The London Times names the boy Joshua as its Young Person of the Year. The paper is owned by Rupert Murdoch, along with Fox TV, the Wall Street Journal and the UK’s Sun. This might seem an odd bunch of media outlets, ranging from the serious to the plain cretinous, until you realize they are all, in their own ways, solidly conservative and naturally anti-communist. At one stage, of course, Murdoch owned the South China Morning Post, which he hoped would help him shoe-shine his way into the hearts of the then-Beijing leadership, who would let him broadcast satellite TV to 800 million Mainland subscribers. The idea that evil foreigners would 
be allowed into China’s media business seems naïve in an age when the paranoid regime is snuffing out Gmail and The Big Bang Theory, but they were heady days.
Poking the Chinese government in the eye is now a pleasure. As a believer that high-quality journalism must be paid for, Murdoch protects most of his publications with no-nonsense pay-walls, so we do not have the full citation. But we can see that the Times says Joshua Wong is a man (sounds strange, but just turned 18, so strictly speaking correct) ‘whose courage in insisting that knowledge is an inalienable right and liberty is indivisible’ wins him the title. I am not sure whether he has actually uttered such Jeffersonian words about knowledge and liberty – though he probably could have. The point is that this will irritate all the right people in the Hong Kong and Chinese leaderships, who obviously have no clue that being in Rolling Stone is far cooler.
If you like the Thing of the Year thing, there’s a RTHK3 poll you can vote in here. The last time I voted checked, the results were…
If the Hong Kong Police lag behind the dashing Joshua and the other pro-democracy students, it’s partly because – under duress, no doubt – they are transforming 
into a crotchety and fidgety thought-control enforcement brigade. Their big nightmare for tomorrow’s New Year’s Eve festivity tedium is not that a pleasure boat will sink in the harbour or that drunks will be crushed in a stampede in Lan Kwai Fong – but that someone, somewhere, will want universal suffrage.
The message is: walk on the sidewalk to go shopping, and that’s fine; walk on the sidewalk to pretend to go shopping, and you could be arrested. Join the estimated 370,000 people who want to see in 2015, and that’s fine; join (or worse, plot) an ‘unauthorized assembly’ of people who want to see free elections, and you could be arrested. It will be interesting to see what the courts would make of this, should the public prosecutors be demented enough to send anyone for trial on ‘willful exercise of basic freedoms’ charges. Meanwhile, a New Year’s wish might be to go back to having a police service that enforces laws rather than opinions.
On a brighter note, at least this isn’t Papua New Guinea. Australian Broadcasting Corp reports the latest…
Bougainville disaster co-ordinator Frank Lacey, who is heading the investigation team, said…
“Local reports coming from the area are that there are three dead bodies in the ship’s fridge with some fish they have caught.
“The occupants of the boat, when it ran aground, they tried to burn it.
“They tried to burn the ship. They do this all the time.”
All the time… Yes, these darned corpses-in-freezer-on-illegal-unsuccessfully-set-on-fire-fishing-boat cases just get so tiresome after a while.
Holy crap! Those pathetic CCP loving trolls that have entirely hijacked the SCMP.com’s pages since September (I’m still wondering if they’ve even paid or have been given passwords to access) had better get off the site “disliking” everything sensible for a few moments and go check out the RTHK site to prop up the police!!
As a happy New Year Resolution, I’ve already discontinued my subscription at SCMP, demanded a refund of my (sneakily charged by them) funds with threat of entering a merchant dispute with my card company and will entirely rely on these pages for all my future HKSARCC news… The “CC” is China City.
“… a New Year’s wish might be to go back to having a police service that enforces laws rather than opinions.”
Amen.
Chinese Netizen (and everyone else): Do not subscribe to SCMP. Just download Google Chrome, open an “Incognito” window, and you can circumvent the paywall. That way you can read the three (or so) articles per week which deserve a second glance.
Today’s SCMP leader “Electoral Reform Package Must Unite HK” could have been lifted verbatim straight out of China Daily. Why subscribe to that?
I think song of the year would have to go to David Cheang’s “I’d call you a moron but you’d get mad”. Absolutely freaking hilarious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvHJ_yt4k_8
Here’s a pretty decent English translation too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO0H7zWjUDs
@Flip-Flopper: Arigato.
Greatest thing is the crook in the Lands Dept who has gotten his cousins to take up as many leases as possible in agricultural land, then got the ball rolling on CY’s latest effort to bribe the leaders of the Kuk and other rual brown-nosers.
“The London Times names the boy Joshua as its Young Person of the Year.”
The young ones
Darling we’re the young ones
And young ones shouldn’t be afraid
You vote, I vote
While the flame is strong
For we may not have the chance to very long.
Tomorrow
Why wait until tomorrow?
For the future surely will unfold.
You vote, I vote.
We will not be so bold
In the days when we are old.
Once in every lifetime
Comes a chance like this.
Vote for you, vote for me.
Oh my darling, can’t you see
Young dreams
Do not have to hide.
Tamar should be occupied.
And some day, when the years have flown
We’ll be sorry how pragmatic we have grown.
– – – – – – – –
The old ones
Darling we’re the old ones
And old ones really do resent
That our routine
Is disrupted by a student in a tent.
A draw between Xi Jinping-pong and Erwiana ??
That is so unfair to Erwiana.
Village Idiot for the year: CY Leung
A-hole for the year: Xi Jinping
Invertebrate of the year: Regina Ip
Traitor of the year: Andy Tsang, the HK Police Commissioner, and Eric Tsang of TVB
Papers to avoid: Wan wei Po, (PO)SCMP, Tai Kun Po, Oriental Publications (Oriental Daily, The Sun), SingTao Daily
Greatest Thing? CCP and Libertarian/Anarchest Agree it must be: “Rule of Law, Whut Rule of Law”.
Joe Studwell sums it up.
http://joestudwell.wordpress.com/2014/12/30/new-years-resolutions-wanted/
Anyone who can read & write Chinese, and who is upset about the immoral treatment of the 14 year old girl separated from her family by the corrupt courts of Hong Kong should consider to fill out this petition.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1U9ul0NJC84uzSBRBf-v6cBvb5I9j-rBY2WglgtGoOJ0/viewform
forgot to mention one thing…PRC China doesn’t recognize dual citizenship…meaning anyone Chinese heritage have zero rights while in areas controlled by China.
PRC considers anyone of Chinese heritage as a chinese citizen regardless of their citizenship.