The Stamp Vultures

I;m sure I'm not the only shopper who's irritated by the stamp vultures - those people who hang around the exits from Wellcome supermarkets - particularly the one in Great George Street in Causeway Bay - pestering departing shoppers for their gift stamps.

What's with these people? When the giveaways were something with some intrinsic value, like cooking pots or luggage, I could understand it. But the current offerings are just unremarkable stuffed toys. How many Shreks can one person need?

Reach out and touch...

A fundamentalist Christian church in the US is planning to mark the anniversary of the September 11 World Trade Centre attacks by burning copies of the Koran - thereby ensuring that more Muslim fundamentalists will be enraged into carrying out further acts of terrorism.

This is pretty much the kind of intolerance and mutual lack of understanding one expects from religious fundamentalists on both sides of the Muslim/Christian divide. What makes it noteworthy is the name of the church concerned - the Dove World Outreach Centre. They certainly know how to reach out to the Muslim world, don't they? Perhaps some Muslims should reach out to them by burning copies of the Bible outside their church. All in the spirit of peace symbolised by the dove, of course.

Fact: Islam also recognises the Bible as a holy book - though fundamentalists on both sides seem unaware of this. Or indeed of anything much except their own bigotry.

Invasion of the Great White Dolphins

ATV News a minute ago brought the welcome news that a large pod of the rare Chinese White Dolphin has been spotted off Shantou - the largest group of the endangered creatures seen for some years. However, according to ATV, the dolphins can grow up to 350 metres in length - more than a third of a kilometre.

memo to ATV - try moving the decimal point two places to the left. Otherwise I shall start to wonder what the Daya Bay nuclear poweer station is pouring into the South China Sea.

Catherine's Cancer Karma

Actress Catherine Zeta-Jones has recently declared in interviews that she is furious with her husband Michael Douglas's doctors for not detecting his throat cancer earlier. And well she may be, but perhaps she should be turning her fury in a different direction. Zeta-Jones has often been quoted as a vocal advocate of the so-called right to smoke - and has even been reported to travel by private plane so that she and her husband can smoke during their journeys.

It is well known that smoking is the most common cause of throat cancer. If you spend your time defending and indulging in dangerous behaviour, perhaps you should look in the mirror when it comes back to bite you - or your loved ones - in the throat.

P.S To be fair to the Douglases, after posting this I read that they have been trying to quit smoking in recent years - with what degree of success, I have no idea. Anyway, this is not meant to be a personal attack - I have enjoyed both their movies over the years, and wish Michael a speedy recovery.

Blair in the Brown Stuff

It's been a while since we had one of our stories where, in the tradition of George Orwell, we translate the language of politics into straightforward English. Appropriately, today's example comes from the just-published memoirs of Tony Blair, never a man to say what he means straight out if he can make it sound better with a little obfuscation. To quote the BBC, speaking of his successor:

Blair argued that, had he sacked or demoted the Chancellor, "the party and the government would have been severely and immediately destabilised and his [Gordon Brown's] ascent to the office of Prime Minister would probably have been even faster".

In plain English, what this means is: If I'd sacked Brown, he would have stirred up the party against me and grabbed my job earlier. So what sounds on first reading like a principled decision in the interests of the party and the country turns out to be a self-serving calculation on how best Blair could hang on to his job at the top.

In tennis, six means something

Is there anyone at ATV News who understands tennis? After telling us in tonight's broadcast how Rafael Nadal had an "easy" first round victory at the US Open, they then gave us the score: 7-6, 7-6, 6-3. Need I say more?

P.S. TVB's late news talked about Nadal's "smooth path" to the second round, but did at least mention that he was on court for 3 hours - not usually a sign of an easy victory.

Understanding the Australian election

As both main parties in Australia struggle to form a viable minority government, another in our series of single sentence explanations that make everything clear. This one came from a friend in Melbourne.

"Neither major political party deserved to win - and they didn't!"

Easy for you to say

Following yesterday's tragic events in Manila, Hong Kong politicians from Chief Executive Donald Tsang downwards have been quick to express their anger at the handling of the hostage situation by the Philippines police. It is of course easy to sit back in a comfortable room in front of your big screen TV and pass judgement in such cases. Perhaps they should give a thought to whether the right course of action is so obvious when you are out there with inadequate protection facing an armed kidnapper in torrential rain. Yes, the Philippines police appeared to lack training, equipment and leadership - all the fault of politicians, not the officers themselves. Despite this, they put their lives on the line, facing gunfire and eventually successfully rescuing at least some of the hostages alive. Don't they deserve some credit for this?

As for the Hong Kong government placing the Philippines on its tourism blacklist, advising against travel to the country, this is a silly knee-jerk reaction. The proper use of this mechanism is in cases where the security situation in a country presents a general threat to visitors, such as in Bangkok a few months ago during the clashes between the government and redshirt protesters. There is no such general danger in the Philippines - the biggest risk most Hong Kong tourists face there, unless they visit the remoter parts of Mindanao, is that of the occasional pickpocket and the country's appalling driving standards, both of which can be found much closer to home.

This was a one-off incident of a disgruntled armed nutcase running amok and killing innocent people who just happened to be there at the time. Such incidents happen from time to time in many countries, including in recent years Canada, the UK, the USA and China. It is hard to imagine the Hong Kong government advising against travel to any of those countries had a similar event occurred there.

I'm In, You're Too Late

Another of the little ironies that make life interesting: both Australia's two main party leaders, promising to get tough on immigration as part of their campaign for today's election, themselves arrived in Australia as Pommie immigrants.

When I hear people complain about asylum seekers, I think of my Huguenot ancestors - French Protestants who fled to England to escape persecution by the Catholic church - the same church, renowned for rampant child abuse, that would-be Aussie PN Tony Abbot belongs to.

Understanding Afghanistan

Sometimes one sentence is all you need to make sense of a complex situation. Last year in England I happened to ride in a taxi driven by an Afghan refugee. We got chatting, and he told me "All the politicians in my country are bandits, thieves and warlords". Just bear that in mind when watching the news.

Trouble and strife

Probably the silliest story of the week comes from Italy, where a mother complained to the police that a young woman on the beach was "troubling" her two sons, aged 12 and 14, by rubbing suntan oil into her "ample" breasts in a sensuous manner.

Having been a teenage boy myself, I can assure the mother that the only thing troubling her boys was probably their mother's presence at the scene.

"Used to wear iron shoes with ease"

Watching Aljazeera a couple of days ago, I saw a trailer for a coming programme on the experiences of a Liberian immigrant to the USA. What struck me about this is that the state of Liberia was founded as a refuge in their ancestral continent for freed slaves from the harsh treatment and oppression they faced in America. As a keen student of the ironies of history, I find it an interesting comment on changed racial attitudes in the USA that the flow of people is now in the other direction.

A tunnel too far

Almost the first thing you learn when studying economics is the basic law of supply and demand. Simply put, lower prices increase demand, higher prices reduce it where substitutes are available.

For some reason, the management of the Western Harbour Tinnel seems never to have grasped this elementary rule. Their response to years of losses has always been, not to lower tolls in the hope of attracting more business, but to raise them even further, thereby driving yet more potential users to divert to the congested but much more affordable Cross-Harbour Tunnel between Hung Hom and Causeway Bay instead.

From tomorrow Western Harbour Tunnel fees, already the highest among the three tunnels beneath the harbour, will go up yet again. This could be an indication of chronic stupidity, but I suspect there is another agenda behind it. The company may figure that the government, exasperated by the impact of CHT congestion on traffic management, will eventually solve its problems by taking the Western Tunnel off its hands, implying that the company would receive substantial compensation and rid itself of a loss-making asset. Watch this space.

Silly Vanilli

32 years on, it emerges in a legal case that Belgian singer Plastic Bertrand did not actually sing on his big hit "Ca Plane Pour Moi". Never mind, it's still a fun record.

These days, of course, it makes no difference who actually sings on a pop record. Today's over-processed production style makes every song sound computer-generated anyway.

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

You learn something new every day

Did you know that a zebra's stripes form concentric rings around the base of its tail? No? Neither did I until I came face to face - well, face to backside - with this specimen.


So much to learn, so little time...

A small start

Israel is reported to have destroyed the homes of 300 Bedouin villagers in the Negev Desert which it claims were illegally built.

It is good news that Israel has made a start on destroying homes constructed illegally. Now perhaps they will get to work on demolishing the thousands of Jewish settlements erected on stolen Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, in clear violation of international law. But I'm not holding my breath....

Way off course

Oddest headline of the day: from the BBC News website, Sailor found dead in Afghanistan. Considering Afghanistan is a landlocked country, you'd have great difficulty sailing there!

The actual story, when read, turns out to be about the death of a US Navy man serving with the American forces there. Which brings us to the Wikileaks release of numerous documents suggesting that America's war effort in that country is also well of course. However, is anyone really surprised that the war is apparently going less well than we are led to believe from public statements? War is a matter of psychology as well as brute force; success depends partly on demoralising the enemy, so why would you want to let them know how badly they're hurting you?

The last place to look

A few months ago I lost my sunglasses - a rather good pair. I looked everywhere - in every drawer and bag I could possibly have left them in - but to no avail. Reluctantly (and expensively, because I need prescription lenses) I finally gave up and bought a new pair.

This morning, in preparation for a coming trip, I took out my video camera to recharge the battery, opened up the camera case, and there were my old sunglasses! I must have popped them in there while filming on our last trip, but really, who woulda thunka looking there? Oh well...

My country 'tisn't of thee

As the World Cup kicks off in South Africa, it is hard to imagine any participating nation discouraging its citizens from flying the national flag in support of their team. Any nation, that is, except my native land, where my departure has clearly lowered the national average IQ even more than I previously thought.

English - as opposed to British - nationalism is rarely as fervent as the Scottish and Welsh varieties - there is no English Nationalist Party in Parliament, and unlike Scotland and Wales, England has no Parliament of its own. Only major sporting events generally bring out displays of English patriotism, when the cross of Saint George, England's patron saint, is seen more often than the United Kingdom's Union Flag ( as the Union Jack is properly called).

One of the reasons being given by killjoys for banning the flying of the flag is fears that it might appear racist. Where do these people live? Clearly they haven't noticed that England's football team has been racially integrated for two decades - indeed, several black players have captained it over the years, and mixed-race player Rio Ferdinand would be doing so in this tournament had he not been injured.

It is true that members of the odious British National Party like to cloak themselves in the flag, but singer Billy Bragg neatly put their bullshit into perspective when he pointed out that their anti-immigration policies would make St George, born in the Middle East, unwelcome in England. (Ironically, the YouTube clip was apparently posted by a BNP supporter). But then logic has never been racists' strong point - I am old enough to remember people arguing that no black player would ever be good enough to play for England - at the very time when Pele (certainly not white) was establishing his reputation as the greatest footballer of all time.

Chutzpah

Chutzpah: (Yiddish) unbelievable gall; insolence; audacity, effrontery

A multinational group of unarmed volunteers on an aid mission are sailing peacefully in international waters when a large gang of heavily armed men board their ships, shoot several of them dead, detain the rest, seize their vessels by force, confiscate their cargo of humanitarian supplies (which is found to contain no weapons), and steal their personal possessions. The legal name for this type of action is of course piracy. Some of those on board may have forcibly resisted the pirate incursion, as they are legally entitled to do, though accounts differ on this.

Just another day in the Middle East - but what males the episode even more bizarre is that the pirates then turn up at the UN Security Council claiming that their victims were in breach of international law and painting themselves as the victims of unwarranted violence. Chutzpah is not a word I use myself, but in this case I am irresistibly reminded of its Hebrew origins.

"Welcome to America, Captain Hook"

Though most countries express outrage, the USA, so quick to condemn piracy when it occurs off Somalia, is strangely hesitant to condemn the actions of the pirates on this occasion. Perhaps the next step should be for American peace activists to mount their own aid mission to Gaza in an American-registered ship. If it receives the same treatment, I wonder if public opinion in America will still let Israel get away with murder?