Camp followers

"Mick Jagger will camp when Rolling Stones play Glastonbury [Festival]"

says The Sun.  Most of us thought he'd been camping for years already.

Nonsense of Direction

According to Facebook, Tai Po is near the airport on Lantau island, more or less diagonally opposite its real location..  I can only assume they get their maps from Apple, not Google.  Still, that should make it quicker to get home from the airport next time I land there!

Young gifted and cracked

We are seeing a bizarre proliferation recently of ever more pro-Beijing organisations seemingly dedicated to telling us that we are too stupid to choose our own leaders.  It appears to be a rule that these should have as long and unwieldy a name as possible.  Last night's news reported on a public forum organised by the Love China-Hong Kong Alliance of Youth Cultural Societies.  The main "youth" speaking at this appeared to be long-time Beijing lackey Ho Sai-chu (born 1937).  Of the other three youth representatives on the platform, one had grey hair, one was balding, and even the youngest-looking didn't appear to be less than 40.  From the brief shot we saw of what seemed to be a minuscule audience, few of them appeared to be younger than 80.  (Many old folks in Hong Kong treat these kind of public forums as free entertainment.)

So no youth there, and not much sign of Love either.  Are we really supposed to take these pathetic organisations seriously?

Diddums

Did you see the mainland tourist on last night's news blubbing like a baby just because his tour bus was delayed by an hour?  Apparently this puerile display of over-the-top emotion was in support of his claim for compensation of RMB3,000 per head for the delay (the amount they paid for the entire 5-day tour to Hong Kong).  On that basis, New World First Bus owes me $750 for the agonising 15-minute wait I had to endure in Hennessy Road on Wednesday.

Song of the day here.

Politician Gets Hands Dirty Shock

Good to see Hong Kong's politicians doing some honest work for a change!

Videos here and here.

The Trinity of Reverse Evolution

Further proof of the decline of the South China Morning Post

From their website today:

Syria dismisses US, UK chemical weapons claims as lie

The 46-year-old, one of the European Union’s youngest prime ministers, is then expected to unveil his programme in a parliamentary session on Monday, before the government is put to a confidence...

10:44AM

Does anyone at the paper actually read what they put out?

Sharing the Love

Fool me once, shame on you
Fool me twice, shame on me

With Chinese officials constantly emphasising the importance of Hong Kong showing love for the Motherland, the latest earthquake in Sichuan Province has thrown up some interesting developments.

Hong Kong people have traditionally been quick to donate generously to victims of past natural disasters in China.  However, the government's proposal to repeat its massive donation of local taxpayers' money following the previous Sichuan earthquake was not so readily accepted this time around.  Having seen how much of their hard-earned cash ended up in the pockets of corrupt local officials last time - most notoriously, a school built with HK$2 million of our money was soon afterwards demolished to make way for a commercial development - Hong Kong people want guarantees that the money will reach those who really need it.

Ever eager to score brownie points in Beijing, the government perhaps did not stop to think that putting this donation on LegCo's agenda for approval would give the Council an opportunity to air complaints of corruption on the mainland, a sensitive topic which would usually be out of bounds for discussion.  Naturally the pan-democrats seized that opportunity in yesterday's Finance Committee meeting, leaving the DAB with the awkward choice of either seeming to show a lack of love for the Motherland by rejecting the donation proposal, or seeming to condone corruption there by accepting it unconditionally.  In the end no vote was taken and the issue remains unresolved.

However, also as usual, the pan-dems missed an opportunity to do better.  If they were smarter, they would have painted their objections as showing their strong support for President Xi Jinping's recent calls for a determined fight against corruption in the Party, thereby casting anyone who disagreed as an enemy of the Beijing leadership.  But perhaps that was too imaginative for them.

In fact, the pan-democrats seem to be letting the pro-Beijing parties hijack the mantle of "love" by default., like the "Voice of Loving Hong Kong" group which first came to public notice by lovingly trying to silence any other voices at a public forum on democracy.  Again the pan-dems need more imagination.  Instead of "The Alliance for True Democracy", why not call their new united(?) front group "Love Hong Kong, Love China, Love Democracy"?  Don't give those who are trying to ruin Hong Kong a monopoly on claiming to love it.

Song for today.

My Country Wrong or Wrong

The surprising thing about today's SCMP poll question - "Do you agree with judge Kemal Bokhary that critics of Beijing can also be patriots of China?" = is not that 93% answered yes, but that as many as 7% were stupid enough to answer No.  Does the CCP really have that many readers of the English-language media in its ranks?

The simple fact is that if you love your country (whichever one it is), you want it to improve.  This can only happen if people point out where it's going wrong, so the errors can be corrected.  And if you seriously think that any country is so perfect that it's above criticism, then you need an urgent  reality transplant.

The Finish Line

Do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, nor the widow, neither shed innocent blood in this place.

--Jeremiah 22:3

Anyone who kills children for any cause (assuming the Boston Marathon bombings were some kind of political act) amply demonstrates that their cause is not worthy of support.

Yesterday when I heard the news, my first thought was for a close friend who is visiting the city, where her daughter, son-in-law and grandchild live.  Thankfully they are all safe.  This boy, Martin Richard, was not so lucky.  Rest in peace, little one.  And rot in hell, whoever did this.

Confusion All Round

Last night's TVB news, talking about a case of burd flu in China:

"The girl's mother also developed a fever, but her temperature has come down and is in good condition."

I'm glad the temperature is in good condition - I wonder how the mother is?

Also reported last night was the case of "W", a male-to-female transsexual in Hong Kong who is seeking the legal right to marry her boyfriend.  W has had gender reassignment surgery and both her Hong Kong ID card and passport now specify her sex as female.  Yet despite officially recognising her as a woman for most purposes, the government is arguing that she is still a man for the purpose of marriage.

One of its arguments in the Court of Appeal yesterday was apparently that "a criterion of marriage is to produce the next generation".  There may be valid reasons for not letting W marry a man (though I can't think of any), but this is certainly not one of them.  If it applied this logic consistently, the government would also have to consider the inability to procreate an impediment to marriage for infertile couples and post-menopausal women.  Not even the Catholic Church would go that far!

The Institute of Trite Observations

According to a Chinese University study, Hong Kong people experience excessive anxiety as a result of inflation, with those who have a household income below HK$10,000 a month being 8 times more likely to suffer from it.  This is hardly news - Professor Wilkins Micawber of the Dickens Academy made a remarkably similar observation in his groundbreaking economic study of 1850.

According to the director of the CUHK Hong Kong Mood Disorders Centre, Lee Sing, people with anxiety symptoms should seek treatment as soon as possible.  I would have thought seeking better-paid work might be more useful, but what do I know?

 

What I do want to know is this: how much anxiety is "excessive" when you can't afford to eat?  And how can I get the government to give me loadsamoney for stating the obvious?

Song for today here.

Pecuniary Incentive (Shock Horror!)

The NTSCMP's parody of it led me to a Standard article on the dangers young women allegedly face by going out drinking.  Among the other horrifying statistics there was this shocker from a social worker: "As for those who work in bars, we believe that money is the main motivation." 

As opposed, presumably, to social workers, lawyers, dockers, toilet attendants, shop assistants, accountants, civil servants, journalists, cleaners and construction workers, who all go to work purely for the love of the job.  With srticles of this quality, one wonders if a parody is really necessary.

Singapore girl, you're a great way to hop

It appears from this picture that a missing foot is no impediment to employment as a Singapore Airlines stewardess.  Some may think this is carrying equal opportunity employment a bit too far!

Richard Li, hijacker

I was planning to start the day with some remarks on the obnoxious Margaret Thatcher, who died yesterday - an obituary I've ben writing in my head for several years.  But when I opened Firefox to get into Blogger this morning, instead of my usual home page - set to Google - I was greeted by the Chinese version of this:

After my initial WTF reaction, I tried opening my other two browsers, Chrome and IE, only to find the same thing - appropriately labelled "PCCW Force Portal" - in all of them.  Attempts to bypass it by closing and reopening, and by opening new tabs, proved fruitless, with each new tab just popping up another copy of the same screen.

Finally I was forced to respond to the offer from PCCW (declining it, of course - I am not giving these clowns any additional opportunity to mess with my system; in fact I didn't even read the details of whatever scheme they were trying to push, I just wanted them off my screen) in order to get rid of the damn thing, and eventually got a screen graciously permitting me to go about my usual online business:

So why did this happen?  PCCW's subsidiary Netvigator is my Internet Service Provider, and while others have good cause to hate them, I've generally found their service OK.  But I don't recall ever signing anything that gave PCCW boss Richard Li the right to override my system settings and hijack all three browsers on my system with his unsolicited advertising.  If PCCW want to contact me, they have my email address.  This is outrageous - contrary to all the rules of netiquette and totally unacceptable - in fact I shall look into making a formal complaint to OFTA about it.

And while I'm bashing PCCW, I received a letter from them recently (they know where I live, too, if they want to contact me) using all the standard meaningless PR buzzwords: "Thank you for choosing HKT as your telecommunications partner [i.e. phone company]. We constantly strive to provide the best customer experience through service excellence." before going on to say: "In order to cope with increasing costs and continue to offer high standards of service quality, we would like to inform you that the monthly service fee for Local Business telephone Services will have to be adjusted with effect from May 1, 2013."

Why can't businesses (not just PCCW) just be honest and say they are "raising" their fees, instead of always using the weasel word "adjusted".  When was the last time you saw a fee adjusted downward?

Stupid is as stupid does

Elsie Leung warns against 'stupid' votes in 2017 chief executive race

If Hongkongers are "stupid enough" to vote for a chief executive candidate who does not meet Beijing's criteria of "loving the country and loving Hong Kong", they should not blame Beijing for the consequences ...

and blah blah blah, says the former Secretary for Justice and vice-chairwoman of the Basic Law Committee of the NPC, though she does at least go on to admit that this eventuality is unlikely - in which case, why all the insistence on screening out candidates who do not (in the eyes of Leung and her cohorts) meet these criteria? ..

I am sure I am not the only one who is getting extremely tired of old Beijing lackeys like Elsie Leung and Maria Tam insulting the people of Hong Kong by implying they're so stupid they have to be told who to vote for.  Who is being stupid here?  Hong Kongers are well aware that whoever they elect as CE will have to work in close cooperation with the central government, and will use their vote accordingly.  Can we have an end to this pathetic scare-mongering?

Perhaps, like Hemlock, I should take to wrapping up my posts with a song.

The Dark Side of the Farce

Beijing-loyalist Maria Tam says the right to be elected is not universal.

So says the South China Morning Post today.

Imagine if the last US election had given voters a right to choose only between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton excluded from aspiring to the presidency.  That is effectively the scenario now being proposed for Hong Kong by the small clique of Beijing loyalists that has undue influence in such matters.  Their idea is that we will all have an equal vote for who runs Hong Kong, but anyone who might actually stand up for Hong Kong's rights instead of kowtowing to the central government will be unable to run for Chief Executive.

It is of course farcical to claim this as any sort of democracy - but then Maria Tam, Rita Fan and the other Hong Kongers who sit on the NPC and NPPCC are not interested in democracy.  Their main discernible talent has been worming themselves to the top of a system where a small self-appointed elite claims to represent Hong Kong with no popular mandate whatever - first under British rule, and then as sudden patriots, under Beijing rule after 1997..

If it were not so serious, the last NPPCC "election" would have been quite amusing.  China declared that members would be required to display high moral standards, then demonstrated their sincerity by giving Henry Tang - failed CE candidate, self-confessed adulterer and owner of an illegal basement below his house three times the size of the average Hong Kong family's total living space - a seat.

As Hong Kong people have grown in political awareness and self-confidence, elements of democracy have gradually chipped away at this old cozy system, but those who benefit from it are not willing to lose their influence without a struggle.  The problem is that Beijing actually listens to these people and takes their advice on Hong Kong matters as if they were representative of anything more than their own self-interest - which probably helps account for its gross misreading of the public mood on such matters as Article 23 and "National and Moral Education" (the coupling of the two is a dead giveaway - the subtext being "if you don't love the nation [as we define it] you are an immoral person").

If the central government understood that in a democracy, an opponent is not automatically an enemy, they might talk to articulate moderate democrats (Audrey Eu would be a good choice, for example) to get a better understanding of Hong Kong, instead of just being told what they want to hear.  Until then we will have to suffer mad old bats selling out the rights we are supposed to enjoy under the Basic Law.

Poll Dancing

Another unanswerable poll question from the South China Morning Post: Do you believe some Hongkongers might resort to violence to fight for universal suffrage?

Do I believe a few hotheaded demonstrators might scuffle with police at a protest march?  Almost certainly - which is probably what the 72& who answered "Yes" have in mind.  Do I believe  we're going to see pitched mass battles in the street and suicide bombings?  No way.  If you're going to ask a question like that, define what you mean by "violence" first.

The previous day's question was equally hard to answer: Do you support the 'Occupy Central' movement?

Morally, absolutely.  Strategically - it depends.

Let one flower bloom, let one school of thought contend

Headline story in toda's South China Morning Post:

No consultation on political reform until conditions met, Beijing official says

Consultation on electoral reform should not begin until most Hongkongers agree that those who confront the central government should not rule the city, a top Beijing official has said.

Which essentially means "We're not going to ask you what you want until you agree with our view of what you should have"

But if they don't ask, how will they know whether Hong Kong people have fallen for their bullshit or not? Not that they care what we think anyway.

Racing to come second

To normal people, the fuss over Sebastian Vettel's win in the Malaysian Grand Prix will seem bizarre.  Vettel apologised to team-mate Mark Webber for overtaking him to win the race, contrary to their team's instructions.

I always thought the idea of a race was that the fastest competitor comes in first.  Apparently in the weird world of Formula 1, that's not the case.  Then what is the point of racing?  In any other sport, fixing the result would get you disqualified.

The Upper Hand

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during US President Obama's visit "We extend our hands in peace and in friendship to the Palestinian people", surely he meant "hand" in the singular?  The other one is still busy grabbing Palestinian land.

OK, my comment is a little facetious, and this map is dramatic, but as a pro-Israeli website points out, an over-simplification.  Then in debunking it as a supposed lie, it introduces new inaccuracies into the picture.

• The first map, it says, is incorrect because much of the land shown in green was not privately owned, but held by the government, and therefore "when the state of Israel was established, it became legally Israel's".  This assumes of course that the population of the new state recognised its legitimacy, and glosses over the fact that the Arab (then) majority of its residents did not, and that many of them were forcibly dispossessed of land they may not have technically owned but had lived on and farmed for generations.
• Map 2, it says, is incorrect because the Arabs never accepted the proposed partition plan.  Fair enough - though why should they, in the circumstances of the time?
• Map 3, it argues, is incorrect because the "Palestinian" areas were not part of a Palestinian territory but held and administered by neighbouring countries, Egypt and Jordan.  What is omitted here is that those countries never accepted the Palestinians as part of their own nations, but continued to regard them as a separate people - just as the many Palestinians in Lebanon today are still treated as refugees.

The site then goes on to praise Israel for "giving up" large areas of land in exchange for peace.  Apart from the fact that it did not "give up" the largest area of land, the Sinai Peninsula, but lost it in war to Egypt, from which it had earlier seized it, it would be more correct to talk of "giving back" than "giving up",  The reality remains, however, that the Palestinian Authority has limited control over the areas nominally ceded to it, and that Israel continues to establish settlements in many of the occupied territories.  Draw your own conclusions about Israel's sincerity in making peace.

Spring Surplus

More than a month after Chinese New Year, the Park N Shop (or whichever combination of upper and lower case they use these days) Superstore in Taipo is still piled high with overstocked gift packs of cookies and overpriced candy being sold off at a discount.  Am I the only one in Hong Kong who feels a warm twinge of delight that the Li family got somnething wrong?

Happy Spring Equinox to all except tycoons!

Polls Apart

I sometimes respond to the South China Morning Post's opinion polls on its website, but I just as often find them irritatingly meaningless.  Take today's, for example: the question asked is: "Is India still a safe destination for foreign tourists?"  Pertinent, after recent widely-reported rape cases there, certainly, but totally unscientific.

First of all, note the implied assumption that India was previously safe.  Then consider the impossibility of summing up the safety level of a large and enormously diverse country of more than a billion people in one snap judgement.  Are you safe at the Taj Mahal?  Probably.  In Indian-occupied Kashmir, or the poorest slums of Kolkata - probably less so.

And what do you mean by "safe" anyway?  Likely to get raped or murdered - even with the occasional case that hits the headlines, not very.  Likely to have your pocket picked?  Much more probable - but not only in India.  Safe from your own stupidity?  Thousands of tourists die in foreign countries every year because people tend to take foolhardy risks on holiday that they would not take at home, from overdosing on drugs to riding motorcycles without a helmet to swimming in dangerous waters to eating in places with dubious hygiene standards - or even over-exerting themselves sexually!  Most Hong Kong people consider Thailand a safe destination for tourism, but apart from the country's appalling level of road safety, five foreign tourists and a Thai guide died in 2011 because of over-exposure to a pesticide used to kill bed bugs!  Who would have seen that coming?

Then there is the question of what one means by a foreign tourist.  In a tour group or travelling independently?  Male or female?  Travelling alone or with a companion?  Able to speak the local language or not?  Staying in luxury resorts or local flophouses?  All of these factors - not to mention one's visible "ethnicity", as officials like to call race these days - could affect how safe one is.  But a white female friend of mine lived for two years in India, travelling alone on a limited budget, with no problems, and loves the country.

My advice: don't let this kind of question put you off travelling except for avoiding obvious trouble spots (two other friends enjoyed a wonderful trip to Syria some years ago, but I wouldn't advise it at the moment)..  Just take sensible precautions, remember shit happens everywhere, and as they used to say in Hill Street Blues: "Be careful out there!"

Eur in trouble

The Cyprus bank deposit grab has triggered the law of unintended consequences.  It does not seem to have occurred to the wise idiots at the European Central Bank who came up with the idea of a levy on bank deposits that, far from strengthening ailing banks, it would further weaken public confidence in banks generally, with depositors in other countries rushing to keep their money safe under the mattress at home rather than leaving it where the "banksters" (as a protest placard in Cyprus called them) can grab part of it.  And ordinary Cypriots may well conclude that if troubled banks can't keep their money safe for them, then those banks do not deserve to survive anyway.

The "tax" - now rightly rejected by the country's legislature, with not a single member voting for it - was supposed to compensate those affected with shares in the worthless banks - hardly an attractive prospect.  But it was blatantly unfair, hitting those who keep their wealth in cash in the bank while not touching those whose riches are in other forms - stocks, bonds, artworks.  Maybe they should open up every safe deposit box in the banks and seize 10% of any jewellery inside?  It also aroused fierce opposition among overseas depositors, many of them Russian (which doesn't say much for their confidence in their own country's banks), who are being forced to "share the burden" of a problem that is none of their business.

You really have to wonder sometimes how stupid politicians can be.

Dumping the burden

The handling of the Euro crisis is becoming ever more ridiculous.  In the latest bailout, citizens of Cyprus will have 10% of their bank deposits stolen from them by their government as part of the deal with Europe's central bank.  This is described by authorities as "sharing the burden".  Why should Cypriots be asked to share the burden of a crisis triggered by a combination of global bank greed and the Greek government's overspending?  (Cyrpus's banks are mainly in trouble because of over-exposure to Greek debt.)

Two things have been consistent throughout this crisis: one is that the policies intended to cure it will instead worsen it by choking economic growth.  The other is that the burden falls on those least able to bear it, while the fatcats responsible for the trouble in the first place survive relatively unscathed.

Politicians and bankers - ain'tcha sick of 'em?

The Luck of the Irish

Happy Saint Patrick's Day to my Irish reader(s)!

I'm Liberal but to a degree

Walking through Tai Po Plaza yesterday, I found that the Liberal Party's district office there had disappeared.  I assumed that, with no election coming up in the near future, they had decided to bugger off back to their luxurious homes on the Peak, but in fairness, I find from the party's website that they still have an office in Sheung Shui.

What is it about political parties' names?  The Liberal Party isn't; the DAB ("Democratic Action for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong", which should surely be in the Guinness Book of Records for the world's most unwieldy party name) does not support democracy and has never bettered Hong Kong; and the Chinese Communist Party long ago ceased to practise anything Karl Marx would recognise as communism.  Other countries are no better: Britain's Conservative Party has not conserved anything worthwhile for decades, though it has destroyed much of value; Japan's Liberal Democratic Party is neither liberal nor democratic; and so it goes.  In fact if a party named itself the "Bunch of Corrupt Self-Serving Shoe-Shiners" it would be so refreshingly honest people might even vote for them!

A Pope for China

Since the Chinese don't like the Dalai Lama supposedly promoting Tibetan independence, they declared his recognition of the young Panchen Lama invalid and chose their own Panchen Lama.  Since they don't like the Vatican having diplomatic relations with Taiwan, how long will it be before they declare the conclave's selection invalid and appoint their own Pope?

South China People's Daily

Catching up on Hemlock's blog from a few months back, my attention was caught by a quote from a South China People's Daily, sorry SCMP, opinion piece by one Lau Nai-Keung, who delivers this gem of either confused thinking or blatant hypocrisy, (depending on whether he is as stupid as he seems):

"The South China Sea will no longer be an issue, after China recovers the sovereignty of various rocks and islands one by one, either through peaceful means or by force. But with a tradition of a somewhat benign paternal attitude, China will refrain from bullying its neighbours despite the American absence. Instead, it will continue to push for peace and co-development in the region, if only to distinguish itself from Western hegemony."

So China will recover [sic] the chunks of rock it claims in its neighbours' backyard by force, but will "refrain from bullying and pursue peace and co-development".  Does the writer not recognise his own contradiction here?  And does no one in the CPP (to which he belongs) recognise that this sounds exactly like the kind of "peace and co-development" that Japan pursued at China's expense in the 1930s?

And I love that "if only..." clause - the implication being "we want to be violent, but we have to be peaceful to look different from the US"!

So Near and Yet So Far Away

"Coming to a store near you soon" proclaims HMV UK's latest email list of new CD and DVD releases.  Rather a strange choice of phrase when you consider that increasingly there is no HMV store near you.  Even that last-minute impulse purchase of both series of Downton Abbey on DVD as you leave the UK will no longer be possible, since all 4 stores at Heathrow Airport are on the closure list.

So far, the Hong Kong stores remain open, but who knows what's going on behind the scenes?

A recently popular twist on the old (and untrue) "home taping is killing music" slogan.  Reality is less simple...

Bread and Circuses

Whether or not a country exercises the death penalty is usually a pretty good indicator of how civilised it is - or at least, aspires to be.  When a country shows executions live on TV, you know for sure it's barbaric.  Whether it also violates the country's own law which provides that executions shall not be held in public, is a legal question I am not qualified to judge.

Making It Better
Amnesty International

"Hot Chinese Women Are Waiting to Meet You Online"

Am I the only one to notice that Norton 360's email filtering seems to have become less aggressive lately?  Message headings like the one above used to be nearly all swept neatly into my junk mail folder.  Now quite a few of them are slipping through into my Inbox.  I've had a whole bunch lately trying to interest me in a Facebook Dating App, something I don't think my wife would approve of!  I keep flagging them as junk, but Norton doesn't seem to have got the message - are the folks at Symantec losing their grip?

Racism, Arrogance and Greed - Such Nice People

The South China Morning Post reports that a Beijing restaurateur was forced to take down a sign barring customers from nations with which China has maritime territorial disputes (which currently means just about every neighbouring country that isn't landlocked, including some so far away - see maps here and here - that they stretch the definition of "neighbouring" to breaking point).  Personally i'd like to see him put his nasty little sign back up to avoid any chance that I might inadvertently put any money in his racist pocket by patronising his establishment next time I visit Beijing.

Meanwhile, over in the UK the Royal Bank of Scotland proves that bankers have learned nothing (certainly not humility) from the 2008 financial crisis caused by their greed, by declaring a loss of
£5.2 billion (much of it as a result of penalties for past misdeeds) and admitting it may not be able to pay back the money it owes British taxpayers, but still paying out £697 million in bonuses to its staff.  The bank's chairman claims this is necessary to compete for good staff - in other words, everyone else in the banking sector is just as greedy despite the fact that hardly any major bank in the world is untainted by the scandals and blunders of the past few years.

And while we're looking at such nice people, let's not leave out the charming lady back in China who wore a false belly to make her appear pregnant so people would give up their seat to her on the train - then officially complained that the device didn't live up to its description when her ruse was rumbled.

So many jerks out there, and so little time to be rude about them all...

Butt what does it mean?

After more than three decades in Hong Kong, I pride myself on my ability to interpret Chinglish, but occasionally I find myself at a total loss.  Presumably "optianal" means the best combination for my bum, but why would I want to perm my previous vehicle?  And if 3 tupe (whatever they may be) cost me $388, why would double price cost me less?  So many questions, so little time...

What's missing here?

As South Korea inaugurates its first woman president today, this may be a good time to look at China's incoming Politburo Standing Committee and observe what's missing from it.  All seven members are drawn from the 696,340,752 Chinese with a penis (give or take the odd eunuch).  Not one of them is drawn from the 644,994,400 Chinese with a vagina.  (2010 figures)

Fact 1: China's constitution guarantees sexual equality.
Fact 2: China has one of the worst gender imbalances in the world.

The Hong Kong government's brilliant plan for bringing down soaring peoperty prices

er, make it more expensive to buy property...

Mixed Metaphysics

Our Chief Executive's usual opaque transparency was never better exemplified than by this gem on last Sunday's "Newsline" on ATV:

"Records show clearly that this government grabs the nettles by the horns"

So don't be afraid of those fearsome horned nettles out there - our government has them well in hand.

Open to Error

"I want something that keep me on my toes..."

declares the latest televsion advertisement for

Many people have expressed alarm at the declining standard of English here in recent years, which threatens to erode Hong Kong's international competitiveness.  If even our universities can't get their basic grammar correct, such fears are clearly well-founded.  The question is what can we do about this situation when the institutions which should be part of the solution are part of the problem?

Making It Count

I can't resist passing on this one whcih a friend (thanks Rob) posted on his Facebook page:

It's reported that 300,000 people turned out to watch the New Year fireworks in Hong Kong. The police put the figure at 800.

Dumbing Up

Memo to TVB (and maybe ATV as well; I didn't catch their coverage):  when you are showing a fireworks display with accompanying music, absolutely no commentary is needed.  And when you interrupt one of the most sublime voices of the past century singing Nessun Dorma with your inane prattle, well, cutting out people's tongues as a punishment has gone out of fashion since the Middle Ages, but you make a strong case for its revival.

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

The First Koel

There is a long-established tradition in Britain of writing letters to The Times newspaper to announce hearing the first cuckoo in Spring - an event which also inspired a well-known musical composition by Delius..  It is in that spirit that I report hearing the first koel in Spring this morning.  The koel is in fact an Asian member of the cuckoo family, whose distinctive two-note cry is commonly heard in Hong Kong's rural areas, and indeed elsewhere in Asia; one can be heard in the background of the Aung San Suu Kyi biopic "The Lady", filmed in Thailand.  Its meaning is presumably the same as that of most bird calls: "hey babe, let's make some eggs together".

There is something endearingly loopy about the koel's cry, particularly when the bird repeats it several times, each at a slightly higher pitch, until it reaches a demented crescendo, only to pause before repeating the entire sequence a minute later.  You can hear samples - along with the sounds of other local birds - at the Hong Kong Bird Watching Society website.

Van-ity

The fact that someone has personalised licence plates on their car tells you something about what kind of person they are.  The contents of the plate tell you more.

Perhaps the silliest I've seen in Hong Kong is one I saw recently which just said VAN.  I can only think of three possible reasons for choosing this:

• The owner's name is Van.  However, the only person I've ever heard of with this name is Van Morrison.  "Van the Man" doesn't live in Hong Kong (though I wish he'd give a concert here), and isn't the type to draw attention to himself anyway.
• Post-modern irony - so subtle that others won't grasp it.
• The owner is so forgetful he may not remember what type of vehicle he's driving.

Whatever the explanation, I wish "Kung Hei Fat Choi" to all my readers.  Have a Van-tastic Year of the Snake!

CNET Sells Its Soul (and Google irritates)

CNET used to be a pretty reliable download source for a variety of software.  Like many other download sites, it encouraged you to install various toolbars and other crap with each download, but I just unchecked those options and had no problem.  (If I installed every toolbar I'm invited to, my whole screen would be filled with them.)  But now it seems CNET has sold out completely - when you download anything from CNET now it installs the Blekko search bar without warning or advising you in advance.

Now Blekko - a name which sounds like someone throwing up - may or may not be good software, but that's not the point.  I want to select my own software.  It is totally unacceptable and unethical for anyone to install anything on your PC without your prior consent.  I may still look at CNET for its user reviews, but I will never again download anything from there.

I got rid of the Blekko toolbar by uninstalling it via the Control Panel (taking the opportunity to clear out the unwanted Bing toolbar, which had somehow crept into my system earlier, at the same time), but found it had also changed the home page on all my 3 browsers to Blekko search.  Then, having been angry with CNET, I also became annoyed with Google.  I tried to reinstate google.com as my home page, but Google kept detecting my IP location and redirecting me to google.com.hk - something that a Google search tells me is also annoying many others who want to use the version of their chocie.  I sorted this out eventually, but I shouldn't have had to.  Software should do what you tell it to and respect the user's choice, not impose the provider's choices on you.

So, black marks for CNET and to a lesser extent for Google - why don't they go to the version you specify but ask if you want the localised version of the country you access it from? Instead they do it the other way round - take you to the one they think you should want, then offer google.com as an option in inconspicuous grey letters at the bottom right corner.  If I ask for a mango I don't expect to be given a strawberry then asked if I want to switch to a mango.

The More the Messier

Hong Kong should take its cue from Singapore for a sound population policy

says today's South China Morning Post.  Singapore wants (or at least its government does) to increase its population to 6.9 million by 2030, a move which would see non-citizens making up 45% of its population.  So should we also plan to eliminate every bit of green from our landscape?  As if we didn't already have too much overcrowding, air pollution, traffic congestion, and all the other ills of overpopulation.  As if we didn't already have the world's least affordable homes.

Officially we now have over 7 million people, though the government recently admitted it cannot be sure of the details.  (Indeed, the revelation that some census officers made up figures rather than conducting interviews makes the total rather doubtful as well.)  The previous Chief Executive Donald Tsang talked about planning for a population of 10 million by 2030.  So just imagine 40% more traffic fumes, 40% more pople crowding the streets of Moingkok, 40% more people on Repulse Bay beach on a hot summer Sunday, 40% more people trying to squeeze on to the MTR and buses in the morning rush hour, 40% more cars driving around in circles looking for somewhere to park...

In a city that is already having difficulty finding sufficient land for its current housing needs, how are we ever going to find space for 40% more homes, schools, universities, shops, markets, restaurants, hospitals, clinics, sports fields, swimming pools, libraries, police stations, fire stations, sewage treatment plants, cinemas, theatres, pubs and bars, parks, car parks, and all the other things that make up the social infrastructure?  Not to mention the businesses to employ all these extra people.

When we are already running out of landfill space, where are we going to dump 40% more rubbish?  And what will 40% more sewage do to our water quality?  And with China's own needs growing and its pollution worsening, can we be sure that the mainland will continue to be able to supply us with adequate clean water for so many additional people?

Do we have docking space for 40% more ferries, and 40% more ships bringing in the necessities we import?  The questions go on and on.  And these projections don't even take into account the demands created by our expanding number of tourists - 42 million in 2011, and probably even more in 2012.

It should be clear to any sane person who knows Hong Kong that talking about 10 million as a desirable - or even feasible - population figure is utterly crazy.  Yes, we have to meet the needs of an ageing population and we obviously need to import some skills that benefit our economy, but we should be taking advantage of our low birth rate to keep population growth as low as possible.  Indeed, I would argue that Hong Kong's optimum population should be about 5 million - large enough to support the amenities of a modern city but leaving enough space for a civilised quality of life.  If we grow to 10 million, I fear for our future.

20/13 Vision

Having commented a couple of days ago on the Singapore government's plan to build housing on golf courses, I now learn from the excellent Big O that Singapore's official "Vision 2030" is "Live better through sports".To promote this in parallel with destroying sports facilities reaches unprecedented heights of absurdity.  It must be a rather short-term vision.

Still some Singaporeans are already living better - or at least richer - through sports, since the city is alleged to be the base for a major football betting syndicate accused of fixing nearly 700 matches around the world.

Can't read, can't...

I have received 2 spam emails today trying to sell me "Vigara".. They also offer "Levtira" and "Cilais".  I had no idea there were enough impotent dyslexics out there to make up a target market.

Eye con

"I think comedians have a function in society, which is to make fun of our icons."

--Julie Brown

But what is an icon?  Hong Kong's property developers would have you believe it's a new housing estate.  Now whether or not you like Norman Foster's style, some of his designs - the HSBC Building in Hong Kong, the Millennium Bridge in London - can justifiably be called iconic, but I don't think even the most devoted Foster acolyte would count this run-of-the-drawing-board residential development among them.  It's doubtful that Foster even saw it - he probably delegated it to one of the anonymous junior "+ Partners" (is a plus sign more trendy than spelling out "and" or using an ampersand?)

The sad fact is that the word iconic - like awesome - has been so overused and trivialised that it has become essentially meaningless.

New motto for Singapore

From today's South China Morning Post:

Singapore PM defends growth plan that includes building on golf courses

The Lion City wants to increase its population by 30 per cent over the next 17 years to sustain economic growth and counter the problems of an ageing society, according to a white paper released...

Clean, grey and boring?

Have a heart

Porn star Ron Jeremy is in hospital with heart trouble.  Funny - that's not the organ most of us expected he would wear out first.

View from A Dove

A few years ago I shot a roll of black and white film.  I got it processed with a contact sheet, but for some reason it turned out to be severely underexposed, to the point where I could barely make out the subjects.  The other day I scanned it (with an Epson V700 for those who are wondering) and played around with the results in Photoshop (at which I am far from expert - in fact a beginner) to see if i could get something out of the negatives - which were also rather dusty and scratched.  This shot - the best exposed of the bunch - needed quite a lot of manipulation, but I am quite pleased with the rather moody feel that resulted.  So here it is.

The Perfect Putdown

It would be hard to find a more perfect putdown than the response by a hotel chain to criticism from British "celebrity" Katie Price - whose main claim to fame is the frequent display of her oversized breast implants - of her honeymoon stay at one of their hotels in the Bahamas.  (She makes somewhat of a habit of going on honeymoon, being on her third marriage already.)   Among her other complaints Price apparently said her "wedding snaps showed a beach — but if you looked the other way there were ugly skyscrapers”.  Well, duh.  Check out Google Earth next time.

The response of the resort: "As a gesture of goodwill we are willing to offer her a refund on condition she does not choose our resorts for any future weddings or stays.”  Nice one!

Silencing His Master's Voice

Since just about every Hong Kong blogger today will probably be pontificating on the Chief Executive's Policy Address yesterday, I thought I'd write about something entirely different: the imminent collapse of HMV, which is now in administration, a prelude to either sale and restructuring or bankruptcy and closure.  In the UK, consumers are furious that their HMV gift vouchers, some of them only sold a few days  ago when the company already knew it was in deep financial doodoo, have been declared invalid.  There is also concern that HMV owes money to a charity in Ireland for sales of a charity recording which the charity may now not receive.  And of course people are unhappy that yet another major retailer joins a long list of familiar names - Woolworth's, Comet, Jessops, and just yesterday Blockbuster - going down the tubes and leaving huge gaps in Britain's high streets and shopping centres, as well as throwing thousands out of work.

Here in Hong Kong, where HMV is, as in the UK, the largest music and DVD store chain in the market, it's too early to know what will happen to the shops, but if they do close down, the best we can hope for is a giant clearance sale which will at least give me the opportunity to fill some gaps in my CD collection at bargain prices.

There is much that could be said about the trends behind this: the impact of Internet sales (in which HMV is also a sizeable player), the switch from CDs to MP3 downloads, and all that, but what I want to do here is celebrate HMV's history as a great British institution.  Though its roots go back even earlier, HMV's retail arm effectively started with the opening of its first store in London's Oxford Street in 1921, presided over by Sir Edward Elgar.  What makes HMV remarkable is that, long before the word logo entered everyday language, HMV's was one of the earliest and most successful examples of what is now called visual branding.

Tha famous picture (left) of the dog Nipper looking into the gramophone from which "His Master's Voice" emanates, which goes back to 1900, has become one of the most familiar and best-loved icons in the world, used by several record companies over the years, and even today a stylised version of it (right) remains in use despite the full name giving way to today's three-letter abbreviation.  So famous did Nipper become that he even has streets named after him in Kingston-upon-Thames, where he is buried, and Baltimore, where RCA had the American rights to his image.

 In its early days HMV produced records as well as selling them, and the image appeared on many old 78s.

But perhaps the best evidence of public affection for the image can be found in the many parodies it has inspired over the years.

This is a Halloween version:

and a modern update:

And with the news of the current crisis, cartoonists could not resist variations on the idea at the top of this post. If the stores go, will the icon retain its popular appeal, or fade gradually into the mists of history, I wonder?

Making Things Clear

Looking at the South China Morning Post online, I was struck by the irony of the headline "China media urges transparency over pollution", but shortly afterwards, the headline was switched to "China state media urges action as smog hits 40 times safe limit" - though the original headline can still be sen on Aljazeera and other sites.  I think transparency is the last thing Beijing residents are likely to see in their air for a while - and we thought we had it bad here in Hong Kong...

Lesbians and Lies

A couple of classic typos this morning: the online programme guide on BBC Entertainment TV has the hottest stars performing live "to a 1, strong audience".  That doesn't sound very strong to me!  Meanwhile Rupert Murdoch's British rag The Sun, reporting on some loony guru who claims the tragic rape and murder of a young Indian woman was partly her own fault, says that the victim "was flown to Singapore for treatment to her catastrophic industries".  Yeah, hard work can be a killer.

The Sun also wins today's award for most tasteless headline of the day: "Lesbians 'tortured pensioner before leaving him to die'".  When you read the story, the fact that the assailants happened to be a lesbian couple has nothing to do with their crime - "Women" would have told the story perfectly well - but The Sun being what it is, no doubt some sub-editor couldn't resist spicing up the story with a bit of titillation in the headline (let's see if it works for me, above).    Or perhaps Sun reporters are secretly terrified that gangs of rampaging lesbians are on the prowl, Night of the Living Dead style, looking for helpless pensioners to torture.  I'm terrified already...

Triple Trio

Unless I clone myself, this could be difficult!