlighting this article is that it seems that the accident involved the most bizarre set of circumstances....to give you some idea the headline of the article is....
it seems that three roast chicken shop employees were on their way to work when a cargo truck filled with corn made a sudden turn, causing their vehicle to brake which caused the van behind them to rear end them...the van behind was carrying fish. Now, I ask you...is that not a headline writer's dream occurence?!
Still in The Manila Bulletin I see that my friends at the MMDA are planning on building ladies urinals around town...now for the unitiated, along quite a few of the busier thoroughfares in Manila there are these metal stands by the side of the road which curve round and inside are men's urinals (picture here)...and they are painted bright pink...now the two times I have seen them being used...I have really seen them being used...if you get my drift! So as a woman, there is no way I would be seen using one of those, although, allegedly they will make the ladies version more enclosed to preserve our modesty! Still..the words 'hell' and freezing over' spring to mind!
The Manila Bulletin has an international section and on the back page they have a section called 'Odds and Ends'...basically snippets of 'entertaining's news....and in this section today I find something that those at home will be interested in/worred about....apparently 'more than one in 10 condoms sold in Hong Kong is likely to leak or burst'....now there's a worrying thought!
Moving swiftly on........
to The Philippine Star.
Now it seems (allegedly...I use this word a lot here!!) as if the recipient of GMA's now infamous '1 million votes' phone call, Mr Virgilio Garcillano (aka Garci), has flown the coop...to Singapore (wise man,..someone ought to let him know that breakfast at the Tiffin Lounge at Raffles is the best ever!) ...he apparently left on Sunday from Subic on one of Asia's low cost carriers...the rumours about his departure seemed to stem from two text messages...(SMS is big here). Now the point being raised in the today's paper is that the Department of Foreign Affairs is saying that apparently they cannot cancel his passport...now...all this guy did (so far, remember innocent until proven guilty and no charges have been laid) was answer the telephone!
According to the Star...opposition members of the House of Representatives are about to launch an anti-GMA website where unhappy citizens can 'make their sentiments' known and find out more information about the corruption occuring in the government.
This impeachment 'thing' seems to be gathering pace as the 'fall back' option. It will be interesting to see how this turns out...if Clinton was not impeached...I find it hard to believe that GMA will be...but only time will tell.
And that's my daily round up from the papers...nothing intelligent, nothing of substance and I know that I am oversimplifying incredibly complex issues but it's just the news that made me raise an eyebrow!
posted by Madame Chiang at 9:34 pm
1 Comments:
Fine idea to post your impressions of the local newspapers and point out the obvious absurdities. Just found your blog over at AsiaPundit, and you're now in my Philippines Blog folder. And someday I'll actually update my blogroll and put you in there.
Post a Comment
<< Home