Our lead story yesterday — about how the mayor, standing committee chairman, leader of the house and Opposition leader are among those on a ‘study tour’ to Singapore , while the city struggles with the monsoon — must have raised few eyebrows. We know because we seem to have carried similar reports, featuring officials in similar positions, a number of times in the past.

When Shubha Raul was mayor, for instance, she attended a mayors’ conference in Turkey in 2007 and returned with nothing to show for it. She went to Israel for a similar conference a year later, returning the same way — empty-handed. In 2008, she visited the New York mayors’ conference and told the media she had learned how to convert dumping grounds into green zones and generate electricity.