No More Mr Nice Guy

Another insight into the personality of John McCain, currently bidding to become the first American President to have called his wife a cunt in public.

Do I Know You?

Ever noticed that the Rolex watch commercials on television don't bother to identify the famous Rolex wearers who appear in them (and are presumably paid a hefty sum for doing so)? Apparently it's assumed that the elite all recognise each other; if the rest of us hoi polloi don't know who they are, well, we can't afford a Rolex anyway, so that's our problem.

A Slip of the Scalpel

In his final campaign debate with Barack Obama, it sounded like John McCain started to say "we need to make health care avoidable", before correcting himself and saying "affordable".

But then, when it comes to health issues, surgical precision is not McCain's forte. Asked a few weeks ago whether the use of condoms was effective against HIV infection, he replied, "You’ve stumped me", before admitting he didn't know what his own position was on the issue!

This raises two possibilities. Either:

1. McCain is apallingly uninformed about one of the major health issues of our time, in which case he's probably too ignorant to be president; or
2. He sidestepped the question to avoid offending his supporters on the religious right, whose self-proclaimed "pro-life" stance does not extend to saving lives that might otherwise be lost to AIDS, in which case he's too dishonest to be president. (They also don't seem too concerned about Iraqi lives, but that's for another article.)
   

The second interpretation here might be inferred from McCain's use of the disparaging term "pro-abortion" in the debate, rather than "pro-choice". No one is "pro-abortion" - they simply believe, as Obama clearly and straightforwardly explained, that while abortion is undoubtedly a moral decision, it is not the government's moral decision to make, but that of the pregnant woman.

But then what else can you expect from a man who chooses as his running mate a woman who believes that the innocent victims of violent crime should be pubished for nine months - if the crime is rape resulting in pregnancy?

No Idea

I envy those bloggers who seem to have time to live a life, hold down a job, and still write 5,000 words before breakfast. I guess they don't need much sleep.

No doubt some of them have already written a lengthy analysis of Donald Tsang's policy speech on Wednesday. I haven't studied it in depth, but I do have two short comments.

"This is not a time for innovation," declared Donald after the speech. Dead wrong! The system of unbridled self-interest that has dominated the world economy since the Thatcher/Reagan era (when greed was elevated from one of the seven deadly sins to the supreme virtue) has reached an ugly dead end with the current financial crisis, hopefully giving way to a new age of fairness and responsibility. Meanwhile Hong Kong's traditional role as China's gateway to the world is becoming redundant, as a newly confident China ceases to need an intermediary and deals with the outside world directly.

Given this situation, innovation - i.e. new ideas about Hong Kong's future role - is exactly what we need at this moment. Either that, or slide into irrelevance.

Donald's other mistake was in declaring that the minimum wage to be set under the long overdue minimum wage law - to be introduced in the coming year, no doubt acompanied by bleats of protest from employers - may still be insufficient for a wage earner to support a family without receiving additional social welfare assistance. If this is so, then what is the point? What this means in effect is that the taxpayer is subsidizing irresponsible firms that underpay their workers, giving them an unfair cost advantage over more responsible companies that pay their employees a fair wage. Great system, huh?

Would you buy a used bank from this man?

I didn't catch the whole story because it was on the Chinese channel, but this morning on the TV news there was some senior official from the World Bank talking about providing financial advice to developing countries.

Looking at the current state of the developed world's financial system, this seems a bit like the Pope giving advice on sexual techniques.

What is Wealth?

According to the conventional wisdom, people are seeing their wealth eroded all over the world by the current financial crisis. Except they aren't; not really, because that wealth never existed.

Real wealth consists of goods and services that people actually need or want, and use. The total quantity of these should not be in the least affected by the banking crisis. We have just as much land to grow food on; just as many mines to dig out raw materials from; just as many oil wells to extract fuel from; just as many factories to produce goods in; just as many workers to work in those factories or in shops or restaurants or wherever else they are needed; just as many ships and trucks to deliver goods; just as many cars to drive, just as many houses to live in; just as many CDs to listen to, pubs to drink in, restaurants to eat in, clothes to wear, books to read, TVs to watch, planes to fly, parks to relax in, schools to study in, sports grounds to play on, churches to worship in if so inclined, and so on ad infinitum. In short, just as much wealth.

Those things are real wealth. All the rest - bits of paper, entries in ledgers, magnetic impulses in computer storage - money, in other words - is fictional wealth; a set of symbols that we have agreed on to represent real wealth.

How did the human race get in a position where these symbols so dominate our way of life that their absence, or a disturbance in their supply, can threaten our access to real wealth? Where large numbers of people spend their working lives manipulating these symbols without adding one iota to the underlying store of real goods and (useful) services? Foreign exchnge dealers, for example, convert one set of symbols into another set, without adding to the value of the goods represented by those symbols (i.e. creating wealth) in the slightest.

In their greed, America's bankers forgot that money is only a symbol, and created more and more symbols in the form of subprime mortgages until their nominal value far exceded the real value of the houses they were supposed to represent. (Real value is essentially measured by what goods could be exchanged for in a perfect barter system.) They then packaged up these inflated symbols and passed them on to other greedy bankers around the world, who also wanted a slice of this largely fictitious wealth. Some of these in turn resold them to the public in the form of yet more dubious financial instruments such as Lehman's minibonds.

Finally reality intruded and it became clear the emperor had no clothes - these symbols did not represent anywhere near the value of the real wealth they claimed to represent. The result: banks left with insufficient meaningful symbols to meet their obligations; angry people demanding to know why they had been sold worthless symbols; and governments around the world pouring meaningful symbols (representing the labour of taxpayers) into financial institutions to rescue them from the consequences of their own stupidity.

So what next - back to barter?

When You're Smiling...

To Sarah Palin's Image Consultant: telling your client to smile is not a bad idea, but not all the time! Intelligent Americans would like to see their potential president display a bit of gravitas, not an inane fixed grin. I'm sure she's got a good dentist, but it would be more impressive if she had a better grasp of the facts. For example, characterising Iran's president Ahmadinejad as a dictator is wrong on two counts: first of all, he came to power by winning a majority of votes from Iran's people, which is more than can be said of current US leader George W. Bush; secondly, the real power in Iran does not lie with him, but with the clerical leadership.

Still, nice teeth.

Poor Guys in Space

China's latest space mission fulfilled all its objectives, but at a cost - the new Chinese-made space suit alone cost over US$4 million. Still, China is clearly up there with the big guys now, which is exactly what its leaders want.

Want to bet that next time it's engaged in world trade negotiations, China will still claim to be a poor backward Third World country in need of trade concessions to help it catch up? Hmmm.

Getting Your Priorities in Proportion

• Amount requested by President George W. Bush to bail out greedy Wall Street bankers: US$700 billion.
• Amount pledged by world leaders and philanthropists to fight malaria (which kills more than a million people annually): US$3 billion.

Distant Drums

It's been a bad year for great musicians - Temptations songwriter/producer Norman Whitfield passed away a few days ago. Now the latest entrant to rock'n'roll heaven is drummer Earl Palmer.

You may never have heard of Palmer, but you've certainly heard his work - a jazzman at heart, he played on an astonishing array of all-time great recordings, from Fats Domino and Little Richard's pioneering early rock'n'roll in Palmer's native New Orleans, to "River Deep Mountain High" and other Phil Spector classics in Los Angeles, finding time in between to drum on everything from TV theme tunes to movie soundtracks, and even record a piece or two under his own name (The A Side blog has one). He is also said to be the man who first applied the word "funky" to music.

Palmer's autobiography, Backbeat, is a great rock read, taking the reader through a colourful life that went from tap dancing in vaudeville as a child to accompanying Frank Sinatra at the White House.

"I invented this shit"

was Palmer's legendary response to a young rock band worried that he might not be able to play in their style. He sure did.

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

Surely No Coincidence?

Average number of rolls of toilet paper used each day in The Pentagon: 666.

Blame It All on Mummy

As former Taiwan First Lady Wu Shu-chen again fails to attend court, claiming to be ill, it's interesting to observe the development of the corruption cases against her, former president Chen Shui-bian, and other family members. Chen claims his wife illegally transferred US$20 million of his campaign funds overseas without his knowledge. His son, accused of transferring US$31 million overseas, claims he merely signed documents prepared by his mother, without checking their contents.

The younger Chen's trust in his mother is touching indeed; I would trust my own mother with my life, but if she asked me to sign some bank forms, I think I would at least display a little curiosity as to what they were all about before sticking my name on the dotted line. Apparently the Chen family's strategy is to heap as much guilt on Wu as possible. As a wheelchair-bound invalid, she could presumably look forward to more lenient treatment than the able-bodied members of the family, if convicted.

Why does all this somehow remind me of the story of the girl who murdered her parents, then asked the court for clemency on the grounds that she was an orphan?

My Untainted Humps

As the Chinese contaminated baby milk scandal continues to worsen - 69 brands from 22 manufacturers recalled; 3 babies dead; 6,200 seriously ill; several export markets also involved - one wonders if Chinese women realise what those two "lovely lady bumps" on their chest are for. And no. I'm not being facetious (sadly).

(Not) Taking Care of Their Own

Mr President, the death toll in Iraq is approaching one million!

Who cares, they're all Muslims anyway. [Not true, by the way - the nearly 2000-year-old Christian community in Iraq has been almost entirely forced out of the country.]

Mr President, hundreds of thousands are still homeless in New Orleans!

Who cares, they're mostly black and poor anyway.

Mr President, hundreds of people have been tortured in Guantanamo Bay.

Who cares, they're all terrorists anyway. [Also not true.]

Mr President, thousands of middle class Americans are having their homes repossessed because they can't keep up with their mortgage payments.

Who cares, that's the system - when you invest, you take a risk. Sometimes it doesn't pay off.

Mr President, Wall Street is in trouble! The big investment banks are going bust!

Oh my God, this is terrible, these are our people! What can we do to help them?

Nothing, Mr President; we've spent all the money we had and more on your war in Iraq and handouts to the rich already.

So finally, the mountain of bad karma piled up by the Bush regime is beginning to topple down on its beneficiaries. And so incompetent is the government, it can't even bail out its own people, the heart of the Republican elite, the very ones whose interests this administration has been all about serving from the beginning, from the consequences of their own greed, folly and mendacity. Which would be enjoyable to watch, if it wasn't that many innocent victims are going to get hurt in the process as they see their hard-earned homes, insurance policies and pensions become worthless.

7-9 and the Marginalised Elector

7-9 is English for what the Americans prefer to call 9-7, i.e. today. The Hong Kong government, uncomfortable with the fact that the territory was a British colony for a century and a half, prefers to use the American format in its promotional advertising for today's Legislative Council election. Since "9-11", the New York skyline is not the only thing reshaped by Osama bin Laden.

"Shape your future"

say the posters; and even though we know that our future will continue to be largely shaped for us by the usual unholy alliance of Beijing politicians and local business bigwigs, it is important to send Beijing a clear message that we want to have a bigger say in our own destiny. So, get out there before 10:30 pm and vote! (unless you're planning to cast your ballot for the DAB, in which case, why not stay at home and read a good book instead? I recommend George Orwell's essays, particularly "Politics and the English Language").

Which brings me to an interesting question: why do Hong Kong politicians pay so little attention to the English-speaking voter? We all know - particularly since Florida in 2000 - that elections can be won and lost by only a few votes, and this is even more so in Hong Kong's rotten boroughs - the Functional Constituencies. Given this, you would think that an astute politician would not overlook any possible group of potential supporters, yet there are still candidates whose election publicity is entirely in Chinese, without even a pointer to an English version on their website. I heard from a friend that one famously hirsute local LegCo member even refused to answer questions put to him in English during a previous election campaign, although he speaks the language.

This time around, more candidates seem to have picked up the nessage - even the DAB - but there are still exceptions. Yet I suspect this group of voters, far from being of marginal significance, may be larger than anyone suspects. In fact, it consists of three distinct subgroups: expatriates settled here such as myself; the long-established local South Asian community, many of whom speak Cantonese but do not read or write Chinese; and possibly the largest of all, those Chinese people born in Hong Kong who grew up overseas following the great wave of emigration in the 1980s and 90s, but have since returned to their birthplace. Many of these speak Cantonese but were educated in English, and may be more comfortable reading it than Chinese.

OK, lesson over, go and vote.

Signs of the Times

That's nice, but will the food taste better?

Beauty isn't what it used to be!. Thanks to DC for this one.

Make up your mind!

Yes, but where do the other 90% of kids get educated?

Pretentious? Moi?

Hong Kong property developers love to give their properties pretentious and silly names. Take Grand Central Plaza in Shatin, for instance - it's not Grand (unless Ikea has moved considerably upmarket in the few weeks since my last visit), and not Central. As for the Plaza part, the original Spanish word denotes a public open space like a town square, but in American (ab)usage, adopted in Hong Kong, has come to indicate a shopping mall. Oh well, a half out of three ain't bad.

Then there's Luard on the Park, a serviced apartment block in Wanchai. The "park" referred to is Southorn Playground, but I suppose Luard on the Patch of Scruffy Tarmac Surrounded by a Few Tatty Trees doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

However, for real pretentiousness, you only have to look to the world of showbiz - a headline on the BBC news website a couple of days ago reported Jude Law calls for world ceasefire. I don't want to disparage any attempts to advance the cause of world peace, but would that be Jude Law the respected international statesman? or Jude Law the Hollywood actor who hit the scandal pages for his affair with his children's nanny?

Do they even know it's wrong?

Many long term residents of Hong Kong have remarked on the deteriorating standard of English in the territory that likes to proclaim itself "Asia's world city". Wellcome supermarket continues to display posters in some of its branches exhorting customers to "Use less plastic bags". Good idea, but as someone pointed out several years ago, shouldn't there be a companion campaign educating the public to "Use fewer water"?

Then there is this sign:



Only one thing wrong with this: you don't prosecute a vehicle, you prosecute the driver. Do we have anyone left in the government who knows the difference?

Acts of Government or God

While many disasters can be blamed on the Hong Kong government, it's a bit much for Stanley residents to claim, as today's Morning Post reports, that "the government is entirely to blame" for the tragic death of a 19-year-old girl crushed by a falling branch from a tree in the village. The fact is that every year around the world, thousands of people are killed or injured by falling trees. These incidents are known as natural disasters, or in insurance terminology, "Acts of God" (or whichever imaginary supreme being you choose to blame for the universe)..

While the government is right to recheck other old trees, and will no doubt review its inspection techniques, which appear to have missed some warning signs in this case, falling trees are a natural event. If we cast around looking for someone to blame for every Act of God, we will end up like the USA, where people's first reaction is to look for someone to sue whenever anything bad happens to them.

I also fear that this accident will lead to demands from the more ignorant sectors of the population for the removal of any tree that might possibly fall on anyone at some future time, leaving our city even more a desolate mass of concrete than it is already.

The man who invented R&B

The great record producer Jerry Wexler, the man who coined the term "rhythm and blues" to replace the old "race records" epithet, has died aged 91. There's a nice tribute here at The B-Side blog..

I have a copy of Dusty in Memphis signed by Wexler. Ironically Dusty Springfield was so paralysed with nerves in Memphis that only the backing tracks were recorded with the ever-reliable studio crew there; Jerry had to coax the vocals out of her during a number of follow-up sessions in New York. This painful process eventually brought forth one of the finest of the many great albums that bear Jerry's name as producer.

Wexler was a man of many talents: a successful businessman, except for his one great mistake of selling out Atlantic Records to Warner Brothers, which he came to regret; and a songwriter whose name appeared as co-composer of some of the records he produced. But his real genius - like that of Geroge Martin with the Beatles, an ocean away - was in getting the best out of srtists, and never more so than with Aretha Franklin. Aretha's earlier and later recordings show occasional flashes of brilliance, but her reputation as the Queen of Soul rests solidly on the string of magnificent masterpieces she turned out at Atlantic under Wexler's direction.

In the last few years many of the greats of the music business have passed away: Ahmet Ertegun, who founded Atlantic Records; Ruth Brown, who fought him for years for unpaid royalties, while always respecting his musical taste; Bo Diddley just a couple of weeks ago; Wilsonn Pickett; ... the list goes on and on. Now there's another bright star in rock-n-roll heaven - R.I.P., Jerry.
Disclaimer - I get a small commission from Amazon if you buy the CD through the link here. This is the version with additional songs; there's another one with the mono versions of the singles from the albums. Both are great.