If it didn’t have the ministry stamp on it Malaysians would have to treat the statement by GPS’s trade and consumer affairs minister Alexander Linggi as a joke in the worst possible taste. They might also ask themselves what the authors of this statement about shopping had been smoking.

So watch out! When your two hours in the shop are up you can expect to be carted off to jail by goons armed with stop watches. Just who will be paying their wages and supplying the watches remains obscure but it certainly won’t be the coup conspirators who specialise in taking rather than giving.

Not content with issuing these absurd and unenforceable rules the “ministerial statement” goes on to state that all employees will be “capped at 60%!”  So who chooses winners and losers? Who pays the loser’s salaries? Certainly not the coup conspirators who believe only in take; not give.

The really saddening thing about this ludicrous official statement is that it could have been made at all. Has Malaysia really descended  to the level of clownish control demonstrated in this “ministerial” statement?