Interesting how the quality of comments around here improves as the day goes on.
One from last night points out the array of Hong Kong talent/immigration schemes as of 2018 (GEP, ASMTP, QMAS, IANG, TechTAS and ASSG – one ‘Admission Scheme for the Second Generation of Chinese Hong Kong Permanent Residents’). And postulates that numbers will fall after a post-Covid bounceback, and some migrants will leave again as they struggle to afford living here.
Perhaps. Alternatively, the policymakers might be more focussed on increasing the number of Mainlanders in the city as an end in itself.
Another rejects the complaints over long waits for transport at the airport during the recent typhoon: ‘limiting circulation during a typhoon is prudent … suck it up, its a typhoon, just sit it out at the airport for a few hours and stop whinging’.
If the airport ATC/movements experts judged (apparently correctly) that the runway was safe for aircraft to land on, why are trains, buses and taxis unable to run in the rest of Hong Kong? The answer surely is that the airport doesn’t automatically shut down flights because the HK Observatory raises a technical signal dating back to the days of sailboats – it uses doppler radar and other fancy methods to focus on specific relevant local conditions. Maybe such a more flexible or nuanced approach isn’t feasible citywide, or maybe it is. If it were, it’s likely that at least some more land transport systems could keep operating in much of the city much of the time even though a Number 8 signal goes up. (How do they do it in other cities?)
Not that you’d want to be out when it gets bad.
I think we can comment on your comments about comments.
Have you seen Gogglebox?
What’s this? Mrs Von der Leyen, Head of the European Community, exactly one year ago:
“Targeted attacks on civilian infrastructure with the clear aim to cut off men, women, children [from] water, electricity, and heating with the winter coming, these are acts of pure terror and we have to call it as such,” von der Leyen said.”
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-leyen-ukraine-infrastructure-war-
crimes/32091194.html
Oh it’s a crime if Russia does it apparently, which they didn’t. Israel did it and does it and are doing it but it isn’t a crime. That’s all right then.
Shalom!
There are several differences between flying through a typhoon and driving through one:
1) no hard things to smash into (given can choose when to land)
2) no HK taxi drivers fighting for the same space
3) millions of $$-worth of safety and monitoring equipment
4) highly trained operator, backed by a highly trained control tower team
I’ll take my chances with flying over local drivers tyvm
The MTR Tung Chung line should always have run through Tung Chung to the airport, and it shouldn’t be a premium service. The Lantau Link (The bridge between Tsing Yi and Lantau) has mostly enclosed rail tunnels and enclosing the section from there to the airport/Tung Chung should be perfectly feasible, so it should be entirely possible to have a full normal service on the MTR to Airport in times to Typhoons.
This would, of course, be devastating to the Taxi rip-off industry who rigidly control a large part of the Transport Functional Constituency, and so it will never happen.
i suspect in regards to HKO there is something more akin to protocol and rules that governs their prognostications and alerts. After all, any freely available software like ventusky or windy app give enough deep levels of information for the average citizen — even one not geeking out about weather –to judge the weather for up to 48 hours very accurately.
it was obvious three days before the approach of Koinu, for example, that black rain and flooding was again going to be a problem as ventusky already showed that at 7pm that evening there would begin for the following eight hours an average of 55 mm of rain per hour over hong kong. and… that’s exactly what happened.
So why didn’t the HKO give that kind of level of detail?
Are they afraid of being proven wrong?
Are they not allowed to?
Are other members of the administration responsible for making that call?
It definitely seems like they are either hamstrung or just not as well versed in facing the public as they should be in 2023.
Your trenchant observation about the poor quality of early comments was borne out by today’s lead-off batter.
Another odd thing about the Hong Kong Observatory is that it NEVER mentions Hong Kong by name. The closest it will get is such phraseology as ‘…. affecting the coast of southern Guangdong’.
People often change their minds about proportionality after a deliberate campaign to rape, murder and behead civilians, including women and children. I know I did. However, in war innocents do die, especially when they are deliberately put in harm’s way.
I saw this on another site and consider it apt – If Hamas and Hisbollah put down their arms, it would be the end of the war. If Israel laid down its arms, it would be the end of Israel.
“Oh it’s a crime if Russia does it apparently, which they didn’t. Israel did it and does it and are doing it but it isn’t a crime. That’s all right then.”
Russia did do it and did so intentionally. We’ve all seen the videos of attacks on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine by Russia. Oh and Israel is also definitely committing atrocities and shouldn’t be protected by US, but you don’t care, you just want to simp for Russia.
Ever hear of two wrongs don’t make a right? A common mistake wumao, vatniks, and shills of all stripes seem to make.
“I saw this on another site and consider it apt – If Hamas and Hisbollah put down their arms, it would be the end of the war. If Israel laid down its arms, it would be the end of Israel.”
Israel is illegally adding Jewish settlements on Palestinian land in violation of international law. It’s also engaging in an apartheid and blockade that treats Palestinian as third class citizens and their rights of due process are non existent. It’s very similar to the Xinjiang treatment.
You know what would help stop rocket attacks and bombings by Hamas? If Israel stopped treating Palestinians like they are inside a concentration camp, stopped the blockades, stopped taking what little Palestinian land is left via illegal Jewish settlements, stopped treating Palestinian lives as worthless, and allowed Palestine to co-exist as a sovereign state.
And wrong Israel would be fine if they laid down their arms and stopped murdering Palestinians. They merely need to accept a two state solution and stop grabbing land and murdering people. De-escalate the situation instead of inflame tensions constantly.
Israel receives the best weapons from the US not to mention aid so they think they can bully their way out of a two state solution and keep everything plus treat an ethnic group like trash with overwhelming force despite it being completely unlawful.
david price – I applaud the HKO for continuing to use “Pearl River estuary” when referring to the local region. No Greater Bay Area nonsense.
Welcome to Wong Brothers Laundry Shop
Laundry of the world, unite
Two Wongs can make it white
The “two-state solution” is dead. The PLO, the PLA, Hezbollah, Hamas and their Iranian paymasters killed it. A succession of Israeli prime ministers offered their hands in peace only to have them thrown back into their faces by Palestinian interlocutors who profit handsomely from the ongoing suffering they impose upon their own people. No serious person even mentions the two-state solution anymore, unless it’s to raise money to fill his pockets from gullible ignoramuses. The rotary dial telephone has a better chance of making a comeback than does the two-state solution. It has been evident for at least 20 years there is only a one-state solution, which both sides are fully aware of, despite what readers of The Guardian and The Economist think.
Golda and others…
WHATEVER HAPPENS…
DO NOT ADJUST YOUR SET.
Wally (sic) Jumblatt
I love the image of a hand being thrown back into a face.
Wonder how that’s actually done. Perhaps there’s a youtube video.
@Jeff Brown some good points. I am thinking about the parallels between the Palestine situation on the one hand and the Xinjiang situation on the other. There are also some large non parallels- in Xinjiang there is no democratic process for Uyghurs to engage in whereas the political situation in Israel/Palestine is far more nuanced.
Killing innocent civilians is uniformly bad, but are there shades of grey to how ‘innocent’ a civilian is? Like, kid at a festival or children, that is obviously completely innocent, but what about adult settlers.
The first commenter is almost always trash. It’s true today, and most days. I’d wager the guy probably pats himself on the back, saying ‘first’ (like a YouTube commenter in 2000). I shudder to imagine such a life…
@Jeff Brown
Very eloquent summary of the crappy treatment of Palestinians. With you until you state that Israel would be fine if they laid down their arms. I can’t see that it would be while you have religious loony-tons in Iran stirring the point and who, as a publicly stated policy, want to see Israel destroyed as a state.
Lo Wu Vuitton
At least you made me smile, thank you.
One irony of the current situation is that Israeli propaganda generally paints support for Palestinian rights as motivated by anti-semitism. The corollary of depicting any condemnation of Israel’s actions as an attack on the entire Jewish people is that enemies of Israel can then argue that all Jews must be responsible for, or at least supportive of, Israel’s actions, deepening the spiral of hatred.
To Yasser Adams and the other tankies:
If Israel was now Palestine, Palestine would be on a par with Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Labia, Tunesia and Algeria. Gee, who wouldn’t want to live there? And just think of the endless stream of seaborne refugees trying to get out so that they can collect trash and wash windows in the better parts of Europe.
The CCP says it supports a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine.
Brilliant idea – now do the Mainland and Taiwan.
Red Dragon is the best especially when sober.
“The CCP says it supports a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine.
Brilliant idea – now do the Mainland and Taiwan.”
Hear Hear.