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.