Giving Democracy a Bad Name

Yesterday's Legislative Council by-elections in Hong Kong have - like the recent British general election - given no one what they wanted. With voter turnout around 17%, the pan-democrats did not get the overwhelming public show of demand for a faster pace to democracy that they hoped for. However the government, despite a bizarre campaign of dissuasion surely unprecedented in any territory that allows free voting - and which Martin Lee rightly said would make them look stupid in the eyes of the world - still saw more than half a million voters turn out to re-elect the five resigned legislators by massive margins. This is in spite of obstacles deliberately placed in the way of many voters, including forcing some to travel long distances to remote polling stations.

With the decision by the DAB and Liberal Party ("under orders" according to Allen Lee - he didn't need to say from whom) not to contest the elections misguidedly engineered by some pan-democrats as a supposed "referendum on democracy", the exercise began to look distinctly futile early on. Once nominations closed, a look at the list of declared candidates made the elections appear even more farcical. With the major parties stepping aside, the field was wide open for an array of attention grabbers, self-publicists and total nutters (one wanted to abolish the ICAC to save public money), and that is exactly what we got. For once the South China Morning Post was right about something in calling them "fringe candidates" (8 April).

A look at their declared occupations is interesting - though two of them don't appear to be occupied with anything, suggesting they may have joined the election simply for lack of anything better to do with their time. The five pan-democrats standing for re-election variously described themselves as Barrister, Resigned Legislative Council Member, Senior Counsel, District Councillor, and Advocate for De facto referendum. That last one is Leung Kwok-Hung, who also gives Long Hair as his alias. Another familiar alias is Bus Uncle, standing in Hong Kong Island. When not starring on YouTube, it appears that he is a Merchant.

Then we have a few students, including the ubiquitous Crystal Chow, without whom no student protest would be complete; an Engineer II (doesn't it seem rather odd to give his grading?); a Government Pensioner (presumably this means a retired civil servant); and a Web Commentator - is this an up-market term for blogger?

Then there is serial attention-seeker Pamela Pak, or as it turns out her name is officially spelled, Peck, who describes herself as a Media Personality. "I didn't know Personality was a job," said my wife, who is clearly not au fait with the Age of Celebrity. When I was young, "famous for being famous" was a derisive description, but these days it seems to be everyone's ambition. Peck's main election platform appeared to be a deep personal dislike of the abrasive Raymond "Mad Dog" Wong. Perhaps she also fancied spending more time with her equally attention-hungry partner Paul "Superman" Tse, who curiously represents the Tourism Constituency in LegCo despite being a lawyer by profession.

Apart from being uncertain how to spell her surname, Pak or Peck has a past criminal conviction for tax evasion, which would have put her in good company alongside LegCo member Chim Pui Chung, convicted of conspiracy to forge documents - apparently a minor peccadillo in the eyes of his Financial Services constituents. Could there be a better argument against Functional Constituencies than Chim's presence in LegCo? Remember these people oversee the spending of our money.

Fortunately foghorn-voiced singer and TV chef Maria Cordeiro did not make good on her threat to stand in NT East, but among the candidates there clamouring for my support were one who describes himself as an Idea Marketing Director (who buys ideas, I wonder?) He was running on behalf of something called the Non Violence Social Movement, which sounds promising until you find out that his idea of violence is the recent goings on in LegCo, so a more apt name would be the Politer Politics Party. If he really thinks that the odd bout of verbal rudeness and an occasional irritating outbreak of banana throwing amount to violence, I will be happy to educate him on what political violence really is by dressing him in my Aung San Suu Kyi T-shirt from Amnesty International and buying him a one-way ticket to Burma (I doubt he'll be coming back soon). Alternatively he could just try roaming the streets of Bangkok tomorrow in a red shirt. The occasional rude remark in LegCo doesn't even compare to the more rambunctious Australian Parliament, where verbal abuse is elevated to an art form, or the frequent fisticuffs in Taiwan's legislature.

Anyway, my problem was - I didn't want to vote for Long Hair, whom I feel has not done a good job as a legislator - indeed I suspect his party's antics only reinforce China's fear of giving full democracy to Hong Kong. So how could I send a message to the Government that I want a faster path to full democracy without voting for any of these clowns? Isn't it time that all ballot papers carried an additional option: "None of the Above"?

According to ATV News, there were about 19,000 spoiled ballot papers in this election, a remarkably high figure if correct, though I can't find confirmation of this figure on the government's websites, which have played down the election to the extent that it doesn't even rate a headline on the main government site despite being clearly the most significant political event of the moment. This suggests that many others found the same solution that I did.

Driving out of his mind

Last night's news reported that a taxi driver sent to prison after crashing his vehicle while driving under the influence of ketamine had 40 previous convictions for traffic offences - which makes me wonder just how bad a driver you have to be before you lose your licence to drive a taxi in Hong Kong. Feel safe now?

This reminds me of the first time my wife and I visited Taipei. Drivers there seem calmer now - or maybe the traffic is now so congested they have no opportunity for speeding - but in those days driving standards there were totally crazy. After a terrifying ride with a young taxi driver clearly intent on qualifying for Formula 1, my wife refused to take any taxi with a driver below the age of 40. She figured if they'd survived that long, they must be reasonably safe behind the wheel.

Groundless Regret

Is there anyone left in the Hong Kong Government who is fluent in English? The Chief Executive's statement denying that he approached Legislative Council Chairman Tsang Yok-Sing asking him to vote for the government's half-arsed electoral reform package ends with the sentence: "The hearsay is groundless, which we deeply regret." Surely he regrets the hearsay, not the fact that it is groundless? The correct grammar should therefore be: "The hearsay, which we deeply regret, is groundless."

Tsang, asked whether he'd been approached, responded that no senior executive of the government had put pressure on him to vote - which doesn't exactly answer the question.

Caption Competition

Doesn't this image from the BBC just cry out for a caption competition?

Bog Otter - That Means You, Ann, or Your Ancestors

Someone should tell ATV's newsreaders that the name of China's currency is not pronounced as "You Ann". They should also be told that, while there may be such a creature as the "bog otter", it is not the name of Colombia's capital.

Or perhaps they were trying to say "begotter", which brings us neatly to another media mistake. British scandal sheet (newspaper would be too polite a word for it), The Sun, in between plugging a Tory election victory that would no doubt benefit its owner Rupert Murdoch's already bulging coffers, found space on its website a couple of days ago for a headline saying "ANCESTOR of Alice Hawkins, jailed for role in suffragettes, meets women who won’t vote". When you click through to the actual story, it turns out to be about a young woman whose great great grandmother was jailed five times for her activities in the suffragette movement that eventually won British women the vote. Last time I looked, that would make her a descendant, not an ancestor, but a knowledge of the English language has always been less highly regarded at The Sun than the ability to come up with the most excruciating puns in headlines.

Of course, Hong Kong women - and men - are still waiting for full universal suffrage, but that's another story.

Brown Stuff on Ice

It will be little surprise that Iceland's voters overwhelmingly rejected a plan that would have made each of them liable to repay thousands of dollars to the British and Dutch governments for compensation they paid out to investors who lost money when Iceland's banks collapsed in 2008 following the global financial crisis.

Quite apart from not seeing why they should bear the consequences of the actions of a few greedy people, Icelanders are naturally pissed off that Britain invoked anti-terrorist legislation following the collapse to freeze Icelandic funds held in London. Since Iceland is Britain's NATO ally and one of the most peaceful countries on Earth, how could such a thing happen?

My own theory is that it was all a misunderstanding. A report from Britain's Environment Ministry landed on Gordon Brown's desk saying that Iceland was a threat to whales (which it is one of the few nations still hunting). Owing to an unfortunate typo, Brown glanced at it and took it to be an intelligence report saying that Iceland was a threat to Wales. Naturally he had to take action.

Of course, another possible explanation could be that Gordon Brown is an unprincipled opportunist willing to bend the law to get what he wants. But no one would believe that of a British Prime Minister, would they?

Lessons in Democracy

The Morning Post today highlights America's criticism of the lack of democracy in Hong Kong, saying "The US government has criticised the Hong Kong government for limiting the ability of its people to change their government". While agreeing with the criticism, I wonder if they should first turn their attention to their own system. The US is, after all, the country where a clear majority of electors voted for Al Gore in 2000 and got ... George W. Bush. What was that saying about pots and kettles?

On the Other Foot

Every so often one hears of the death of someone who has been so long out of the public eye that one has assumed them to be dead already. So it is with the passing at age 96 of Michael Foot, former leader of the British (Old) Labour Party, and best remembered for his unfortunate loss of the 1983 election to the execrable Margaret Thatcher.

"He was as far removed from the techniques of modern politics as you could possibly imagine."
--Tony Blair

Could there possibly be higher praise than that?

Are you keeping up?

A few weeks ago, needing a new battery for my little Samsung digital camera, I went to the service centre address in Russell Street listed on their website, only to find they had recently moved a few blocks away to Causeway Centre.

Needing to take another Samsung product for service, I rechecked their website this morning, only to find that the service centre address has still not been updated.

"In everything we do, we strive to help people live better lives"

says Samsung's website. Everything except keeping their website up to date, that is.

Misdirection

I don't know which government department is responsible for erecting these signs, but you would think the person putting this one up would have noticed that the sign to Blake Pier is pointing in exactly the opposite direction to where it should be - especially as the pier is clearly visible from this point! Perhaps he was confusing it with the old Blake Pier in Central, which was demolished a couple of decades ago.

Year of the Tigger

Question: if the Chinese have a Year of the Pig(let) and a Year of the Tigger, why don't they have a Year of the Pooh?

Wishing a happy and healthy Year of the Tigger to all my readers.

Trading Places

A branch of Tesco (Britain's leading downmarket supermarket chain) has imposed a ban on people shopping in their pyjamas. This reminds me that when I first came to Hong Kong, it was common to see people in their PJs slipping out to the local dai pai dong for a quick bowl of noodles at suppertime. Nowadays there are only a handful of true dai pai dongs left, and no self-respecting Hong Konger would dream of going out to eat without getting dolled up in their name brand clothes (real or fake depending on income). Somehow there was an unselfconscious innocence about those days which I miss .

Democracy or Diversion?

"I elected them to represent me, not to resign."

Words of wisdom from one who, I suspect, echoes the feelings of many Hong Kong people over the resignation today of five pro-democracy legislators to force what they claim will be a de facto referendum on democratic reform.

I an personally quite peeved by this action. I don't want to do anything that could be perceived by the government as indicating a lack of public support for immediate universal suffrage. But neither do I want to cast my vote for Leung Kwok-Hung, better known as Longhair, the democratic candidate in my constituency. I feel he's never made the mental leap from being a street agitator to becoming an effective legislator, and his party's attention-grabbing antics in LegCo all too often divert attention from the causes they aim to promote rather than furthering them.

This is only the latest in a whole series of mistakes made by the pan-democrats, however. The previous electoral reform proposals in 2005 were voted down, yet it would in retrospect have been wiser to abstain from voting (as one member did) rather than voting against them. A small step towards democracy may not seem much, but Beijing calls the shots, and they are clearly concerned that full democracy will bring about the kind of social chaos that they most fear. Each move towards democracy that is seen not to destabilise Hong Kong reassures them and makes them more ready to grant us a little more next time around. If the price for that is living with some role for the fundamentally undemocratic functional constituencies a little longer, then so be it.

Another mistake, particularly for the League of Social Denocrats, was to overplay the fuss over Donald Tsnag's alleged favouritism towards his family members in the last budget. The Chief Executive - in my view a competent administrator who has neither the vision nor the charisma to be a true leader - may have made an error in not realising that the proposal to subsidise energy-saving light bulbs woiuld indirectly benefit a relative, but nothing in his history or what we know of his character suggests that he is corrupt. Far better to oppose his real failures - on democracy, health care, and numerous other issues.

So - how to vote in the coming by-election? That's if there is one, with the pro-Beijing parties threatening to boycott the whole exercise. Wait and see.

South China Posting Morn

It appears that the Substandard's notorious inability to afford competent subeditors has now spread to the South China Morning Post. A headline on their website today proclaims "Dissident HK handed to mainland jailed 9 years". If "HK" is the subject here, as it appears, we're all in big trouble. (Not that we aren't anyway, if "our" government goes around handing people in Hong Kong over to mainland authorities for offences that are not illegal here.)

Tiger's Lost Balls

Consulting firm Accenture was one of the first sponsors to drop Tiger Woods after his extramarital shenanigans became public knowledge. Somehow the message doesn't seem to have filtered down to their Hong Kong office yet - a version of the image above advertising their services still greets arriving passengers at the airport (exit B).

What's the Difference?

A long-running series of TV commercials in Hong Kong has been telling us for months that "the difference is Macau". Now a new series of ads is telling us "the difference is Gaggenau". I'm confused - what exactly is the difference? Or is it just that some advertising agency is too lazy to think up a new slogan?

Anyway, 2009 was a difficult year for many people; let's hope the difference will be 2010. Happy New Year, everyone!

"'Tis the season to be jolly" - bah, humbug!

On Christmas Eve I looked in Oliver's for Stone's ginger wine, the traditional Christmas tipple (even my resolutely teetotal grandmother used to partake of a drop at Yuletide, apparently persuading herself that it wasn't really alcoholic). Alas, everyone else had apparently had the same thought, since they had sold out, and I had no time to look elsewhere, having already drawn a blank at City Super. Then I made the mistake of popping into Toys"R"Us to get a little something for the nephews - again everyone else had the same idea, since the queue for payment literally stretched the entire length of the shop.

I always envy those organised people who are fully prepared for Christmas by the end of November - I am still sending out late Christmas greetings several days later (I suppose I could pretend to be Russian, since their Christmas is twelve days later) - anyway we were still putting up our decorations on Christmas Eve.

On Christmas morning I eagerly opened my email, expecting more greetings from my loved ones, only to be flooded by the usual crop of spam. The organ extenders seemed to have taken a break (they came out later in the day, having presumably been testing the efficacy of their products late into the night), but the Nigerian business proposals, "replica" (= fake) watches, Canadian medications and the like were all out in force. Perhaps the oddest was a message from one "Holly [how seasonal!] Connelly" saying, "I know that you'll be alone these holidays [wrong], what are you going to do? My advice is gambling. It's lots of fun!" No thanks, especially at an online casino I've never heard of.

Least seasonal, having perhaps dropped through a timewarp, was the spammer who suggested I order 10 special cigars as a gift for Father's Day - which was some time in the summer last time I looked. Since my father died of cancer from smoking (15 years ago yesterday in fact), cigars are just about the last thing I would give anyone for Father's Day - or Christmas for that matter.

Things could only look up from there - until I bit on a staple in my fried rice at lunchtime. Then in the afternoon I went out into the garden, only to find that our little lotus pool (the ceramic type that sits on a stand) had completely dried up. I suspected a leak, but since I refilled it the water has stayed in. It could, I suppose, have been caused by a mini-tornado sucking out all the water, but since there were no reports of any strange weather phenomena over Christmas, my theory is that Santa's reindeer drank all the water the previous night.

After that, the rest of the day was actually quite enjoyable. The 3-year-old nephew was pleased with the toy plane we gave him, until another aunty and uncle gave him a talking toy bus from Japan, when he quickly lost interest in our less sophisticated offering. And the 1-year-old detested his wriggly toy snake and kept throwing it to the floor to get rid of it.

So what sort of Christmas did you have? Anyway, Merry Christmas to my dwindling stock of readers!

Debate or Denial?

As the great Climate Change Conference opens in Copenhagen, one of Hong Kong's TV stations (I can't remember which) used the term "climate change deniers" in a news broadcast.

This is a singularly unhelpful term in the context. It is clearly intended to resonate with the term "Holocaust denier", but we are dealing with a very different phenomenon here. The Holocaust is a historical fact, attested to by thousands of reliable witnesses who survived Hitler's death camps, the testimony of Allied forces who liberated them, the confessions of camp guards, and numerous Nazi historical documents. Those who deny that it occurred are either deluded loonies, or more commonly evil racists seeking to whitewash the reputation of the Nazi regime.

Climate change is not a solid fact in this sense. It is an interpretation of masses of statistical observations, which means that more than one interpretation is possible. The majority of climatologists concur on it, but those who do not are better described as sceptics than deniers. In fact there are several levels of interpretation at work:

1. Climate change is occurring, i.e. substantial long term change in prevailing patterns of temperature, precipitation and wind strength and direction, as opposed to periodic shorter term fluctuations in local weather patterns. Most scientists agree that we are now seeing long term global warming, though some diagree, and some even posit the opposite - global cooling.
2. Given that global warming is occurring, human activity is responsible for (or a major contributor to) it. Again the scientific consensus agrees with this interpretation, but again there are dissenters. The general view is that the rise in the emission of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, is a key factor in causing rising temperatures.
3. This warming is having, or will have, a disastrous effect on humans and the many other creatures with which they share the planet.
   
4. Given this, we should change our behaviour to mitigate the effects. Here we begin to move from scientific to moral and political questions. Some prominent voices have suggested that we should just "get used to the idea" - not a view, I suspect, that will be shared by people in countries such as Bangladesh and the Maldives, or cities like New Orleans, which could largely vanish with a rise of a few feet in sea level.

The fact is that propositions 1 through 3 above are generally agreed to be the best interpretation we have of the available data, but they are not "facts" in the sense that the Holocaust is. In the nature of scientific method (something sadly misunderstood by most laymen), they are open to challenge and alternative hypotheses. The debate will and should continue, and it is neither fair nor logical to stigmatise those who do not share the prevailing view as "deniers". ( I was intending to compare this scientific debate with those over the tobacco/cancer and HIV/AIDS findings, but will save that for another day.)

What does this mean for proposition 4? In my view, regardless of the fact that climate change may eventually be disproved, we should continue to act for now as if it is a proven fact. If it turns out to be a false alarm, we will have at least cleaned up much of our atmospheric pollution and developed new cleaner sources of energy, while doing no harm. If not, our actions now may make the difference betwen the survival and extinction of the human race.

Mass what?

For those of you who haven't yet encountered it, here is the mascot for the Shanghai 2010 Expo, as mentioned in hkorbust's comment on my previous post. It looks to me like one of those friendly nano-characters in commercials for cleaning fluids that chase away the nasty germs lurking in your kitchen and bathroom. Or does anyone have a better idea?

What Becomes a Leg End Most?

Well, the East Asian Games have started, and I hope they go well - and of course that Hong Kong performs well. But I am still waiting for someone to tell me what the Games' slogan is all about.

Be The Legend.

Be the what? First of all, who is it addressed to? If it's to the people of Hong Kong, how can we be the legend? A slogan is not enough - we need an instruction manual to go with it.

If it's to the athletes, well I wish them luck, but I very much doubt we're going to see any real sporting legends here. A true sporting legend is someone who dominates their sport internationally and sets the benchmark that others aspire to - and if they have a dash of charismatic flamboyance in their character, so much the better. Think W.G. Grace, Pele, Tiger Woods, Martina Navratilova, Muhammad Ali, Jesse Owens, Lance Armstrong, Michael Schumacher, Torvill and Dean.

No doubt we will see some keen competition here this month, but I don't expect much of it to be of that class. Which is not at all to disparage the efforts of those who do their best. Hong Kong may not have raised any global sporting legends (yet), but we have had our local sporting heroes, a couple of them world class: Lee Lai-shan, and probably our finest current sportsman, Wong Kam-po.

Anyway, good luck to all the competitors - but next time, give them a better slogan. And those mascots are pretty silly, too...