A few days after his bureau said teachers mentioning the ‘I’ word could lose their professional qualifications, Education Secretary Eddie Ng comes back from a brief but refreshing trip to Beijing to say that actually they can talk about Hong Kong independence in schools after all. There is a condition: the discussion must be within the scope of the Basic Law. No-one knows what that means. Officials can’t say whether they want to criminalize ideas, let alone go into whether they can.
Since schools are currently closed for summer, and political debating sessions are not part of the curriculum anyway, this is a case of Clarifying Illogicalities Arising from Giant Contrived Mega-Fuss about Nothing. But pleasingly scurrilous young people in Hong Kong have discovered that by talking and acting as if a measurable ‘independence movement’ exists in the city, they can trigger yet greater automatic mass-mouth-frothing and frenzied head-exploding among Mainland officials.
Hong Kong officials and sycophants feel compelled to emulate their Mainland masters. But alas! Their automatic mass-mouth-frothing skills are mostly feeble in comparison with the vitriolic rants spewed out by the professionals in Beijing. The blatherings of shoe-shiners like Rita Fan or Fanny Law are so limp that it’s embarrassing. (Indeed, Rita seems to have gone completely soft in the head, recently suggesting that Chinese Communist officials fail to understand Hong Kong – when any patriot knows it’s the other way round.)
But occasionally, a local kowtowing groveler to the one-party state successfully comes up with a classy diatribe. Today’s award goes to Alan Hoo, a Basic Law expert.
He is so miffed and alarmed by the creeping, lurking, looming pro-independence menace in our midst that he is demanding the death penalty, over the border, at least. Such heavy-duty, no-nonsense wrath rightfully deserves a response. The Hong Kong National Party, which Hoo wants banned, dares the authorities to declare it illegal and come and arrest them. The Communist Party’s propagandists are of course also challenging the Hong Kong government to eliminate and crush the (unregistered, nebulous) group. Our officials can only squirm and issue macho-sounding threats to do something to someone, somewhere, sometime. Probably not next week.
(The Standard refers to the Hong Kong National Party simply as ‘the National Party’, which prompts in my mind the instant word association ‘Pik Botha’. Presumably, the paper hopes that omitting ‘Hong Kong’ dilutes the subliminal-ish splittist message conveyed by the full name. Which it does, if ‘Pik Botha’ flashes before you.)
I declare the weekend open with Uplifting and Cheerful Documentary of the Month for the viewing pleasure of anyone interested: A Certain Kind of Death – how Los Angeles deals with the property and (especially) bodies of those who die with no next of kin.
Is not Alan Hoo the “senior counsel” who sought to evict his own mother?
Re: Rita Fan & Alan Hoo – this suggests that the local old school patriotic brigade are upset at being cut out of the loop by Xi Jinping’s famously controlling faction.
My guess is that the Empire has decided that its longtime local representatives have been here too long and “gone native”. So they’ve been brushed aside in favour of Liaison Office functionaries parachuted in despite (or because of?) their complete unfamiliarity with Hong Kong affairs. The more desperate among them are trying to worm their way into the Xi faction’s good graces by spouting the most insane rhetoric they can think of.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
You’re such a stirrer.
Saw Zimmermann’s election slogan HONG KONG: LET’S FIX IT , a brilliant piece of satire in a fixed election with a fixed outcome for the benefit of a fixed number of people in a fixed economy.
We satirists do have our effects in the end. Or as Pik Botha would say – our effix.
As for A CERTAIN KIND OF DEATH, I had no idea you were that depressed. I had to give up on it, curious when you think that I can watch and love horrific Russian films like COME AND SEE and CARGO 200 ( the latter will give you nightmares). The thing to watch at present is MAKING A MURDERER, all ten hours of it, on YouTube. Justice the American way. Pip, pip!
As Alexei Sayle one said to a heckler during a stand-up routine “I’d rather be up here shouting spite, than down there spouting shite!” Talking of which, I image our friend Alan Who? being the delegate at the back of the NCCPCC meeting hall with his hand up shouting “me, me, sir, me” in response to the question “Is there any way that we can become more despised by the people of Hong Kong?”
@Cassowary’s reference has given me a Friday afternoon idea … move over Star Wars, we can have our very own Celestial Wars! The evil Empire, headed by Emperor Xi and Grand Moff Leung, supported by his henchman, Darth Guangya, who is based in the Death Star, aka The Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Then, for the Rebel Alliance, we have Joshua Wong as Luke Skywalker, the fragrant Audrey Eu as Princess Leia, Long Hair as Han Solo and Martin Lee as Obi Wan Kenobi. Supporting cast including Albert Ho as Jabba the Hutt (obviously, no make-up required) and Broomhead/Vagina as Chewbacca (ditto)? Does anyone have JJ Abram’s number?
No, no, Maria Tam as Jabba and Vagina as her best ugly friend.
Please…let’s not offend Chewbacca by putting him in the same column as Ragina
For the weekend.
There Are Bad Times Just across the Border
They’re nervous in Wing On,
They’re worried in Sincere:
Bad times are coming on.
In Hang Seng Bank
They’re feeling crank
And have been all the year.
They’re shaky, wan
In Shau Kei Wan;
In Kowloon Bay
They’re going grey.
There’s no fun to be had
In Causeway Bay
Because they
Are so sad.
High on the Peak
They’re feeling weak.
The jewellery shops
Are all flops.
There are bad times just across the border.
There’s a typhoon coming down this way.
A chill wind blowing,
And everyone is going
To stay with their relations in the USA.
Brand-new office blocks,
The Party cannot hide them –
Not a soul inside them.
After midnight knocks
All the decent lawyers are in jail.
Though we cannot go there yet
By high-speed rail,
Cheer up, and don’t forget
Bad times lie ahead:
Wait until we all go red.
They’re sorry in Shanghai Street,
They’re troubled in Tai Wai.
There’s nothing good to eat,
The pubs are running dry.
The Mandarin Hotel
Has gone to hell.
The Café de Coral
Is immoral.
There are bad times just across the border.
And never mind the publishers’ arrests;
They crossed the border gladly
As China’ honoured guests.
And though some people badly
Went out into the streets and occupied,
The Government would only wait
For orders from the other side.
ICAC fading,
PLA parading.
What a glorious fate!
See what lies ahead:
Wait until we all go red.
People quote the Law
But don’t obey it.
I’ve heard it all before,
They always say it.
In Happy Valley races
Every horse is lame;
And so, alas, this place is
Hong Kong just in name.
Get drunk in Lan Kwai Fong,
Sing a bawdy song,
And wait until we all go red.
High autonomy?
Not that I can see.
Hello, Mr Xi!
Wait until we all go red.
with acknowledgement to ‘There Are Bad Times Just around the Corner’ by Noël Coward
The Bothas Pik and P.W. are not the same although they were both National Party politicians
@ dimuendo
The lad’s a class act. ‘Nuff said.
Nice article, but one little quibble:
Your hyper link to Pik Botha leads to the wikipedia page of P.W. Botha.
This is P.W.’s page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._W._Botha
This is Pik’s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pik_Botha
Sorry to be such a boer.
@ Big Al. I’d pay to see Joshua Wong kissing Audrey Eu as Princess Leia.
Whoever told Knownot that he was a poet, please make amends.
Ah, the QC Alan Hoo, he with a large mainland property portfolio in Sanya and Beijing among others (one of which was gained via a blatant land grab),
Bit nervous me thinks
In the James Bond film “The man with the golden gun” (1974) the villain Scaramouch owned a golden bullet with 007’s name on it. If only he had another bullet with “Alan Hoo” written on it. Or better still, “689”.