Predictable Nonsense

A member of the electoral reform panel of the DAB has admitted that Beijing “requires a high level of predictability over the [next Chief Executive] election".  Apparently he fails to see the blatant contradiction between this and his party's claim to stand for "Democratic" Action for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong.  One can have democracy or predictability, but not both.

Signs of Confusion

Why a Well Women Clinic?  Wouldn't it be more useful to have a clinic for sick women?  Taipo.

"Overpayments Accepted" sounds so much nicer than "We rip you off by not giving change", don't you agree?  Market Square, Helmsley, Yorkshire, UK.

Hope no one misreads this as "Letter" and tries to pop their mail in there!  It does look like a mail box.  Somewhere I can't remember in the UK.

DAB - hhmmm...  Wonder if the Hong Kong government is trying a little subliminal advertising here?

You have to admire any hotel that displays Basil Fawlty at its front door!  Damn fine beer, too.  The Buckingham Hotel in Buxton, Derbyshire Peak District, UK.

Do you feel safe? Well, do you?

The mysterious disappearance of a Malaysian Airlines plane, possibly a victim of a terrorist attack, has brought renewed attention to the issue of airport security.  Malaysian Airlines, it emerges, not only allowed several passe4ngers with false or stolen passports to board the ill-fated flight, but has a previous conviction for knowingly falsifying passport records to allow a banned passenger to board a flight.

If this worries you, then consider my recent experience.  A year or two ago, airlines everywhere were panicking at the prospect of liquid explosives potentially being brought on to a flight, leading to a general worldwide ban on liquids in all but tiny quantities being carried in cabin baggage.  On Friday last week - the day before the Malaysian jet vanished - I flew back to Hong Kong from a business visit to Manila.  At the airport, every passenger not only had their cabin baggage X-rayed, but was even asked to remove their shoes for X-ray examination.  Strict security, you might think - but one of the colleagues I travelled with inadvertently left a bottle of drinking water in his backpack, which eluded discovery and went on to the plane with us.

So, is total flight security possible?  I doubt it - even if passengers' carry-on bags are checked, it would only take one criminal baggage handler to smuggle a bomb on board.  You either accept terrorism as a risk of flying, or stay at home.

So What?

The South China Morning Post has another of its patented "no useful information" online polls today.

So do the 73% think that Albert Ho should have had his knuckles rapped more firmly for being a naughty boy, or do they think that browsing soft porn is a perfectly intelligent response to the tedium of having to listen to John Tsang wrongly predicting a budget deficit for the 5th (or is it 6th) consecutive year?  I fear we shall never know.

Facing Basic Realities

An article by Chief Secretary Carrie Lam in the South China Morning Post urges Hongkongers to "accept basic realities" to achieve universal suffrage in 2017.  Yet Ms Lam appears curiously reluctant to accept some basic realities herself:

1. Basic Reality 1 - to any reasonable person, the purpose of universal suffrage is not merely to give each citizen an equal vote, but to do so in order to enable them to make a free choice between a selection of candidates representing a broad variety of political viewpoints.  To have a vote but only be able to choose between 2 or 3 identikit candidates with essentially the same views and policies falls well short of the "democratic process" Ms Lam claims to espouse.
2. Basic Reality 2 - most people don't need to have the meaning of "screening" spelled out.  Ms Lam says 'There are also views suggesting there should be no "screening", but without clearly defining or explaining what "screening" means'.  Well, most of us understand that it simply means rejecting any candidate who does not fit into the category commonly but inaccurately called "pro-China" - in short, anyone who is likely to stand up for the interests of Hong Kong where they clash (as they sometimes do) with those of the mainland.
3. Basic Reality 3 - contrary to Ms Lam's assertion that a nominating committee modelled on the framework of the four-sector Election Committee currently in place would be broadly representative, the majority of Hong Kong people are well aware that the Election Committee's structure is - and indeed was designed to be - totally unrepresentative.  The government's insistence on modelling the nominating committee on the pattern of the Election Committee (in line with the NPC Standing Committee's ruling) therefore directly engenders the public distrust which leads to demands for alternative systems such as civil nomination. Lam is right that these involve "bypassing the committee or undermining its substantive nomination power", but that is essentially because the likely composition of the committee will fail the Basic Law's requirement that it be "broadly representative".  So which side is failing to comply with the Basic Law here?
4. Basic Reality 4 -  the Basic Law does not spell out that a CE candidate must "love China and love Hong Kong".  The Hong Kong people are not going to be so stupid as to elect someone who does not love Hong Kong, and they are well aware that the elected person will have to be able to work closely with the central government on many issues.  The problem here is that Beijing implicitly defines "loving the country" to mean "loving the Chinese Communist Party"; a definition many - probably most - Hong Kong people do not share.  They simply wish to be offered at least one candidate who will stand up for the autonomy granted to Hong Kong in the Basic Law, and does not define cooperation as subservience.

So where does this leave us?  Probably we can agree with Ms Lam on one thing - that "the outlook for the successful implementation of universal suffrage for the chief executive election is not very bright, though the prospect is not yet completely bleak".  It would become a lot brighter, however, if the government itself faced up to the basic realities and focused its efforts on trying to convince the authorities in Beijing to trust the Hong Kong people, instead of trying to ram a fake version of democracy that ignores these realities down the throats of the Hong Kong electorate.

We know who you are

This slogan has become omnipresent since the brutal chopping attack on former Ming Pao Chief Editor Kevin Lau a few days ago.  It's interesting that everyone in Hong Kong seems to know who "They" refers to.

There were some unexpected faces on today's anti-violence protest.  Of course the usual suspects were there, but who would have expected a delegation from The Liberal Party?  And perhaps even more surprisingly, at one point I found myself standing next to CY Leung-supporter-turned-foe Lew Mong-hung.  Who would've thunk it?

The Big Budget Question

With everything we love about Hong Kong, from press freedom to our country parks, seemingly under sustained assault at present, the annual budget seems curiously irrelevant this year.  Financial Secretary John Tsang used his budget speech as another opportunity to repeat his gloomy prediction that the SAR will run out of money in a few years, despite having bigger reserves than most countries many times our size.

No doubt his figures will be endlessly picked over by analysts; however, no one is likely to answer the really big budget question. If a private company employed a Chief Financial Officer who year after year predicted that the company would make a modest loss, but in the event it repeatedly turned in massive profits, he would surely be fired as incompetent.  So why is someone who gets his sums wrong year after year still in charge of our economy?

Value Added

A T-shirt is a T-shirt is a T-shirt, or why Gertrude Stein would not have done well in the fashion business:

 Factory price HK$10

Street market price HK$20

Chain store price HK$40

Fancy boutique price HK$200

Moving in the Dark

The Hong Kong government announced yesterday that an APEC meeting planned for the city in September will instead move to Beijing - if they can find it!

Putting Tourism into Proportion

A hysterical (in both senses) article in Beijing mouthpiece The Global Times castigating Hong Kong for selfishness in not wanting to be flooded with ever more mainland tourists asks:

"Chinese tourists bring their bad habits of shouting, noise level, shopping in crowd and in bulk to Paris, London and New York. Only Hong Kongers react to these problems more violently than the 'foreign devils/ghosts'. Why is Hong Kongers' tolerance level so low? Shouldn't they have thought about their inability to tolerate and embrace (Chinese tourists)?"

[Translation by the invaluable (to non-Chinese readers) Real Hong Kong News – apparently from a longer Chinese version.]

The answer to this question is easily illustrated:

In simple terms, tiny Hong Kong had a ratio of approximately 3.4 visitors per resident in 2012 (most of them from the mainland), compared with 0.8, 1.6 and 0.6 visitors respectively for the much larger Paris, London and New York metropolitan areas.  Is it any surprise that we feel like we’re being crowded out of our own city?

[Sources: Population figures taken from Wikipedia.  Tourist numbers from here - the latest complete comparative figures I could find, though other sources differ – things have already become much worse in Hong Kong since then.)]

Little Minds

LITTLE BRITAIN

LITTLE HONG KONG

Oh where are you, my Valentine?

As you celebrate Valentine's Day with your loved one today, spare a thought for the millions who will never have anyone to celebrate it with.

The recent crackdown on the booming sex trade in Dongguan has gained much media attention, with some articles suggesting it is the start of a new campaign to return to the strict "socialist morality" which had almost eliminated prostitution in China by the time the Open Door Policy reopened the door to it in the 1980s.  However, basic biology tells us that any such campaign is doomed to failure.  Apart from the entrenched corruption which protects the sex business, the one child policy combined with the traditional Chinese preference for sons over daughters has created a situation where male births exceed female ones by possibly as much as 15 to 20 percent.

This has created a situation where tens of millions of men  - some estimates suggest 24 million by 2020 and 30 million by 2030 - will never find a wife (except perhaps in Tibet, where there is a tradition of one woman marrying several brothers).  Figures vary - the most pessimistic projections suggest that 25% of men of marriageable age may never find a mate, while others argue that many female births are in fact being concealed from the authorities and the situation may be less severe than feared - but either way, it is simply unrealistic to expect that all these masses of unmarried men will be willing to remain celibate for their whole lives.  The reality is that Chinese government policies have unwittingly created a social need for prostitution - a reality reflected in negative public reaction to the current clean-up campaign.

This is not the only irony in the situation.  The very desire for a son to carry on the family name - so deeply ingrained in Chinese culture - has contributed to a situation in which many family lines will come to a dead end in the current generation.  As the old saying goes: Be careful what you wish for - you may get it.

Happy Valentine's Day! 

P.S. After posting this, I read this story: China Valentine: No cinema seats for Shanghai couples.  The SCMP's version of the story adds: 

'China's growing population of singles has caused changes in the youthful perception of Valentine's Day. What was once viewed as a celebration of love is now the subject of discontent for some youngsters, and in the 1990s, "Single's Day" was a born as a rebellious answer to Valentine's Day.

Occuring on November 11, with the date 11/11 chosen for its appearence of "four single digits", Single's Day has evolved in recent years into one of the mainland's biggest days for online shopping.'

[The spelling and punctuation errors are the Post's, not mine.]

Chicken Spittle

ATV News last night reported that Shu Yuelong, director of the Chinese National Influenza Centre, said that in the long term, authorities will have to reconsider allowing chickens to be raised in backyard farms.  This is getting things exactly the wrong way round.  Science should be evidence-based, but there is no evidence that small farms are the problem here.

For centuries, people around the world have kept a few chickens running around in their back yards, and bird flu was never a significant problem.  Far from this, it is in fact the giant factory farms of today that are the source of the problem.  Cram hundreds of chickens into row upon row of prison-like cages in unhealthy conditions, feed them an unnatural diet, and you have the perfect environment for any disease to spread quickly from one enfeebled bird to another.

Even before considering the cruelty involved, these "farms" should be eliminated.  Naturally reared birds may cost more, but they are less likely to put your life at risk - indeed a recent scientific study finds their eggs are better for you.

Triad Influence

What is it that compels otherwise sensible companies to change meaningful names to meaningless - and often hard to remember - three-letter identifiers?

 

Now another well-known Hong Kong chain seems to be succumbing to this curse.

Happy New Year!

The great thing about living in Hong Kong is that you get two chances to start the year right.

Go to the Mirror, Comrade!

This is good news - perhaps they could start by looking at some secret offshore accounts in the British Virgin Islands.  Although of course if you're in China, those accounts don't exist.  A case of the pot calling the kettle white?

Oxy Moron

A spam email I received today begins "I am Mr.Berry White a Legitimate, Reputable money Lender".  As Private Eye would put it: "Shome contradiction, shurely?"

Trappist Trickery

Imagine the box above - purchased from City Super - with a bottle in each of the 3 central slots, and a glass at each end.  The bottles contain one each of the excellent beers brewed by the Trappist monks of Rochefort, one of a handful of Trappist monasteries in Belgium and Holland renowned for their superb strong beers - the rarely seen Number 6, plus the more widely available 8 and 10.

It was only after drinking the beer that I noticed this on the back of the box:

So, where's my extra bottle?

Advice on Smartphones for those with Poor Eyesight?

I've never tried asking for advice here before, and I don't even know how many people actually read this, but does anyone have any idea which smartphone is best for someone with poor eyesight?  I have vision problems and even after 2 operations on my eyes and with glasses, small print and fine detail remain a problem.  At home I use a 27-inch computer monitor; when out and about I've been using an unsmart Nokia phone for years for voice calls, but I rarely use SMS as the screen is too small for comfort.

Now my phone is showing signs of dying on me, plus I really need to be able to access my email when I'm out for meetings or whatever; it would also be nice to use WhatsApp.  I don't care so much about photographic capability, as I generally carry a neat little Canon S100 everywhere with me.  Music capability is not a deal-breaker either.

So, time for a smartphone (several generations behind everyone else!), but which one?  After a bit of Googling, which mostly uncovered recommendations for already-obsolete models (isn't it time everything on the Internet carried a "use by" date?), I have reached a few conclusions:

• A big screen should help, but is not always better if the resolution is not good enough.  Contrast and brightness are important, not just size (and other factors, too).
• Most phones made specifically for those with poor eyesight appear to assume that the user is a senile centenarian who's deadly afraid of technology.  I'm not.
• Both Apple and Android operating systems offer some features or apps which can help (e.g. by magnifying text or reading it aloud), as does Windows Phone, but none has a definitive edge over the others in this area.

Does anyone have any comments on the following, which look like the best possibilities?

• Samsung Galaxy Note 3 or Galaxy Mega 6.3
• HTC One Max
• Nokia Lumia 1520
• Sony Xperia Z Ultra
• Huawei Ascend Mate
• LG G Flex

Experiences and alternatives welcome.  Incidentally, I have big hands so a relatively large phone is not a problem - in fact, smaller phones tend to be too fiddly for my fingers.

By the way, am I the only one who wonders why, in a world where the proportion of elderly people is steadily increasing, with the inevitable deterioration of visual functioning that comes with age, we are nevertheless being expected to read ever smaller print?  (Shrinking screens, bank terms and conditions printed in 6-point type - not to mention the teenage website designers, probably descended from Douglas Adams' telephone sanitisers, who think that pink on purple is a really cool colour combination.) 

Perspectives on Property

The Pro-China Morning Post has a talent for quoting from "experts" whose opinions are at variance with those of any intelligent observer.   Of course analysts and property consultants welcome the chance to make money from the despoliation of Lantau Island; those who care about Hong Kong's environment shudder at the prospect.  No doubt the same analysts are wetting their knickers in alarm at the empty shops in Causeway Bay; the rest of us hope this presages more affordable rents that will no longer drive out businesses serving local needs in favour of those purveying overpriced tat to mainland tourists.

I have tended to oppose the government's curbs on the property market on the grounds that they have made it harder for existing owners to sell while doing little to assist new market entrants to buy.  However, if they help to delay the erosion of one country two systems - which is what "closer integration with the mainland economy" really means - and reduce the flow of additional unwanted immigrants into our already overcrowded city - then I might be persuaded to change my mind.

A Bit of Old Trafford

Those who were wondering whether David Moyes was Alex Ferguson's true heir, following Man United's disappointing run recently, can be reassured by today's headline.  Moyes is clearly following the Fergie Formula for Football Management to the letter - when all else fails, blame the ref.

Time Heals All Wounds

1968 - white man kisses black woman on US television - shock horror!

2013 - white man kisses black woman on US television - yawn.

Sometimes human beings do learn better.  Happy New Year!

Future news

Hong Kong, 1 January 2015: the Hong Kong Beggars' Union today announced the signing of an agreement to equip its members with Octopus smart card terminals.  Commenting on the deal, the Union's Chairman said "Since the launch of the Octopus card, local people are no longer carrying much small change around in their pockets.  This has hurt our members' income, as they generally rely on the odd coin being dropped into their begging bowls.  This agreement will bring them into the hi-tech era and make it easy for donors to give with a simple wave of their card."

It is believed that the new terminals will also benefit Hong Kong's buskers.  However, it is feared that it will do little to improve their woeful lack of musical ability.

A belated Merry Christmas to my readers!

Zero Sum

According to TVB news a few days ago, a new 180 km pipeline being built across Israel and the Palestinian territory to Jordan will carry "some 200 cubic metres of water per year".  The pipeline will cost US$400 million, which seems a little expensive to transport one eighth of an Olympic swimming pool's worth of water annually - until you check the story elsewhere and realise that TVB left six zeroes off the annual volume to be carried.  What a mistake-a to make-a!

Desperate Times Call for Mediocre Men

In what is clearly an orchestrated campaign, a former government minister and a failed CE candidate have both suggested in the past few days that former Financial Secretary Antony Leung - who has suddenly re-emerged in public after a period of keeping a low profile - would make a good Chief Executive of Hong Kong.  Apparently the tycoon sector want to put someone of their own forward as an alternative to the presumed democratic candidate (if we're lucky) plus whoever gets the Beijing bootlicker nomination to replace the doesn't-have-a-hope-in-hell-of-re-election CY Leung - but they must be pretty desperate if they select someone who's already left the government in disgrace once.  Perhaps they think the Hong Kong public suffers from the same kind of memory loss that afflicted Leung when he raised vehicle taxes shortly after acquiring and apparently forgetting an expensive new motor, or perhaps they think Leung's fragrant wife compensates for his own shortcomings as a candidate.  Or - worst case scenario - they already know Beijing will put a block on any truly democratic candidate, and figure the Hong Kong public will respond by voting for anyone who isn't too visibly far up Beijing's backside, rather than the Party's anointed one.  Scary thought...

Don't Bank on Timeliness

This morning I received two emails from Standard Chartered Bank informing me that two payment transactions I set up online had failed (because I accidentally set the wrong "pay from" account) - on 25 November!  Did it really take them 3 weeks to notice?  The email might have been helpful on the day, but by this stage I had long ago noticed it on my last statement and rectified the matter already.  Is this their idea of real-time banking?!

The Spoiled Brat of the South China Sea

In Britain, we liken this sort of behaviour to the spoiled kid who picks up the soccer ball and runs away with it because he doesn't like the way the game is going.  There is a well-established mechanism under international law for adjudicating on competing territorial claims.  If China is so confident of the validity of its claims to enormous chunks of the South China Sea, it should not be afraid to follow the rules, as the Philippines is doing in this case.  Otherwise we can draw our own conclusions.

[Story from South China Morning Post]

The Contradiction at the Heart of the Government's Case

As Carrie Lam, Elsie Leung and other cheerleaders continue to argue for the government's stance on electoral reform, they also continue to gloss over the serious contradiction at the heart of it.  On the one hand they insist that any reform must comply with the Basic Law, which requires that a "broadly representative" nominating committee should nominate candidates for election by universal suffrage as Chief Executive of Hong Kong.  Most of us could live with that; the problem arises when they insist that the formation of the committee must also comply with the ruling by the NPC Standing Committee in 2007 that it be formed "with reference to the existing election committee" that selected CE candidates for the last "election".

According to those who are supposed to know, this means in Chinese legal parlance that the nominating committee, while it may be larger, should be of similar composition to the "four sectors" making up the election committee.  The difficulty here is that, other than those with a vested interest in the old system, no one in Hong Kong recognises the election committee as coming anywhere close to being "broadly representative"; in fact, the very opposite.  So if we have a nominating committee that follows the NPC ruling, we will not have one that is in any genuine sense "broadly representative" , and therefore it cannot be compliant with the Basic Law.

Apart from providing ample fodder for a judicial review, failure by the government to address this contradiction seems almost guaranteed to bring on Occupy Central.  Is that what they want?

Pie Eyed

Memo to the person who hit Financial Secr5etary John Tsang with an egg at a recent public forum: don't waste good food on bad politicians.

Tsang's boss, Chief Executive CY Leung, for whom the missile was probably intended, subsequently said that "such incidents won't happen in mature democracies".  This is yet another factual inexactitude from a government that produces rather a lot of them - in fact throwing eggs, pies, paint, and more recently glitter, at public figures is a time-honoured tradition in many mature democracies, including the UK, France, Belgium, Canada, and of course the USA.  Notable victims have included Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates and even the King of Sweden.

Despite claims that such incidents are immoral, violent, and even constitute terrorism, their intent is clearly symbolic rather than to cause physical harm (though in a few tragic cases, they may do so); the aim is to leave those who are perceived by the thrower as dishonest, immoral or self-important looking ridiculous, deflated and humiliated.  As such, most Hong Kong government ministers are clearly prime targets for such treatment.

Nothing Specific

Yet another reason why the governance of Hong Kong is so bad: according to TVB news a couple of days back, while defending the government against a court case brought by a social welfare recipient, the government's lawyer said the government had "no specific policy objectives" for its private rental housing subsidy scheme.  So in other words, they are handing out our money with no particular purpose in mind...

I guess it's close enough to Christmas now to say "Bah! Humbug!"

Hoist on their own petard - or are we?

The recent visit to Hong Kong by Li Fei, chairman of the Basic Law Committee (BLC) of the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC), appears to have been primarily intended to let the Hong Kong public know the permitted limits of our long-promised democracy.  As a China Daily article by devoted Beijing acolyte Lau Nai-keung makes clear, what this means in practice is that Beijing will tell us in advance who we're allowed to vote for to save it the necessity of telling us after the election that we voted for the wrong person - a precaution Lau considers necessary because of Hong Kong's "disrespect towards Beijing's goodwill".

Unusually for anyone on the establishment side, Lau does acknowledge that the interests of Hong Kong and Beijing may not always coincide, a fact he describes as "embarrassing", though the only solution he offers is "a capable CE to keep both sides happy".  But how is this fantasy figure to be chosen?  While there has been talk of it being a legal requirement that any candidate "love China and love Hong Kong" in order to be qualified for election, no law has yet been devised anywhere that can mandate or verify love.

It appears from comments by another Chinese official,  Hao Tiechuen, that the required "love of China" may be ensured through loyalty to the country's constitution, presumably by requiring candidates to swear some sort of oath of loyalty - something he describes as an internationally accepted convention.   Hao is of course wrong in saying that loyalty to a country's constitution is generally a requirement for election in other countries - take a look at the Scottish Parliament, for example - only that changes to that constitution should be achieved through constitutional means.

The fundamental problem here is that the Chinese leadership itself does not live by what it proposes.  The Chinese constitution guarantees - in theory - human rights, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of demonstration, and property rights; all values dear to us in Hong Kong.  But not only do the authorities regularly ride roughshod over all of these rights in practice; and not only do the courts lack the power to overthrow a law as unconstitutional; but a substantial faction within the leadership regards the very concept of what it calls "constitutionalism" as a Western-imposed affront to "socialist" values [with Chinese characteristics, of course.]

So where does that leave Hong Kong?  In the contradictory position of requiring a potential leader to demonstrate loyalty to China's constitution in order to assure the Chinese leadership of his or her deference to them, while they themselves ignore the very same constitution with impunity.  You couldn't make this stuff up.

The Chronic Blogger

In his Not the South China Morning Post blog today, George Adams takes the opportunity to promote one of his books: Le Retour de Suzie Wong (The Return of Suzie Wong) in French.  My schoolboy French being pretty rusty, I put the linked review through Google Translate.  The sentence " Il tient aussi un blog satirique, The Not South China Morning Post, où il chronique l’actualité locale." is saying, I believe, that his blog chronicles local news (when not busy sniping at other local bloggers) - according to Google, however, "It also takes a satirical blog, The Not South China Morning Post, where chronic local news."

Many would agree that the local news is indeed chronic these days, but I think if I'd turned in that translation, my old French teacher, the diminutive but formidable (say that word the French way) Miss Adams, would have marked it "must try harder". 

These are not the droids you're looking for

It appears that Chief Executive CY Leung has a new tactic for dealing with differing views.  Following his recent speech suggesting that the government had already explained the HKTV issue and we were just too dumb to understand it, last night's TVB news reported that "The CE also said thee were no more concerns about the plans for developing the Northeast New Territories".

As my wife said "Not for him maybe, only for everyone else in Hong Kong."  Still, if you can't solve the problems, pretending they no longer exist is an interesting alternative.

Natural Ignorance

Just a few days before Hong Kong's annual Gay Pride March attracted a crowd twice the size of last year's, it was reported that "the Liberal Party conducted a survey in which they found over 60% of the 1,200 respondents [as always with such figures, I wonder how this sample was selected?] objected to homosexuality and transgenderism".  Well, tough!  I object to typhoons, but that doesn't mean they don't happen.

In a city which is well behind the times in terms of waking up to equal rights, the result is hardly surprising.  What is sad is that instead of taking a lead in trying to enlighten the public, Liberal Party legislator Felix Chung endorsed the findings, describing these conditions as "anti-natural".  The reality, however, is that homosexual behaviour is observed in nature across a wide array of animal species.  Put simply, scientific observation tells us that like it or not, it is natural for gay people to be gay.  I am naturally attracted to women; Elton John is naturally attracted to men - that doesn't make either of us unnatural.

As for transgenderism, I suspect some of the prejudice here comes from simple-mindedness - many people want to slot everyone into two neat categories because it's easier to think that way.  But nature is not so precise - many babies are born with varying degrees of gender ambiguity, often "tidied up" surgically in infancy, though this policy is increasingly being questioned.  There is nothing new about this - one of our words for intersex individuals dates back to ancient Greece.  There have been notable transsexuals throughout history, including possibly a Roman Emperor and allegedly a Pope.  Some people may not even be aware of their true gender, as in a recent Hong Kong case.

So while some countries are amending their laws to recognise these realities, some Hong Kong politicians are still attacking natural phenomena as "unnatural".  This only demonstrates that the natural state of Liberal Party politicians is ignorance.