Still a way to go

 

Invisible Men

Do the Standard's caption writers actually look at the photos they are captioning?

Hamming it up

 

Safety First

 

The Lion Rock Spirit Lives

 

The picture shows a group of people who rushed to lift the taxi that crashed in Taipo yesterday (at a spot where I've crossed the road hundreds of times) to free victims trapped underneath.

This is far from the first such case in Hong Kong.  Years ago I helped to lift a car that knocked down a young boy in North Point.  Meanwhile it has been widely reported that in mainland China, most people will steer well clear of helping accident (or worse) victims rather than get involved in potentially messy consequences.  

There would be scope for an interesting master's thesis on why mutual aid thrives in a supposedly competitive capitalist society while being conspicuously absent in a supposedly collectivist one.  Suffice it to say here that "one country, two systems" is not just about politica and economics.

Precious Medals

 

Now if only our politicians were of the same calibre as our athletes...

A Centenary Worth Celebrating

 

There is a lot of bally hoo  at the moment about the 100th anniversary of a certain organisation, but we won't talk about that.  Meanshile there is a local centenary which many Hongkongers may perhaps consider more worthy of celebration.

Three times in my life I have found stray animals and handed them in to the SPCA - a rabbit roaming in, of all places, the Academy of Performing Arts garden; a puppy unable to escape from a concrete drainage channel in Jardine's Lookout; and a desperately sick kitten, its eyes two pools of pus, dumped in an alley in Kowloon Tong.  Without the SPCA, life for these, and many thousands more lost, sick and abandoned animals every year, would be immeasurably worse.  Their valuable work costs money - why not become a member and give them your support?

Walk On

 

By Their Fruits...

 

I Ran

Watching BBC News earlier today, I was struck by some key characteristics of the current Iranian election:

• The ruling elite selects the winner in advance and ensures that their selected candidate receives the most votes.
• To make sure of this, many popular opposition figures are barred from standing for office.
• The government also puts pressure on the media to suppress dissenting voices. 
• However, the government does not exercise ultimate authority; on all major decisions, it defers to the dictates of a self-appointed higher power that tolerates no defiance.
• In the face of this situation, many citizens are becoming disillusioned with the prospects of achieving change through electoral politics and are not bothering to vote.

Now, where else in the world does this remind me of?

Lest We (Are Forced to) Forget

Few people in Hong Kong take the South China Morning Post seriously as a news source any more, but one of the few remaining points of excellene in the paper is Harry's cartoons.  With the Victoria Park candlelight vigil banned for the second consecutive year, the June 4th Museum closed on the bureaucratic  pretext that it requires a public entertainment licence (massacres are so entertaining, aren't they?), and organisers of the vigil being arrested or already in prison, today's cartoon is particularly poignant: 

The Hong Kong Free Press also has a number of articles marking the date.  And Hemlock is incisive as usual - pointing out that the aurhorities' clumsy efforts to suppress remembrance of the 1989 events are merely bringing more attention to them (the Streisand effect at work).

P.S. A valuable resource: How to Respond to Tiananmen Trolls.

Quack Doctor

No one can deny that HKU professor of microbiology Yuen Kwok-yung has made a major contribution to Hong Kong';s fight against the Covid-19 virus - but really, what's with the duck's beak mask?

P.S. The heading of this post refers only to the duckie character of Dr Yuen's mask, and is in no way questioning his credentials.  If I had wanted to write about dubious doctorates, I would have headed the post "Quat Doctor".

Two Words, Not One More

It's puzzling that Carrie Lam is spending so many days hobnobbing with Chinese officials over the border to discuss the content of her delayed Policy Address, when all she has to do to surprise and delight the people of Hong Kong is to condense it to just two simple words: "I resign".

Look Back in Danger

Four decades in Hong Kong have given me a great admiratiuon for the Hong Kong people (if not, alas, for those who govern them). Yet despite their hard work, intelligence, and dedication to principle, one quality is curiously lacking - they seem to be totally unaware that vehicles can travel backwards as well as forward.  Any driver in Hong Kong trying to manoeuvre into or out of a tight parking spot can be sure that the second they start reversing, some idiot pedestrian will walk across their path a few inches behind them, seemingly blithely unaware that they are actually moving.  I'm not sure what accounts for this blind spot - posasibly the fact that many Hongkongers lack driving experience - but you can be sure that if one of these people who put themselves in harm's way actually suffered an injury, they would immediately blame the poor driver for it and not their own lack of caution.

Mind how you go.

We are the people our government warned us against

 

Nasal Intrusion

Though the government will no doubt proclaim its mass community testing programme for Covid-19 a magnificent triumph, I leave it to others to comment on whether a turnout of 1.7 million against a projected 5 million, with only a handful of positive test results, really qualifies as a success.

What I do wonder is whether any of the numerous test subjects pictured in the constant stream of propaganda pushing the scheme have given permisision for their depiction in this situation.  Surely one time you are entitled to expect a degree of privacy is when undergoing an uncomfortable and unsightly medical procedure probing one's oral cavities?

Given this, I wonder how it is that Chief Executive Carrie Lam (or her body double; it's impossible to tell from this angle) managed to get her own test photographed from behind?

Surely if others are expected to be photographed uncomplainingly with a swizzle stick deep up their nostrils, Carrie should let the public enjoy the sight of her own discomfort?

Be careful what you ask for

As in past years, the Hong Kong government is conducting a public consultation exercise on what should be in the Chief Executive's annual Policy Address.  This seems a particularly pointless exercise this year, as what the majority of people want is not only clearly unattainable under the current regime, but even to demand it is probably no longer legal.  Still, I am wondering what would happen if a million Hongkongers wrote in to say they wanted this year's address to consist of only two words: "I resign".

Return of the 4 o'clock fairytale hour

See here for an account of the police's rewriting of the Yuen Long attack story.

Patriots' Pantomime

Add caption

 

Mirror, Mirror