Esteemed, Pulitzer prize-winning, influential western news outlet The Guardian admitted that the United Kingdom can learn a thing or two from the late Lee Kuan Yew.

Considering that the western media always had something to say about freedom, repression and whatnot, this amazing turnaround can be accurately describe as striking Toto and being the only winner.

Just barely months after concluding that Singapore is too sterile and repressed for its own good (which mentioned about chewing gum, naturally), The Guardian published an article on April 2, 2015 under the public leaders network section, saying how our former colonial masters can learn from the late Lee Kuan Yew.

Rather than fixating on the ban of chewing gum, the newspaper instead listed out what made Singapore the metropolitan it is today.

The writer, Colin Cram - not a journalist, but a a public sector consultant specialising in procurement - noted that to make Singapore more attractive to businesses, business tax in Singapore is half that of the UK and the government gives generous allowances to startups.

It was also reported that Singapore in 2014 spent 30 times more per head of population on infrastructure than the UK.

But of course, being the bastion of freedom of expression, no reports in the Western hemisphere could see the light of the Internet without poking at our lack of press freedom but, hey, at least it reported as it is.

Singapore is criticised for its tight controls on media and freedom of speech. Political and social stability in a diverse nation has been seen as vital to economic success and after some turmoil in the early 1960s and in neighbouring countries in the 1990s, Lee Kuan Yew decided that the western model of press freedom was potentially divisive.

Indeed, a story praising Singapore and without any mention of chewing gum is probably too good to be true. This guy called it out as sponsored content.

However, the writer did clarify:

Ok. Thank you, Guardian?

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