Look closely at the front page photograph we published on Saturday of Singapore elder statesman Lee Kuan Yew and you will see on the podium behind him an enlarged photograph of the front cover of his latest book.
From Third World To First, the second volume of his memoirs, is not nearly as readable as the first, but this book promotion reminds your correspondent that he really ought to continue slogging his way through it.
Its title, however, reminds him more of a visit to Singapore years ago just after the United States had decided that Singapore no longer required something called GSP preferences - special sweetheart trade terms for developing countries that had sided with the Free World against godless communism.
Rumours then emerged that there had actually been what passed for a protest in Singapore against this decision, although admittedly brief, orderly and characterised by none of that outrage one might expect from something spontaneous. Your correspondent remarked on it during a meeting with a Singapore civil servant and the man replied: 'It's quite simple. The US had just told us we are no longer a Third World country and we are just proving that we still are.'
The substance of Mr Lee's message to us on Friday was a perfectly pragmatic one - don't expect Beijing to let you run more of your own affairs until you can convince Beijing that you are really operating on China's agenda.
But then back we went to vintage Lee Kuan Yew. Our civil service, he said, was trained under British rule to implement policies rather than formulate them and win public support. Policy secretaries will be unable to back Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa like cabinet ministers unless they are politicised.
Music to Mr Tung's ears. He is known, we shall put it mildly, to hold legislative councillors in some disfavour, and here is someone to confirm that in government, it is not the business of elected representatives to formulate policies and win public support for them. It is rather the business of appointed bureaucrats to do so.