The personal, not to say bitchy, mud-slinging between heart surgeon Yu Cheuk-man and management/colleagues at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Shatin starts to calm down as government health authorities send some boys round to slap them about a bit and bring them to their senses. At the same time, the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce’s workshop on Dealing With Difficult People becomes fully booked. Coincidence? I hardly think so.
The Hong Kong government, in its usual forthright and confident fashion, anonymously leaks vague plans for a public consultation on constitutional reform to begin (probably, perhaps) in around six months’ time. Compared with such exercises in the past, which were blatantly and embarrassingly rigged to lead nowhere, this one looks set to cautiously prepare for some sort of change. We will hear lots of blather about the need for consensus and the supposed difficulties of overhauling small-circle functional constituencies in the Legislative Council and the nomination system for Chief Executive. But the real issue, and the final authority, is a Chinese Communist Party that is petrified at the thought of allowing a citizenry to freely and collectively choose its own local leadership, yet is unable to figure out any other way to quell widespread dissatisfaction in Hong Kong. Beijing is tormenting itself by exaggerating both these supposed dangers, but that comes with the whole insecure, paranoid, one-party territory.
Chinese officials’ desperate and uppity lecture to the new US Consul-General in Hong Kong about non-interference in local politics is the latest manifestation of this fear. At least some credit for prodding Beijing towards a tipping point must go to the Occupy Central civil disobedience movement. In the Communist mind, this is a conspiracy to usurp control, and it must inspire the most demonic imagery – from the Party’s own revolutionary origins, to Martin Luther King’s speech 50 years ago, to Tiananmen Square in 1989. Occupy Central is also forcing at least a modicum of unity and discipline onto the hopelessly split pro-democracy camp, which left to its own devices will bicker over irrelevant symbolism or air-headed posturing. Not bad for a bunch of people talking about sitting in the street.
Enjoy the next few consultation-free months while they last.
In a highly commendable gesture of good corporate citizenship a week ago, Prada avoided using an unnaturally perfect and glamorous male model in its advertising, instead opting to feature a manic-depressive with severe learning difficulties. This week, the company continues to give the mentally disabled a chance to show they can do the job as well as anyone else, hiring a gender-dysphoric who is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and delusions that he is the Christian martyr Saint Sebastian.
If the CCP were a person it would be diagnosed with acute paranoid schizophrenia and drugged up to the eyeballs and locked away somewhere never to be seen again. The similarties with the Prada model are quite scary.
No I take that back the Prada boy is at least a little bit functional.
Forget King. He lost. Obama is whiter than any saltine cracker. Martin Luther was a real winner because he had a sense of humour:
AUS EINEM TRAURIGEN ARSCH KOMMT KEIN FROEHLICHER FURZ HERVOR.
And don’t we have sad backsides in Hong Kong? Particularly when it comes to seizing rights rather than giving speeches. Just like King.
Did anyone catch Alex Lo’s new “piece” of journalism today? Regardless of whatever you think of Scholarism, using one’s position in the press to go after a teenager publicly is despicable and reprehensible
I think we should put HK and world issues on the back burner for a while and set our minds on what is really important here. We need to step back a moment and reflect. Is that dude a
Boy __
Girl __
Something else __
Check one.
Missed the biggest story of all today, literally screaming from the front page: You’re all really old, and we’ll need trillions to care for you as you live to 95.
Hinted at: A GST or equivalent, the most regressive tax possible in the most regressive city on earth.
Not mentioned. Nobody’s gonna live to 65 in this pollution, let alone 95. Hong Kong will be the first city on earth and possible the only one ever to start showing a DECLINE in life expectancy soon.
Not mentioned: The 1 Trillion in reserves, sitting there uselessly.
Not mentioned: Taxing land long term rather than auctioning, to smooth our revenue and make it predictable.
Wonder who the poor bastard is that’s been given the brief. Good luck with that.
Alex Lo gives journalism a bad name, and most of the members of this forum (please note: I said most, not all), not to mention Hemlock himself, could do far better. His main claim to fame is that CY Leung invited him for a meal — talk about rats and a sinking ship!
Even a Frank Ching, who insinuates, without quite being brave enough to say, that the Democrats are unable to win a genuine CE election, demonstrates more thought and insight.
The “manic-depressive with severe learning difficulties” was Christoph Waltz. I presume you’ve watched a Tarantino movie or two and should be able to recognize him.
So Property Developer. Boy or Girl?
@ reductio : None of the above
@ Bela aus Deutschland :
‘RUNDFAHRT’ Definition: Like a smoke ring only different
The ****** rule OK!
The Standard has started copying the SCMP.
(Key question: will this increase or decrease the level of journalism?)
Take a look at page 6 of today’s Standard : “Angels are devilishly expensive” (just below Mary f******g Ma, but perhaps the order was juxtaposed by accident)
There we have Green Tea B*****, Coffee B***** and Milk Tea B*****, all on sale for US$97,000 for 3 nights ( 2,000 condoms included)
The mind boggles if there’s ever a Full Fat Milk B***** for sale.
Wot? No music?
Let me fix that: Merry Go Round, by Wild Man Fischer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHqR1Rql5r8
Hong Kong is going down the toilet faster than ever. Occupy Central is fast shaping as a catalyst, reacting against all the rot people put up with on a daily basis.
Jeff, For $1tr, read $1.5tr, but you’re dead right about the need to replace (partially) the auctions, usually of large plots, by a proper land and/or property tax.
Reductio, Adblock deleted the delicious young creature, with the coy leg position and kissable ears, so I am unfortunately unable to help you in your quest.
Hemlock,
Was just flitting around the interweb and found this absolutely patronising gem. You may have seen it before.
A HK Blog about HK blogs – how surreal. But this has to be read:
http://hong-kong-blogs-review.com/hemlock.php
Just a small quote:
“Judging by the comments and the majority of their writing styles — indirect, bitter, dismissive, and sarcastic — in this blog, one should keep in mind that the people who frequent this blog are in a minute percentage of the HK population and almost all of them are Chinese-illiterate. They do not and can not read the major Hong Kong news publications — in native tongue — that the natives read. ….”
and it goes on..and on.
I don’t think he/she/it likes white people or their opinions…how strange.
@Gweiloeye. I stopped reading that blog of blogs after a 5 second skim.
In Britain that would be a hate crime. Assuming Hemlock and readers were Muslims of course.
@Karen. Awesome. That cheered me up. In view of ATVs problems can I suggest.
http://youtu.be/rGaRtqrlGy8
More a reply on yesterdays post – Is Fanny Law suggesting 3 because she knows the Pro-Dem’s are so hopelessly led and divided that the different factions will put up a candidate and their vote will be split ? Whereas the Pro-Gov block will undoubtedly put one candidate forward which at this stage looks increasingly like Carrie. Result Carrie wins.
Therefore shouldn’t today’s song be The Who’s “Won’t get fooled again” – After three (How apt!) “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss …”
@gweiloeye. We’ve discussed this in the past. The author(s) is making assumptions based on a stereotypical view of the world. How do they know some of us are not Chinese or maybe we speak fluent Cantonese and Putonghua. The observations say more about the author(s) prejudice than us.
@ gweiloeye
That blog rant against Hemlock and those of use who lurk here has been around some years.
From its style and sensibility one can safely assume that the writer is American, in his/her late 20s, earnest, priggish, humourless, culturally deprived in not having never seen or understood an episode of “Monty Python”, prejudiced against Perfidious Albion and her progeny, and who thinks any criticisms of Beijing and/or Chinese people are egregious examples of postcolonial Orientalism.
Thanks all – wasn’t sure how long it had been around.
If you have the stomach to actually delve into that anti-Hemlock blog, read its other blog reviews, and pay a visit to the blogs it enthusiastically recommends, you would get a very clear picture of the writer’s perspective. It’s the perspective that, in my experience, is shared by about 60-70% of local expats, as follows:
“Hong Kong is a FANTASTIC city, a wonderful place to live and work!!! The local people are GREAT too! It’s AMAZING how many of them speak perfect English and have been educated at western universities, and who send their kids to the same international schools we send our kids to. And they also say Hong Kong is just FAB!
So let’s enjoy this GREAT, VIBRANT, JOYOUS city, and in our blogs and Facebook comments celebrate its fine restaurants, its cultural amenities, its hiking trails, its unjustly neglected countryside, its exuberant wealth of shopping malls and exclusive boutiques, its flora and its fauna, its business opportunities, its dizzying diversity, its sheer exoticism.
And yes, okay … Hong Kong has problems, what city doesn’t? But it’s not for us outsiders to judge or sneer. Let’s respect the locals and leave it to them to sort it out among themselves, without us poking our big western noses in.
Hong Kong .. You just gotta LOVE it!”
@Sojourner. Exactly. Well said.
Sojourner, You could add that by the blogging prig’s logic, white (and black) United States people shouldn’t be poking their big foreign noses into North American affairs, since they have no business being there in the first case, and indeed more or less practised genocide on the natives.
@ PCC .. Thanks.
@ PropertyDeveloper — Indeed.
The wholesale massacre of Native Americans is an internal matter. The U.S. should not intervene.
Yes, and Britain belongs to the ancient Celts and Cunts, and those Johnnie-come-lately Anglo-Saxons should go back to Germany whence they came. The shepherds from Normandy should return to Norway, and on and on.
The wholesale massacre of white British culture by Muslims who came from third world shitholes and want to make Britain feel like home is no business of anyone not British.
Um…
Come on guys (or ladies) you are sounding like a bunch old cynics. I am, in the HK local time, “fresh off the boat” (or Airbus A330).
In wanker expat time (2 year all expences paid), been here a whole life time.
Reality is been here 5 years. I still keep my nose out of local business – but in 2 years time – fuck ’em, i’m going all in, and any whinging local better suck it up.
Sojourner i’ll play the newbie and still agree with part of your summary with a different emphasis and ending:
“Hong Kong IS STILL a fantastic city, let’s hope China doesn’t fuck it up too much more..and we can still say “at least it’s better than back in our mother country (where ever that is)””
Bugger I should listen to my own rule – don’t send emails or blog after several beers. I am going to have to read this in the morning to remember what I wrote…..
@ Sojourner
Actually that anti -Hemlock blog review which gweiloeye quotes (and which I also found long ago) is remarkably frank, and dare I say true, especially if one bases the review on the kind of comments which Hemmer’s blog attracts, which are almost totally from biased gweilos ( me included : biased can be AC/ DC )
That’s not so say that the Big Lychee is a bad thing. Far from it !
I rank Hemmers as one of the top commentators in HK on a par intellectually with Jake and Tom Holland (and Alex Lo and Chugani in their occasional moments of sanity )
Also Hemmers comes across – at least to me – as “one of us” insofar that because it’s HIS blog, and not a newspaper column, he can write what the **** he likes, and **** you if you don’t like it. But also there’s a sense of “actually I’m interested as to what kind of reaction I stir up in what I write because that’s typical of all the HK western ex-pats, so it’s interesting to know how they think and react to this and that issue”
So are we all some kind of “rat” experiment by Hemmers ? ( What was the name of that Russian psychologist who experimented with rats? )
What the heck !
It’s all in good fun and common interest, and like Bela I wait eagerly every morning for when Hemmers enlightens us for another day, then I enjoy the riposte and the BS.
BUT : for a deeper understanding of what really goes on in HK, the new SCMP on-line edition with an active comments section is really worth subscribing to. Much cheaper and less work than buying the hard copy and the on-line version is constantly updated through out the day / night The comments there come from a complete cross-section of HK english- reading/ writing educated society. Easy to differentiate the gweiloes from the local Chinese. But both have valid perspectives and some do very deep and clever background research e.g “dynamco” .
NO ! I don’t work for the SCMP and NO I am not dynamco !
@ gweiloeye
1. ” Hong Kong IS STILL a fantastic city, let’s hope China doesn’t fuck it up too much more..and we can still say “at least it’s better than back in our mother country (where ever that is)”
Fully agreed !
And for all those who say their glass is half empty I say mine is still half full
2. “Bugger I should listen to my own rule – don’t send emails or blog after several beers. I am going to have to read this in the morning to remember what I wrote….”
Doubly agreed !! I have the same problem
So better to send emails when your glass is half empty than when it’s fully empty .
“Carlsberg : probably the best beer in the world for making you fall over and talk BS ”
🙂
RTP:
On a par intellectually with Chugani? R i i i i i i i i i i g h t…
I think you’re another one who should lay off the sauce in the wee hours.
@ G. Hova
I did say “occasionally” …. but perhaps that was going to far I admit.