The first week of 2013 hints at a year of wackiness to come: Starbucks metastasizes its way into Vietnam; Colorado (possibly) buys marijuana from vending machines; Mainlanders hoover up baby milk powder everywhere from Australia, to the UK, to plucky little Tai Po; and Beijing’s foreign policymakers conclude that Western moves to make the Middle Kingdom part of the global club are aimed at ‘retarding and undermining China’s power’.
Hong Kong’s partially dethroned tycoon/bureaucrat establishment starts the new year with a degree of chutzpah bordering on hubris.
Failed Chief Executive candidate Henry Tang bounds back into the public eye to whine about victor CY Leung being the pot calling the kettle black over illegal structures. The spoilt rich kid was due to have the Big Lychee’s top office handed to him on a plate – to the extent he barely deigned to bother with the make-believe campaigning that the quasi-election called for – and still can’t come to terms with the (admittedly still barely explicable) fact that he and his plutocrat buddies lost. As for any equivalence between the pair’s respective illegal structures: CY’s are irregular add-ons like yours and mine, while Henry’s massive basement possibly involves a criminal fraudulent planning application. So overbearing is the man’s sense of entitlement that he seems to believe he is in a position 
of moral superiority. We can only hope the gods are looking on. In all fairness, he still has his old sense of humour, mischievously stirring things up for his pro-Communist nemesis by telling us he can’t wait for democracy.
Eagle-eyed news junkies will have noticed that Henry’s old Liberal Party buddies have been popping up rather a lot in recent days. Selina Chow, leggy ex-newsreader/legislator/tourism czar, appears from nowhere to carp about the dreadful CY Leung. Then the ever-odious James Tien does the same. Now James announces his party’s call for a two-year freeze on unemployment benefits for the able-bodied. With jobs easy to get and welfare payments low, I doubt there is much of a problem with couch potatoes on the dole, but that’s not the point. The point is what the Liberal Party says about such people developing ‘psychological inertia and long-term reliance’.
By way of taking a deep breath and counting to ten lest I hit someone, a bit of background. The Tiens (and the Tangs) came to Hong Kong from Shanghai to flee the Communists. The British, relieved to have some fellow non-Cantonese turning up, greeted the newcomers with the ultimate licences to print money: textiles quotas. They didn’t even need to own or run garment factories; they just sold the precious rights to export clothing to Western markets to other people who did all the work. That’s how Henry’s and James’s dads became billionaires. As with the property tycoons who succeeded them in the plutocratic hierarchy in the 70s, this was wealth – a major welfare handout – given them on a plate, with zero entrepreneurism or innovation required. A chimpanzee could have done it. But a chimp would be smart enough to keep its thoughts on ‘psychological inertia and long-term reliance’ to itself.
Why have these slimy nematodes suddenly slithered into the limelight? Presumably, they see CY Leung’s problems and smell blood. To the extent they are being waaay too premature here, it’s because they are waaay too dimwitted to realize it. One, probably the, main reason for their eagerness is that the pro-democrats have essentially sided with them. Ex-Chief Secretary Anson Chan senses that this strategy is going nowhere, but for the mainstream pan-dems it is an inadvertent meeting of rather unimpressive minds: the psychological inertia of heirs to textiles fortunes and the pro-dems’ long-term reliance on permanent and automatic opposition to the government.
I declare the last of a rapid succession of weekends, mid-week weekends and semi-weekends open with a cunning plan to register my pan-dem-style, long-term reliance on disliking Michael Jackson: downloading a pirated version of his Thriller album, thus denying his estate the royalties, then – without listening to it – deleting it and dumping it in the trash folder of my PC.
Excellent summation of the current state of play. I have to say that today we are rather spoilt for choice with so much to comment upon. You could of course deal with the nonsense in Aceh, Indonesia; where ladies are required to sit sidesaddle on motorcycles to comply with some nut-jobs take on Islamic law.
But what really struck me today was the article from Mr Lau Nai-keung in the SCMP, in which he muses about the identity of Hong Kong people. He has hit the nail on the head with a commentary that Hong Kong people are more concerned with cupcakes rather than the realities of life. I’m somewhat worried that I find myself agree with Mr. Lau more and more.
I once told Selina Chow to one of her two faces that she was a slimeball with no principles.
Sadly, Henry is usually in one of his cars when I see him. I thought of mooning but my jeans are usually too tight for a quick manoeuvre.
All the last quarter of a century in Hong Kong these “Liberals” (Liberal in much the same way as Hitler was a Socialist) have been blocking every move Legco comes up with to create an equitable society – thus their latest move to tighten up Hong Kong’s derisory unemployment allowances.
In the Ideal World of The Liberals, used brown people would be used to pave the sidewalks and the minimum wage would be a grain of putrid rice.
Please, fellow readers, do insult these douchebags at every opportunity. They shouldn’t be allowed onto the streets without being challenged and maligned.
PS: Chow, Tang and Tien in one photo montage. Parental advisory surely? Some of your readers are of a nervous and vulnerable disposition. I feel soiled.
The Liberals? Are they still around? Wakakaka… as mentioned previously, after Selena and succeeded by James to the Tourism Board, the final result is that the Old Chappy tells us we are inundated by Mainlanders. Therefore, its obvious that our money is poured on useless marketing programs overseas and redundant offices in the Mainland. Even Michael Chugani walking the streets on New Yeat’s eve can tell us the same results.
Therefore, with the Liberals in the TB driver’s seat is a work of futility.
To add insult to injury, Old Chappy calls parallel traders disgusting. But ah so, maybe Hemlock has hit the nail on the head with his historical findings… The Tien’s and Tang’s were spoon fed, thereby explaining their deficiency in business acumen. Boys, the Fragrant Habour started as a den of pirates and boot leggers. HK thrives on the free market but this is a point missed by the business friendly Liberals (wakakaka), or maybe their agenda is only for a certain echelon of businesses… and not for the mateys that hang by the rafters.
If the Liberals are smelling blood, its most probably their own!! Our dear politicians have very little in-between, even lesser in the tactile and finer points of politics. Its brawn all the way over brains.
Oooh forgot…. for the Unionist, Liberals, Pan-democrats, Darling Starry & DAB folks, mateys of the Duck who refuse to die and fade away & the inhabitants of Big Lychee’s underbelly who woke up one morning to find themselves in the sh%#: The Moral from Capachin Monkeys.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8mynrRd7Ak&feature=player_embedded
Have a good weekend!
I just so hope that Horse face Henry will read this excellent assessment of his heritage and lack of brains. I felf physicaly sick watching him on the news last night. What a revolting piece of shit.
I saw James (ugh, even thinking of him induces nausea) intoning that C.Y. would be sacked, which had me wondering. It’s almost biblical, instead of god’s wrath in the form of locusts and frogs we have the Libs sticking their heads out of their current hidey hole. Given their sudden confidence its a portent of something allright.
Michael Jackson is a bit like HK. Both are talented, confused, have a fascination for whitening one’s appearance, is sucked dry by assorted family and neither look anything like they once were.
Steady on, old chap! Suggesting that nematodes like Selina can actuallly “slither” is mere rhetorical hyperbole.
Lois on fine form today. I’d like to pay him a dollar a paragraph (and no cheating, like the SCUMP: an average of at least 1.3 sentences in each; and no padding, conclusions saying the government should do something will be penalised).
Amusing to hear Henry say that he would build a wall to cut off his basement (covering-up a la CY …) But, wait a minute: if the basement is the whole footprint of the house, which it is, won’t he just end up with a sub-divided (naughty!) basement?
And, besides, it’s not his baby is it: shouldn’t he get the wife to see to it?
PS. Lau Nai-Keung’s piece in SCMP today quotes (verbatim) one of Real Tax Payer’s comments on this very blog. Perhaps, in this non-mainlandy Big Lychee, where we can still mercifully use noms-de-plume, Lau is RTP?
@PD
I gave up journalism when the Hong Kong Standard printed my classical record column in reverse order, the final page before the second before the opening paragraphs. Of course no one, save myself, noticed.
The Horse is back, smiling ear to ear, and scarcely able to believe the noise about CY or how the gullible Pro-Dems have joined forces with his Pro-establishment buddies. It will end when CY’s buddies in the liaison office tell the latter to pipe down.
As for the next CE some things we can be sure of – at this early stage – is it won’t be a Tien, Henry Tang or any current or former member of the Liberal Party. In fact there are remarkably few “suitable” candidates in their 40’s or early 50’s bubbling to the surface save perhaps for Bernard “Heritage” Chan – is he a liberal, I believe he’s a scion ?
How many more weeks is it before Chinese New Year ???
A dark horse for next CE must be JAY Sew-tong. He is certainly building the right profile: Minimum Wage Commission, IPCC, JP, Inland Revenue Board and many others. He is well connected, a decent enough chap and ambitious. Remember you read it here first!
Hey all who laughed when I supported CY so strongly (when actually I did was to hate the awful tang who has now shown his real colours – but actually it’s only a whiter shade of pale)
Today’s news is really funny and the story even keeps changing as the SCUMPOST keeps updating its new super website
I found this tucked away at the end of a story earlier in the day
“Tang said he had wanted to rectify his structural issues over the past 10 months but was warned against doing so as the investigation was not complete.
He doubted if the government was dealing with the matter fairly because his lawyers and architects said they had never seen such an in-depth probe into illegal structures before.
The Buildings Department said it was expecting an acceptable plan from the owners to handle the illegal structures but would not comment on details as it was now a criminal inquiry. It would enforce the laws without regard to who was involved”
Lock him up for life say I (and even better put his wife in the same cell – that’ll teach the slimy toad a lesson he won’t forget)
‘Twas brillig and the nematodes
Did slime and tangle in the wabe
All BS were the pro-dem toads
And tienrats oatgabe
BEWARE the henry tang my son
The smirk that sickens
Grin that smacks
BEWARE the sub sub basement turd
The frumious BD snatch
@ Mary Hinge
Really ? Lau Nai-Keung is quoting me ?!?
I’m not sure whether to take that as a compliment or an insult , but like WDH I’m finding I do find myself agreeing with LNK more and more, which I consider a very worrying trend in myself
( SH1T – now I have go outside and actually buy today’s copy of the SCUMPOST to find out how and in what way LNK has plagiarised me because I can’t find the article on the website)
Anyway, RTP is certainly NOT LNK as Hemmers well knows
Grrrrrrrrrr 🙁
– and there goes my new year resolution
PS: that should have been ‘outgabe’ not ‘outgabe’
Sorry guys and gals, but the more I dig into the SCMP today the funnier it gets . I thought the SCMP was a serious newspaper but today it reads more like the Simpsons
I just saw this classic from our enery :
“I am thinking about how can I serve Hongkongers in different capacities, without giving the administration an impression that I am a threat or making irresponsible comments,” Tang said.
I also noted that he has been doing things in the past 10 months he always wanted to do “like going to Antarctica” – as if he was not already out in the cold enough
Buwahwahwawah
I also became livid at seeing the Horse trying to stick the boot in. He’s such a pusillanimous, self-righteous, prat. He has no balls to present his views square on. It’s, “my friends tell me”, or, “I was saying to a friend”.
I suppose giving him airtime now is timely and beneficial to CY, as we can all appreciate what a fortuitous event discovery of that basement was and helps to put into perspective CY’s petty misdemeanour.
Not so long ago, my mateys here decried CY’s lie as being a lie… however big or small in comparison to the Catholic church’s definition of mortal & venial sins. Well at least Sir Ducky is well versed with the difference being prayerful & all during his crisis.
But curiously, the old boy Henri hasn’t taken reporters for a full tour of the love basement unlike his arch nemesis. I’m not sure what the taxable rates for a trellis is or blocked up room is but the love nest must surely account for something. Due to new environmental issues, the basement is best filled with water than more concrete or being blocked up since skeletons tends to dwell in such crannies.
But maybe last weekend’s show of anti-CY sentiment was interpreted as “I love you Henri”… the old boy just felt it was time to say hello again. Another mis-reading of the Liberal’s charter. Wakakaka.
RTP, your Comments wordcount is of such volume that the law of averages says someone somewhere is going to inadvertently plagiarise you sometime.
Henry Tang – now he’s de man
That “friends” now fear to greet
He only opens up his mouth
To grin and then change feet
Adam Smith must have had the Liberals in mind when he said:
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices….”
and
“To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers…The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.”
By Gad ! The mouth frothing Lau did actually quote me verbatim !
I just bought today’s SCMP
Well at least that proves he reads the Big Lychee because what I write here is usually such total BS that no right-minded person would ever bother to quote the rubbish I have written and print it anwhere else, so Lau did actually wade through the blog comments that day
I wonder if enery also reads the BL ?
LAU probably has some Expat on a retainer who writes his articles. And, of course, that Expat comes here for his opinions.
@RTP
For those (and i suspect there maybe quite a few) who have long since given up the PCMP which of your pearls of wisdom did Lau Nai Keung quote ?
BTW Are all those who don’t believe in the divine right of the CCP to rule China forwever still considered ‘Dissidents’ by the barking, racist and insecure Mr. Lau?
@Real tax Payer
You’re getting too greedy dear chap and dominating these responses. Start your own blog.
It was rather mean to suggest locking Hooray Henry’s wife up in a cell with him. With her beauty concerns, she surely has enough to contend with?
and @ Walter De havilland
Walter De Havilland says:
January 4, 2013 at 12:54 pm
“A dark horse for next CE must be JAY Sew-tong”.
Don’t over look Regina Ip. She’s in with a good fighting chance next time around… if not before… AND she has an, as yet, unaccomplished mission……. to bring in article 23 of the Basic Law. Beijing must be getting increasingly anxious to get this unfinished business pushed through very soon, especially now that we were being treated to renditions of God the Save Queen during this weekend’s demonstrations. If only they good sing it properly!
Sorry please correct the typos in the above:
” especially after being treated to renditions of God the Save Queen during this weekend’s demonstrations. If only they could sing it properly!”
@ Walter, P.A. et al
Sorry to nitpick, but in case anyone wants to google this rising star from the legal sector his name is JAT Sew-tong.
Perhaps Hemlock could limit the number of paragraphs from any one contributor, especially when they’re rambling, mumbling, fumbling or bumbling?
My image of the debonaire, sophisticated Lois Beluga is somewhat dented today. Instead of the imagined tailored pure wool and bespoke shoes, I now see him trolling around town in a pair of jeans 2 sizes too small. Please, please tell me it was fictional fantasy.
It’s limerick time:
There once was an aging Brit
Who was an annoying tit
….RTP……………………..
……………RTP……………
……………………………….Brad Pitt (or a word of your own choice)
A house-rich communist
And an astrophysicist
But didn’t know Xi from shix
he was dreaming that Venus
was kissing his elbow
and he woke up all covered in perspiration
@ ALL
Genuine apologies for a really ranty friday but the whole tang thing really pissed me off, as it seems also it did to Hemmers ( I never knew he has anti – Michael Jackson habit, but it’s one I also share along with justin biever)
The quote of mine ( my sole claim to lifetime fame in cyberspace) by mouth frother Lau was about the the Chinese new high speed trains running to uncharted territory re safety issues . Gad knows what blood-minded expat reads this blog and ghost-writes for Lau, but it’s certainly not me
I am away from the big lychee all next week and in a completely different time zone – like 15 hours behind HK so there’s no possible way I can beat Bela to the post.
Thanks to all of you who fart in my general direction
I deserve it all but I take it all in good humour and laugh all the way with you all – as I am sure Hemmers does because otherwise he would not moderate my BS
Best wishes for 2013
@ Joe Blow. PD and Stanley Gibbons :
Once there was an aging Brit
Who was an a annoying twit*
He slogged and slogged
And flogged the Blog
And farts at Tang with shit
(* tits are for admiring and fondling , not insults … please respect that fact of life )
🙂
I have the pillow.
Any volunteers to smother ?