Door to Nowhere

 For many months, I regularly passed by this charming trompe l’oeil doorway into a peaceful country scene at Tai Po Market railway station.  Then one day recently I came by and it was gone – just a long section of featureless white wall where it used to be. 

 

I feel oddly bereft – as if I had pushed my way through the heavy coats to the back of the wardrobe, only to find that the entrance to Narnia was no longer there.  In a world where the likes of Donald Trump and CY Leung can ru(i)n our lives, we all need a doorway to a better world – however imaginary.

Logolikes

America Commits Suicide

There will be time for analysis later - I just wanted to be first with that headline.

There's an answer to everything - and this isn't it

Decision Day today - vote wisely, my American friends!

A Basket of Deplorables

Women for Trump - I'd give 'em a 1 - maybe a 1,5 if they lose the egotistical braggart with the bad haircut.  Supporting a candidate who has made so many demeaning remarks about women indicates an alarmingly low level of self-esteem.

Then there are the men - some Trump supporters are pretty dim bulbs.  One (so obese that if I was Trump, I'd probably call him Mr Piggy) was on the TV news the other night, asking "If I don't need a permit to exercise my right to free speech [guaranteed by the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution], why do I need one to exercise my 2nd amendment rights?"

Well, if you're going to claim rights on the basis of the American Constitution, you might try reading it first.  The 2nd Amendment specifically sets gun ownership rights within the context of "a well-regulated militia".  In other words, the Founding Fathers never intended a free-for-all - they envisaged a certain level of regulation.  Which doesn't stop supposed "law-and-order" candidate Trump from insisting that even the mentally disturbed and suspected terrorists should be free to arm themselves.  Duh.

Turds of a feather

Signs of Personality

Bordering on Insanity

Melania speaks her mind - well, her speechwriter's mind, anyway

The Giulanification of Donald

Rudolph Giulani's argument is, like most other excuses for Trump, nonsense.  Giulani argues that Trump is under an obligation to maximise profit for his shareholders.  It is true that those in charge of a public company are so obliged, within certain legal and ethical boundaries.  But the Trump Organization, Donald's main business vehicle, is privately held.  As such, Trump can essentially do whatever the law allows him to get away with.  He could even choose to pay tax if he wanted to.

689 Explanations

Amazing Technological Advance

Bet you didn't know they could deliver food over the Internet!

Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining - For Someone

The Restaurant That Dares Not Spell Its Name Consistently

They corrected it a day or two later.

Dead On Target

It is of course outrageous for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to suggest that in certain circumstances, shooting an American President could be a good thing. On the other hand, if Trump himself gets elected, we might just be forced to concede that there is something worthwhile in the idea after all.

Downcycling

May You Never

Whenever I hear a Tory Prime Minister announcing their intention to govern for all the population and not just a privileged elite, my instinctive reaction is to recall the words of wisdom uttered by those great philosophers at the University of Woolloomooloo: "Howls of derisive laughter, Bruce".

However, Theresa May's first speech as PM yesterday was interesting for going into considerable detail on the existence of specific social barriers to upward mobility - barriers rarely acknowledged to exist by those in her party.  This marks a clear turn away from the crude Thatcher philosophy that if you're poor it's just because you don't work hard enough, and back to the "One Nation" Toryism of the Macmillan days - though perhaps with less of the whiff of noblesse oblige that accompanied it then.

May has an unenviable job ahead - she will be judged primarily on how successfully she can implement a policy opposed by almost half the British people, 2 of its 4 constituent nations, its largest city, and she herself - not to mention me.

All At Sea

No Laughing Matter Really

Having lived out of Britain for four decades, I no longer have a vote there, so I can't participate in today's referendum on EU membership.  If I could, I would vote to stay in.  Not only are many of the "Leave" arguments exaggerated and unrealistic, but the campaign to quit seems to attract a large number of xenophobes and racists, as Jo Cox's murder sadly indicates.

I have long felt that Britain would have far more influence in the EU if it was less half-hearted about its membership.  For example instead of coming back every few years to squeeze a better deal out of the other members, it should propose a long-term mechanism which would periodically review every member country's contributions to ensure they remained fair, then seek support from other countries to implement it.

If Britain does vote to leave, I predict that within a few years Scotland will vote again on whether to remain in a United Kingdom that would be very different from the one they chose to remain in last time.  Having secured their independence, they would then reapply for EU membership, leaving the rump of the UK out in the cold with diminished influence.  But hey, at least Boris Johnson's ego would be stroked.  What could be more important?

The Equal Opportunity Candidate

Special bonus: how Donald Trump will start World War Three!

Calling the North Korean leader "Fat Boy" to his face, instead of behind his back like every other world leader.

Big Swinging Donald

Too obvious?  Oh well...

Unfortunate Resource Locator

As always in these cases, you wonder if they are playing games with you or just being woefully ignorant.

Bend It Like Alvin

Who's Cruzy Now?

Iowa Republican caucuses winner Ted Cruz's victory speech - after the obligatory nod to God - sought to project him as a grassroots anti-establishment candidate, an outsider.  The next President of the United States, he claimed, "will not be chosen by the Washington establishment" and "will not be chosen by the lobbyists".  Presumably this indicates that Cruz - a Senator in Washington, whose campaign contributors [and here] include a bunch of SuperPACs as well as the usual Wall Street suspects like the oil and gas industry and financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, the controversial investment bank up to its ears in both the 2008 financial crisis and the Greek debt crisis - does not expect to become the next President!

Cruz is no stranger to self-contradiction - according to the BBC, as solicitor general "he argued in favour of the death penalty and late-term abortion bans", thereby contriving to be simultaneously both pro-life and anti-life!  But that is a contradiction he shares with most of the religious right wing in America, to whom human life is apparently more valuable before birth than afterwards.

Cruz is not of course the only Republican candidate who hasn't thought things through - Marco Rubio, third-placed Republican candidate in Iowa, blames mental illness for America's epidemic of gun violence.  At the same time, he has vowed to dismantle President Obama's health care reforms which have made health care more affordable for millions.  Perhaps he wants more untreated nutcases roaming the streets with guns?

One of the stated aims of this blog is "to make sense of the world".  Guys like this make that very difficult,

Carrie on Dreaming

Beleaguered Chief Secretary Carrie Lam appeared on the TV news a couple of days ago at the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers Fun Day in front of a banner proclaiming:

 "Your Dreams.  Our Goals."

(Unfortunately I have not been able to find a photo of this online - perhaps the media are getting tired of reporting every boring move made by senior government figures.)

Apparently this is the HKIE's slogan, not the government's latest vacuous feel-good campaign, but it did get me thinking:

Some of My Dreams	The Government’s Goal?
Real democracy	X
Human rights	X
Protection of the Country Parks	X
Rule of law / judicial independence	X
Academic freedom	X
Universal pension scheme	X
A cap on tourist numbers	X
Conservation of historic heritage	X
No white elephant projects	X

I guess one man’s dream is another man’s (or Party’s) nightmare.

DAB'd If I Know

Odd Things Happening All Over

"Very odd things are happening nowadays in the Legislative Council," says Chief Secretary Carrie Lam.  And how right she is - there is the spectacle, for example, of her government colleague, Secretary for Commerce & Economic Development Greg So, arguing that the government can't approve the amendments to the Copyright Amendment Bill proposed by the pan-democrats because "they haven't been thoroughly discussed with the public".  In other words, he is arguing that LegCo should pass the bill even though, on his own admission, it has not been the subject of adequate public discussion.

It seems to be becoming a habit for this government to argue that something must be implemented immediately despite widespread objections, usually with the sop that it can be reviewed some time later (which it probably never will be).  One example of this was of course the fake universal suffrage bill.  Clearly they have never heard of the maxim "Get it right first time" (nor indeed, in many cases, grasped the concept of getting it right at all!)

Pretty odd things are going on outside LegCo as well.  For example Lifelong College, exposed by Apple Daily as peddling fake (or at least unearned) degrees to, among others, council members of Lingnan University, 17 police officers, a District Councillor (DAB, naturally - the party already has form in that area with the Quat Doctor), and a TVB actress, claims that the newspaper's exposé is “unethical”.  Richard Nixon should have tried that argument on the Washington Post.

And across the Pacific, Sarah Palin and her new best friend Donald Trump (they should form a singing duo called the Intellectual Lightweights) are blaming Barack Obama for the arrest of Palin's son, who got drunk and ran amok with a gun.  It's certainly true that mental health care for veterans could be improved, but given his mother's loopiness, Trick (what kind of name is that?) Palin's mental condition could owe as much to heredity as to his army service.

The Trump/Palin linkup is interesting.  For Palin, the lure is presumably another shot at the Vice-Presidency.  For Trump, putting Palin on the ticket could be a safeguard against assassination if he gets elected.  Who'd bump him off knowing that she was next in line to the White House?

PS - correction - that should be Track Palin, not Trick.  less tricky, but just as weird.

And yesterday Greg So told the media that the copyright bill had been the subject of very thorough public consultation - more or less the opposite of what he told LegCo the day before.   Duplicity is the word of the day.

Fairy Story

A little far-fetched, perhaps, but rather more credible than NPC member Ng Leung-sing's nasty little smear in LegCo yesterday - for which he has since half-heartedly apologised - which sounded as though he was reading it direct from a script drafted by some underling in the Liaison Office.  Ng is the idiot who asked in LegCo a few months ago if there was any health benefit from drinking lead-poisoned water.

In other fallout from this case, Page One books has, presumably under pressure, pulled anti-Beijing books from its shelves.  Time for a boycott of Page One?