Averages can be misleading

According to a BBC News story, a researcher in Britain claims that having an older sibling, particularly a brother, can stunt your growth, and that children from larger families (4 or more children) tend to be shorter than average. From my own experience, I beg leave to doubt this. I am the oldest of five, and 6ft 3in. My next two brothers are also over 6 feet tall, while my youngest brother is 6ft 7in. My sister, the youngest of us, is 5ft 10in. Obviously we are all far above average!

Hacking Away at Hong Kong's Heritage

When will we have a government that isn't afraid to say "boo" to a property developer?

I first arrived in Hong Kong just days after the old Tsimshatsui railway station closed. Despite widespread calls for its preservation, all that was retained was the clock tower in situ, and a few meaningless bits of its colonnade relocated to a new site in Tsimshatsui East. Three decades later, at a cost of billions of dollars, the KCR was extended back to Tsimshatsui from its new terminus at Hung Hom. Great forward planning, huh?

Soon after that came further heritage battles: the stately old GPO (where Worldwide Plaza now stands); the old Hong Kong Club, a marvellous wedding cake of a building; and over the years since then a whole succession of attractive and/or interesting buildings has vanished, sometimes with a total lack of logic - why, for example, is the Tsimshatsui wet market still in its "temporary" location, twenty years after it was moved out of its perfectly sound building in Peking Road (subsequently demolished after serving other uses for some years)?

Despite occasional victories for preservation (the relocated Murray Building; the Sun Yatsen Museum in the old Kom Tong Hall), in general, the government has almost always put development interests ahead of conservation interests. So whereas other Asian cities have large areas of old buildings tastefully restored (Macau and Singapore are good examples), relics of the past in Hong Kong have become increasingly scarce. Of those which remain, one of the finest is the magnificent King Yin Lei Mansion on Stubbs Road, designed in Chinese style 70 years ago by a Yorkshire architect (no kidding).



The government has known for several years that this lovely building was under threat; the Antiquities Advisory Board proposed that it be declared a monument in 2004. So why is it only when the wreckers moved in to vandalise it, possibly already causing irreversible damage, that they have now listed it as a proposed monument, preventing further alteration or demolition while its case is considered?

The only positive aspect of this case is that the speed with which the listing was done suggests a new-found awareness on the government's part that the community is fed up with the loss of everything that gives Hong Kong its unique character. If this is a sign that they are finally beginning to take conservation seriously, we may yet become a civilised society. I hope.

Making It Better:
The Conservancy Association (I borrowed the picture from their website; I'm sure they won't mind.)

Another irresistible offer from Nigeria - and a Mother's Day special

From the country that gave you the 419 scam comes an irresistible offer: according to an email I received a couple of days ago, the First Bank of Nigeria PLC has been authorised by the Nigerian government to compensate foreigners who have been cheated by so many of its countrymen. Of course, to give me my share, they will just need a few of my personal and banking details first...

However annoying these spam scams, it is fascinating to observe the number of changes the scammers can ring on the same basic idea. One can't help feeling that if the same amount of effort and ingenuity went into legitimate business, Nigeria would be far and away the most prosperous country in Africa.

Also in the "nice try" category is the spammer a few months ago who suggested that ink and toner would make the ideal Mother's Day gift. Yeah, sure. YMMV (Your Mother May Vary), but I think mine would still prefer a bottle of sherry and a nice bunch of flowers!

Then in the "totally unconvincing spam" category, we have the computer training school in Hong Kong that can't even get the html in its email messages correct. I don't think they'll be seeing me as a customer any time soon.

I think I need another pint of Guinness...

Did you hear the one about the Irish magazine editor who had to quit his job because he told Irish jokes? No, alas, it's not an Irish joke but a true story. The mind boggles.

Presumably the humourless lady who found these jokes offensive would like all jokes to be like the one I read recently:

"An Englishman, an Irishman and a Pakistani walked into a pub. What a perfect example of racial integration."

[Notice: no Irishmen were harmed in the writing of this column]

Where the man with his hand on the tiller has his other hand in the till

Former Philippine President Joseph Estrada's conviction and sentencing on corruption charges comes as no surprise. There is little doubt of Estrada's guilt; nevertheless, one can have some sympathy with his claim that the verdict was a political decision. After all, he was only doing on a bigger scale what most politicians do. If every corrupt office-holder in the Philippines was imprisoned, there would be barely a dozen public offices in the country left occupied. This is, after all, the only nation to have two former leaders in Transparency International's all-time World's Ten Most Corrupt Leaders list: Estrada himself at 10 and Ferdinand Marcos at 2 - and we should remember that Imelda Marcos has never surrendered the latter's ill-gotten gains.

Where have all the bloggers gone?

What's happening to all the Hong Kong bloggers lately? Fumier has shut up shop, and now, as I learn from Spike (who's still writing), 962 has done the same (both their sites being immediately grabbed by usurpers, though the new 962 seems to have disappeared as well). Sash surprised herself by falling in love, and no longer tells us all the fascinating details of her sex life (though anyone who appreciates high quality erotica can still enjoy her old posts). And another blog that shall be nameless seems to have disappeared as well.

I hesitate to shout "I'm still here!" in case I also get afflicted by the Curse of the Vanishing Local Blogger, but...

Iraq: a voice from the trenches

“Everywhere Bush travels he has to erect a fortress to protect himself. What the hell is this man so afraid of? I’ll tell you what he’s afraid of—he’s afraid of the people."

"We were never there to help those people. I was ordered to bury the humanitarian food I was given because we were told, ‘We’re the United States Marine Corps we are not the United States Peace Corps."

"There was a complete disregard for human life that I witnessed, almost a bloodlust."

"Morale has never been so low in the military, and this is even coming from the top echelons of the military leadership."

"The Democrats have absolutely betrayed us. We voted them into power on an antiwar mandate and they have refused to confront Bush and to listen to the constituency that put them into power."

We hear a lot about the Iraq war from a political standpoint, but the voices of the ordinary American soldiers used as cannon fodder for Bush's illegal war get much less coverage. Here is one intelligent and articulate ex-Marine's take on the situation - well worth reading.

Children: Guide Your Parents

I came across mention of Mingle² in another blog - it's mainly a dating site (no use to me), but they will rate your blog as if it was a movie. Private Beach comes out as PG (Parental Guidance). They say:

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:
sex (4x) dangerous (2x) gun (1x)

Since "dangerous" sets off alarms here, if I write about safe sex, will the two words cancel each other out, I wonder?

Protection Racket

Spot the similarity between these two current news stories:

China's Hu warns of 'dangerous' time for Taiwan

Taiwan's complex diplomatic situation is entering a 'possibly dangerous period,' Chinese President Hu Jintao told US President George Bush on Thursday.

And from the front page of today's South China Morning Post online edition:

Mainlander made up plot against tycoon

A mainlander demanded HK$1.02 million to protect the family of a local entrepreneur from gangsters he said had been paid to attack his children, a court heard yesterday.

Get it? In each case, the only "danger" comes from the mainlander supposedly warning against it.

Standard Identity Crisis

Long time English-speaking residents of Hong Kong will know that The Standard newspaper has been through quite a few makeovers in recent years. Originally the Tiger Standard, and once a long-established South China Morning Post lookalike, it found (as did the short-lived Eastern Express, another left-of-SCMP clone) that there was only room for one SCMP in the local market. It then went tabloid with a new trendy name, HongKong iMail, for a while, before again reinventing itself as "China's Business Newspaper" under its old Standard name.

Now in yet another attempt to find a unique market niche, it has announced that it will relaunch from next week as Hong Kong's first English-language free (i.e. advertising-supported) giveaway daily (there are already several such Chinese papers, mostly handed out in MTR and KCR stations).

It remains to be seen how this latest incarnation will work out; though the Post's market leadership has never been seriously threatened over the years, the Stock Exchange's decision that listed companies need no longer print announcements in the newspapers (pointless now they all have websites) must be worrying it a bit. And the Standard can take advantage of parent Sing Tao Group's already established free paper distribution set-up.

What surprises me is that no one (since the long-ago demise of The Star) has yet tried to fill the most obvious gap in the English media market: an English language equivalent of the Apple Daily. In other words a resolutely lowbrow paper combining a strong populist pro-democracy political stance with plenty of gore and gossip, celebrity, sex and scandal, sport and showbiz . Apart from the democracy part, this is pretty much the same recipe that has made Rupert Murdoch's The Sun Britain's best-selling daily. Any investors out there reading this?

Make Up Your Mind, Senator!

What's wrong with you, Senator Craig? First you consistently vote against gay rights in the Senate over many years. Then you get arrested for soliciting gay sex and plead guilty. Then you announce that you're not guilty after all, and not gay. You say you do not intend to resign your Senate seat, then you announce your intention to do so. Now you are apparently reconsidering that decision. Do you even know what you're doing? Gay or straight, stay or go, just make up your damn mind!

Who will watch the watchers?

Many years ago, long before the Tuen Mun Highway was constructed, we would sometimes take a bus via the scenic Castle Peak Road, which still winds its way along the shoreline, to the Ching Chung Koon Temple at Castle Peak for a vegetarian lunch and a wander around. Though the Temple and the nearby psychiatric hospital are still there, not much else from those days is now recognisable under the concrete sprawl of Tuen Mun new town. So as I drove around the area a few years ago, I was completely unfamiliar with the local roads, relying on a map to find my way around.

Anyway, I was tootling along merrily at 70 kph down a wide road with little traffic. As I recall, the road dipped under a bridge, and I emerged on the other side to find myself being waved down by a traffic cop. More officers stood around, stopping other unwary motorists and putting them through the same rigmarole: “Can I see your driving licence? Do you know you were breaking the speed limit? I will have to give you a ticket.”

Yeah, yeah. Useless to argue with these robots. Never mind that the road was nearly empty of traffic; that all the vehicles were doing the same speed; that there was no danger to anyone, and no pedestrian anywhere within sight. Just take the ticket, swallow your bitter medicine, and go on with your journey.

Most of the time, you can’t win when dealing with the traffic police, though I did once score a minor victory: parked in an unmarked space (the official spaces were all full) in the car park of the Lions Nature Education Centre in Sai Kung, I returned to find a ticket on my windscreen. Oops! The area is clearly marked as a private road, so I wrote in politely pointing out that the police have no authority to issue parking tickets there. Ticket cancelled!

But how many less attentive poor suckers just pay up without checking, so the cops can meet their monthly quota of victims? I wouldn’t be so aggrieved if they occasionally stopped some of the absolute maniacs I see every day driving dangerously on the Tolo Highway, zigzagging wildly across several lanes at once, instead of wasting time ticketing people who aren’t even causing an obstruction (Taipo Industrial Estate on a Sunday – come on…)

Anyway, back to Tuen Mun. As you can imagine, returning along the same road an hour later, I was carefully keeping my speed down to 50kph, not wanting to get another ticket, when a police motorcycle roared past me at over 80, way in excess of the limit. Gosh – what dire emergency could justify such reckless behaviour? What urgent mission of mercy could require such a rapid response?

A little further up the road, all was revealed. Our brave motorcycle warrior was indeed busily engaged in bringing relief to the afflicted … well, bringing lunch to his colleagues at the road block where I’d been stopped earlier, anyway. What could be more urgent than that?

As the ancient Roman poet Juvenal said, two millennia ago: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? – who will watch the watchers (or guard the guardians)? Who indeed, I wonder.

Hard Beancurd

Couldn't resist this one, seen in a mall in Mongkok (thanks Dion for the photo). I will, however resist the obvious jokes about getting a rise out of it, having a hard time, etc.

And since I usually try to keep this blog suitable for parents: Mum, don't look at this entry!

Damned if you dude

The BBC reports that some Blogger blogs (not this one, fortunately) are being hijacked to propagate spam.

One basic rule that should be part of your anti-spam precautions: never click on anything which addresses you as "dude". Does anyone except spammers actually use this word?

Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance, says Wikipedia, is "a psychological term describing the uncomfortable tension that may result from having two conflicting thoughts at the same time, or from engaging in behaviour that conflicts with one's beliefs, or from experiencing apparently conflicting phenomena." In other words, pretty much what US Senator Larry Craig must be feeling these days.

One thing that puzzles me about the endless parade of American politicians and preachers caught with their pants down, is why their wives so often stand meekly by them on the platform when they make their public confessions. Once in a while, it would be rather entertaining to see the wronged wife trying to do a Lorena Bobbitt on the jerk, rather than being so patiently forgiving. Or maybe she's saving that for when he gets home...

Glad to be unhappy

The Standard reports that, according to a recent Citibank survey:

• Hong Kong's middle class has little money to spare at the end of each month;
  
• The majority of respondents have insufficient time to manage their financial affairs properly;
  
• Most do not think their MPF returns, and their property investments for those who have them, will be adequate for their retirement;
  
• Most expect little help from the government; and
  
• More than half said they could not expect financial help from their children in their old age.
  

Despite all this, more than half the respondents expressed satisfaction with the economy, the economic situation and the business environment.

Er - why?

Happy Birthday Dear Blog

Today marks exactly a year since my first post. Since then I've subjected my ever-growing (but still tiny) band of loyal readers to over 100 posts, or about one of my ramblings every 3 days or so. Looking at the category listings, my favourite subjects have been Politics (44), Hong Kong (34), the Environment (13), and Stupidity (22). Looking at the way the world is going in the first 3 categories, I expect my rants on the last category to multiply enormously in future.

I can't say I've changed my opinions much on anything in the past year, except that I now detest most politicians even more than when I started this blog, particularly the gang of war criminals around George W. Bush - many of whom are now deserting the sinking ship of state as he continues to steer it resolutely onto the rocks.

If this blog stands for anything, I hope its guiding values would be compassion, common sense, and a sense of humour to cope with the absence of the first two qualities in much of what goes on around us. I hope you enjoy it, and welcome feedback through your Comments. Have a nice day!

Disappearing Acts

The excellent music blog I Am Fuel, You Are Friends laments the disappearance of the Weekly World News. This is sad news indeed - where will I go now to find out which supermarket Elvis has been spotted in lately?

Meanwhile Spike fears that Hong Kong's Ritz-Carlton Hotel will follow the WWN, as well as the former Hilton and Furama Hotels nearby, into oblivion. It is clearly environmental insanity on a massive scale to demolish perfectly sound and serviceable buildings that have decades of usable life ahead of them just to squeeze a few more bucks out of the site, but this is Hong Kong.

Spike also takes a well-deserved swipe at "the soulless Cheung Kong Centre" (or Center, as they insist on spelling it). It says a lot about the architectural and environmental judgement of Cheung Kong boss Li Ka-Shing that his company's flagship building is a dull box totally devoid of character.

Another disappearing act is reported by the BBC: the once numerous house sparrow has been placed on a list of British birds that need greater protection. What the hell are we doing to our world, when even the most common creatures are being driven towards extinction by our arrogance and carelessness?

Making It Better:
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

Honk if you're stupid

With the entertainingly irascible Fumier sadly retired from blogging (don't be fooled by the impostor who's usurped his blog name), someone has to keep up his valuable tradition of skewering Hong Kong's awful drivers, so let's get started. Last night our car broke down in Kowloon Tong, leaving me and my wife sitting just off Cornwall Street for half an hour awaiting the tow truck, with the emergency flashers on. During that time, I can't count the number of idiots who drove up to within a couple of feet behind us, then hooted irritably on finding we weren't moving, and they would have to reverse out in order to get past us.

See here dummies, it works like this: when a car is flashing its emergency lights, that's a sign that something's wrong. If you're smart, you don't wait until you're almost bumper-to-bumper with it to find out that it's blocking your way. You slow down, observe the situation, and change to another lane in plenty of time.

Oh, I forgot. You're not smart, are you? How the hell did you even pass a driving test in the first place?

One country, two (or three) UN seats

Next month Taiwan will again attempt to get accepted to UN membership, and once again China's overwhelming influence will no doubt defeat it. But China is not being consistent here: it argues that Taiwan, which it considers as part of China, is already represented through the PRC's membership. But back in the days of the Soviet Union, Ukraine and Belarus (then known in English as Byelorussia) had their own UN seats in addition to being represented as constituent republics of the Soviet Union. We didn't hear China complain about double representation back then, so why now?

Wheeling in the beers

The World Socialist Web Site thinks I was too hard on Paris Hilton. What do you think?

There's one thing I don't understand about the infamous trio of Paris, Nicole Richie and Lindsay Lohan. Apart from being buddies, they all have two things in common:

1. being arrested for drunk driving; and
   
2. being filthy rich.
   

Now if they want to drink themselves into a stupor it's their business, but since they can all easily afford to employ an army of chauffeurs or grab a cab, why the hell do they insist on driving themselves after getting pissed?

In other law enforcement news, the BBC News website today has an arresting headline: How detective work uncovered a lost Constable. That's the trouble with the police today: you can never find a copper when you need one.

Favourite Colour: Anything but Green

From today's SCMP online edition front page:

Green pressure could harm city, says Li Ka-shing

"Li Ka-shing warned yesterday that conservation campaigns and calls for limits on high-rise buildings could damage the interests of everyone in Hong Kong."

Well, not quite everyone, Mr Li; only a handful of wealthy property developers and chain store owners. Mr Li is well qualified to speak for them, but has even less authority than our unelected leader Donald Tsang to speak for the rest of us.

Every cicilised society preserves the best of its history, and Hong Kong people increasingly want to see human values emphasised over purely economic ones. Far from being dismayed by Li's outburst, I think we should take heart from it. If the voice of the conservation movement has grown loud enough for Li to feel threatened by it, then green views are clearly moving from the fringes of society into the mainstream - which can only be good for most of us.

All in a good cause

I worry about these Christians. First we had the priest who killed his own son. Now we have US Arny Major John Cockerham, who has apparently acknowledged receiving US$1 million in bribes for giving out reconstruction contracts in Iraq (part of billions of dollars floating around in Iraq without proper accountability).

The money, says Cockerham's sister (also accused in the case), was to be used to set up a church. So, that's all right then...

Call Me Doctor Stupid

I am constantly amazed at how stupid spammers are - and even more amazed at how stupid some other Internet users must be to make their spamming worthwhile.

A Yahoo group I subscribe to has repeatedly received variations on the following message:

I am now to be referred to as Dr. Jenkins haha ;) Took me about a month to get fully accredited, but after ringing these ppl 1-801-xxx-xxxx they got me setup at an international uni and had me my BA in no time.

My first question: if your name is Dr Jenkins, why is the email coming from "muriel-berggren686", and later from "domenique-mcnally"? Don't you know your own name?

My second question: do you really think a BA entitles you to be addressed as "Doctor"? (You can only pull that trick if you have an MB,BS degree from Hong Kong U.)

Do people really fall for this crap?

Diaper Dilemma

Sorry, not a very good picture - I was in a hurry and didn't check it after taking, else I would have tried again with the flash turned off to avoid reflections from the metallic surface.

However, it should be clear enough to show the point: this is from the door of a male toilet on The Peak, indicating that there are baby changing facilities inside. That's fine - as I have written before, I believe Dads should share that part of childraising. However, whoever designed the sign appears to have been somewhat reluctant to accept this idea - although it's the men's room, the nappy-changing figure on the sign is clearly female!

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.