After one ‘Hong Kong-based activist Tom Grundy’ tried to make a citizen’s arrest for war crimes of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair here last week, I thought the award for Self-Righteous Pretentious Bore of the Year had a clear winner. How cosmic (mildly, at least) would that be – this much-valued prize going to someone 
who heckled a previous multiple awardee, founder of his very own Faith Foundation?
But now Julian Assange, the peroxide-blond pin-up super-stud founder of Wikileaks, has taken refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, asking for political asylum like a blind Chinese lawyer, but more groovy. Named after the equator (a local landmark). Capital: Quito. Bananas (probably). And that’s about all we know about the place. It seems that although its president has all the right, trendy, anti-American, Gringo-baiting credentials, the small Latin American country is not renowned for its press freedom.
What makes me think ‘Hong Kong-based activist Tom Grundy’ teaches English in one of the Big Lychee’s esteemed educational establishments? Or could he be ‘Long Hair’ Leung Kwok-hung’s gwailo running dog? It’s not just tycoons who have them! I am reliably informed that a professional full-time Trotskyist from the UK is attached to the legislator’s band of radicals. Could be him. And doesn’t the name Tom Grundy have an earthy, proletarian ring to it? You can imagine folk songs about such a man joining Wat Tyler’s peasants’ revolt or fighting evil Victorian mill owners.
On balance, Assange has a bit of an uphill struggle in the contest to win the Award. He occasionally shows a very slight glimmer of a sense of humour. You need an electron microscope to detect it, but the merest hint disappoints the judges terribly. And then there is the indisputable fact that he knows pleasures, specifically of the flesh with Swedish women; enjoyment of anything loses points in this contest. He will certainly lose them for actual persecution by authorities – even Scandinavian ones (and certainly for something that could sort of, approximately, more or less happen to any of us with the gift of catching ladies’ eyes).
This is in stark contrast to Tom Grundy, to whom the judges feel bound to award extra points out of sympathy. The poor guy expected that the local oppressive capitalist powers would respect his rights as a crusading martyr and drag off him off to jail to rip his fingernails off, or at least give him a squirt of pepper spray. Instead, the henchmen of the Hong Kong Police ignored him. Totally. No tap on the shoulder. No ID check. No word of warning. Not even some mumbling about not getting involved in arguments between Westerners. Like he didn’t even exist. He just went home to his teddy bear and cocoa (or whatever the most righteous people on the planet do after work).
There are still six months to go, but it would be the first time the Award came to Hong Kong, so fingers crossed.
(Not my job to push commercial products, but with the hot weather coming I strongly recommend that everyone follows Tony Blair’s fashion advice on casual days off, and wears a pair of his stylish Faith Shorts.)
Click to hear Blind Faith’s ‘In the Presence of the Lord’!
You’re brilliant, sir!
What a knob.
Offending Muslims, Palestinian rights, citing George Monbiot, yawn, what a wanker. I’d love to see how much his free speech would have been respected in say for example, the Saud Royal Kingdom, had he pulled a similar stunt.
Same with the unwashed who have taken over the HSBC covered area to protest againg the ‘rich’ effectively pushing out domestic helpers, those at the lower end of the income scale. Its all pythoneseque.
Talking of faith has anyone noticed that the Anglican Church of Mammon has successfully evicted the Central Hospital from it’s consecrated grounds to better facilitate it’s so very Christian pursuit of greater riches. Obviously there’s not enough money to be made in pitying the poor and sick these days. Who needs to throw the moneylenders out of the temple when you can just invite in the property developers?
Now the debate here 2 days ago was around the redundant government building in Lower Albert Road. Demolish, redevelop, build, hold a boot sale, bonfire, whatever?
Anyway, jumping to the chase, empty building, government decision pending, dispossessed hospital, it all begins to make sense n’est pas? Another potential winner for CY to make himself look good by installing the homeless non-profit making doctors, nurses and patients into the West Wing – and they only have a few hundred yards to wheel the beds across the road!
Let’s hope Carrie Lam can be so resolute with ending the small house policy as she seems to have been with the must do demolition of the west wing.
She certainly has the HYK upset now..from today’s SCMP
“Lam is the villagers’ nemesis,” said Tsang Shu-wo, a member of the Ping Shan Rural Committee. “Whatever issues [arise] about the New Territories, she wants to destroy them. Shouldn’t we chop her? We shouldn’t let her be our chief secretary.”
are they really non-profit making ?
whenever I walk past Central Hospital and I see the expensive doctors’ cars parked in front I cannot help but feel that they are doing pretty well. Or maybe that’s the reason why they are not making any profit.
It is reductionist misses the point to believe I did this ‘for fame’. I kept the protest concise, factual and left quickly and peacefully to avoid the exact sensational drama you describe…. I’ve also refused all personal questions from the media. As planned, I renewed awareness and debate surrounding a relentless narcissist – but that person was Mr Blair.
(PS – For the record, the teddy and cocoa are unfortunately accurate but I’ve nothing to do with Long Hair and believe in capitalism.)
Sound thinking, @Probably. It would allow the ‘christians’ to discuss talking snakes, burning bushes and 700 year old patriarchs among themselves while the government would be seen to be actually doing what the god-botherers pretend to be concerned with. Far too logical to be accepted, of course; Auntie Carrie knows best.
@ Spud
Yes I also noticed the HYK’s intention to chop Carrie
( So if we find little bits of her in suitcases floating in the Harbour we know where to direct the police … or do even they fear the HYK ? )
And Yes , I hope she works as hard to demolish the HYK as she appears to be working to demolish the West Wing
Hemmers, I fail to see the difference between Mr. Grundy railing against a sleazy political operator in Mr Blair (and let’s face it, he did lie to the British public to get them behind the Iraq adventure) and your good self railing against the HK political elite, why is he a self-righteous bore and you are just a concerned citizen with a netvigator account? Alright, his tactics may rub you the wrong way but I suspect you two have far more in common than you care to admit. Now kiss and make up!
@ RTP & Spud
Wasn’t that a death threat made in the national media?
in which case shouldnt they be “helping the police with theie enquiries” already?
Yes – I don’t quite know why but I too get annoyed by the sight of Porsches in St Paul’s Hospital car park. Somehow it just doesn’t seem right for doctors to make so much dosh.
@No Future For You
At least Tom Grundy has the balls to show his face in public.
But to be fair, Hemmers is way more entertaining.
Key difference is that Hemlock is not forcing you to read his stuff or even be aware of it, whereas public protest stunts like Mr Grundy’s shove messages down the throats of others whether they like it or not.
If Hemlock ran an aggressive pop-up advertising campaign on other websites that littered your monitor with links to his site while you’re trying to read your daily news, then there would be some sort of equivalence.
Tom Grundy is a HERO. The real people who deserve a “Self-Righteous Pretentious Bore of the Year Award” are the people who accept the status quo; allow politicians to lie; turn a blind eye to the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians; and, write dull posts such as the one here. Keep up the WONDERFUL work, Tom Grundy. All truth sayers are ridiculed in their time but vindicated by history.
@ No Future & Peter
Don’t expect too much from Hemmers. He has a healthy bourgeois disdain for uppity little people. Sharp-tongued critic and keen observer of the Hong Kong scene, suuuure… but Hemmers’ sympathies only extend so far. Let’s go easy on poor Hemmie. It can’t be easy pretending to work all day in that 88th Floor corner office. The air-conditioning alone …. *shivers*…. He could just watch YouTube half the day like the rest of the office stiffs, but at least Hemmie’s fervent efforts to produce his musings have the appearance of work.
It’s always struck me as interesting that your typical Western raised, ideologically-driven hero (at least of the Left leaning, born in 1970s or later era, never moved beyond the undergraduate mindset and haven’t lived much in Asia) can work up a far greater head of steam about the safety and well being of 32m odd Iraqis under threat by Americans than 1.3b odd Chinese under threat by their own government.
But yes, deena, Mr Grundy certainly qualifies as a hero if one defines a hero as a self-righteous pretention bore **who has achieved nothing much really**. What personal sacrifice has he made and who is better off as a result of his action (excluding the smug levels of those who already disliked Blair anyway)?