Foreign customs

What have Hong Kong Customs been doing over the last couple of years of zero inbound travel, with hardly any arriving passengers with bags to check? Seems they’ve been training to switch completely to ‘Chinese-style’ (ie Prussian) marching at parades…

…in order to express [the department’s] sense of belonging to and patriotic feelings for the country.

The disciplined service said the People’s Liberation Army-style of drills will make performances more attractive, and help officers better integrate with the governance system of the country and enrich the practice of One country, Two systems.

‘Goose-stepping is more attractive than regular plain marching’ and ‘marching like John Cleese helps you integrate with the governance system of the country’. Discuss.

If you think learning to goose-step is a waste of taxpayers’ money – the ICAC is going to ‘work hard’ to bring exiled activist Ted Hui back to Hong Kong to prosecute him for encouraging people not to vote in the last legislative election. They have also been checking online to see if anyone is urging a boycott of the John Lee CE ‘election’, but haven’t found any cases (perhaps because it’s not really an election in the first place). Remember when these guys fought corruption?

Interesting little thread from a former District Council member on the long-awaited opening of the Shatin-Central MTR Link…

…a textbook case of failure of #HongKong public administration. Intertia of the gov, wrong priorities, weak oversight and loose corporate memory.

Apparently, the UK House of Lords has an annual evidence session with the President and VP of the UK Supreme Court, Lords Reed and Hodge. In the latest one, a month ago, the two judges answered questions about why they resigned from the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal (scroll down to Q23). As you would expect, their comments are infuriatingly measured.

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16 Responses to Foreign customs

  1. Chinese Netizen says:

    After clicking on Hemmer’s pic of Cleese on Twatter, I wandered off course and discovered a long thread about a foreign journo being tailed at every turn during his bike trip in Guizhou.

    At the end jumped in a VERY useful idiot for the CCP that I never heard of before but who’s obviously VERY proud of himself and his toadying…

    Anyone heard of him?

    https://www.facebook.com/ChinaIndiaDialogue/photos/basw.AbpEfufQn0lJFA7dp5THMsrTpDkXBK65shK-8plfxmdBc1rYLk2ig3BZ2BNs6wwLAadDOYKHOtzQX0-05YVSXPYmE2sPDtYhyu4lT_aUVWIYUbMPsLos97HXnv5mA_0lgVS3p1vP1aP7DMId4FX_3y8P/2087276554752759/?opaqueCursor=AbqhInJsGwY7N9QZhHW-qure0XBNosv6-wJYYuh25lkaXGwmlOHmsZmlNQVAJhd6DSrnsfuWolfx1BwJbKmSuDOhZN8DcLWLW8qIq-gKkiFuCq4Uz3WnbkIPn4_dVFv0jn2QgEGe-b2rGXxBHOe8on1kdjes3M3sNppGxZF6pMJOne8QKPrc0PPHyPKbygwuBT1joQQJ5tJnFsu1GntBW_ccRzZh7wZFEZjL3ijEYt-oAqNyOtlY_FeScxWYu7pP10wPDDSGgjYpp9mcy47tn7He2YW13wR9YMF48A7E5QaotvjjmFriE4yq2F4UE3xVmk0CsQTXgPSolq8uV5kPoqK_RJuDLMbA16-tM21Eq9LUo5DIyUbvu-LhUjm3BkhUlMk_b_vHecZEawl2bTPFSCMTbo0F5NXsVYty4cOoOKF0VFW_P5TJOB1mBET_-KXWiUEiwjeGs3woKnFw564nIfOInaGTktL50h4JDVWe9yb7VCpSTev-e2_Hr08UGUaeQ8WveWrsjuQ1AB10McC71UUQkWYcaILs9wfkZsrCPbf9UCX9xJA8GEpuquLXWHmjFy7i_HljL0-PiNIxdXTKV5i72XuUEU8CeIiJXFd9EgmS7muWjxsaYVbZELRigXQHC7mjQ9AmkiXdo0mkOIJUfIQV7X-Yv7Dr-F7-SEAoog2BQKX2IH-vOWVuwMnYmZjPozFjcLOkl2PbLTxVL6PKhNG0Feqpn-Nf4ENqkQI31bp6WvfQDq67RgVM4w50eLi0gq3rK9HW-V0IrjUJjvKYCAnpVjiPabF-hE5WcjECDyEbTJmZnOpjFbzyr9vRUnbNRE-KBIHKs64hKh080QVm_SmJAnv1OdQLyZZC850q6ri71RsFZWWWMI_1ZDGCQHVs6Hy1NW_QNdjvQQe04xx7bAsh69vYpRLjtm3hy2qoPGPm0Q

  2. reductio says:

    @Chinese Netizen

    Thank you for scrolling though Facebook so others don’t have to. David Ferguson is obviously a guy to watch (as is anyone who is a recipient of “the 15th Special Book Award of China” ). How come I’ve never heard of the other 14 previous Book Awards of China, as it is clearly a literary event of some magnitude? Looking forward to other works from David’s oeuvre.

  3. Red Dragon says:

    Chinese Netizen.

    That’s a very big link to a very little man.

    And, no, of course I’ve never heard of him.

  4. Chris Maden says:

    I’m glad the Customs and Excise have found an appropriate way to show they’re patriots. Given the very probable collapse in HK as an aviation hub and the reality of its demise as a trans-shipment hub, I anticipate their goosesteps will be the most polished and sharp of all the disciplined services’.

  5. tim hamlett says:

    Not a real Scot. Belt outside doublet, wrong shoes.

  6. Chinese Netizen says:

    Apologies to all about the massively space taking link.

    Yes, enough space wasted on the useful panda fucker.

  7. Idiot Savant says:

    @Chinese Netizen
    Judging by his google presence, I don’t think anyone outside of the Chinese propaganda cluster has heard of him. In his case the accent is apparently firmly on the “idiot” rather than the “useful”.

    The one thing I can surmise, given the full Scottish paraphernalia in the pic, is that he is almost certainly from England.

    BTW top tip on long url links: you can almost always delete everything from the first “?” on (test first). The rest of it is just tracking data.

  8. Formerly Known As... says:
  9. Roddy the Rodomontade says:

    Ferguson: Highland dress all wrong. Definitely from Surrey.

  10. Idiot Savant says:

    @Formerly Known As…
    Love the way he looks back at all the catastrophes caused by Lam et al’s risible and pathetic governance, and concludes it was some sort of heroic struggle against unseen forces of fate, not the direct result of their own tone-deaf, dimwitted ineptitude:
    “But she has endured with the help of the central government and can now bow out with her head held high. She and we have survived … but just.”

    Also, how exactly do you bow out with your head held high?
    Pinkstone’s mastery of doublethink seems to be bleeding into his metaphors…

    Lest we forget how terrifyingly prescient the concept is:
    “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word—doublethink—involved the use of doublethink.

  11. reductio says:

    “Hong Kong is still the hub of Asia and offers the mystique of the orient”. FFS. What is this Pinkstone bloke tripping on because his world ain’t the one I’m currently situated in.

  12. WolfLikeMe says:

    can’t wait for the Sevens

  13. Chinese Netizen says:

    @Idiot Savant: Cheers for that pro tip!

  14. Big Al says:

    @Idiot Savant
    I’d imagine “bowing out with your head held high” would involve Carrie goose-stepping towards the light radiating from the Motherland while bent at the waist, but at the same time arching her back so her face looks up into the loving eyes of Chairman Xi.
    Is this bodily contortion a physical representation of the mental contortion that Carrie has needed in order to excel in doublethink? Discuss.

  15. Red Dragon says:

    Old Pinky certainly sounds perky.

    Interesting to learn that his views do not “necessarily” reflect those of China Daily.

    That’ll be the day, cobber!

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