Many of the attendees at Witman Hung’s birthday party – including 30 or so government officials and lawmakers – do only a few hours at Penny’s Bay before being let out to finish quarantine at home. Even this slight brush with real life proves too much for some, with Junius Ho doing his online meltdown (now set to music, given new wording, and otherwise parodied and mocked).
There is some excited speculation that the Witman-gate scandal will crush Carrie Lam’s supposed dreams of ‘re-election’ to Chief Executive. This is fanciful: Beijing will appoint whoever it wants to the post, and it makes little difference who it is when Mainland officials are making the decisions behind the scenes. The CCP might stick with the dutiful and obedient masochist, or it might go for the full anti-charisma option of John Lee. Who cares?
On the other hand, Beijing must surely be concerned that the new ‘improved’ election and governance system is highlighting the respective arrogance and dimwittedness of the ‘elite’ bureaucrats and DAB lawmakers who now monopolize what passes for the political stage.
In the lead-up to 1997, we had top officials like (to pluck some from hazy memory) Anson Chan, Piers Jacobs, Libby Wong, Haider Barma, etc. They weren’t perfect, but at least they took pride in their work and – perhaps more important – in Hong Kong. Today’s ministers are clearly less competent, but also more contemptuous of public opinion (which is itself now more informed and demanding than 30 years ago).
Hong Kong’s most popular elected representatives – ranging from Eddie Chu Hoi-dick to Claudia Mo to Long Hair – are in prison, essentially for having brains, principles and ideas. The new Legislative Council now comprises nothing but ‘patriotic’ shoe-shiners with fake degrees, thuggish manners, and an embarrassing lack of smarts.
Beijing must realize this adds up to a highly visible legitimacy problem. For example…
What do mainland state-controlled media really think of HK’s new political class? Qin Feng, broadcaster once praised by Wen Jiabao: “How did idiot Witman Hung get here? I first met him 6 years ago and I hated him, slimy tongue and face of an opportunist”
(While we’re at it, try hilarious details from the personal life of Witman Hung – ‘owns three taxi licences and lots of Sunlight REIT’. Finding it rather easy to add to this establishment social-climber stereotype… Is considering Dubai and the Maldives for future classy vacations. Hired a Stanford PhD to tutor his three-year-old in algebra. Owns a Tibetan Mastiff called Bo Bo. Tried to sell his grandmother as part of an elaborate scheme to be awarded a Silver Bauhinia Medal. Asked his family’s Filipino domestic helper to come to Penny’s Bay to wash his socks.)
One solution is to just clamp down on criticism in the media (see the timid coverage of Witless-gate in the establishment press).
On which, CNN on the dismantling of Hong Kong’s press freedom. And Hong Kong appears in the latest Private Eye.
Thomas Kellogg on why the Hong Kong government is using ‘sedition’ charges rather than the NatSec Law. Possible reasons include…
The government may have wanted to save the courts from the embarrassment of having to endorse the notion that journalists reporting on political events in Hong Kong are in fact engaged in an effort to “overthrow or undermine” the government. The sedition provision obviates the need for such a showing…
[Judges’] consciences may be lighter in cases where journalists are quote-unquote only sentenced to months rather than years.
Meanwhile, the ‘new improved effective’ governance is failing in its most immediate challenge: to find a way out of zero-Covid. Bloomberg points out that the administration has wasted the best part of a year in getting the city fully vaccinated…
Companies from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to JPMorgan Chase & Co. are allowing employees to work from home and splitting up teams coming into the office. While avoiding Covid is a key goal, they also want to reduce the risk that workers – perhaps entire teams or floors – could be sent to the government’s dour Penny’s Bay quarantine facility.
Desire to avoid the camp … has many in the city debating how forthcoming they would be should they develop symptoms or know of an exposure.
On a brighter note, a New York-based visitor appreciates Hong Kong’s zealousness.
Meanwhile the rest of us have to just lump it and miss out on weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs etc. Are bottom of the barrel leavings like fuckWitman and the like really the best we can hope for? Such a depressing thought.
For whatever reason, I keep wanting to re-work David Bowie’s “Starman” replacing the said word with Witman. Perhaps the blog’s poet-at-large would be interested in having a crack at it?
Is Odious Whore not THE biggest f-ing c**t in all of Hong Kong? His “tough man” pose is the most pathetic, laughable look ever! He must have stomped, cried and gotten red faced ALL the time as a POS little spoiled fuck kid back in the day when nothing went his way. IF anyone EVER deserved a boot heel to the mouth, it’s him.
with apologies to knownot
In Penny’s Bay a cadre shops another photograph
Of every head who was at the party show
Into quarantine they go
Whether sick or no
In the photo is a member of the party
Little children laugh at him behind his back
Coz the member never wore a mask when Omi came
What a shame
Penny’s Baaaay they swab my throat they scrape my nose
In a cell so far away from home
I sit and meanwhile back
In Penny’s Bay there’s a doctor with an hourglass
In his pocket is an order from the queen
Lock them up and keep our city clean
For the party machine
Point the finger at whoever is responsible
Those who fly our goodies in
Throw them in the bin
What a sin
Penny’s Baaaay they swab my throat they swab my nose
In a cell so far away from home
I sit
Penny’s Bay
Knowing how Hong Kong’s elite people of wonderfulness covet and ever so slightly inflate academic achievements, would it not be out of the ballpark to assume Witman engaged Vag to tutor his daughter??
Witman Slim –
Don’t apologise. Pretty good.
Chinese Netizen
In Vag’s defence, I’d simply point out that although she has one or two Master’s degrees (each of which, remarkably, she appears to have earned), she has never claimed to have a PhD or, as far as I know, attempted to buy one.
In consequence, I feel that Witless would have considered her insufficiently qualified to tutor his daughter in anything at all, let alone algebra.
I’d just like to add that in resisting the temptation to inflate her credentials, Vag differs from many, if not most, of her peers in the pro-Peking patriotic brigade, chief amongst whom, of course, is that fragrant (and, indeed, flagrant) purchaser of “academic honours”, Elizabeth Twat.
Beijing must realize this adds up to a highly visible legitimacy problem.
And what will the China Daily write after this?
https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202201/07/WS61d78081a310cdd39bc7f9bb.html
Evil foreign forces undermined the new legislators??
It seems the police commissioner has disappeared from the list of either those incarcerated in Penny’s Bay or of those required to stay at home.
“Owns three taxi licences and lots of Sunlight REIT.” The spoof conjures ups an image of a Hong Kong Alan Partridge.
“Hong Kong is the third least inoculated place among the International Monetary Fund’s 39 advanced economies, above Latvia and Slovakia, with just 62% of its population having received two doses. More significantly, only 23% of the over-80 population has taken a first dose due to rampant misinformation and complacency.” ~Bloomberg
Surely this is worth something brag worthy to the overlords in Peiping by the minions in the HKSARCCP Gov’t?