Headline Blues

All I usually see of the South China Morning Post website is its headlines, because you need to subscribe to read the full stories on its website, and I don't.  But those are a most peculiar mix.  On the one hand, there are some - usually one or two a day - that would be more at home in Fashion Week than a serious newspaper.  Today's example, Louis Vuitton holds reopening party at Pacific Place, may be of interest to some, but it's hardly headline news.  Do the companies they promote so blatantly pay them for this publicity?

Others could come straight our of the People's Daily: Xi Jinping wins support with his forceful yet peace-driven persona sounds like a puff piece for the next Chinese President.  Or is there an implied hint of criticism here?  After all persona, the dictionary tells us, means "a person's perceived or evident personality, as that of a well-known official, actor or celebrity; personal image; public role".  But more deeply, in Jungian psychology, it means "the mask or façade presented to satisfy the demands of the situation or the environment and not representing the inner personality of the individual".  In other words, Xi is putting on a face which is winning him public popularity, but one one knows his real thoughts.  Sounds like another leader closer to home (though he can hardly be said to be winning support!)

Coming back to the SCMP, then we have its readers' polls which invariably ask the wrong question.  Today's, for example, asks "Do you support legalising euthanasia in Hong Kong?"  I would want to see the word voluntary or involuntary in front of "euthanasia" before I could answer that question, and my answer would be different depending on which of the two words appeared.  Such polls tend to over-simplify complex issues, so that I often want to respond with an essay or a supplementary question rather than simply a "Yes or No".  Older British readers may remember Professor Joad on Brains Trust, who invariably opened his answer to any question with "it depends what you mean by..."

There's a chance peace may come

I was struck by the juxtaposition of two headlines on the South China Morning Post website this morning.  One says

China's rise is peaceful, Xi Jinping tells foreign experts

The new Communist Party general secretary, Xi Jinping, assured foreign experts in Beijing yesterday that China was not seeking hegemony and would continue to open up to the world.

Immediately below it, the next story is:

Xi calls on P.L.A. to get combat ready

The People's Liberation Army Air Force finished a large-scale, 12-day military drill in the Gobi Desert on Friday that chimed with new Central Military Commission (CMC) chief Xi Jinping's emphasis...

Ready for what?  An alarming outbreak of peace?

Talking to the oppressor

The UN General Assembly's recognition of Palestine as a "non-member observer state" is long overdue.  Every sensible person recognises that the so-called two-state solution is the only realistic way out of the Middle East impasse.  Everyone, it seems, except the US government, which continues to insist that Palestinian statehood can only come through negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel.

There are times in human history when an oppressed people obtains its freedom through negotiations with its oppressor - South Africa comes to mind.  But that moment usually comes only when the oppressor is under such intense pressure that the status quo is clearly no longer supportable. That generally comes as a result of years of resistance and building up strong international support.  To tell the Palestinians they cannot do everything in their power to put pressure on Israel is merely to side with the unjust Israeli occupation under which the Palestinians have suffered for more than half a century.  President Obama should know better.

Eats Stabs and Leaves

An "Eats Shoots and Leaves" moment on last night's TVB news, reporting on the arrest of a woman suspected of stabbing her husband to death:
"Police said the woman had a history of mental illness and took away the knife for further investigation."

Chief Executive CY Leung explains the illegal structures at his home

Oh, is that where I live?  I'd forgotten...

[Picture borrowed from the SCMP].

In Place of Knowledge

I was somewhat amused to see that one member of the new Chinese leadership line-up, Zhang Dejiang, studied Economics at Kim Il-Sung University in North Korea.  Given that communist North Korea has possibly the world's worst-run economy, unable to even keep its own people fed, this would probably be about as useful as studying Evolution at Bob Jones University in the USA.  The country is also classified by the Committee to Protect Journalists as the second most censored country in the world,

Your Generosity Astounds Me!

Now here's an irresistible discount from a restaurant in Knutsford Terrace:

Small World

Seeing the manager of the San Francisco Giants bragging of his team being "world champions" on TV after winning the World Series, I couldn't help but want to ask him: Which countries did you beat to achieve that?

Money for Nothing

My sympathies on most issues are usually with the pan-democrats in LegCo rather than with the Hong Kong government, but their call to scrap the means test on the government's proposed Old Age Living Allowance raises a simple question that none of them has yet answered to my satisfaction.  As a taxpayer, I am happy to contribute to the support of those elderly people in real need.  But what the hell gives anyone the right to take my hard-earned money and give it to people who don't need it?

Filibuster or not, the government should stand firm on this one.

And there it is!

I've just been playing around with Blogger's template options, so this post brings a new look to the blog.  In the conversion process, Blogger somehow lost my list of blogs and quote at the right side, but they were overdue for an update anyway, so I'll work out how to restore them later.

Apart from the colour scheme, the biggest change you'll see is the picture above, which is of the beach I think of as my private beach.  Of course I don't actually own it, but it's far enough off the beaten track in Hong Kong that relatively few people know of it.  And no I'm not going to tell you where it is - if I did, it wouldn't be private, would it?

Diseased Minds

The more I think about Richard Mourdock's views, the more bizarre they seem (though he now claims they've been misinterpreted).  If he believes that the biological consequences of rape are God's will, then wouldn't it also be God's will if the rape victim contracted HIV as a result?  His God maybe; but not any god I would choose to worship.

The eminently sensible Robert Reich says that "A democracy needs at least two sane political parties".  With members like this, it's looking increasingly as if America is one sane party short of a democracy..

What's wrong with these people?

Following Todd Akin's support for punishing rape victims by making them carry the rapist's child to term in case of pregnancy, another Republican candidate has gone even further, with Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock declaring that "even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."

What next: if pregnancy from rape is something God intended, then how about death from murder?  What's wrong with these people?

The Rime of the Missing Mariner

The Hong Kong government has acted quickly to appoint a Commission of Inquiry into the Lamma ferry disaster which killed 39 people.  Its mandate is to look into the causes of the accident, review maritime safety conditions, and recommend measures to be taken to avoid similar tragedies in future.  The Commission has been given six months to complete its work.

With all due respect to the two-man panel appointed - a respected senior judge and a former Director of Audit, who will certainly perform their duties conscientiously - there seems to be a glaring omission here.  In view of the fact that much of the evidence examined will inevitably be technical in nature, wouldn't it be desirable for the panel to include at least one member with expertise in maritime affairs?  Or is this just another of the many occasions on which something that seems obvious to me does not to anyone else?

Without Exception - Except...

US Republican Representative Joe Walsh (not the rock star of the same name) is, he says, "pro-life without exception".  And in his view that means not only the widely accepted exceptions for rape and incest, but even cases where the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother.  Like his party colleague Todd Akin, who famously and wrongly argued that women's bodies are able to prevent pregnancy in cases of rape, Walsh shows an alarming ignorance of female physiology.  Apparently he believes that medicine has advanced to the point where no woman's life is endangered by pregnancy.

If Walsh had been able to impose his ignorance on my sister-in-law, who suffered an ectopic pregnancy a few years ago, she would be dead now instead of the healthy mother of two young children born subsequent to the operation that saved her.  I can't help wondering why any woman would support the Republican Party when such ignorant prejudice is becoming increasingly characteristic of its leading figures.

In fact I have difficulty understanding the entire mentality of the so-called pro-life movement.  The same people who are most fiercely opposed to abortion in any circumstances are often also opposed to sex education and even to convenient access to contraception, making it likely that more women will experience unwanted pregnancies which they will seek to terminate.

But the contradictions don't end there.  If Walsh is really "pro-life without exception", why does he belong to the party that plans a massive increase in America's military budget (contrary to its claims to want to reduce the country's budget deficit).  And why is it also the party more supportive of capital punishment?  It seems that "without exception" really means "without exception unless the child is already born, in which case it's OK to put them into uniform and send them off to be cannon fodder somewhere; or OK to strap them to a gurney and inject them with lethal drugs".  And this in the name of a god who said "blessed are the peacemakers" and commanded his followers to love their enemies.

Whether all this is hypocrisy or just stupidity, I will leave you to decide.  But I hope American electors will think about it when they choose who to vote for this year.

Fame At Last!

Thanks to Ulaca for naming this "Most Sensible Blog" - though I'm not sure everyone I know would agree!  Now I am going to be flooded with new readers (possibly), I may even get around to the long overdue task of updating my blogroll.  Half of those listed are probably defunct by now.

Which Side Are You On?

If you or I, as ordinary citizens, are asked whether we belong to a political party, we are perfectly entitled to answer "None of your business".  But if we put ourselves up for public office, this entitlement vanishes.  Anyone who seeks the public's trust should be required to disclose their true allegiances.

Tsang Yok-shing's refusal yesterday, during questioning by his fellow legislators, to disclose whether or not he is a member of the Chinese Communist Party makes him unfit to hold the Legislative Council Chairmanship.  Unlike the banana-throwing wing of the pan-democratic camp, whose "all or nothing" stance will leave us with nothing, I believe Hong Kong needs to cooperate and compromise with Beijing to achieve progress.  But in the nature of "One Country, Two Systems", there will be times when Hong Kong's interests and Beijing's do not coincide.  At such times we need to be confident that our public officials are standing up for our interests, not serving those of another power.  Tsang's refusal (unlike Leung Chun-ying's) to give that assurance makes him unworthy of public trust.

That Sinking Feeling

The day after the Lamma IV sinking last week, which has now claimed 39 lives, I was walking through Causeway Bay MTR station and found long swathes of one tunnel wall taken up by advertising for the Venetian Macau, which is holding a Titanic package promotion.  This features a Titanic Exhibition and a Human Bodies Exhibition.  Of course they couldn't have foreseen last week's events, but could there possibly be more insensitive timing?

Public Relations - Contrast and Compare

It will probably be many months before the public inquiry into Monday's tragic ferry disaster officially assigns blame for the fatal collision, but one thing that's already clear is that it has been a Public Relations disaster for Hongkong and Kowloon Ferry.  While Hongkong Electric was quick off the mark in bringing out senior figures - including the company's ultimate owner Li-Ka-shing - to answer questions, show concern, express sympathy for the dead and injured and their families, and promise practical assistance, it took HKF around 24 hours to put out a statement and another half a day before they held a press conference.

By this time, quotes from various sources had managed to plant an impression in the public mind - and some sections of the media - that the HKF ferry - the Sea Smooth - rammed into the Lamma IV, then sped away from the sinking vessel without trying to assist the passengers.  I suspect this is a distorted and simplistic account of the evening's events.   As Ulaca points out, we don't yet know which vessel was in the wrong place - perhaps both.  But beyond this, the captain of the Sea Smooth - which was also damaged in the collision and had injured passengers on board - may well have feared that his own vessel would sink as well.  In that case, his decision to head on to port and disembark his passengers as quickly as possible would make more sense than taking people off one sinking ship onto another.

This is of course speculation - but so is the other version of events.   Anyway, what should HKF have done that they didn't do, and which the mighty Hutchison empire's PR machine did so effectively?

• In the event of a major incident, make senior executives available to the media as soon as possible.
• Don't wait until all the facts are known - admit frankly that the incident is still being investigated, and express willingness to cooperate fully with any inquiry.
• Express sympathy for the victims.
• Offer them practical help (financial or otherwise) "without prejudice" (i.e. without acknowledging any responsibility for their plight until the facts become clearer).
• If an unfavourable version of events is circulating, characterise this as speculation and suggest an alternative possible scenario which casts your staff in a more favourable light, while repeating that the facts are not yet known.

Pretty basic crisis management, really.

See also Joyce's post:

A Drop of the English Stuff

Methinks the Sun's reporter on the celebration of "Arthur's Day" in Ireland has had a drop too much of what she writes about.  She reports that Arthur Guinness's "ancestor Desmond Guinness and wife Penny unveiled a new Arthur Guinness Square in Leixlip".  Unless Desmond and his wife are about 300 years old, I think that should be "descendant"!

The irony in all this celebration of Ireland's most famous export is that Guinness is no longer Irish.  For some years now it's been owned by London-based multinational conglomerate Diageo, which also owns many other famous drink brands.  From the Wikipedia description, it sounds as predatory and unlovable as any other giant conglomerate.  Here in Hong Kong, it quietly reduced the strength of Guinness Foreign Extra Stout - the version of the drink long established in the territory - from 7.5% to 5% some years back without cutting the price to match.  Not very extra, is it?  Meanies!  Incidentally most of the Guinness sold here comes from the company's brewery in Malaysia - only 6,700 odd miles from Ireland.

However, with Ireland's other two big breweries - Beamish and Murphy's - also in the hands of a foreign multinational, Heineken, the small Porterhouse chain is now free to advertise itself as "Ireland's largest Irish-owned brewery".  And good luck to them - their beers are better.  The picture above was taken in their London pub in Covent Garden last month.

Of which day, exactly?

Spotted in the blog list in the HKSAR Blog:

Typo of the Day

Herioc* (for Heroic*)

4 days ago

Big fleas have little fleas...

I'm no royalist - far from it - but it's hard not to sympathise with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge  over a French magazine's publication of topless photos of Kate.  If the Royal Family are parasites, as many would consider them, what does that make the paparazzi who prey on them?

Irish newspaper editor Michael O'Kane, who reprinted the pictures in his organ, commented that he treated them no differently than photos of other celebrities like Rihanna and Lady Gaga.  The difference is that Rihanna and Gaga's bodily exposure is a calculated move to attract more publicity in order to advance their careers.  Kate, by contrast, was sunbathing with her husband in a remote private garden, unaware that a peeping tom was lurking in the bushes a mile away with a super-telephoto lens.  If O'Kane can't understand the difference, then he's too stupid to be a journalist, let alone an editor.

it goes without saying

Just a reminder, if you're a Hong Kong resident and care about the territory's future, get out there today and vote!

Con-fusion

Several decades ago I made the memorable journey across what was then the Soviet Union by the Trans-Siberian Express.  At breakfast time the Brits and Australians aboard would bring out their little pots of Marmite and Vegemite and argue the respective merits of these two concoctions.

Then I just heard a couple of days ago that some people in Singapore eat Marmite congee.  How the British Empire lingers...

Skewered by his own petard

Bill Clinton's speech at the Democratic National Convention urged voters to give President Barack Obama another 4 years in office.  Clinton compared Obama's position with his own presidential term, arguing that Obama inherited a worse mess than he did and therefore needed more time to correct it.

According to last night's TVB News, the Republican response was to claim that Clinton owed his successful management of the economy to his ability to cooperate with the Republicans.  Since the current Republican leadership has largely refused to cooperate meaningfully with Obama on anything at all, this is tantamount to admitting their own responsibility for Obama's economic failures.  But I suspect they are too stupid to realise the irony of their own argument.

Of course, stupidity is not a one-sided prerogative.  The Democratic leadership, ignoring vocal opposition from the floor of the Convention, forced through an addition to the party platform declaring both that "Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel" and that "Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations" - otherwise known as wanting to have your cake and eat it, and definitely unhelpful to Middle East peace efforts, not to mention contrary to international law which recognises the pre-1967 borders under which East Jerusalem is not part of Israel.

Awe-ful error

How could I have published yesterday's post and not seized the opportunity to make fun of the other indispensable word in the teenage vocabulary (not just by Americans, though they tend to be the worst offenders)?  I, like, totally apologise for this awesome omission.

How to speak American

Overheard in Delft, the Netherlands, recently - an American visitor looking at an old church tower with a pronounced tilt to one side: "It's, like, totally leaning!".

Apparently "totally" is American for about 2 metres from the vertical.  Or like it, anyway.

Incidentally the artist Vermeer is buried in the church, which is totally still standing.

Unhygienic Europe

Commonly observed in Europe: woman (or sometimes man) sits down at a restaurant table and casually deposits bag on the ground beside seat, down among the doggie doo and discarded chewing gun. Later picks up bag and places it on lap to get something out. Subsequently rests hands on lap before eating with same hands.


I hope I'm not being racist here, just making a cultural observation, but the Hong Kong way of finding a spare chair, window ledge or other relatively clean surface on which to deposit one's bag does seem considerably more hygienic. Yet if you accused the European woman of being dirty she'd probably be shocked and deny it vigorously. Every culture has its blind spots.

Money for nothing and waste for the landfill

Many years ago in 1986 I bought one board lot of shares in the Cafe de Coral fast food restaurant chain when the company had its IPO.  A few years later I sold the shares, but the company still  kept sending me dividend cheques and reports.  I wrote to the share registrar telling them I'd sold the shares, but they replied that the new owner had not registered them and therefore so far as they were concerned I was still the registered owner.  I have no idea why someone would buy shares and not bother to register them or collect the dividends, but the result is that for 20-odd years I have been receiving dividends on shares I no longer own.

Over those years, the company has done well (unlike other shares I have owned - one company went bust; another's shares are so worthless they would cost me more in broker's fees to sell than the amount I could sell them for) - well enough that I wish I'd bought more shares in the first place - 25 years of increased turnover, and continuous profit growth until Hong Kong's minimum wage law finally dented this record.

However, the downside of still receiving the dividends is that I still receive the company's reports.  These have grown with the business - having once been magazine-sized, the latest is 320 pages long and the thickness of a telephone directory, half in English and half in Chinese.  How many of these pages do I read?  Just one - the highlights, to see how the company is doing and what dividend it will pay.

I strongly suspect that many small shareholders only glance at the highlights, which means that most of these pages are totally wasted.  Ironically, the cover of Cafe de Coral's latest annual report depicts a grove of fruit trees - ironic because at least that many trees were probably cut down to print it.  And while my copy goes straight to the recuycle bin, not all shareholders are so environmentally consciopus and a fair percentage of copies probably end up in landfills.

What can be done about this enormous waste of resources, with its negative impact on the environment?  Hong Kong Stock Exchange rules permit a company to print its report in English only, with a separate Chinese translation available to shareholders on request, but so far as I know, few companies take advantage of this.  But even that is not enough - why can't companies do as the London Exchange allows its listed companies to do: send out a brief highlights document only and send the full report only to shareholders who specifically request it?  After all, every company's full report is posted on its website anyway.

If we truly want to be "Asia's World City", shouldn't we be taking better care of the world?.

Bad Dreams

The official video celebrating the 15th anniversary of Hong Kong's reunion with China - "Memorable Moments" - perfectly illustrates the widening gap between government rhetoric and on-the-street reality in the SAR.  Almost the first shot depicts three goose-stepping PLA soldiers.  Whatever else Hong Kong people may dream about, it's certainly not the PLA, except perhaps in their nightmares on June 4th.

Far more in tune with the city's current mood is the parody version, "Who's Killing Our Dreams?"  It was perhaps with this kind of production in mind that the government recently tried - fortunately without success in the face of fierce public opposition - to introduce an amendment to the copyright ordinance that would have outlawed parodies.  They will probably try again.

Plodding towards Democracy

Isn't it a depressing commentary on Hong Kong's progress towards the democracy supposedly promised to us by the Basic Law that the annual July 1st democracy march has, after ten years, become a local institution?  Far from moving towards democracy, we seem to be going backwards, with the forcing through LegCo of the government's iniquitous by-elections bill.

One new (to me, anyway) feature of this year's march was the number of people carrying the old colonial flag of Hong Kong - an extremely blunt critique of 15 years of Chinese rule.  I wonder what Queen Victoria was thinking about it, up there on her throne above the masses?

And how on earth do the police come up with their figures for the number of participants on this thing?  Their estimate of 62,000 is roughly 1,5 times the capacity of the Hong Kong Stadium.  Now, visualise everyone in the stadium, plus half as many again, and compare that with the turnout for the march.  A friend of mine was one of the first people to reach the government offices around 5:30 pm.  I didn't get there until 8pm, with at least a third of the procession still behind me.  The organisers' estimate of 400,000 may be overstated, but it's certainly closer to reality than the "official" figure.  Maybe the Hong Kong government wants to avoid frightening the Beijing government by letting them know just how pissed off local people really are with their rulers.

The more things change, the more they remain the same

• Women in Hong Kong's population: 51%.
• Women in incoming Chief Executive CY Leung's cabinet: 5.56%.
• One of CY Leung's election promises: to create a more inclusive society.

Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set

While Europe's economy continues to self-destruct, the continent seems to be ever-expanding geographically.  Consider the evidence:

• Turkey, only a small part of which is in Europe, is applying for membership of the European Union.  While it has no current intention of doing so, it is possible that the Russian Federation, the majority of which is in Asia, could do the same.
• Israel has long competed as a European country in international sports (mainly because most of its Middle Eastern neighbours don't want to welcome it to regional contests so long as it continues to oppress the Palestinians).
• The BBC News website a couple of days ago listed the Qatar shopping mall fire under "Europe" rather than "The Middle East".
• The recent Eurovision Song Contest was hosted by Azerbaijan, which last time I looked was closer to Central Asia, being east of Turkey and just north of Iran..

So where does Europe end?  And where will it end if this process continues?

At least we don't need to worry about what will happen to Hong Kong in 2047 when the "One Country, Two Systems" agreement ends.  At Europe's current rate of expansion, by then we will probably be part of the EU already!

Is insulting Hong Kong people good for business?

Following the recent Dolce & Gabbana case, where the Italian fashion chain kicked up a storm by telling local people that only mainland visitors were allowed to photograph its flagship store in Canton Road, another international fashion chain appears to share the view that insulting Hong Kong people is a smart business move.  French chain Agnes b opened a new cafe in Tseung Kwan O with menus in English and simplified Chinese (as used on the mainland) only, triggering another wave of outrage on the local blogscape.  This kind of decision can only exacerbate the growing feeling among Hongkongers that mainland money is making them second class citizens in their own home.

Dolce & Gabbana took weeks to eventually apologise.  Agnes b has been quicker off the mark and already promised to change its menus to include traditional Chinese.

What I find ironic is that these luxury chains spend millions of dollars each year to build and promote their brand names around the world, only to discredit them through such thoughtless and discriminatory actions.  Are they totally brainless, or are these decisions taken thousands of miles away by executives with no sensitivity to the local cultures of the places where they operate?

Houston, we have a problem

Memo to Hong Kong's TV stations: Yes, I know you will want to pay tribute to the late Whitney Houston, and that's fine, but could you please not do so by subjecting us to the 4,378th rerun of The Bodyguard?  She did make other movies, you know - why not give Hong Kong people a chance to see them?

In sickness or in health

Sitting waiting to be served in the bank a couple of days ago, I was idling through Fortune Magazine's Special Issue Investment Guide 2012 when I came across this choice quote from Rajiv Jain:

High quality equities are the place to be - the Coca-Colas, the McDonald's, the BATs of the world.

(For those who don't know, BAT is British-American Tobacco.)

It's a sad commentary on the world that the companies making healthy profits in a sick economy are those dedicated to filling their customers with unhealthy crap.

Greenwash

No matter how many pictures of trees Chinachem may erect on their construction sites, the reality is they are covering another bit of Hong Kong with concrete. I know we need more housing, but let's not pretend that Hong Kong's future will be green unless we make some big changes.

Making it Better: Friends of the Earth (Hong Kong).

Underwater meditation

First of all "Kung Hei Fat Choi" and a happy year of the dragon to all my readers. Or perhaps I should say "Kung Si Fat Choi" in case a disgruntled mainland professor scolds me for not using Mandarin.

A heading on the South China Morning Post website today says "Old habits threaten giant mantra ray". Presumably the creature swims along the seabed chanting "Om mani padme hum" to itself.

But it's not only in Hong Kong that one finds such errors. The once-impeccable BBC News website has the heading "Murray though as opponent retires" today. I guess they are though with sub-editing.

Finally someone has reviewed this blog and "damned me with faint praise". While calling it "a very stereotypical HK blog by a male expat from the British Isle" (there's only one?), he does at least concede that my writing "is at least borderline literary". For these small mercies, thanks. Happy new year!

Stilton Blues

As most people know, Europe has "Protected Designation of Origin" laws designed to protect the names of distinctive local foods and drinks from being copied elsewhere. Champagne, for example, can only come from the Champagne region of France; and Newcastle Brown Ale could at one time only come from Newcastle, until its brewer applied in 2004 to cancel its protected status because they wanted to move the brewery across the river out of the city. (This is the same unlovely company, then called Scottish & Newcastle, that also closed its last brewery in Scotland, leading one writer to suggest that it should change its name to Ampersand, since that was the only valid part of the name left.)

Usually this system works well, though some names had already become so widely (ab)used that it was impossible to save them. Numerous inferior cheeses around the world bear the name Cheddar, for instance, though the finest examples of the style are still produced on farms around the Somerset village of that name.

Cheddar can at least still produce its local speciality, though not exclusively. Not so lucky is the Cambridgeshire village of Stilton, where the magnificent blue cheese of that name was first sold. The current landlord of the historic Bell Inn, where the cheese originally came to fame, commendably wants to sell locally produced blue cheese. Unfortunately for him, Stilton can by law only be produced in the three counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire (where the Inn's owner in the early 1700s obtained his first supplies) or Nottinghamshire. So the Bell Inn can sell the product it is most famous for, but only under a different name. Crazy, huh?

Personally, as much as I love Stilton, I find Blue Wensleydale even more delicious, though often hard to find. That is, believe it or not, still made in Wensleydale.

Fleet Street and Sour

The Guardian newspaper in Britain is so notorious for its frequent typos that Private Eye long ago dubbed it The Grauniad. Just now I Googled "Matt Driscoll" (a British sports journalist) after reading about him in a BBC story. Driscoll challenged his harassment and sacking by Rupert Murdoch's now defunct News of the World newspaper after he fell ill, and won a court settlement of £792,736 - good for him!

But that's not the point of this story - what is, is the extract turned up by Google from the Guardian blog: "Matt Driscoll is now being taken [by Britain's Leveson inquiry into press ethics] through his 10 year stint at the NoW chronologically. He worked under sour editors - Phil Hall, then Rebekah Wade, ..." Well, it's hardly surprising they're sour after the revelations about the paper's shameful behaviour under some of them which led to its closure.

World's Worst Brand Names

What's your brand called? "Nipple Silly". Yeah, sure.

Even worse (sorry for the poor picture quality):


This is one of the packets of tissue they give away free when you buy a newspaper. They probably have to give it away - would you purchase from someone who tells you "Our brand is BS"?!

Google this

Try this: Google "Epson scanners" and see what comes up first.

Now if I type in "scanners", I don't mind Google taking money from HP to place theirs ahead of others. But when I specifically search for Epson, I don't want to see HP at the top of the list. In fact, Epson only comes 4th. True, Google identifies the first 3 entries as ads, but still...

It doesn't feel right to me. What do you think?

Here comes the Terminator

From a BBC story about the Korean robotics industry:

The South Korean defence company DoDAAM is also developing robotic gun turrets for export which can be programmed to open fire automatically.

Does this sound to you like the beginning of Skynet? And who are they exporting them to?

Have these people never sen Dr Strangelove?

Handy Health Hint

Shown on a screen on the Hong Kong side of the Lo Wu border crossing:

Prevent influenza
Wash hand frequently

Yes, but which hand - left or right? Decisions, decisions...

And while we're on the subject of public announcements, who changed the MTR announcements from "This train will terminate at..." to "This train will stop service at..." Unless it's the last train of the day, it is more likely to go back in the opposite direction than to stop service when it reaches the terminus.

Coach Trip to the Dentist

When setting the video recorder for another programme the other day, I caught a few minutes of Coach Trip by chance. For those who don't know this programme, it's a kind of "Big Brother on Wheels" - the idea is to dump a bunch of publicity-hungry strangers together in an artificial environment, in this case a coach tour around the sights of Europe, and hope to derive entertaining television from their ego trips and petty squabbles.

As with all "reality TV", it bears about as much relation to reality as Britney Spears does to real music, and what I saw convinced me that I would never want any of the participants as travelling companions. But what struck me particularly about it was that almost all the participants appeared to have awful teeth. I wonder if the producers secretly intended it as a searing satire on the sad state of British dentistry?

Football on Ice?

Since I often make fun of ATV News's errors here, it's a pleasant change to have a go at their rival TVB instead. Listen guys, when you're talking about the NFL (National Football League - or at least what Americans call football), it may not be a good idea to display the NHL (National Hockey League) logo on the screen. Clue: if they're playing on a green surface, it's not ice.

Signs of the Times in China

One of the things that makes visits to China interesting is the signs there, either for their curious English , or for what they reveal of Chinese thinking. The last line of this direction sign in Jinan Airport, for example, tells you all you need to know about flying in China.


Then there is this. "Bumf" originally meant bumfodder or toilet paper in English usage, but then came to be applied more commonly as a slang term (now somewhat archaic) for unnecessary paper such as unwanted circulars, junk mail, pointless memoranda and the like. It seems that someone in China wants to restore its original meaning.

British Broadcasting Miscorporation

What's up with the BBC these days? From a time when "BBC English" indicated the highest standards of grammar and punctuation, it seems to have declined to a point where not even its headlines get properly proofread. Here are some random examples of scrambled English found on the BBC News website today:

Ohio animal Terry Thompson owner shot himself - police

The uprising that eventually overthrew him started in Libya's February 2011 in second city Benghazi,

Another story spells skis as skies and minuscule as miniscule (the word comes from the same root as minus, not miniature).

Has the BBC's budget been cut to the point where correct English is no longer affordable!

Fanning the Flames

Does anyone in Hong Kong really believe Rita Fan's claim that she knows little of what happened in Beijing in June 1989? Asked about the Tiananmen massacre, she said she was in Hawaii at the time and only knew what she saw on CNN. But considering that CNN was giving an almost literally blow-by-blow account of the events as they happened, does Fan really think she would have learned more if she had been watching CCTV? Furthermore, as a member of China's parliament (I do not say a representative of Hong Kong to it, since Hong Kong people have no say in who supposedly "represents" them), is it plausible that she has not bothered to acquaint herself with the details of one of the pivotal events of modern Chinese history?

All this would be academic if Fan were not a probable candidate for the post of next Chief Executive of Hong Kong. But since she is, do we want to be led by a woman who appears more concerned with not contradicting Beijing's official line on the massacre - sorry, "unfortunate incident" - of June 4th 1989 than with finding out the truth? Or, if we accept her story, by a woman who can't be bothered to do her political homework? Either way, I think not.

Flying the Flag

I went to the British Consulate in Hong Kong this week to renew my passport. The consular officer who processed my application (politely, quickly and efficiently) was wearing a Mickey Mouse tie.

I'm sure this says something about the British government, but I'm not sure what.

Syn Tax

A couple of weeks ago, ATV News unwittingly gave a perfect illustration of why users of English need to pay attention to syntax.

"Several men were arrested following an investigation into cigarette smuggling by Customs officers"

was their story. Unless Hong Kong's Customs officers are far more corrupt than I believe they are, I think what they really meant was:

"Several men were arrested following an investigation by Customs officers into cigarette smuggling".

Paying for Trains

Some LegCo members have recently been objecting to the government's policy of granting land for development by the MTR Corporation to fund the construction of the South Island Line. The problem with this is that they don't seem to be offering any alternative.

No one who observes the air pollution and traffic congestion in Hong Kong can doubt that the territory's railway network needs to be extended. And most would agree that it makes sense to integrate any extension with the existing network, which means putting it under the MTR rather than a new operator.

If we accept these assumptions, the several planned new lines will not build themselves. Given the vast sums of money required to construct them, what is the least painful way of financing these developments? The government could hand out cash to cover the cost, which means taxpayers would bear the burden directly. Or it could require the MTR to fund it out of its own revenues, which would almost certainly mean fares rising substantially to pay for it. With many already objecting to the recent modest fare increase at a time of inflationary pressure, this would be politically unacceptable and would probably drive many passengers back on to the overcrowded roads as a cheaper alternative.

Of course, the property method is also depriving the taxpayers of the potential revenue that would otherwise accrue to the government from the sale of these sites, but in the current circumstances it seems the least objectionable way of achieving the desired goal. The real objection in my view is that, since the MTR is partly privatized, some of the eventual return from this handout will go into the hands of private investors at the expense of the taxpayers. The MTR should have been left in full public ownership.

The Americans are Winning

Being out of England for most of the time, I tend to notice small changes when I'm there that may be imperceptible to those who live there. One of these is the creeping Americanisation of the English language. Not only do we have a whole generation who use American spelling because they've never bothered to change the default spell checker in Word to British English, but American vocabulary is gradually replacing British usage.

One of the changes I observed on this year's visit is that the original British "railway station" has largely given way to "train stati0n", which in my childhood would have been understood but considered an Americanism. Now that usage makes sense, since "bus station" was already common British usage, but why don't we call an airport a "plane station" to be consistent?

Football Fatcats

Sepp Blatter's statement that FIFA - world football's governing body (that's soccer for American readers) - is "not in crisis" is about as credible as Muammar Gaddafi's claims that all the Libyan people love him. Nevertheless, Blatter's re-election as head of FIFA was entirely predictable - and not just because his only challenger was conveniently accused of corruption and sidelined before the vote.

In the welter of corruption allegations, firings and reinstatements, and general chaos it's hard to know the truth. But a look at most of the FIFA bigshots will tell you one sure thing - from the size of their waistlines, most of them have not actually played football for a long time - indeed, it's doubtful they would last more than 5 minutes on the pitch before collapsing.

The fact is that FIFA is an entrenched bureaucracy - and the first task of any bureaucracy is always to perpetuate itself. While Blatter likens his role to captaining a ship, what he is really doing is driving a gravy train. And as long as he keeps the gravy - free tickets to big games, lavish banquets, foreign trips, and perhaps additional benefits - flowing, most of its recipients will continue to support him. As the French say, the more things change the more they remain the same.

Racial Scaremongering

A "shock, horror!" headline on the website of British tabloid The Sun claims "Third of rapists and killers 'are foreign'". Except they're not. When you actually read the article, this figure is only true in a few police districts. The figure across the UK as a whole is 1 in 7, or less than half the quoted proportion.

Further evidence that The Sun is engaging in racial scaremongering is that in three successive paragraphs it refers to immigrants, foreign nationals, foreign-born suspects, and in a later paragraph to non-English speaking suspects, as if all these groups were synonymous. Furthermore, despite the fact that the majority of recent immigrants to the UK are white EU citizens, they chose to illustrate the piece with a photo of a black convicted murderer.

Apart from the article's obvious racial bias, the ill-defined 1 in 7 (14.3%) figure is even more meaningless unless we know how many foreigners are in Britain at any given time for comparison. A recent estimate suggests that the figure may be around 11.4% - so far from the shock picture of the headline, the reality is that foreigners account for these crimes in only a slightly higher proportion than their total numbers would lead us to expect. Furthermore, it would be helpful to separate rape and murder for comparison in analyzing the figures, since cultural misunderstandings can play a part in some rapes.

The Sun should be ashamed of itself for peddling racist propaganda.

Commoner

During a recent trip to Europe, I spent nearly a month without following the news. I didn't feel I'd missed much - when I got back, most things were going on exactly as before.

Two stories did filter into my consciousness - the death of Osama bin Laden, and the wedding of Prince William, at which time I was in Britain. I'm no monarchist - far from it - but this did at least demonstrate that a country rapidly descending into Third World status can still put on an excellent show of pomp and pageantry. Now if only they could apply the same impressive level of organisational skill to the chaos of Terminal 3 at Heathrow Airport. Considering that this gives many foreign visitors their first impression of the country, isn't it time the whole overcrowded mess was pulled down and rebuilt to the standard of Terminals 4 and 5?

Scary Vegetables

The 1978 movie Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is generally regarded as a good-natured spoof of the science fiction genre. Now today's BBC news site has a deadly serious headline: Deadly cucumbers claim more lives. We really are living in a science fiction world.

Who are my friends this week?

What is this craze that some people seem to have for changing their names in Facebook? You log in and suddenly find you have a whole lot of friends you never heard of. Weird.

Irish Stewpidity

I never set out to make this blog an exercise in ATV-bashing, but they do set themselves up for it. They are currently filling the gaps between programmes, when they don't have enough commercials, with little snippets of information under the title "The World at a Glance". Nothing wrong with that, but the one asking "Are You Prepared for St. Patrick's Day" was still being run as late as 22 March. That should give you plenty of time to get ready, because St. Patrick's Day had already passed on 17 March.

Mind you, the Irish have their own ways of measuring things. I still vividly recall many years ago setting out from Rosslare Harbour to Wexford. After a while I passed a signpost saying "Rosslare 2 miles, Wexford 7 miles". A mile further on, the sign said, naturally enough, "Rosslare 3 miles" However, in the other direction, it still said "Wexford 7 miles"!

Ireland is a beautiful country, but expect the unexpected there.

Q&A - the Definition of Stupidity

Q. What's the definition of stupidity?
A. Building nuclear power plants all over one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world when you're sitting on a vast reservoir of free geothermal energy that you could use instead.

And a really bad joke:
Q. What do you call a tiny tsunami?
A. A microwave.

Yeah, I know, it's not funny. And incidentally, why is Iran so insistent that it needs to develop nuclear power when it's sitting on the world's fourth largest oil reserves? I think we can guess the answer to that one.

Freepost - Bugs can "bee" useful

Hong Kong readers of the South China Morning Post online will be aware that unless they have a paid subscription to its website, clicking on a link on its main page will only bring up the first couple of sentences of a story, with the rest supposedly available to subscribers only. But try this:

• Copy the headline of a story (I did it with "China's mappers take on world and get lost today.) and paste it into Google.
• Do a Google search for the story.
• Click on the resulting link back to the Post.

In all 3 main Windows browsers (IE, Firefox and Chrome) this gives you the entire story without payment, not just the limited version.

Making It Better
And here is another story showing that bugs can "bee" useful. Please sign the petition to save these undervalued creatures who are vital to our food supply.

Misunderstanding China and Economics

The South China Morning Post reports that "newly elected Republican lawmakers are itching to act against what they see as an undervalued yuan that is costing American jobs".

They are unlikely to have any more success in changing China's course on this matter than the previous Democratic majority did. All they are doing is displaying both their lack of understanding of China and their simplistic ignorance of basic economics. There is no mystery over China's policy - Chinese leaders have made it clear for years now that they are willing to let the yuan rise gradually and to move step by step towards making it freely convertible - both of which they have been doing. But anyone who knows China is aware that what its leaders fear most is any sudden disruption that could lead to mass social disorder - and an abrupt jump in the value of China's currency could trigger exactly this by throwing millions out of work.

But if by some unlikely chance the Republicans did achieve their objective, what then? In the short term, there would be a sharp rise in inflation in the US (and Hong Kong, incidentally) as all the China-made goods on supermarket shelves (which these days means most manufactured products) jumped in price. And in the longer term, would all those jobs in China come back to the US? Not likely, with so many other cheap labour countries lining up with open arms - far more probable that they would move to Vietnam, Indonesia, Brazil, Bangladesh, South Africa, wherever ...Meanwhile, those products that America does still produce would become more expensive in China, throwing even more Americans out of work.

Hong Kong, with its currency peg to the US dollar, would suffer collateral damage from all this. I have always maintained that, while the institution of the peg was a necessary - indeed, vital - move at the time, it should have been to a basket of currencies and not to one alone. America was at the time our main trading partner, but changing times have seen the Mainland fill that role. The reality is, no matter how much our leaders may deny any plans for a change (as they have to do, or the currency speculators would be circling overhead like vultures), sooner or later we will probably have to realign our currency to the renminbi rather than the US dollar. The only question is when.

I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass

The Hong Kong government's decision to implement a pilot project for glass recycling in East Kowloon is a waste of time. The fact is there is absolutely no need for a pilot scheme when glass recycling has already been proven to work well in countries such as Britain and Canada for more than two decades. What we need is not a timid pilot project but a full-scale recycling scheme for the entire SAR immediately, before the government tries to steal any more of our irreplaceable country parks as landfills.

If we're truly "Asia's World City", why aren't we leading the world instead of always lagging lamely behind?

Going Chrome

I use Firefox as my default browser, but I also use Chrome quite a lot (and IE only for those few sites that insist on it). This morning my PC crashed. When it recovered, all my Chrome bookmarks had vanished - many of them marking sites from which I planned to download files. The backup bookmarks file (.bak) was also empty and therefore useless.

When I went to the Chrome help page for a clue on how to recover the bookmarks, I found that this problem has been repeatedly reported by users for more than a year, but Google appears to have done nothing about it. Their corporate motto may be "Don't do evil", but it seems there is a coda to that: "... or much good either." Maybe I should stick to Firefox in future.

A Public Life

First of all, let me wish all my readers (who seem to have increased dramatically in number recently for some reason) a happy, peaceful and prosperous New Year.

The start of 2011 was saddened here in Hong Kong by the news that Szeto Wah died today. Szeto was a leader of the movement for democracy in both Hong Kong and the mainland who earned respect on both sides of the political divide for his steadfast dedication to his principles.

For myself, I shall remember the time he sat across from me on the MTR late one night. While other Legislative Council members (as he was then) generally ride around in fancy cars, Szeto, an unassuming man, was happy to use public transport. He will be missed.

Rule of Flaw

Further to my post about the absentees from the recent Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony, it later emerged that the Philippines was also among those countries refusing their invitations to attend - one of only three democracies to do so (the others being Colombia and Ukraine).

It is hardly necessary to comment on the irony of this decision coming from the son of a father who was murdered for opposing the Marcos dictatorship and a mother who led the successful People Power revolt to overthrow it and restore democracy - for which she herself was nominated for the Peace Prize. But why was this decision made?

Reports suggest several reasons: close trading ties with China; a desire to buy Chinese weaponry; a desire not to be sen as caving in to American pressure (always a sensitive issue in this former US colony); and a wish not to further offend China when the Manila bus siege has already left scars on the relationship. After the Philippines government initially suggested that its Ambassador in Oslo had a "scheduling conflict" (as if they couldn't send a substitute), Philippine President Benigno Aquino Jr. did eventually come up with a more noble reason (though qqually implausible, suggests one commentator) - the decision was, he explained, intended not to prejudice the fate of five Filipino citizens on death row in China by angering the Beijing government.

It is not yet clear whether this will lead to any leniency deal for the five, but neither Aquino nor the Beijing authorities, who publicly welcomed the decision, appear to have noticed the deeper irony at work here. The Philippines' decision makes it clear that they believe political relationships, rather than judicial decisions, will determine the fate of the convicted Filipinos. In other words, they are agreeing with Liu Xiaobo's argument that China lacks judicial independence and the rule of law. So by supporting the Chinese government in its objections to Liu receiving the Prize, they have unwittingly reinforced Liu's case against that same government.

Keeping up with the news

I usually pride myself on keeping up with what's going on in the world. Just a moment ago, for the first time ever, I scored a resounding zero out of seven in the BBC's weekly news quiz. Obviously I'm losing my touch. You try it.

Come on, it's not the Spanish Inquisition

The Catholic dioxese in Hong Kong has won a legal battle which will enable it to challenge the constitutionality of the government's education reforms in court. The Chirch objects to a government policy requiring aided schools to set up management committees, 40% of whose members will be drawn from parents, alumni, teachers and government representatives. The Church argues that this contravenes its right under the Basic Law to control its own schools.

Fair enough, but the key word here is "aided" - meaning subsidised by the taxpayer. There is a very simple solution to this problem - if the Catholic Church wants 100% control, then it should also provide 100% of the schools' financing. If public money is involved, it is not unreasonable to require some degree of public accountability over its spending. Otherwise the Church is trying to "render unto God that which belongs to Caesar", and should be firmly rebuffed.

City Limits

Memo to ATV News: if Luton is "on the outskirts of London", then Sheung Shui is "on the outskirts of Kowloon". No skirts are that far out.

And while you're paying attention, can you tell one of your reporters that Chan is not pronounced "Charn"? As the most common surname in Hong Kong, it shouldn't require a pronunciation guide.