Public-service snark terminated

RTHK English News Twitter gets rectified. Comments are no longer allowed, and all previous tweets – long universally adored for their high-quality and finely-gauged snark – deleted. Judging from one response, it seems someone new has moved in to handle media inquiries…

As HKFP puts it

It is unclear if the broadcaster is aware that users may still screenshot their tweets or use the “quote” function to comment on them.

Someone has set up an alternative RTHK Twitter account that automatically posts all the headlines, just like the original – except readers are free to comment. (Until the site gets taken down for copyright infringement in – let’s guess – the next three working days. Of course, there is also a way to prevent people from using the screenshot/’quote’ fixes to comment on Twitter: imprison them for inciting hatred of the government, or blocking the whole Twitter website. Easy.)

The deleted tweets should all be archived here. RTHK Snark Greatest Hits compilations are already being compiled.

Enjoy things before they disappear.

On the subject of things vanishing, must-read of the week: Howard French on the ‘asphyxiation’ of China’s most cosmopolitan city as part of Xi Jinping’s vision of a nation that can live without foreign people and ideas.

Time for a quick horrors update… Having cleansed Hong Kong of the deadly speech therapists/cartoon sheep menace, police arrest pro-democracy activists for releasing a balloon. And, in what looks like an overly elaborate performance to reassure NatSec enforcement forces, HK University bars students who attended a union meeting from the campus. Apparently this will help preserve the institution’s reputation, or something.

A couple of good reads on the verdict in the Tong Ying-kit national security trial: Aaron Mc Nicholas and, in the SCMP, Michael Davis

Pursuing the easier charge of causing grievous bodily harm by dangerous driving would have been supported by the court’s findings in this case and would not have caused grave concerns over the security of human rights in Hong Kong. We can only hope these issues will be addressed in the coming appeal.

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8 Responses to Public-service snark terminated

  1. Low Profile says:

    The poor grammar in RTHK’s announcement (“refute” should be “refuting”) suggests that they are no longer trusting native English speakers with writing their tweets.

  2. Chris H says:

    @Low Profile,

    Not to mention the grammar errors, such as missing a couple commas and “the”.
    Wonder who in the Liaison department was tasked with this PR beaut…

  3. Knownot says:

    From the HKU statement:
    “The HKU Council has decided that all students who attended the meeting of the HKUSU Council on July 7 should be denied access to HKU campus as well as to all facilities and services of the University, until further notice and subject to review.”

    It is not final, but it looks as if those students have been expelled from the university.

    I haven’t seen the whole text, but it looks as if the motion that they passed was deplorable and, as it was public, a gross error of judgement. But they have apologised, and withdrawn it. It looks as if the Council is damaging, perhaps even ruining, these young people’s lives.

  4. A Poor Man says:

    Knownot – 32 students are presumed to be guilty of something, even though they have not been arrested or charged with any crime. HKU does have a formal disciplinary process to deal with students AFTER they have been convicted of a crime, so it seems that King Arthur and The Ghost have done this on their own or at the request of Curry Lamb.

  5. Mary Melville says:

    Eric Cheung at least had the balls to resign from the council. No doubt he will be subjected to ‘patriotic’ smearing and his tenure terminated in due course.

    Re the ‘entertainment’ charge, ICAC was probably inundated with multiple well documented complaints about similar activities on the part of the blue camp, so a quick retreat was deemed a better choice than having to respond to endless inquiries as to why the other cases were not being prosecuted.

    The athlete T-shirt issue that will not go away should have been a lesson in cause and consequence. But loyal trash is not renowned for an abundance of grey matter.

  6. Penny says:

    “Singer Anthony Wong and former pro-democracy lawmaker Au Nok-hin have each been bound over for 18 months in the sum of HK$2,000 for corruption charges in connection to the Legco by-election in 2018.”
    https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1604439-20210805.htm
    Why were they bound over ?

  7. Din Dan Che says:

    @Penny – simple guess: on the advice of their lawyers.

  8. Mary Melville says:

    Penny, this was a face saving exercise on the part of ICAC and DoJ. Of course they do not want to pursue the many cases of blue ‘entertainment’ during elections, not to mention lunch boxes, free transport, red packets, etc.
    As Din Dan Che says, the lawyers would have advised compliance particularly as Au is facing other far more serious charges.

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