There is a book out by Jim Collins, Good to Great, and in it he says the greatest hindrance to being great is good.

I am now immune to foolish words from our esteemed ministers, the latest from a deputy minister who says the haze here is better than Santiago's in Chile.

When will they ever learn to stop comparing and just do what is good and right for the people? No doubt we need to be thankful for what we have (or don't have) but if a business was always to benchmark with the worse, then there will be no impetus for improvement whatsoever.

For example, security in Malaysia is better than Iraq or Malaysia has less corruption than Bangladesh and the haze in Malaysia is not as bad as Santiago's. These statements, even though probably true, shows a 'settle for second best' mentality. The truth is any corruption is bad, and any lapse in security is bad and any haze is bad.

By not publishing the Air Pollutant Indexes (API) and playing it down, the government only shows its immaturity in its concern for tourism rather then the health of suffering asthma patients and patients with chronic pulmonary conditions.

The duty of the government in this instance is to provide public health announcements on how we should protect ourselves from the effects of the haze. An advisory should be given on physical exercises in hazy conditions besides a warning to patients with history of asthma.

Nobody is blaming the government for the haze, but there's definitely a lack of responsibility shown by them. The public are not children to be consistently blacked-out on health information.

Give us sufficient advice and warnings so that we can make responsible decisions for these hazy conditions.