And what will we do all day instead?
- Click to hear ‘Love Child’ by the Supremes!
The Hong Kong Chief Executive ‘election’ shock-horror outrages du jour are: a) aides of CY Leung attended a Heung Yee Kuk dinner at which a former triad boss was present; and b) the (or a) much-discussed alleged illegitimate offspring of Henry Tang may have resulted from a liaison while the textiles scion was at high school in the UK.
These are, of course, non-stories, and signs that the quality of scandal flying around Hong Kong over the last couple of months is undergoing a disappointing decline. Whoever is spreading the night-soil around is starting to scrape the bottom of the bucket.
The fact is that if you go to a Heung Yee Kuk event and no New Territories mafia are around – that’s major news. Indeed, you’d probably be on your own. Everyone knows that.
Similarly, if you send your precious little prince or princess to one of those pricy, oh-so-high-class boarding schools in our former colonial motherland, the kid will soon discover the delights of rutting like crazy between piano classes and remedial Chinese tuition. The brochures portray British education as neo-gothic architecture, sprawling green playing fields and bright-eyed young exam-passers in smart uniforms. What they don’t mention is Europe’s highest rates of teenage pregnancy, abortion and venereal disease, not to mention all the booze and drugs.
On a more positive note, we are reliably informed that our current Chief Executive, high-living victim of maliciously-triggered corruption probes Donald Tsang, has the full backing of the Central People’s Government. Such support is not automatic. The nation’s leaders can obliquely indicate disapproval by failing to mention you or by lavishing praise on your counterpart in Macau, or they can be blunt and openly say you’re useless.
Even if the mud-slinging now dies down (sob) for want of new ammunition, the question remains: who is behind all these leaks, or at least the initial disclosures that prompted retaliatory dirt-digging? We can still only presume that the Central Government’s Liaison Office in Western must have had a hand. Guiding the Chief Executive selection process is the emperor’s prerogative, and no local pro-Beijing player would have the audacity to usurp it. The chaos and division resulting from the revelations also point to the same incompetents who were surely behind the vote-rigging in last November’s District Council polls, which at least partially backfired. As for why: maybe Beijing wants a tighter grip ahead of ‘universal suffrage’ in 2017, or maybe the local Hong Kong and Macau Affairs officials have simply been trying too hard to impress their bosses back home (either way they have some explaining to do).
A more convoluted theory involves joining up the dots backwards. Beijing – it goes – has orchestrated Donald’s downfall. This is partly just to avenge the time he (quite likely) threatened to resign unless the Chinese state made its unprecedented concession to the pro-democrats on political reform. But it is mainly a counterattack after Sir Bow-Tie’s administration tried to smear CY Leung with its inept pair of press releases one (very long) month ago. And that was an attempt to rescue Henry after Beijing pulled the plug on him after/with the basement fiasco and decided to make CY the next CE. The fact that this de facto tussle between the Communist Party and Hong Kong’s tycoon-bureaucrat clique would have been fought by proxy doesn’t make it hugely more believable. But it’s fun. Asia Times, fountain of truth, accuracy and impartiality, has more.
Another idea is that Donald is nobly taking the heat off Henry, by distracting attention from the spoilt rich-kid’s misdoings (and wouldn’t it be typical of a spoilt rich-kid to make his low-born, cop’s son buddy do that?) This of course is the opposite of the Asia Times theory, which has Sir Bow-Tie’s jet-setting helping rather than hurting CY. Take your pick.
One factor we cannot ignore is the role of Hong Kong’s famously free press. Although local actors would never openly pre-empt Beijing’s own meddling, some of them can no doubt interfere unseen through the media. And let’s not forget the role of the masses. It is no secret that waiters, hotel workers, emergency services personnel, and hospital, airport and other minions in Hong Kong can augment their humble incomes quite nicely with one call to our grubbier newspapers. What we have been seeing is Mainland officials thinking that they could manipulate the local media, only to find that it’s not that simple, and the press even end up in charge. It has been hilarious, and we can only trust that the cadres will go back up north with a newfound respect and admiration for the role played in a free society by the fourth estate.
- Click to hear ‘The Idiot Bastard Son’ by Frank Zappa and the Mothers!
Hi pop pickers!!!
Seems Henry is suffering from that old Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergangenheitsbewältigung
Vergangenheitsbewältigung is a composite German word that describes processes of dealing with the past (Vergangenheit = past; Bewältigung = coming to terms with, mastering), which is perhaps best rendered in English as “struggle to come to terms with the past”.
Now wouldn’t that be a pop song to remember?
But as usual, Dusty says it all…tarra!!!!
Fluff XXXX
IN PRIVATE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1z5DZEse3I
Take your time and tell me
Why you lie?
I realise
That we’ve been found out this time
We should stand together
If we can
But what you planned
Means there’s a difference between …
What you’re gonna say in private
You still want my love, we’re in this together
And what you’re gonna do in public
Say you were never in love that you can remember
So discrete (She’s so discrete)
I never tried to meet (She never)
Your friends or interfere (No)
I took a back seat (Back seat) between …
On what you’re gonna say in private
You still want my love, we’re in this together
And what you’re gonna do in public
Say you were never in love that you can remember
What you gonna say
When you run back to your wife
I guess it’s just the story of my life
I’m more and more agog each day. This is amazing; “Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference delegate Samuel Yung Wing-ki said Tang has already admitted to flaws in his love affairs, and that can cover have a child out of wedlock.”
Same same, la. He admit, second milk wo. Other child, all included ma.
Some things don’t add up. What is the truth? His chld was an accident committed as a teenager? Ok. I’m not sure how this explains his rutting whilst married. If true, it says alot about Tang’s behaviour over a long period of time. The other possibility is the child was a result of his extra marital rumpy pumpy. Either way the fellow isnt to be trusted at all it seems.
Don’s conveyance of choice was the “Golden Toad”? I’m laughing my arse off.
If you can’t be trusted to stay faithful to the woman you pledged faithfulness to, how can you be trusted in any context?
JFK did a whole lot worse, yet he was made a saint. I don’t care about Henry at all, but cut the guy some slack. All men cheat, either in the flesh or in their mind.
Something else: there don’t seem to be any wimmin around here.
TFF
Unfortunately, you can count 95% of the worlds male population in your statement. Me excluded, of course.
I too am beginning to lose track of Hooray Henry’s lusts: there’s the Heung Yee Kuk one with the long hair, Esther who isn’t really Chinese and now the teenage foreign-devil — or have I mixed them up?
These stories, together with the 2250-sq ft storeroom, seem to have followed a pattern: first rumours, trapping the hapless horse into half-hearted heehaws, then the full monty. They were/are clearly not coming from “patriots”, and their very breadth, depth and masterly rhythm mean they are not accidental discoveries, or even coming from eg his wife, one of the bimbos or the architect, but surely emanate from long-term political colleagues.
The counter-stories, against CY Leung and Donald Tsang, do seem to be motivated by revenge, from, again, governmental sources, quite well-informed but betraying a certain note of desperation in not being able to find anything really juicy. To kow where they’re coming from, it would be useful to be able to firm up the origin of the really tangy ones.
If the mainland is really actively undermining the CE, they must be stupid: two failed CEs, coming after a series of relatively successful governors, with the prospect of a third one who is either incompetent or a wolf in wolf’s clothing, must make the world’s media sit up.
It just needs a scandal now involving tension between the old and new nominal and real heads of the ICAC, tother with the sitting CE and the anointed one — six actors and fifteen two-way relationships that can go wrong — to shake the institutional foundations.
@ Joe Blow
Very probably if someone put a bulled through ET’s head (as is now the only decent thing to do with lamed horses ) ET would be hailed as a saint as well.
The only difference would be that the guy whole pulled the trigger would probably be hailed as an even bigger saint 🙂
Tang’s wife Lisa has just said “he’s 90% perfect”, which makes her a good deal harder to please than Allan “losing by 20% is OK” Zeman.
Meanwhile, up in Beijing, asked if Tang had problems with his integrity, National People’s Congress deputy Wilfred Wong Ying-wai, another Tang nominator, said: “Don’t link everything with integrity …”
FFS …
Just two more thoughts: the person(s) leaking the details of H the H’s past life must think he’s still in with a chance: otherwise why bother? And when can we expect the crackdown on the press?
HOT THE PRESS:
“Lisa Kuo Yu-chin, the wife of scandal-plagued chief executive candidate Henry Tang Ying-yen, said (…today on RTHK… )Tang scored 90 points out of 100 ….. and urged the public not to write him off because he fell short of perfection.
“He is not perfect; he is 90 per cent a good man. Why would people attack him because he is 10 per cent short of perfect?” she said.
Guess she should ask Donald…. 40 years of noble public service wiped out by one foolish 4 hour breakfast on the Golden Toad(y)
I hope you remember your comments Lisa when the Buildings Dept and police come to prosecute you.
(But @ Joe Blow again : now THAT’S what I call a REAL woman. ET does not deserve such a good wife )
Hemmers, you are slipping…
The best news today was in fact in the Standard – check the home page now :
“Police have been called in to check out an International Women’s Day strip show at a Kowloon nightclub tomorrow to determine if it is artistic or obscene
.
“Private club Bar City is pushing the show – for men and women – with adverts showing two men posing suggestively and wearing skin-tight briefs.
“So far the club has received about 70 bookings….*”
*( but I bet there will be lot more if ET puts in a surprise performance ! )
@ Joe Blow……… so than explains where are all the wimmin ( I assume you meant women) !
in the press today……………
Tang’s wife backs him as ’90pc purrfect’ – allocates him duffer of the decade award
Peter Sokonpo
11:41am, Mar 07, 2012 not the South Chinese Morning Piss
Lisa Kuo Yu-chin, the wife of scandal-plagued chief executive ineffectual candidate Henry Tang Ying-Jui, said Tang scored 90 points out of 100 as a husband, and urged the public not to write him off because he fell short of purrfection. She promised he would devote 90% of his time to the tycoon interests and 10% to the public of Hong Kong in the travesty that he got elected and forced 3 million residents to take to the streets and a shutdown of the business world.
In an interview with Commercial Radio on Wednesday morning, a suitably tearful Kuo declined to confirm rumours that Tang has and is a bastard. Any further comments would affect her basement educated children, who were innocent in the incident and this would cause them to spit out their silver spoons, she said.
“The most important thing is a rover knows the way back, and we must not talk about matters in the past once [I] forgive him.” She was not sure how often Henry had actually gone walk-about and when his next roving venture would be with any myopic male, female or other form of animalia of his choice.
“He [Tang] is not purrfect; he is 90 per cent a good tosser. Why would ordinary poor people attack him because he is 10 per cent short of tycoon purrfect?” she said. She forgot sadly that the public of Hong Kong demands better than the 90% which is pre-allocated to doing tycoon favours, keeping commercial and residential property prices and supermarket food costs sky high whilst running the old polluting buses for another 15 years, cutting the civil service working week to three days and increasing their pay by 60% to match Singapore MP levels .
“Maybe he was foolish at that time, but he had no ma lice, since due to his complete paucity of brain cells he has not learned the word yet.” Sadly he is a dumb f–k and a Spitting Image duffer born into wealth by the work of his father selling textile quota to aspiring clothing exporters.
On Tuesday, Tang replied indirectly when asked about the rumours of a bastard child, saying only that he would not comment on “anything that involves an innocent third person brought into the world as a result of too much red wine and having the wrong thing in the wrong cranny at the wrong place for too short a time”.
But he admitted his ?questionable behaviour in the past had left him with “lifelong regrets”. Fortunately he is so thick skinned and dumb, inept and without integrity and knows the public does not want him but he must chin up (all of it) and hold out for his tycoon hierarchy who actually control Hong Kong and gopher Donald.
Kuo said she did not blame Tang when she knew he had extramarital affairs. He’s a lousy f–k anyway she said, thinking back 27 years. She has never thought about a divorce given her lack of good looks and tai-tai life in chauffeur driven 3388 , and would marry him all over again if she had such a choice, she said showing her complete lack of taste, whilst thinking of cloning the 90% she believed to be acceptable.
Kuo said Tang’s regrets were the “biggest punishment” he had to bear. Sadly he regrets f–k all and blunders from one gaffe to the next whilst the charge of malfeasance in office , fraud and other possible charges loom awkwardly on the near horizon, albeit at basement cost.
Meanwhile Lisa Kuo stated she would be willing to accept the blame for Donald Tsang’s transgressions and dangerous liaisons since Donald is a 90% good person who likes the house red in church and she would marry him tomorrow if he became a Muslim.
Interesting snippet from David Webb’s Webb-Site a couple of days ago
“Policy note: by buying an offshore company which owns a property, the purchaser can avoid HK stamp duty on a property purchase….”
As I recall it, Tang’s homes are owned through an offshore company
So was ET deliberately trying to avoid paying HK Taxes?.
I’ve not heard of that one before: interesting.
A possibly simpler trick to reduce the stamp duty is to split the ownership of the property up either amongst different people and/or by setting up a HK company. But you do have to be careful of profits tax.