One Restaurant, Two Menus

Spike's recent post on being taken to inferior Chinese restaurants in other countries when what you really want is to sample the local food reminds me of two amusing cross-cultural incidents in Birmingham some years ago (the original one in England, not the other Birminghams scattered around the world). Birmingham is well known for its many Indian restaurants, and has played its part in making chicken tikka masala "Britain's national dish", but it also has a sizeable Chinese community.

My brother (who's now travelling around the US with his wife) lived in the city then, and on a visit we wanted to take him and his then girlfriend out to taste some Chinese food. We found a reasonable-looking upstairs Chinese restaurant near the bus station, and settled into our seats to study the menu, which was in English. Then my wife asked for a Chinese menu, which was willingly supplied, only to find that the prices shown on it were about 10% lower than those on the English menu for the same dish!

Now two-tier pricing is not uncommon around the world - foreign tourists routinely pay double the local price at every tourist attraction in Thailand, for example - but it's not usually the natives who are being fleeced. When my wife asked the waiter which price we'd be charged, he squirmed with embarrassment, eyes downcast to the floor, but we ended up enjoying a decent meal and paying the lower price for it.

On a later visit we tried out a restaurant in south Birmingham somewhere (Moseley, perhaps?) Unlike most in England, it advertised itself outside as not just "Chinese" but "Cantonese", which looked promising. However, when my wife asked the waiter in Cantonese (which he spoke poorly - I suspect he was Vietnamese) for a popular Cantonese dish, they did not have it. Then another one - no. And another - still no. After several rounds of this fruitless exercise, frustration was setting in on both sides, when suddenly enlightenment dawned. "Ah," said the waiter, looking relieved, "You want real Chinese food. You'd better go to Chinatown." So we did.

Death merchants go phishing

Among my daily haul of spam today is one (obviously phishing) claiming that I have won US$5 million (why not sterling?) in the "British Tobacco Online Lottery". Wish it was true - the tobacco industry owes me at least that much for driving my father into an early grave with their poisonous products.

The Lesser of Two Evils?

A Catholic priest in Mexico killed his own son so the Church would not find out he had broken his vows of celibacy.

So to Catholics, sex is more sinful than murder?

So. Farewell Then, Ma Lik.

At some stage in their careers, most politicians say something ill advised that haunts them afterwards: "The pound in your pocket will not be devalued" (Harold Wilson); "I am not a crook" (Richard Nixon); "I did not have sex with that woman" (Bill Clinton). The assertion by DAB Chairman Ma Lik, who died yesterday, that there was no massacre in Tiananmen Square in June 1989 will be remembered as the Hong Kong equivalent of those dubious claims, overshadowing a balanced assessment of his public career.

Part of Chief Executive Donald Tsang's tribute to Ma said that under Ma's leadership the DAB had become "a close partner of the government". Given the government's many failures - on the environment, on heritage protection, on the slow road to full democracy - this reminds me why I never vote for the DAB.

And Another Thing...

Another Alternative continued:

...AND I would make sure the cans get recycled afterwards.

A word of praise here for the bottlers of Lucozade, who have recently switched from glass bottles, which cannot be recycled in Hong Kong, to plastic ones, which can. But why doesn't Hong Kong have any glass recycling facilities? Huh?

Another Alternative

Another story from The Sun: Malaysian customs officials are planning to pour 200,000 cans of seized smuggled beer down the drain. They claim to have no alternative because to sell it would disrupt the domestic market.

Well, they could try shipping it to me instead. I promise not to resell it, but I might throw one hell of a party.

A Painful Story

Britain's Sun newspaper reports that police in Ontario, Canada, are seeking a man who has asked three women in the street to kick him in the groin. The paper reports Sgt Cate Welsh as saying, "That kind of behaviour tends to be a precursor to sexual assault".

I'm assuming that Sgt Welsh is female. Any man will tell you that if you've just received a forceful boot in the groin, the last thing on your mind is sexual activity, consensual or otherwise. You're more likely to be writhing in agony on the ground clutching your injured privates.

Return of the Living Dead

I thought Monty Python's "Bring out your dead" sketch was just a joke - until I read this story.

Bollocks

Quote of the week:

I am in no way a violent person.

--Amanda Monti, sentenced to prison for ripping off her ex-boyfriend's left testicle with her bare hands and trying to swallow it.

Fascinating Facts

Amazing what facts you come across accidentally online. Who knew that hair straightener (1909), the gas mask (1912) and traffic lights (1923) were all invented by a black American man? No, nor did I.

Silly Buggers

Today's Standard reports that Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal yesterday upheld a verdict dismissing a charge against two men for engaging in anal sex in a public place (a parked car, in fact), on the grounds that the relevant law was unconstitutional because it applied only to homosexuals, contrary to the Basic Law which guarantees that everyone shall be equal before the law.

As in any case involving sexual activity, up pop the usual suspects to moralise about it. Choi Chi-sum, general secretary of the Christian group the Society for Truth and Light, says the verdict is "regrettable" and "disappointing" and "sets a dangerous precedent", arguing that "using a technicality to strike down the appeal is worrisome". "What the people are worried about is that indecent acts in public places are inappropriate. It's not about whether hetero or homo sex is involved", he is reported as saying.

Choi seems to have grasped only half the point here. Certainly most people would prefer not to witness a mass outbreak of sodomy in the streets, whether homosexual or heterosexual. But applying the law against it to only one sector of the population is not a "technicality"; it is a clear violation of basic human rights. If the law banned public buggery between white people but allowed it between Chinese people, would Choi consider that sort of discrimination a mere technicality?

8 Things you may not want to know about me

I have been challenged by the misanthropic Mr Fumier to write eight autobiographical facts. So without getting too up close and personal with myself, here are eight things you may not want to know about me:

1. I set out for Australia in 1975 and still haven't got there yet.

2. Having heard a new word as a child, and always eager to enlarge my vocabulary, I asked my mother, "Mummy, what's a prostitute?" She promised to tell me when I was grown up, but she still hasn't. I guess I haven't grown up yet...

3. As a child, I had several out-of-body experiences. I can still vividly recall looking down on myself pitching a tent while setting up camp with the Boy Scouts.

4. I attended the same school as Paul Boateng, later Britain's first black cabinet minister. In a television interview some years ago, he pronounced himself lucky to have been at a school that had little racial prejudice. "Huh!", sneered my brother, "You should hear what his sister [my brother's classmate] has to say about that."

5. As a child, I saved a younger playmate's life when he was choking on a sweet, by turning him upside down and slapping him so violently on the back that it popped out.

6. Photographs I have taken have been published in the South China Morning Post, Photo Asia, Fragrant Harbour and Recruit.

7. I learned driving at the late age of 38, ad scuba diving at 48. At 58 I plan to take up skiving.

8. I have never met anyone (including Americans) who likes George W. Bush or supports his policies.

So, not much change there then...

As the tenth anniversary of the handover (sorry, "reunion with the beloved motherland") passes, we have seen a lot of looking back to the events of 1997. Here are a couple of extracts from my annual newsletter to family and friends in December of that year that I think deserve a wider audience:

Local politics become ever more farcical, with one of our Chief Executive’s senior advisers defending the reappointment of election losers to the “provisional” local councils as a step towards greater democracy, thus placing us in the elevated company of such shining models of democratic development as Burma, Nigeria and Algeria.

The so-called election (by 400 hand-picked China cronies) of Hong Kong’s representatives to China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress, saw all but one of those “elected” coming from the ranks of the electors themselves. The most votes went to the head of the New China News Agency, China’s de facto top man in Hong Kong. This leaves China’s top representative in Hong Kong as Hong Kong’s top representative in China, but we are assured by the Chinese Communist Party that this is all right and we just don’t understand the system (who could?).

On Taiwan’s National Day a cluster of Taiwanese flags was taken down by the police, with the government first saying it was illegal to fly them, then realising they hadn’t actually got round to passing the planned anti-sedition law to outlaw them yet. They then changed their tune and announced that the real reason they were removed was because they’d been erected in a public place without permission. Ironically one of the plain clothes police removing them was wearing a Union Jack T-shirt!

One Country, Two Standards

At the 10th anniversary celebrations of Hong Kong's handover to China at Happy Valley today, seven female Chinese paratroopers scattered confetti from a height while coming down to land. Wanna bet they won't get ticketed for littering?

Looking back on ten years in which we have survived the challenges of SARS and the Asian financial crisis with little real change in Hong Kong (i.e. it's still run for their own benefit by the same cartel of property developers as before), it's hard to recall today how much fear was in the air as the last hours of British rule ticked inexorably away. Memories of the Tienanmen killings were still fresh (I nearly said massacre, but as Ma Lik has kindly explained to us, there was no massacre, in the same way that there was no sex between Bill Clinton and "that woman").

One particular incident sticks in my mind. As midnight approached on June 30th, I was in the old Bull & Bear pub in Hutchison House with a visiting friend from Australia. The pub was packed, and all eyes were on the big screen as the handover ceremony neared its climax. As midnight chimed the British flag was lowered, the Chinese flag raised, and a couple of people began to applaud. Another person called acros the room, in a voice heard by everyone, "Why are you clapping?" The applause stopped, and the entire pub fell silent for several seconds. When conversation resumed, it was in hushed tones.

So, are you clapping today, and why?

My Enemy's Enemy Is Not Always My Friend

I can rarely see George W Bush spouting his latest poisonous nonsense without feeling angry - do you feel that, too? Not long ago the idiot was on TV telling the long-suffering American people that defeating Al-Qaeda in Iraq is vital to America's security. In that case, why the hell didn't he just leave Saddam Hussein in power?

Under Saddam, Al-Qaeda had no presence in Iraq; for all his faults, he at least kept religious fanaticism firmly suppressed. It was the American invasion that gave Al-Qaeda the chance to enter the country, presenting themselves as heroic allies of the Iraqi resistance to the invasion, and giving them the biggest recruitment opportunity they had ever enjoyed.

The USA (and its lapdog Britain) are very good at creating their own enemies. Support the courageous Mujahideen fighting Russian communist control in Afghanistan, and watch them mutate into the dreaded Taliban. Build up the military might of the secular Saddam Hussein against the mad mullahs of Iran, and watch him turn it against Kuwait.

Most of the time, America and Britain would be better off if they kept out of physical intervention in other countries' affairs. At the least, they should learn that believing the old saying, "My enemy's enemy is my friend" is often foolish and dangerous.

Bring Out Your Dead

I wrote back in April about the reduced frequency of household waste collection in Britain. Now Private Eye has a nice cartoon on the subject:


This reminds me of the old Monty Python sketch:

Bring out your dead!

A family dump a struggling old man on the cart. He vociferously complains, "But I'm not dead yet!"

"Shut up, you soon will be."

Expensive Ferry to Inconvenience

It comes as no surprise that the Star Ferry is applying for a price rise on its Hung Hom routes, probably to be followed by its Tsimshatsui route soon. As everyone with a brain predicted, passenger numbers have slumped since the government moved the Central terminus from its former convenient location to an inaccessible new home in the middle of nowhere.

Apparently the next stage in the government's master plan to ruin Hong Kong's waterfront is to relocate the Central bus terminus to a less convenient location as well. They are already planning to relocate the Tsimshatsui bus terminus away from the Star Ferry Pier.

Have Hong Kong's planners never heard of integrated transport? Sometimes they get it right, as in extending the KCR back to Tsimshatsui to connect with the MTR there, but all too often they seem to look at one transport mode in total isolation from others, destroying connections instead of creating convenient interchanges between them.

The Rip-off Files 1: What you see is not what you get

How's this for deceptive and wasteful packaging? I know it says 28 pieces on the wrapper, but I don't think any purchaser would expect 40% of the space inside to be taken up by cardboard and air. Less for the consumer and more for the landfill.

Purchased from PARKnSHOP, as they now write their name. (Thank you, Mr Li).

Unintended Consequences for America

Several American senators are planning to introduce a bill in the Senate to push China to accelerate the rise in its currency, in order to ease its gigantic trade surplus with the United States. This only proves that politicians don't understand economics very well.

The intended consequence of this bill is to sell more American goods to China and slow the flow of Chinese goods into the USA. However, a sharp rise in the RMB may well have other effects:

1. American firms with factories in China will receive smaller profits from them in US$ terms, losing money they might have otherwise have invested back into the US.
   
2. American households will find themselves paying more for just about everything, as almost every manufactured product in WalMart is now made in China and will cost more.
   
3. This will not bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, as hoped; it is far more likely that they will move to other countries with low labour costs and relatively undervalued currencies.
   
4. China will be less able to afford to purchase American products such as Boeing aircraft, Microsoft and Oracle software, other high technology items, and grain.
   
5. China will produce even more pirate DVDs, as genuine Hollywood movies become more expensive in RMB terms.
   
6. Perhaps most surprising of all, this move could help to end America's illegal invasion of Iraq. Bush's ruinously expensive war (see latest cost in the right side column here) has run up a massive budget deficit, which has been largely financed by borrowing through issuing US Treasury bonds. The largest purchaser of these is China, which holds a large part of its enormous foreign exchange reserves, accumulated because of the trade surplus, in this form. Without this to fall back on, America will have problems coming up with the funding to maintain its occupation - certainly the American people will be in no mood for a tax rise (see 2 above).
   

Have they really thought this out, I wonder?

Help! Star Trek Universal Translator Needed Urgently

What's up with Blogger? For some reason, whenever I log in since yesterday it now shows everything on the screen in Chinese. There doesn't seem to be any button to click on to change language, and I can't use the Help function to sort it out because that's in Chinese too. Nor can I see any language indicator in the URLs it's using that I could try changing to "en".

Is it detecting a Hong Kong IP address and using Chinese because of that? If so, someone should tell the idiots at Google (Blogger's parent) that not everyone here is Chinese. Meanwhile, my annoyance level is rising....

Drowning the Deaf

ATV's English news the other night reported that some parts of Lantau Island had received 100 millimetres of rainfall in 24 hours. Now that's quite a lot (about 4 inches for the metrically challenged), but the subtitles showed it as 100 metres! If true, that would pretty much have washed away every village on the island except Ngong Ping - not to mention the airport.

Another Lost Opportunity

Hong Kong's Chief Executive Donald Tsang is an efficient administrator, but as a former top civil servant he is, I fear, better at carrying out orders than at coming up with new ideas himself. I have long believed that the Hong Kong government's major weakness (apart from constantly attempting to second-guess Beijing's wishes, instead of deciding on the best policies for the SAR and then selling them to the central government) is lack of imagination.

Sadly this lack has been demonstrated yet again in the appointments to Tsang's revamped cabinet. There are no real surprises on the list, and several familiar faces playing musical chairs. One such move sees current Director of Information Services Edward Yau Tang-wah succeeding the largely ineffective Sarah Liao as Secretary for the Environment, Transport and Works.

No doubt Yau is competent enough; but according to The Standard today, "despite Yau's lack of an environmental track record, he beat pan-democrat candidate, the Civic Exchange's executive director, Christine Loh Kung-wai, for the post". Now that really would have been an imaginative appointment (if she accepted it): Christine Loh's environmental credentials are impeccable, she is highly articulate (in English as well as Chinese), creative, and as a former legislator she knows well how LegCo works.

Not only that, Loh is 100% committed to democracy but, being more diplomatic and less abrasive than many in the democratic camp, manages to avoid making too many enemies on the pro-Beijing side; as such she could have helped to bridge some of the divisions between the two sides that make necessary compromises on many issues difficult to achieve.

And if all these qualities aren't enough, she is to my knowledge the only Legislative Councillor ever to have admitted (in an HK Magazine interview) to enjoying skinnydipping!

Start Your Day the Hong Kong Way

One of those mornings:

In a mean mood today, I was entering the lift at 1 minute to 9 with 4 or 5 other people when I spotted the building's shuttle bus arriving. Knowing this would mean a flood of people coming, I hastily pressed the Doors Close button to get us up, up and away before they reached the lift. Pressed several times, but nothing happened.

Then I observed that the jerk on the other side of the lift was frantically pressing the Doors Open button to keep us all waiting while his dear colleagues got off the bus and joined us. Very un-Hong Kong of him.

When I finally reached my office and checked my email, I found a junk mail beginning "Dear Sir/mad". How did they know?

Diddums and Death

Poor Paris Hilton! Sent back to prison where, according to one of her friends, "“It’s so cruel what has happened to her. She wasn’t allowed to wax or use a moisturiser. Her skin is so dry right now.”

Meanwhile I was talking to my mother last night when her doorbell rang. She called me back later to tell me it was her neighbour, informing her that the young man who cleans her windows had been knocked off his bike and killed by a drunk driver.

Well, Paris, some people get arrested for drunk driving and sent to prison where, no matter how rich they are, they have to suffer the indignity of dry skin. Others get killed by drunk drivers - how cruel is that? - which is why we send drunk drivers like you to prison. Get real, you spolied brat.

Cheers! ... or maybe not

No sooner had Hong Kong's Consumer Council (bless them) reported that budget cuts in duty on beer had not been passed on to local drinkers, and Financial Secretary Henry Tang and LegCo members backed their complaints, than up pops a hitherto unknown trade association of seven major beer suppliers called the Hong Kong Beer Coalition (which according to Sunday's South China Morning Post accounts for about 80% of local suppliers) to announce that its members were "committed to passing duty savings to consumers," and would "issue new price lists to wholesalers and retailers on June 1, 2007, to fully reflect the direct transfer of all duty savings."

So, good news, right? Media pressure works. Cheers all round!! Except...

How come in "the world's freest economy", a self-confessed price-fixing cartel is unashamedly admitting to effectively manipulating the price of beer? This would land them in jail in many countries. Whatever happened to the virtues of competition?

Good News and Bad News in the Park

Good news in Hong Kong always seems to come with a sting in its tail.

It should have been good news for drinkers when the government cut duty on alcoholic drinks in the last budget. However, three months later the Consumer Council finds that prices have hardly fallen. Indeed the prices of two beers, Asahi and Heineken, have actually risen by 50% and 32% respectively. I suggest you boycott these brands.

In other apparently good news, a proposed golf course on Lantau Island will not go ahead because of environmental concerns. However, a far more destructive "logistics park" in the north of the island remains on the drawing board, together with various other questionable schemes. The government should not be allowed to build anything on Lantau until it first fulfils its long-delayed promise to extend the North Lantau Country Park; and any further development of the island should concentrate on conservation and recreation - we have lost too much of Hong Kong's green space already, with the western New Territories being blighted by a rash of container yards on land supposedly zoned as agricultural.

And why do planners think they can persuade the public to accept smothering the countryside with concrete by calling the result a "park"? Whether you call it a science park, logistics park, business park or industrial park, a collection of industrial buildings is not and can never be a park. This is just another example of Orwellian language at work.

Worst Taste Ad of the Year - already

Less than halfway through the year, it will be hard to beat this advertisement for bad taste. Whoever dreamed up this campaign has a sick mind. Someone should put the boot in on them.

Shoot the Piano Player

An Excite.com search for John Cage's music turns up the following entries:

42. File Name John Cage - 4'33'' for piano.mp3
Format mp3
Site URL oracolo.mine.nu/varie [Found on Yahoo! Search]
Size 1.0 MB
Playtime 04:27 sec

55. File Name John_Cage-433.mp3
Format mp3
Site URL en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage [Found on Yahoo! Search]
Size 4.7 MB
Playtime 05:06 sec

I'll leave you to work out for yourself why this is amusing.

 
Disclaimer - I get a small commission from Amazon UK if you buy the MP3 download through the picture link here.  This version includes remixes!  (really.)

Your friendly unwanted makeover specialists

An alarming headline on the South China Morning Post website today:
Mong Kok gets a makeover
The Planning Department will map out measures to reorganise the chaotic streetscape of Mong Kok in a bid to make the area more shopper-friendly, writes Anita Lam.

Not being willing to pay the Post's exorbitant subscription fees when I can read The Standard online for free, I haven't seen the rest of the article, but this is probably bad news for shoppers. It is exactly Mong Kok's "chaotic streetscape" that makes it so vibrant and interesting.

The government's idea of "shopper-friendly" is usually to smarten everything up and then double the rents. The result: bye-bye to all the cramped CD and DVD shops and tiny boutiques and labyrinthine computer malls and second hand bookshops and exotic petshops and untidy street markets and cosy little cafes that really attract shoppers, and hello to all the same big boring overpriced retail chains we can find everywhere else.

Already they have done away with all the colourful dai pai dongs that used to liven up Hong Kong's streets in favour of no doubt more hygienic but characterless cooked food stalls herded into concrete bunkers above markets. Then the markets in public housing estates were privatized in the face of fierce opposition. Stanley Market has been "tidied up", again drawing complaints. And in Kwun Tong, there is much discontent among the residents (most of them in the lower income group) over government plans to "improve" the area, which it is feared will drive out the cheap shops that residents depend on for their daily needs.

When will we have a government in Hong Kong that actually asks people what they want instead of deciding for them? (Yeah, I know, when we get democracy... I guess I'll just have to hold my breath a bit longer.)

One Law for the Rich and Another for the Poor

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, who entered his post promising to clean up corruption (following his time as Assistant US Secretary of Defense, in which he was one of the chief creators of the murderous mess in Iraq), but was then caught breaking the rules to get his girlfriend a massive pay rise, is now reported to be "working on a resignation deal" that will allow him to leave on his own terms (no doubt with a handsome pay-off).

The rich and powerful really have no shame. If an ordinary person is caught with their hand in the till, they will get the boot immediately. But at this level of power, it seems you don't have to accept responsibility for your actions. And as the OJ trial showed, if you have enough money in America you can even literally get away with murder.

In this situation, it's refreshing that at least one of the super-rich may actually face the same justice as ordinary people for a change. The judge who sentenced silly heiress Paris Hilton to 45 days in prison, after she was twice caught at the wheel while her licence was suspended for driving under the influence of alcohol, deserves congratulations.

Britain's Sun newspaper reported that, "Her family had believed their money could buy her freedom. Her mum Kathy was heard ranting: '“And after all the money we spent!'" (though in true Sun style, the story concentrated on Paris's reported fear of lesbian assault in jail, and appeared under a shot of the wind blowing up her skirt to show her knickers).

Meanwhile, a questionable court case in the US has seen a vegan couple sentenced to life in prison for the death of their malnourished baby. It's hard to tell without seeing all the evidence, but it sounds to me from the report here that they were more probably foolish and ignorant (and rather eccentric) than deliberate killers. And like most poor people, they were probably forced to rely on overworked court-appointed defence counsel who may not have had the time or resources to mount an effective defence for them.

Ministry of Truth

This morning's South China Morning Post website says this:
"Fury at DAB chief's Tiananmen tirade
Hong Kong will not be ready for universal suffrage until around 2022 because the people lack national identity and many still believe there was a massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the leader of the main pro-Beijing party said yesterday."

The Standard reports Ma Lik's speech, but does not include any mention of his remarks on Tienanmen.

Let's get this straight: Ma is absolutely correct in saying, as Beijing's leaders always like to point out, that there was no massacre in Tienanmen Square in 1989. In fact the massacre took place in the nearby streets as the protestors were already leaving the Square - but they usually forget to mention that bit.

Another Appropriate Analogy

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

--Frank Zappa

Still thinking about the subject of my previous post. Suppose I tell you that if you go to Page One Books you can find a copy of Oliver Twist; does that make me the publisher of Oliver Twist? Of course not.

So if Woo Tai-wai posts a link that says "Go to xxx website and you can find porno pictures", does that make him the publisher of those pictures? Go figure, as the Americans say.

Real Life Crime Here on Your Screen!!

If the law supposes that, then the law is a ass, a idiot!

--Mr Bumble in Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist"

Watch this carefully: I am about to break the law in Hong Kong.
There are shops in Amsterdam where one can buy hard-core pornography.

There, I've done it! I've told you where to find obscene articles. That's what 48-year-old Woo Tai-wai did, and according to the Kwun Tong magistrate who fined him HK$5,000 last week, he acted illegally in doing so.

Except that Woo didn't write a sentence like the one above; he posted an Internet hyperlink in an online forum that led to a pornographic website. And the magistrate's decision proves that he understands neither the law nor the Internet, because what he convicted Woo of was "publishing an obscene article". But an Internet link is not and cannot constitute such an article in itself. Like my sentence above (which you could find in dozens of travel books about Holland), it is simply a signpost that tells you where to find something. It is not the thing itself. It neither compels you to follow the indicated direction, nor guarantees what you will find when you get there.

This site contains a good summary of the relevant law, the Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance (Cap 390), according to which "it is an offence to publish an obscene article. Publication covers distribution, circulation, selling, hiring, giving, or lending the obscene article." The definition of article includes "anything consisting of or containing material to be read or looked at or both read and looked at, any sound recording, and any film, video-tape, disc or other record of a picture or pictures."

I don't see anything in there that would include an Internet link; and if this ridiculous verdict is upheld then everyone offering a search engine online is in big trouble, from Bill Gates downwards, because what search engines do is also just tell people where to find things. As one comment on Spike's excellent post on this says, "following the logic of this unfortunate precedent, if I tell someone where firecrackers can be bought, I am guilty of selling explosives."

Looking on the bright side, however, it would really be nice to see all the spammers who clutter my mailbox with unwanted porn links lined up to face justice in the Hong Kong courts!

Other Views:
EastSouthWestNorth - Hyperlinking in Hong Kong

What's in a Name?

Wikipedia's article on Hong Kong Island's Soho district says this:
'For several years the local district council has fought an ongoing battle against local businesses in the area against formal adoption of the name "Soho", preferring instead the descriptive "Hong Kong Theme Restaurant District". The apprehension is that use of the name "Soho" will cause association with the London area of the same name.'

"Hong Kong Theme Restaurant District" - well, there's a catchy name that slips easily off the tongue and is simple to remember. I can really see how that one would catch on.

This is exactly the sort of mindless stupidity that gives Hong Kong's mini-politicans a bad name. Take a district with an already familiar and popular informal name, used by both Chinese and expatriates, and try to lumber it with a long-winded and boring official alternative instead.

And what's wrong with associating it with London's Soho? The area has long lost most of its former sleazy red-light reputation and is today more familiar as a lively bar and restaurant area which also includes London's thriving Chinatown. Did anyone complain when the bar area on Macau's reclamation became known as "Macau's Lan Kwai Fong"? But then for all its faults, Macau has a much better grasp than Hong Kong on how to attract visitors.

Coming next: Lockhart Road in Wanchai to be renamed "Hong Kong Theme Girlie Bar District".

Meanwhile in Taipei, the DPP government is planning to rename the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall as part of its campaign to eradicate Taiwan's visible links with the mainland. Since the existing name is an exact description of the place, it's hard to see what they could come up with instead - "the building formerly known as the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall", a la Prince, perhaps? Like him or not, Chiang was one of the towering figures of modern history who shaped both China and Taiwan irrevocably. I won't bother to dig out the famous quote to the effect that those who try to eliminate history inevitably fail to learn its lessons.

Why Am I Not Surprised?

Indonesia's former military chief denies that there were gross human rights violations in East Timor ahead of its independence vote.

And Pakistan's nuclear authority denies there is any cause for concern after it publishes press advertisements urging members of the public to inform officials if they find any "lost or stolen" radioactive material.

It's amazing how often one can apply the famous words of Mandy Rice-Davies, isn't it?

Bankers with a "W"

I spent a frustrating 45 minutes in HSBC's head office this morning trying to get a credit card cash advance. The trouble was, I wanted to draw out the total credit limit on the card. First I was told there was a maximum daily withdrawal limit on my card, which it turned out there wasn't.

That was merely irritating. What was infuriating is that the outstanding balance on the card had already been paid off in cash earlier the same morning. So, you might think, the entire credit limit would now be available. Not so. It appears that even though you pay cash into HSBC, it doesn't get credited to the card account until 9am the following day. So I'm there with the card and the pay-in slip proving it's been paid off, but that makes no difference.

So, if the money is no longer with me and not yet in the card account, where is it? Acting as a nice interest-free loan to HSBC for a day while they presumably sock me for another day's interest on the credit card, I suppose. And they wonder why so many people spell "bankers" with a W.

Gonig, Goign, Gnoe

The Guardian newspaper is so famous for its frequent typos that it is affectionately known in Britain as the Grauniad. But even by the paper's usual standards, its website's story on the funeral of Boris Yeltsin takes some beating. For a start, the headline misspells his name: Russian church and state unite to farewell Yelstin.

Skipping over the inelegant use of "farewell" as a verb, we are then informed that, "The signs of years of ill health were harshly written on the face of Boris Yeltsin's face". His face has a face?!

Yeltsin was notorious for making a fool of himself when, as the Irish say, "having drink taken". Perhaps the Grauniad's sub-editor had just come back from the pub himself?

[On clicking on the links again, I find they have already fixed the spelling error, but not yet the othetr mistake. This may change, of course - unlike printed material, online text is easy to amend.]

No Go at Soko

Today's Standard reports that, "CLP Holdings, Hong Kong's largest power company, is urging the government to speed up the approval process for its proposed HK$8 billion liquefied natural gas terminal on Soko Island".

Apart from the fact there is no such place as Soko Island (the Soko Islands is the name of the group of islands; the proposed terminal would be on Tai A Chau, the largest of the group, also referred to as South Soko Island), one hopes that the process will be one of disapproval. Not because it's a bad idea to switch from coal to gas for power generation; in fact, this will make a significant contribution to cleaning up Hong Kong's filthy air. Not because CLP's majority partner in the project is Exxon Mobil, whose most famous contribution to the environment was the Exxon Valdez disaster. And not because the government's present misconceived "Scheme of Control" for power prices enables CLP and Hong Kong Electric to benefit from capital expenditure whether it's really needed or not.

No, the main objection to this plan is simply that it's in the wrong place. The Soko Islands sit right in the breeding and fishing grounds of the threatened Chinese White Dolphin, already diminished by the construction of Chek Lap Kok Airport. So important is this habitat that the government has already designated it in 2002 as the site of a proposed marine park, now awaiting final approval. Ashore, the islands are also rich in wildlife, including nesting Sea Eagles, and offer ideal potential for low-impact eco-tourism.

Why put the dolphins, and the other marine life in the area (including the finless porpoise), at risk in order to build a terminal that will require a lengthy 38km undersea pipeline to the power station it serves, when it would make much more sense to construct it closer to Black Point where the gas will be used?

Making It Better:
Joint statement by six local green groups opposing the scheme
- Detailed critique of the scheme by the Green Lantau Association
- World Wide Fund for Nature - online petition against the scheme
- Discussion of the scheme at the Wildest Hong Kong Forum
- What You Can Do - Hong Kong Dolphinwatch

Don't Play That Song For Me

Let's sing another song boys, this one has grown old and bitter.
--Leonard Cohen

What is it about the song Streets of London that makes it the favourite of every busker in the world? Even here in Hong Kong, it's the one English song that every street singer knows.

With over 200 covwr versions recorded, in addition to his own million-selling single, the song must have been a "nice little earner" for Ralph McTell over the years, though I guess he is probably heartily sick of being expected to sing it at every concert he gives. But if he had a dollar for every time a busker sings it on the streets somewhere, he'd be as rich as Bill Gates.

The ironic thing is that it's not even McTell's best song. I personally much prefer the narrative song The Hiring Fair, best known in the version by Fairport Convention - like a Thomas Hardy novel compressed into three minutes of music.

BC Attitudes

The current issue of BC Magazine features its annual Golden Durian Awards, honouring the worst efforts of the Hong Kong film industry over the past year. Most of it is as entertaining as usual, but whoever wrote this sneering smear story about Gillian Chung needs to undergo sensitivity training:

"This [Best Actress] award is in recognition of her performance after the infamous 'hidden' camera incident back in August - which just happened to coincide with her latest album release. But even more ironic is that on the album cover she wears less than she did in that blurry hidden camera picture. Without sounding too insensitive and cynical, let's just say the whole 'incident' proved at least one of the Twins could act!"

I'm no Twins fan (I hold the somewhat unfashionable belief that singers should be able to sing), but "insensitive and cynical" exactly sums up this nasty little bit of character assassination. What is most objectionable is not the (possibly libellous) insinuation that the whole episode was staged, but the implication that by posing in scanty clothing, a woman forfeits any right to protest if some peeping tom sells voyeur shots of her to the media. This is morally equivalent to saying that if a woman has ever had sexual intercourse, she has no right to object to being raped. The issue here is not about how much skin Gillian Chung has ever displayed, but about the violation of her right to control her own life.

The Race Is On

Writing in the influential Huffington Post, Jim Fallows reports the following:

"It was Tuesday night China time when the authorities in Blacksburg, Virginia, identified the gunman as a young Korean. For the previous 12 hours, the worst traits in the Chinese media had been brought out by an even-worse lapse by part of the U.S. media. One -- and as far as I can tell, only one -- journalist in the U.S. identified the killer publicly and quickly as a student from China who had recently been given his visa in Shanghai. During the long night after the shooting U.S. time, which was daytime Tuesday in China, that report was picked up -- surprise! -- by Fox news and a few smaller U.S. outlets, and, via web news sites, it quickly made its way to China.

What the Chinese media did next was bad in a predictable way. Many web links to outside news of the shooting were blocked to limit subsequent details from reaching China. As reported in this blog from Beijing, parts of CCTV and the other official news outlets downplayed all announcements about the shooting until they could be sure what the "correct" Chinese angle would turn out to be. Meanwhile some other Chinese press web sites reported the news -- and the suspicion, emanating from America, that the killer was Chinese. I have friends in the U.S. consulate here, and I could imagine them tearing through the visa records yesterday, trying to figure out who the student might posibly have been, and which consular officer had stamped Approved! on his papers." [story continues...]

My first thought on hearing the original story that the shooter was Chinese was concern that it would arouse American racist feeling against Chinese people in the US. But given China's usual over-sensitivity to perceived slights against the country, I should have foreseen that the case would also perturb many in China itself.

As it turned out, the killer was not a recently arrived Chinese student after all, but a South Korean born US citizen with a history of mental disturbance, which did not, of course, prevent him exercising his "right" to acquire what turned out to be weapons of mass destruction for many of his unfortunate schoolmates.

Bin there, done that

Many local councils in Britain are switching from a weekly rubbish collection service to once every two weeks. According to government research, if waste is properly wrapped there should be no hygiene concerns.

In my student days I used to work as a dustman (binman or rubbish collector) during the summer break, and I can assure you from personal experience that this is (literally) absolute crap. Especially in the hot summer months, the stink from many bins becomes unbearable after even a few days. And since when has everybody followed government advice on how to wrap their waste (except perhaps in North Korea or Singapore)? This is just another step in the gradual deterioration of public services in Britain under "New Labour".

Incidentally one of the greatest compliments I ever received was to be told by one of my fellow dustmen, "You don't work like a student"!

Traditional Hypocrisy

Conservative Hindus are up in arms over Richard Gere's playful kissing of Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty, with some claiming he had insulted Indian culture and outraged the country's "traditional modesty". Gere was appearing at an AIDS Awareness event - presumably the 5.7 million HIV-positive Indians (the highest total of any country in the world) all became infected by practising the virtues of traditional modesty. Can any country with this problem continue to pretend that men and women do not get close to each other?

Well-Regulated Hypocrisy

The shooting massacre at Virginia Tech university in the USA is of course tragic, but there's something sickening about George W. Bush's public commiseration with the victtims and their families while his illegal war in Iraq is killing more people than that every day (not to mention Bush's accomplice Tony Blair getting in on the act).

No doubt some will argue that there is no connection between these two events, but I think there is: America's obsession with guns and its foreign wars both reflect the same sad illusion: that violence is an effective way to solve problems.

America's gun culture also reflects, I feel, a lack of understanding of the country's constitution. The relevant clause (Amendment II, 1791) says (complete with redundant commas), "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed". In the context of the first part of the clause, it seems clear that what is intended here is a collective right of self-defence.

The right of the people as a whole to protect themselves should not be interpreted as the "right" of every individual nutcase - a Chapman, Hinkley, Whitman or Cho - to carry a gun. 30,000 Americans die of gunshot wounds every year - some just because someone doesn't like Mondays or whatever. But Americans have a problem with anything collective, because it smacks of communism to a nation of people who pride themselves on their "rugged individualism".

So It Goes

The death was announced yesterday of the writer Kurt Vonnegut Jr, aged 84.

Vonnegut's later work was uneven, with some of his stylistic tricks wearing thin, and he has rather gone out of fashion these days, but I believe several of his early novels will in time be seen as among the great masterpieces of 20th Century literature.

Cat's Cradle (1963) introduced the world to the fictional religion of Bokononism, which proclaims its own untruth while asserting the value of foma, the comforting lies that make humans happy. Isn't that essentially what all religions provide?

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) was prescient in its early identification of what has become a central question in the post-industrial economy: what to do with people who are no use. Rosewater's (and by implication, Vonnegut's) answer is simple: love them. Makes sense to me.

Though I doubt if it qualifies me as a member of Vonnegut's karass, I do have a slight link to him in that my late uncle was, like Vonnegut, a PoW drafted as what Vonnegut calls a "corpse miner" following the controversial 1945 bombing of Dresden in World War Two. Unlike Vonnegut, he was not able to exorcise his horrific memories through writing, and suffered attacks of depression throughout his life.

Having achieved some sort of catharsis through writing Slaughterhouse Five (1969), based on his Dresden experiences, Vonnegut never again reached quite the same heights, though all his later works, however patchy, contain some interesting ideas. His last book, A Man Without A Country (2006) was, he said, driven by his contempt for President George W. Bush.

"When you're dead, you're dead." (Vonnegut, Mother Night) So it goes - but his books will live.

Of all the bodies in all the world...

Following yet another case in Hong Kong where mortuary workers mixed up two bodies, causing a grieving family to mistakenly cremate the wrong person, officials at the Prince of Wales hospital denied that the fact the two bodies were packed in the same cubicle in the overcrowded hospital mortuary had anything to do with the mix-up. In the immortal words of Mandy Rice-Davies, "well, they would say that, wouldn't they?" Or as Homer Simpson would put it, "Duh".

Preserving Face

So Chief Executive Donald Tsang wants to "learn from Beijing's experience and policies in preserving its heritage and ancient buildings". Given Beijing's notorious mass destruction of its city walls and traditional hutongs in past decades, this is a little like taking lessons in peacemaking from George W. Bush.

Tsang would do better closer to home by looking at our neighbour Macau, which has done an excellent job in recent years of preserving its core Portuguese architectural heritage among a tidal wave of new building. Meanwhile Singapore provides good examples of how old Chinese shop-houses can be renovated and reused imaginatively, something our own Urban Renewal Authority could learn from as an alternative to its heavy-handed approach in areas like Wanchai and Mongkok.

Incidentally, am I the only one who thought Tsang exhibited slightly indecent haste in practically running off the plane to greet the Mainland officials awaiting him on his arrival in Beijing?

Happy Easter

(another cartoon from Private Eye)

Ye cannae change the laws of physics - except in Hong Kong

Governments like people to forget things - it makes it so much less embarassing for them later.

For centuries, the inhabitants of Ma Wan Island lived a quiet life, making their living mostly by fishing and farming; then in more recent times many took up jobs across the water in the nearby industrial areas of Tsuen Wan and Kwai Chung. When the Tsing Ma Bridge was built to serve Hong Kong's new airport, the islanders asked the government if they could have a road link to the mainland, making it easier for them to get to work, in recompense for having their tranquil island blighted by the massive concrete supports and traffic fumes of the bridge. However, the Hong Kong government at the time said it was physically impossible - not just prohibitively expensive, but physically impossible - to build a spur road off the bridge to the island.

A few years later, Sun Hung Kai Properties came along with billions of dollars to build a new housing development on the island, and suddenly the physically impossible became possible after all. Yes, money is so powerful in Hong that it can even triumph over the laws of physics!

While we're remembering what the government would rather we forget, let us also recall that the Hong Kong people were promised an extension of the North Lantau Country Park to help compensate for the environmental damage caused by the airport construction (not to mention our very own cuddly concrete Disneyland). Despite the extension being gazetted in 2001, ten years after the airport opened that promise still hasn't been kept.

Worse, the government's "Concept Plan" for Lantau Island proposes a range of inappropriate developments on the island. And I haven't had a chance to read the full story yet, but from a headline I glimpsed today apparently the government has screwed up the removal of some of Pui O's picturesque water buffalo population, with most of those moved ending up dead. Poor Lantau! Poor buffaloes! Poor us!

Making It Better:
An alternative plan for sustainable development on Lantau without destroying the island's rural character

See No Evil

Israel's Defence Minister was photographed a few weeks ago looking through binoculars - with the lens caps still on! Perhaps he was afraid of seeing what his country is doing to the Palestinians.

Happily there are some people in the region who can see things clearly.

The Not Listening Bank

Call up HSBC's phone banking hotlines in Hong Kong, and the first thing you hear after selecting your preferred language is a recorded PR message telling you that HSBC has won an award for having the best customer service in Hong Kong.

If they're really interested in serving the customer, wouldn't it be better to go straight to the choice of services, instead of wasting the customer's time by subjecting him or her to half a minute of self-congratulatory BS first?

Incidentally, am I the only one who's tired of the increasingly meaningless use of the word hotline? Originally, this meant a point-to-point telephone line that was permanently connected, i.e. "hot", like that linking the Kremlin and the White House. Then it became extended to permanently staffed emergency lines like those of suicide prevention agencies such as The Samaritans. Now it seems to be applied to any telephone line that purports to provide customer service, even those that put you on hold for 20 minutes before connecting you to an operator - maybe these should be called coldlines instead?

Old Fart At Play - Again (maybe)

After 25 years of self-imposed absence from the music scene, Captain Beefheart is about to release a new album and tour with a reformed Magic Band. You would probably have to be as old as I am to understand why this is exciting news (unless it's an April Fool's stunt, which can't be ruled out - it was published yesterday).

More Mother, Less Money

F0llowing on from my previous post, another two women, mother and daughter are also given credit for establishing Mother's Day. However the younger, having got it made a national holiday in the USA, then spent much of her life and all her money campaigning against it, because she felt it had become excessively commercialised. Regrettably, her campaign failed and the greetings card industry continues to invent ever more (and ever more bizarre) "Days" we are exhorted to celebrate by spending money on their products.

A quick search of two online greetings sites turned up not only traditional religious festivals and such reasonably well established celebrations as Father's Day and International Women's Day, but the following (and that's not counting all the special "Weeks" and "Months" and birthdays of famous people):
Act Happy Day, Administrative Professionals Day, Alfred Hitchcock Day, Awkward Moments Day, Banana Cream Pie Day, Be Heard Day, Black Forest Cake Day, Boss's Day, Bridge Players Day, Bunsen Burner Day, Buzzard Day, Cabin Fever Day, Cereal Day, Chocolate Caramel Day, Chocolate Cheesecake Day, Chocolate Covered Raisins Day, Cuddly Kitten Day, Curlew Day, Dance Day, Day Of The Seal, Dentists' Day, Department Store Day, Doctor's Day, Dream Day, Employee Appreciation Day, Everything You Do Is Right Day, Father-in-law's Day, Flower Day, Fly A Kite Day, Frankenstein's Birthday, Genius Day, Give Up Easily Day, Go Commando Day, Grandparents And Grandchildren Day, Grandparents Day, Groundhog Day, Hiccup Day, Hot Tub Day, Houdini Day, Hug A GI Day, I Want You To Be Happy Day, International Astrology Day, International Goof Off Day, Irish American Day, Let's Laugh Day, Liberty Day, Money Day, Mother-in-Law's Day, Multiple Personality Day, National Anthem Day, National Day of Prayer, No Smoking Day, Nurses Day, Paper Dress Day, Peanut Butter Lover's Day, Pecan Day, Photography Day, Pi Day, Pig Day, Pitchers Day, Plan A Solo Vacation Day, Plant A Flower Day, Potato Chip Day, Pulaski Day, Quilting Day, Read Across America Day, Receptionist Day, Respect Your Cat Day, Roller Coaster Day, Salesperson's Day, Santa's List Day, Say Hi To Mom Day, Share A Smile Day, Sing Out Day, Single Parents Day, Smile Rejuvenation Day, St. Urho's Day (apparently he is credited with driving the grasshoppers out of Finland – bet you didn’t know that – though he might have just been made up by the Finns to trump St Patrick, who drove the snakes out of Ireland), Stop The Clocks Day, Submarine Day, Swallows Day, Sweetest Day, Tavern Day, Telephone Day, Uranus Day, White Day, Workplace Napping Day, World Theatre Day, World Water Day

Much as I love the sound of some of these, surely they can't all be serious? And do I have to send two cards to each person on Multiple Personality Day?

Here we go a-mothering

The Americans usually get the credit for inventing Mother's Day. But long before Julia Ward Howe came up with the idea, the British celebrated Mothering Sunday, which today is more or less the British equivalent, but originally had an entirely different meaning (and is still celebrated as a church festival today).

I've often wondered why Hong Kong, despite being a former British colony, follows the American date instead of the British one (three weeks before Easter). Be that as it may, I'd like to wish my mother a Happy Mothering Sunday today.

That Thing You Do (if you're a cat)

Anyone who knows cats will find this anusing: my brother and his wife, after a few days away from home, reported that, "when we got back, [our cat] was so pleased to see us that he forgot to do that cat thing of turning his back and pretending that he didn’t care one way or the other".

Bigger than Bruce?

Acid-tongued American Idol impresarion Simon Cowell claims he's bigger than Bruce Springsteen.

That would depend on whether you were comparing his ego or his artistry.

Poor Little Rich Girl

Celebrities really do live in a different world. Naomi Campbell has to attend classes in anger management, following yet another assault on one of her domestic staff.

Let's see now - Naomi is widely regarded as one of the world's most beautiful women, is enormously rich, has an army of servants to wait on her hand and foot, gets to travel to all sorts of exotic places, is invited to loads of premieres and award ceremonies, hobnobs with other rich and famous people, eats in the finest restaurants (and owns some herself), and wears clothes by the world's leading designers. She doesn't even have to write her own books.

Yes, I can really see what she has to be angry about...

'Twas Ever Thus

I haven't had time to post much lately, but to keep you going here's a thought-provoking cartoon borrowed from Private Eye, which I've been reading for 40 years now.

For more on Hogarth, see here. The poster depicted is an extract from his picture Gin Lane. Personally I find there are times when nothing hits the spot like a cool gin and tonic, but it's awful stuff to get drunk on (particularly, so a friend assures me, the cheap brand sold in Wellcome). Like Hogarth, I'm more of a beer man myself.

Kung Hei Fat Choi! and other New Year stuff

Wishing a happy, peaceful and prosperous Chinese New Year of the Pig (not the Golden Pig, that's a load of PR hype) to all my 11 readers.

I noticed that Hong Kong's Chief Executive Donald Tsang was unable to resist turning his traditional New Year message into a propaganda plug for "family values". He must be under the delusion that he's Lee Kuan Yew rather than a jumped-up civil servant.

If the Hong Kong government is really concerned about preserving traditional values, they could start by squashing the stupid proposal to use plastic buns for this year's Cheung Chau Bun Festival. This is turning a living tradition into a Disneyland pastiche of the real thing. What idiot came up with this idea? And they even have the cheek to cite "environmental concerns"! Simple environmental lesson that even civil servants should be able to understand:

1. real buns are biodegradable if not eaten;
   
2. plastic ones will end up as litter, either in a landfill, or worse, in the sea.
   

Probably this idea came from the same twit who decided to direct vehicles to the car park near the Wishing Tree in the Lam Tsuen Valley on Chinese New Year's Day, only for them to find on arrival that the entire spacious car park was unnecessarily cordoned off and closed to cars on the one day of the year when it was most needed. (Part of it was marked as being reserved for tour buses, of which there were none at all present when I arrived.) The only alternative was to park wherever one could find a space in the nearby villages, risking a ticket or blocking access to someone's property (not to mention that, as any New Territories village resident will tell you, nasty "accidents" can happen to cars - and sometimes even their drivers - when they encroach on what some villager considers his private parking space, even if it's marked as public).

As for the poor old Wishing Tree itself, I appreciate that it's now protected because of its fragile state of preservation. But what's with the ugly and pointless metal cage around the shrine at the base of the tree? Ot the weird little structure next to it that looks like a pyramid-roofed Portaloo?

Does anyone in the Hong Kong government have even half a brain any more? Or care?

Wind Between My Wings

A few years ago I felt that the standard of Cathay Pacific Airways' service was declining, but on my recent trip to London it was fine. However, on the return trip to Hong Kong my wife and I had the misfortune to find ourselves seated behind an elderly couple one (or perhaps both) of whom had a major flatulence problem. Now we all let one rip occasionally, but this was different: a steady stream of non-stop stinkers.

We tried to put up with it for a while, but eventually the malodorous miasma around us became totally intolerable, and my wife had to request the cabin attendant in our section to find new seats for us. (Since this was done in Cantonese, the offending couple, who were not Chinese, presumably could not understand).

The plane was nearly full, and I don't know how she did it, but the stewardess managed to persuade someone else to move and thereby succeeded in getting us two seats a couple of rows further back, out of range of the pungent putridity. Another passenger, seeing our two previous seats free, attempted to colonise them, but also rapidly retreated from the noxious emanations.

So to the helpful, cheerful and diplomatic stewardess on flight CX 254 on 30 January, many thanks! And to the rancid reeker producing the pestilence, for God's sake see a doctor to get your digestion sorted out. Or get yourself some charcoal filter underwear. Or just never get on the same plane as me again!

And that should be the end of the story - except that after landing at Chek Lap Kok we took the airport bus to get home, and found ourselves seated behind another foul farter! One is just bad luck, but with two I was beginning to suspect a conspiracy. Fortunately he got off at the Tsing Ma Bridge tollbooths, and the rest of the journey was as fresh as Hong Kong's polluted air ever is.

Probably the only good thing about him

Quote of the week: from veteran singer and peace campaigner Joan Baez, on being awarded a (well-deserved) Grammy lifetime achievement award:
"President Bush is the best publicity agent I've ever had".

Two nations divided by a common language

Quip of the week: older readers may remember the late Alistair Cooke's Letter from America on British radio, a long-running weekly feature in which Cooke, a British-born naturalised American, wittily explained his adopted country to his country of birth.

My brother and his wife are currently spending a year in the arms of American academia, and being trained sociologists with a keen eye for social detail, are keeping friends and family entertained with a periodic Email from America along the same lines. In this week's edition, they report that her parents have just arrived for a visit, adding wryly that "It’s nice to have some people to talk English to".

By the way, will someone please tell the Americans that "leverage" is a noun, not a verb?

Political Correctness Gone Mad

The title phrase is not one I generally use; it is more commonly heard (in the UK) from the kind of rightwingers who read the Daily Mail, call black people "darkies", and think the country went downhill when women were given the vote. But once in a while you have to concede that they may occasionally have a point.

On a recent trip to Britain (hence the lack of posts in the last few weeks) I had occasion to make a lost property report to the police. The details were taken down by a polite and helpful young constable, but I was surprised to find that even on lost property reports the police are now required to enter the "ethnicity", as they call it, of the contact person.

Now I can see that for many police matters this detail would be highly relevant: cases of incitement to racial hatred; defilement of synagogues or mosques; and senseless racially motivated attacks, such as the tragic murders of Stephen Lawrence and Anthony Walker (among many others). But lost property? Come on!

I have alarming visions of a battalion of dedicated civil servants toiling away in a Whitehall basement somewhere to produce detailed statistics showing that Bangladeshis are 4.2% more likely to lose their wallets but 3.7% less likely to lose their mobile phones than Vietnamese. Absurd.

And you thought your life was eventful...

Not like this!

Orwell Award 2006

Before 2007 gets too far along, let's give out the Orwell Award for last year's finest example of doublespeak.

A late entrant (29 December), but the undisputed winner, is this gem from the home page of the South China Morning Post. (I didn't read the full article because the Post charges for access to its sacred writings, unlike the more entertaining NOT the South China Morning Post; however, you can read the story [from AP] here).

Military spotlight on Taiwan
The central government [of China] on Friday said it would strengthen its military ability to thwart rival Taiwan's push for independence while vowing it was committed to the peaceful development of the world's largest army.

Too late for common sense?

The Hong Kong government's sudden new-found concern for the territory's heritage, following the Star Ferry protests, is welcome if belated (and somewhat limited, since it appears they have ruled out direct acquisition of threatened historic buildings). However, Secretary for Home Affairs Patrick Ho has made it clear that this new awareness will not extend to scrapping the Central Bypass scheme, saying it is too late to cancel a project that has been in the planning stage for four years. Perhaps he hasn't noticed that it's also been opposed by a large proportion of the public for that time, and even been the subject of attempts to stop it through the courts?

Let's examine the government's logic behind this project:
1. Move the Star Ferry to somewhere that's inconvenient for most passengers.
2. Demolish the familiar and popular existing Star Ferry Pier and Queen's Pier.
3. Reclaim part of the already excessively depleted harbour that no one wants to lose.
4. Use the land thus constructed to build a road no one wants (and , let us not forget, a shopping centre no one needs, but which is probably the real driving force behind the project).

The fact is that most of the traffic likely to use the new bypass could be eliminated by:
- accelerating the proposed extension of the MTR Island Line to Kennedy Town (and eventually to Aberdeen via Pokfulam); and
- reducing the ridiculously exorbitant tolls for the Western Harbour Tunnel, so traffic between Kowloon and Western District has no incentive to divert via the old tunnel and travel through Central in order to save money.

Is it really too late for common sense?

Other Views:
Star Ferry: The Beginning of a New Social Movement?

Making It Better:
Friends of the Harbour
SOS - Save Our Shorelines

On the Eleventh Day of Christmas

Don't take much interest in Christmas. Used to be great fun in the old days when it was simply an orgy of commercial excess, but now I find that people are tainting the whole thing with a lot of religious mumbo jumbo.
--Peter Cook

I was planning to post various Christmas stuff, but as usual time got in the way. However, as we are still within the twelve days of Christmas, and in any case tomorrow will be Christmas Day in Russia, I guess it's not too late. Not that the date means much anyway, since one of the few historical facts we can be reasonably sure of about Jesus Christ is that he wasn't born on the 25th of December (nor in zero AD; most historians of the period place his birth around four years earlier).

We owe the present date of our Christmas celebrations to the Emperor Constantine, who wanted to usurp the place of the Roman Festival of Saturnalia when Christianity became the official religion of the Empire (a move from which it has never recovered). Most of our cherished Christmas traditions have nothing to do with Christ, but are either pagan survivals from the various festivals that celebrated the Winter Solstice (as the Chinese still do), like the Christmas Tree and the Yule Log, or Victorian inventions, like the Christmas card and the popular image of Santa Claus in his red robes.

Similarly Easter took over the place and some of the customs (all those eggs!) of the spring fertility festivals which were also common in many cultures. Some religious purists reject all these non-Christian accretions to their faith, but I welcome them as part of mankind's continuing tradition of celebrating the great cycle of the turning seasons.

Anyway, back to Christmas. I haven't tried to post a picture here before, so let's try. The cartoon above was borrowed from Private Eye (please subscribe so they'll forgive me). The funny thing is that when I first read the caption, I took it as a satire on Tony Blair's vacuous New Labour political correctness, until I saw the word "Tory" in the smaller print. Which just goes to show how little difference there is between Britain's two major parties these days.

In his Christmas Eve message, Pope Benedict XVI made a special appeal for the protection of children. He could make a start by protecting them from the priests of his own church.

I have one more Christmas item to post, but that can wait a day or two. If you've already celebrated Christmas, I hope you had a good time. And if I have any Russian readers, Merry Christmas to you!

Seems Like a Brand New Day

Hong Kong's Internet access is still rather iffy following the earthquake off Taiwan that damaged several undersea data cables just after Christmas, but is getting better gradually. However the difficulties of access during the last few days have provided me with a perfect excuse for my blogging lethargy. Normal service will be resumed soon.

Meanwhile, looking at the New Year celebrations around the world on TV, I was struck by how positive and joyous everyone seemed. We all know that 2006 was in many ways a horrible year, and that on any reasonable assessment of probability, in 2007 the Iraq War will continue to get bloodier, Israel and the Palestinians will remain at lethal loggerheads, human rights violations will worsen further around the world, terrorist bombings will take innocent lives at random, the rich will get richer while making sure the poor stay poor, more countries will seek to acquire nuclear weapons to keep the imperial US off their backs, thousands of square miles of tropical rainforest will disappear, and global warming will bring the planet a step closer to destruction while politicians do nothing effective about it. Yet in the face of all the evidence, we persist in looking forward to a better year than the one just passed.

From one perspective this is pretty foolish behaviour - the unfounded optimism of a confirmed gambler, always sure that next time the dice will fall differently. Yet I also find this capacity for finding joy and hope in the darkest of times one of the most endearing human characteristics - and one that perhaps helps us to keep going when all logic would lead us to just give up. And maybe one day (it does sometimes happen), if we all do our bit to make it so, the future really will be brighter.

Happy New Year!

Rise of the Machines - Closer Than You Think?

Private Eye magazine (essential reading) reports in Issue 1173 that the British army is establishing a new worldwide satellite-based communications system called Skynet. To anyone who has seen the Terminator series of movies (starring Arnold Schwarzenegger before he switched from acting to a less reputable profession), this will either be an extremely disquieting omen, or an indication that someone in Whitehall has a wicked sense of humour.

The Rich: Not All Greedy Bastards

Slate has a list of the 60 largest American donations to charity in 2005. There are several interesting things about this list.

While there are plenty of familiar names - Bill Gates and Paul Allen of Microsoft, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Ted Turner of CNN, Oprah Winfrey, the odd Rockefeller and Ford - quite a few of those listed are much less well known. This suggests that their money is probably inherited ("family wealth" as the list delicately puts it) rather than earned through any newsworthy current ventures of their own.

Also noticeable is the absence of many other enormously bloated individuals who could easily spare a few million bucks: no Warren Buffett, no Larry Ellison, no Steve Jobs, none of Sam Walton's heirs (of course they could appear further down the top 100 list, and some have made big donations in the past). Essay question: compare and contrast with the Forbes rich list.

Another observation is that many of the donations are to already massively wealthy institutions: MIT, UCLA, Princeton, Stanford, Wellesley College, (probably most of these are the alma mater of the donor), the Smithsonian, the Museum of Modern Art, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library - rather than the less glamorous but infinitely more vital needs like clean water supplies and childhood vaccination in the Third World, medical aid for war victims (no shortage of those thanks to America's foreign policy), rainforest preservation and [name your own cause here].

Final note: much as I admire the work of the Gates Foundation, which does address some of these causes, I can't help feeling that the best service Gates and Allen could do for the world would be to provide more reliable software at a more affordable price!

Geography Lessons

Bash a broadcaster Part 3 - in fact several broadcasters this time.

ATV News reported the big storm in the Pacific Northwest of the US a couple of days ago against a graphic of a US map showing a hurricane approaching Florida. Well at least they got the right country, even if they're 3,000 miles off course.

Then TVB Pearl's news summary last night reported that Hong Kong Electric was applying to increase its prices, while showing on screen the head office of China Light and Power, Hong Kong's other electricity supplier, which serves the opposite side of the harbour. (To be fair, their full news later used this clip to contrast HKE's prices with those of CLP - they are already 35% higher, which may help explain why major shareholder Li Ka-Shing is Hong Kong's wealthiest man. And to be fair to HKE, they have reduced their emissions of pollutants by switching from coal to greater use of cleaner but more expensive natural gas.)

Finally this morning a DJ on RTHK Chinese language radio introduced Enya as a Scottish singer (she's Irish) singing "O Come All Ye Faithful" in Italian (it was Latin, "Adeste Fideles"). Close enough, I suppose - two Celtic nations, and two languages from the same location separated in time, in fact one descended from the other.

Am I the only one pedantic enough to notice this stuff?

Hey, that's no way to say goodbye

Bash a broadcaster part two:

Listening to the car radio (Chinese RTHK) this morning. With unusual good taste, they're playing a Jennifer Warnes version of a Leonard Cohen song. So I'm just getting into that Cohen mood of mellow melancholy, when they abruptly switch to the next item by way of a fusillade of gunshots. Ever heard of gradual transitions, you insensitive idiots?

Accountants of the Serengeti

I was behind a jeep going into the Tate's Cairn Tunnel this morning that had a sticker on the back saying Hunter on Board. Yeah, sure, in urban Hong Kong where just about every animal species is protected by law except the rat.

Or maybe Hunter is the driver's surname....

The Good, The Bad and The Brainless

It's not often that I have two opportunities in one week to praise Hong Kong's politicians, but last night's TV news reported that the Legislative Council passed a bill increasing the maximum penalties for cruelty to animals. Good for them!

However, most cruel treatment to animals in Hong Kong (and even more so on the Mainland) more often reflects ignorance and failure to understand their needs than deliberate nastiness. For example, a vet told me on Monday of someone who keeps three large dogs (Labrador Retrievers) on a small rooftop and never takes them out for a walk.

Anyone who doubts that many Hong Kong people need more education in this area obviously failed to watch TVB's Beautiful Cooking (美女廚房) contest a few weeks ago (22nd October). The audience laughed when some brainless bimbo clumsily dropped a live octopus on the floor twice, and again when another octopus, obviously distressed, was thrashing around wildly trying to escape another brainless bimbo who was attempting to lift it out of a tank.

Don't bother commenting that "brainless bimbo" is not a PC term - I know. But the octopus is an intelligent creature that can feel pain; the only dumb animals on this show were the contestants.

Making It Better:
There are many dedicated people campaigning for better treatment of animals in Hong Kong; here are a few:
- Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Hong Kong)
- Animal Earth
- Hong Kong Dog Rescue - this site also has a useful list of other animal welfare organisations in the territory

Listening to the people

In a rare departure from its usual practice, the Hong Kong government actually listened to the people for once, and announced that it is scrapping the proposed goods and services tax (GST).

Just about everyone opposed this tax: ordinary people because it was regressive and would transfer part of the tax burden from the rich to the poor; the business community because it would impose a heavy administrative overhead on every company in the SAR; retailers because it would hurt sales; the tourism industry because it would make Hong Kong more expensive to visitors, and therefore a less attractive destination.

Nevertheless, the problem that the tax was supposed to solve remains: the government's narrow tax base and over-dependence on revenue from property transactions. So here's a suggestion: listen to the people some more. Public concern about environmental issues in Hong Kong has never been stronger, particularly with regard to the filthy smog-laden air we have to breathe. So how about a pollution tax, or rather a targeted set of environmental taxes?

Tax retailers for giving out unnecessary free plastic bags that end up in landfills. Tax minibus operators that have not yet converted their vehicles to run on cleaner LPG. Tax the power companies for every unit of pollution they emit until they fit more efficient emission controls on their generating stations. Tax transport operators that don't fit new cleaner engines to their vehicles within a reasonable time. Tax excessive packaging. And so on...

You get the idea. Raise public revenue while hitting polluters in the pocket, until they find it cheaper to clean up their act than to continue dirtying the environment, thereby killing two birds with one stone. How about it, Mr Tang?

Making It Better:
- Clear The Air
- Friends of the Earth (Hong Kong)

Empty Promises

Hong Kong's Secretary for Security Ambrose Lee was quoted on local television a few days ago as saying that the Hong Kong government would do all it could within the one country two systems framework to assist the family of jailed journalist Ching Cheong. Which means they will do nothing.

Of course there are limits to what Hong Kong can do to influence the Beijing authorities, but as a minimum, the Hong Kong government could at least tell the Chinese government that no one in Hong Kong, even among the "pro-China" crowd, believes for a moment that Ching is guilty.

Too Much Monkey Business

An interesting fact from singer/songwriter Tom Robinson's website: "A download on iTunes costs [in the UK] 79p per track. The Performer gets 7%, the Writer 8%, Credit Card company 9%, Apple 15%, and Record Company 61%". As Tom says, go figure.

Furthermore, the greedy record companies are always moaning about their supposed losses because of illegal downloads, but they can't even be bothered to make music they already own available to those of us who are actually willing to pay for it. There is plenty of good stuff that has never even made it on to CD: to name just a few, two albums by Loudon Wainwright III, one by Vivian Stanshall, two by Dory Previn, and one by Kate and Anna McGarrigle are only available if you are prepared to pay inflated prices on eBay for the original LPs or get someone who has them to run off a CD-R for you. (Obviously I'm giving away my musical tastes here.) Even one Bob Dylan album (admittedly his worst) has only made a brief appearance on CD, and is currently only available on cassette!

Viv Stanshall's widow and a group of his fans have been campaigning for years to get his album Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead reissued on CD. To sign an online petition to Warner Brothers Records for this, go here.

The music industry, movie studios and software companies also try to make you feel sorry for them by inflating their losses due to copyright piracy. The figures they quote assume that everyone who acquires a pirated copy would otherwise buy a legal one, which is clearly nonsense.

Update: (August 2013). The LW3, Dory, and (finally) Viv albums are now available on CD. But that still leaves other masterpieces like Bright Phoebus by Lal and Mike Waterson (a whole story in itself) largely unavailable. And I've done a later story on the missing Dylan CD.

Disclaimer - I get a small commission from Amazon UK if you buy the brilliant Stanshall CD through the picture link here.

Annoying Programme Interruptions (APIs)

I turned on TVB's English channel soon after 8am this morning and found it relaying CCTV Channel 9 news. Switched to ATV, and they were carrying exactly the same programme.

Now I have nothing against China Central Television. The days when their "news" programming consisted largely of happy red-scarved peasants celebrating bumper rice harvests thanks to the all-encompasssing wisdom of Chairman Mao are long gone, and while I wouldn't trust their impartiality on topics like the Dalai Lama's latest speech or the pros and cons of Taiwanese independence, most of their English language news coverage is as professional as anyone else's.

But if Hong Kong is going to license two terrestrial broadcasters, shouldn't they make some effort to carry different programmes? Otherwise why do we need more than one?

However, that's not the most irritating thing about Hong Kong television. Nor, annoying though it is, is TVB's habit of giving away the key plot points of films in the trailers they show. (At least it saves you having to spend time watching the actual movie.)

No, that distinction belongs to the so-called "Announcements of Public Interest" (APIs). Now some of these carry perfectly harmless and even useful public information, like reminders to register for upcoming elections, or that it's your age group's turn to change your ID card for the new smart card.

What pisses me off are the fuzzy pointless ads that tell you things everyone with half a brain doesn't need to be told: "be a happy family" or "be good to your children". Is it really necessary to spend the taxpayers' money on this kind of stuff? Does the government imagine that someone watching this will experience a sudden epiphany and think, "Oh, I should really be good to my kids - I never realised that before"?

Where do they think this is - Singapore?