What this is, and how it is put together

What it covers

Two kinds of page. The first explains a part of the system and is meant to stay accurate for years: what a Group Representation Constituency is, how Question Time runs, who draws the electoral boundaries, what happens when a party whip is lifted.

The second counts something. Those pages take a specific question — how many oral questions were filed and by whom, how improvement grants were distributed between town councils — and answer it from the published record, with the figures and their source stated. The notes sit alongside both: shorter pieces fixed to a moment, kept at the address they were published on.

How each entry is sourced

Every page ends with where its figures come from. The recurring sources are Hansard, the official verbatim record of proceedings published by the Parliament of Singapore; the statutes themselves; reports of the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee; results published by the Elections Department; and the annual reports of individual town councils.

Where a figure is taken from a document, the document is named precisely enough to find. Where something is contested, both positions are stated in the form their holders would recognise, and the page says which parts the record settles and which it does not.

What it leaves out

Predictions. Endorsements. Coverage of a campaign as a contest. There are publications that do those things well, and this is not one of them.

It also leaves out interpretation dressed as fact. Several pages here end by stating what the available documents cannot establish, which is less satisfying than a conclusion and more useful.

On the numbers

Counts are only meaningful alongside their method. A total of oral questions is not a total of questions; a count of referring domains is not a count of links. Where a figure could be arrived at more than one way, the page says which way was used.

Figures that come from a single published document are checkable by anyone who opens it. That is the standard applied throughout: if a reader cannot verify a number from the source named, the number should not be here.

Corrections

Errors of fact are corrected on the page where they appear. A correction that changes what a page concludes is noted on the page rather than made silently.

Corrections, questions about a figure and requests for the document behind one go to [email protected]. A report that names the page and the figure is easier to check than one that does not, and a count that turns out to be wrong is more useful corrected than defended.

Language

Singapore English. Terms specific to the system — cut, division, Hansard, private member's bill, standing orders, supplementary question — are collected in the glossary.