In September 2022, I came to the UK in the hope of leaving behind an overbearing and censorious state. In 2021, an op-ed I wrote for the Nikkei Asia Review provoked the ire of the Singaporean authorities because I exposed their feigned ignorance about cartels abusing lockdown loopholes during Covid-19.
The UK state – while much less competent than Singapore’s – is no less heavy-handed when it comes to dealing with dissent
In response, the government waged a character assassination campaign against me and blocked foreign news outlets that dared to cover my case. When I was offered a lifeline – a chance to study for a master’s in international security at Bath – I did not need to think twice before grabbing it with both hands.
I thought I would be rebuilding my life in a society famous for Enlightenment values – a place where freedom of speech was valued and there was little in the way of press censorship. Instead, I found that the UK state – while much less competent than Singapore’s – is no less heavy-handed when it comes to dealing with dissent.
The realisation came last month, on 8 July 2025, when Robert Moss, a 28-year veteran of Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service, had his house raided. Four Staffordshire Police officers descended on his address in Newcastle-under-Lyme, seized his electronic devices without a warrant and took him into custody.
Moss spent nearly six hours in detention before being interrogated and released on conditional bail. He has yet to be charged with any crime. Last week, a Staffordshire detective constable told Newcastle-under-Lyme magistrates’ court that investigations were still ongoing, and that she intended to submit a file to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) recommending charges to be brought against him.
What, exactly, are these alleged crimes?
The first one is ‘malicious communications’. Moss has been accused of targeting his former employer, Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service, and specifically its current Chief Fire Officer Rob Barber and Deputy Chief Fire Officer Glynn Luznyj. The ‘malicious communications’ in question were Facebook posts which, in the words of the Free Speech Union, were ‘anodyne but critical of the fire service’s operation’. Moss is not alone in being targeted for this. On average, more than 30 people are arrested every day in the UK for ‘offensive’ online messages.
But Moss has been accused of an even stranger crime: harassing fire service officials under the pseudonym ‘Andy Wong’ on his Substack, ‘the Narrative Shaper’.
This is rather strange. Because Robert Moss is a man in his fifties, with a firefighter’s build and a grey beard, who lives in his native Newcastle-under-Lyme.
Andy Wong, on the other hand, is me – a man in his mid-thirties, of slightish frame, clean-shaven, and a long way from his native Singapore. I am very much not Mr Moss.
Were this investigation not so serious, it would be a little silly. A regional police force – on the basis of a complaint from the fire service against a disgruntled former employee – has arrested a white British man in his fifties on the basis that he is secretly pretending to be me, a Singaporean Chinese journalist in my thirties.
My identity is no mystery. On my Substack, I’ve posted my photograph, a picture of my degree certificate, as well as my email address.
When Moss’s lawyers requested proof of who I was, I provided identification documents. Yet neither Staffordshire Police nor the fire service has ever contacted me to ask whether I’m Rob Moss, or whether I write under any pseudonym.
In fact, last week, when I attended Newcastle-under-Lyme magistrates’ court to observe as a member of the public Mr Moss’s hearing, I was sat behind the very same detective constable responsible for investigating the case. There were multiple occasions during and after the hearing where it was entirely impossible for DC Holliday not to have seen me. Yet not once did she ever give any sign of comprehension or recognition of who the Chinese-looking individual actually was, nor why I was present as a public observer.
The idea that Moss, a retired firefighter as well as a former Labour councillor, would pose as a foreign outsider to expose wrongdoing in a regional UK fire service should have been silly. Instead, it lent not just credence but formed a major part of the basis of Mr Moss’s arrest – a man of impeccable character.
The real story, as some basic police work would have found, is simpler. A series of six articles I wrote embarrassed the leadership of Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service. Rather than challenge it directly, the leadership of the fire service tried to discredit or silence me by concocting a plot stranger than fiction, and printed all six of my articles out as material evidence submitted to Staffordshire Police alongside Moss’s Facebook posts.
As it was, unlike many, Moss was able to secure top-draw legal support in the form of a barrister paid for by the Free Speech Union. Last week, they successfully persuaded magistrates to lift the bail conditions that banned him from even discussing the fact of his arrest – conditions which, in the words of Moss’s barrister, Thomas Beardsworth, were a ‘gag order by any other name’.
Regardless of this victory though, this preposterous ploy has to an extent succeeded. A message has been sent: no matter the evidence, no matter how preposterous the claim, critics beware. If you speak out, the police will arrest you – even where the evidence is farcical.
Beardsworth’s statement that ‘we do not live in a police state’ is one I fully approve of. I know all too well the reality of a police state.
The bumbling behaviour of Staffordshire Police is not what you’d see in Singapore. But, when last week that Staffordshire detective constable told magistrates that Mr Moss’s freedom of expression needed ‘limiting’ in order to ‘maintain public health and order’ – well, that I did recognise. That same attitude is the preserve of petty bureaucrats and over-zealous enforcers the world over, and a favourite line used by the Singapore government to justify its censorious grip on public debate.
Both Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service and Staffordshire Police were approached for comment on this case. Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service said: ‘It would be inappropriate for Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service to comment while legal proceedings are active.’ Staffordshire Police said: ‘We arrested a 56-year-old man from Newcastle-under-Lyme, on Tuesday 8 July, on suspicion of harassment without violence, sending communication/article of an indecent/offensive nature and knowingly/recklessly obtaining or disabling personal data without the consent of the controller. The man has been released on conditional bail as our enquiries continue.’
After Brexit, it was suggested that the UK should set its ambitions on becoming a Singapore-on-Thames – a global hub for business in Europe. Politicians read Lee Kuan Yew in the hope of recreating Singapore’s growth miracle.
But one thing we should certainly not seek to emulate about my home country is its repressive, paternalistic style of politics.
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