We haven’t heard much from the pro-democracy Occupy Central movement lately. Maybe they’re still on the beach in Penang, sipping pina coladas and having their hair braided. Just as we’re on the verge of forgetting they were ever there, the Silent Majority for HK comes along with full-page newspaper ads to keep the radical freedom-fighters in the public eye… 
Where have I seen that typeface before? I believe it was on the old English-language PRC Customs Declaration form, circa late 1980s, which you filled in at the border to inform the Mainland authorities how many gold bars and bicycles you were carrying. And the clunky misshapen red bold font in the headline (below)? Wasn’t that the one used in the apartheid signage to indicate which immigration booth travellers should use (‘Hong Kong and Taiwan compatriots’, ‘Chinese compatriots with foreign passports’, ‘Capitalist-Roader Barbarians’, etc)?
As well as delivering Occupy Central free publicity, the Silent Majority for HK performs another valuable PR service to their enemies: the pro-Beijing loyalists come across as such pompous, self-righteous bores that they make the civil disobedience planners look untainted by the slightest hint of pretentiousness or 
grandstanding. (And that’s before we recoil at the purple prose, and shiver down the back of the neck at the sight of the creepy Communist typefaces.) Sympathizers of the universal suffrage cause may register their appreciation at the Silent Majority’s Facebook page.
Meanwhile, life goes on. Mak Chai-kwong, the Development Secretary whose term of office was briefer than the half-life of element 115, is appealing against his conviction for taking part in a civil servants’ housing scam back in the aforementioned 1980s. All he got was a suspended sentence.
This is the sort of high and mighty, I-insist-on-not-losing-face attitude that makes our civil servants so popular. Shades of ex-Security Secretary Regina Ip’s outrage that officials bowed to public pressure and agreed to give welfare handouts to poor people living in illegal dwellings. We usually suppose that bad policies result from entrenched and blinkered attitudes in the top administrative levels of government bureaus. But perhaps the bureaucrats know every bit as well as the rest of us that their education, traffic, health, planning and environmental thinking is crap – they just refuse to change because it would be too humiliating to admit that they were wrong.
The Standard tells us:
In sentencing them, the judge said he had considered their outstanding contributions to society [covering Hong Kong with vast, multi-lane clover-leaf freeway intersections no-one uses], the submissions by former chief secretaries Stephen Lam Sui-lung [huh?] and Henry Tang Ying-yen [whaaaat?!] as well as Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah [!!!] and the fact that they had returned the money with interest [well, gee, thanks guys, and how much did those City Garden units appreciate in value since you bought them?].
Still, it’s interesting: if you are convicted of an offense and don’t have ‘submissions’ from the simpering, weasel-like Stephen Lam and (for God’s sake) Henry Tang, you get a stiffer sentence. I’ll bear it in mind.*
And the South China Morning Post discovers horrifying, wide-scale child abuse. Six-year-old kids in Shenzhen are getting up well before dawn and enduring four-hour bus rides to get to their schools on this side of the border. Among the effects: missed lessons, lack of sleep and nightmares – but worst of all, missed lessons. And we’re not even told when they get their five hours of homework done every night.
Hold that nasty if understandable thought that it serves them right for abusing Hong Kong taxpayers’ hospitality: they are but innocent babes. We can only hope the pushy parents feel suitably punished one day when the little mites emerge from this hell as ketamine-addled rebels who fail their accountancy exams.
*Of course, it could be that the judge was revolted by the ‘submissions’ from Lam and Henry and instantly reversed his previous decision to find them not guilty – and only narrowly avoided giving in to the temptation to give them 20 years each.
Your imagery is slipping.
As far as I know, Occupy Central leaders don’t have any hair to braid.
Regina’s attitudes are not blinkered, they are blindfolded (Bela passim).
I think you should stop reading the SCMP.
You can also just look at words rather than typefaces. The imagery of Silent Majority is pure Nixon: light and shade. the hour before the dawn, agreeing with your mortal enemies but beating them back with a slogan. How long before we have the Silent Majority Doctrine and a sideshow in Shenzhen? Oh, we already have the chaos. Send in the troops!
Technically, the last time that font was used was on the Foreign-devil Exchange Certificates.
Those kids are a little sleepy because they’re attending kindergarten in China as well. But they’re coping well, as the homework is identical in both jurisdictions.
Perhaps it was an abuse of process to prosecute these guys for doing the cross-lease two-step like everyone else did back in the day, but the fact remains that they did it, they got caught, and yet they got away without having to do any time in jail. Now these jerks feel hard done by and want to appeal? So much for the veracity of all of those creepy letters testifying to their sterling characters. I hope each of the stiff-necked cretins gets five years inside.
When interviewed after his conviction, Mak came across with far more dignity and humility than I’ve heard from anyone in HK politics/ government/ business for years.
Every single one of our business/political leaders has got grubby hands even if they have sailed on the right side of the law over the years.
Far worse examples than Mak out there. He was just the fall guy in a witch hunt.
I for one think he’d have done a far better job than the bloke who replaced him.
I can’t remember who all of these ‘love whatever’ groups are. Are they the JPF or the PFJ? I can never remember
4 hours. Surely scope for some enterprising tutors to offer ‘on-bus’ teaching to the poor sprogs. All for a modest fee, of course.
How on earth have we ended up with cross-border schooling anyway? Is it a stipulation or right which is enshrined in the Basic Law?
For a group calling themselves “silent” they are not doing very good job.
And in breaking news:
“Australian Football League side St Kilda began investigating claims that one of its players set a dwarf performer on fire at the club’s end-of-season celebrations….”
I know i shouldn’t laugh, but…
Gweiloeye,at first it was alleged the dwarf in question was wearing a bear suit.
Ah, those Aussies … such lovable rascals!
A man died and went to Heaven. As he stood in front of the Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of clocks behind him. He asked, ‘What are all those clocks?’
St. Peter answered, ‘Those are Lie-Clocks. Everyone who has ever been on earth has a Lie-Clock. Every time you lie, the hands on your clock move.’
… ‘Oh’, said the man. ‘Whose clock is that?’
‘That’s Mother Teresa’s, replied St. Peter. ‘The hands have never moved, indicating that she never told a lie.’
‘Incredible’, said the man. ‘And whose clock is that one?’
St. Peter responded, ‘That’s Abraham Lincoln’s clock. The hands have moved twice, telling us that Abraham told only two lies in his entire life.’
‘Where’s Tony Blair’s clock?’ asked the man.
St Peter replied, ‘We are using it as a ceiling fan. ‘
Sojourner, I resemble that comment – well I hope I do but in a “don’t set fire to dwarves” sort of way.
@gweiloeye…it was a midget…dwarves are found in epic fantasies…and don’t perform in porn.
@Q Oneleggoalie … “Game of Thrones” is sort of soft porn and a dwarve performs there.
@ gin soaked boy. LOL. I chuckled.
Related note, back in the UK last week the chattering classes are now musing how Muslim Britain will play out. At middle of this century it will be Muslim majority thanks to Blair’s immigration brainwank of the naughties. Divided Island a la Indian partition with Shariah Midlands and Shariah East London unavoidable if fertility rates continue.
Name for the new Islamic homeland around Leicsster and Brummy…. Blairistan
@Oneleggoalie – apologies I meant to say “dwarfs” – I blame Tolkien for that. FYI Midgets are technically dfferent. And dare i say, googling dwarf porn actually gets results, and no I did not click through to witness the result.