I have no time but I just HAVE to blog this

Penang Government agrees to multi-language signs for tourists’ benefit
The Star, July 23 2008

GEORGE TOWN: The state government plans to put up street names and road signs in multiple languages at heritage areas here for the benefit of tourists and visitors.

State Local Government, Traffic Management and Environment Committee chairman Chow Kon Yeow said yesterday that the languages would depend on the cultural characteristics of the streets in question.

“There have been requests for road signs in various languages now that George Town has received Unesco recognition as a world heritage site. The state has, in principle, agreed to have signs in Bahasa Malaysia, English, Chinese and Tamil, and maybe even Arabic,” he said.

Chinese signs: Penang residents riding past one of the six new road signs in George Town yesterday. The six signs were put up by a group of Gerakan members on Monday.

Chow noted that the Federal Government had also approved an allocation to put up signboards in various languages around George Town.

On the six street signs put up by several Gerakan members, led by former Penang Municipal Council councillor Dr Thor Teong Ghee, Chow said he had instructed the council to give notice to the group to remove them.

“The council will advise them to take down the signs themselves, unlike in the past when the council under the previous administration used to pull down signs put up by the DAP within two hours,” said Chow.

On Monday, Dr Thor and six others put up the road signs in Chinese to remind the DAP that it had to keep its word to come up with such road signs now that the party was helming the state. The six signs were for Beach Street, Burmah Road, Macalister Road, Carnarvon Street, Chulia Street and Jalan C.Y. Choy.

Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng said there was no reason for anyone to politicise the issue as this was the people's aspiration. He likened the need to have multilingual road signs to the multilingual announcements at airports which were a necessity.

However, Tanjung Umno Youth division chief Shaharrudin Hassan urged the local government and government agencies to only allow road signs in the national language.

“If the Malays can compromise with not having road signs in Jawi or Arabic, we do not see why the other races cannot practise a similar thing,” he said.

When contacted, Dr Thor said he would wait for the council's notice, but hoped that the signs could remain until the council put up its own.

Mlle Monster says

For tourists? What an utter load of rubbish! I am at a loss for insults because this is so preposterously absurd that calling him mentally challenged would be insulting the mentally challenged.

Lets just call a spade a spade here shall we.
This is clearly a response or a retaliation if you will to all the road signs that have been carrying jawi script. Of course when questioned, the asinine reasoning given was that it was for the benefit of Arab tourists. Yeah, sure...

So now in Penang, we are attracting Chinese tourists with our road signs are we.
This is so embarrassing.

Of course its racial. Let's just say it instead of hiding behind laughable statements. You have one faction that wants to brand everything Islamic even petty roadsigns and another that retaliates by repeating the exact same nonsense with Chinese characters. And the road sign contractors are laughing all the way to the bank. Some government crony is my bet.

Petty, wasteful and idiotic. Way to go Gerakan and DAP.
And the one person I really feel pity for is the postman.