As if she hasn’t done enough to make Hong Kong squirm with embarrassment, Chief Executive Carrie Lam pleads with consuls-general to help the city procure surgical masks and other protective equipment, and not to impose travel restrictions on local residents.
Her audience did not mince their words. “If your citizens planning to travel to our countries are not carrying the plague,” they responded angrily, “why do you need the face masks so badly? Huh?” Or they would have – but they are diplomats, so held their tongues.
Instead, the US Consulate announces that it is letting non-essential staff take their families back to the safety and security of (say) Baltimore. Which brings the Hong Kong US mission into line with those in Beijing and Shanghai.
The last time Carrie addressed all the consuls (if I recall correctly), it was to assure them that her Extradition Bill was a fine and dandy idea and nothing to worry about. Since then, her main contact with them has been in the form of venomous freak-outs about How Dare You Interfere in Our Internal Affairs, when their home governments had the temerity to voice concern about the business hub’s descent into civil unrest.
Meanwhile, the Hong Kong Free Republic’s provisional Secretary of State Joshua Wong is effortlessly exploiting the Revolution’s soft power among overseas allies to source face masks – our fledgling nation’s equivalent of oil wells and gold reserves.
Did she also mention that Wuhan people are clandestinely holed up in Hong Kong in supposed quarantine as hotels refuse them entry?
6/F, 260 Gloucester Road above the Volvo dealer is one place but for some reason I can’t see it on the CHP desktop map.
Surely the Fujian Associations of Patriotic Thugs in North Point and beyond are more than happy to take in wandering mainlanders as a sign of brotherly compassion?
Surely asking foreign devils “… to help the city procure surgical masks and other protective equipment …” is precisely “… Interfering in Our Internal Affairs”? Or is that only a one-way thing?
Carrie should Take a tip from the US consulate staff and go back to Beijing with the other nonessential staff of her government. Or she could take a tentative first step in developing her leadership and governance skills by showing a bit of both and resigning.
So a handful of 20-something kids can get hold of masses of face masks while our highly paid government with all its resources flounders uselessly! What the hell are we paying these incompetents for?
@Private Beach – most of us dearly wish we weren’t paying them and they weren’t in office
“The masks will be delivered to district councillors to help poor people, street cleaners and the elderly, Wong said. The rest will be sold online at a price lower than the cost, he added.” (HKFP). Presumably DAB and pro-govt toadies who were against St Joshua during the Umbrella Movement and Anti-Extradition Protests need not apply online?
@ Private Beach: “What the hell are we paying these incompetents for?”
Quite simply to irritate you. What’s the point of having power if you can’t piss off a load of moaner-groaners? As I post, Carrie Lam and I are chuckling our little heads off.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cow-dung-cure-for-coronavirus-11581378967
“Swami Chakrapani Maharaj, president of the Hindu Mahasabha—a century-old organization that advocates Hindutva (or “Hinduness”)—declared that “consuming cow urine and cow dung will stop the effect of infectious coronavirus.”
The swami added that a “person who chants ‘om namah shivay’ and applies cow dung” on his body “will be saved.” The Sanskrit chant is a salutation to Shiva, a Hindu deity.
The swami is a prominent figure in hard-line Hindu circles and has an ideological affinity with Mr. Modi.”
And here I thought that Traditional Chinese Medicine was the only cure…
I’m waiting for the United Front dim wits to start saying that the Demosisto masks are an example of “black hand” interference in the economy of Hong Kong and part of a plot to alienate the patriotic people of Hong Kong from the Motherland.
@Private Beach. She did get some, but they were all diverted up north.
Looks like Tedros spent more time agonizing over what to call the Wu-Flu in order not to offend ‘anyone’ than on getting the WTO finger out.
Why hasn’t the DAB bought a shipping container of masks and distributed them to their own network of grannies and granddads? It’s such an obvious thing to do to win back voters, and so stupid to let themselves be upstaged by Joshua Wong. Did their firehose of undisclosed China cash get shut off?
@MarkLane: I think the swami’s remedy is bullshit.
The Hash House Harriers generally use toilet paper to mark trails in “shiggy”/undergrowth as it rapidly dissolves in the rain.
A dozy Frog laid a trail yesterday in Tai Po.
Guess what?
By the time the pack got to the shiggy, all the toilet paper had gone…