Graffiti = vandalism?

Some days there are no letters and some days there are no letters worth reading but today, there were two letters in TODAY that 'support' the so-called 'vandalism' of post boxes.

Excerpts (nowadays you have to log in to read TODAY online, so, no link):

Letter 1

1. '... what bothers me is not the issue of "vandalism" or the police's involvement (as it is clearly a miscommunication), but rather Singapore's lack of tolerance for anything radical.'

2. 'And now SingPost has had to apologise for a creative, "out-of-the-box" stunt that, frankly, did no harm.'

Letter 2

1. 'I would like to give SingPost some credit for thinking differently.'

2. 'It is too extreme to think that it may inspire others to vandalism...'

3. 'However, SingPost, on its part, failed in carrying out the campaign properly.'

I have to say that I did not follow the news reports much but did people actually say that graffiti on the postboxes would lead to us becoming vandals??

How were the police involved / not involved? I agree that vandalism needs to be reported but this enthusiasm for calling the police for all sorts of things must be quite annoying to the police force. Imagine nobly signing up to be a part of the Home Team and having to deal with complaints about elephants cut-outs, spray-painted post boxes and such. I guess people think our police officers are very 'free' in this low-crime country. Or maybe there just isn't anyone else to call for these things, which is probably why people are also calling the police to catch, not robbers, but pythons, monkeys (the newspaper photo of a police officer trying to offer a monkey a pack of peanuts at Holland Village is deeply etched in my mind) and I don't know what other animals.

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