Three months in prison for a T-shirt – but feel free to block an ambulance with your Mercedes (registration clearly visible, plus lame CC tag). Of course, the T-shirt threatens the security of the nation, while emergency vehicles just drive around the streets making a silly noise.
Apparently, the NatSec judge went easy on Chu Kai-poon, whose T-shirt had the slogan ‘Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times’ on it…
The defendant, who is unemployed, has been remanded in custody since he first appeared in court on November 30 last year.
Designated national security judge Chief Magistrate Victor So said on Wednesday that the offence was less serious than in other sedition cases as it involved a small number of items and a relatively short period of time.
The judge said that between leaving his residence and arriving at the airport, Chu only publicly demonstrated the protest slogan for five hours and 23 minutes. This was less influential than posting it on the internet, So said. He added that Chu had no political affiliation.
Found here, a table ranking 214 territories by birth rate (I’ve edited the version on the right). You would have thought that, with a drop in the number of children, Hong Kong would need fewer teachers. But an RTHK report suggests there’s a shortage of them too…
More than 6,700 Hong Kong teachers quit their jobs during the last academic year which was a 25 percent increase on the year before, government figures given to Legco revealed on Wednesday.
Secondary schools saw about nine percent of teachers resign, while for primary schools the rate was 10 percent. Kindergartens lost 17 percent of their teachers.
Data also showed that the number of new recruits failed to fill many of the gaps the departing teachers left in the city’s schools and kindergartens, with more than 1,100 posts remaining vacant.
But speaking to reporters, Education Secretary Christine Choi described the supply of teachers in Hong Kong as “very abundant”.
Almost as if there’s a competition between kids and teachers to see who can disappear first.
The t-shirt thing seems like a new low for the own-foot-shooting judiciary, the HKSARG and HK’s image abroad. Maybe a token $500 fine would have sufficed? Now the “less influential” offline action is all over the Internet.
Good thing for the owner that Merc wasn’t in front of a fire house in the States. Would have been plowed through AND fined on top of that.
Obviously the “driver” was completely unfamiliar with the workings of that vehicle and just handed the keys and told to “drive” as the front passenger giggled the entire time, finding the hilarity in the situation.
What’s even better – the number plate reads “HK 815”!
(Anything “significant” ever happened on August 15?)
Why do some commentators look for every opportunity to talk about the US? It’s quite weird I think.
So the going rate is 1 day in jail = 3.5 minutes of ‘seditious exposure’. Good to know if I’m ever in the mood to walk around outside in my “liberate HK” underpants.
On the Edu front its quanitity over quality as another institution of further education has been elevated to uni status.
Meanwhile over at CUHK the internationally renowned biomedical scientist and vice-chancellor is bowing out after having suffered in silence and with dignity the vicious attacks mounted by some of the meanest players in our political cesspit.
Hopefully the ICAC will limit further damage to its repuation by terminating the probe into the research centre run by his wife, a well respected academic, The ‘investigation’ into this small operation has taken an exceptional amount of time, indicating that there have been difficulties in identifying any issues.
But that would probably not meld with the script of relentless intimidation.
And why the programme to encourage births when there are not enough teachers to handle the existing number of students????
re HK 815 Blocking ambulances
Gosh! If only there was some way for journalists to access a publicly-owned database of the personal information of vehicle owners without the government explicitly threatening to arrest them for it. They might’ve have shamed the government into doing something.
You might think public security would be better served by getting drivers whose reckless, illegal and dangerous behaviour is actually life-threatening off the roads and into court, rather than arresting harmless folk wandering around the airport in a T-shirt with eight characters on it that are so dangerously seditious and such a threat to national security that it took the hundreds of elite police and security guards in a high security area five hours and 23 minutes to notice him*. You might think that. I couldn’t possibly comment.
*Strangely all four so-called dangerous seditious ‘words’ are fine elsewhere: “Hong Kong” is the start of HKSARG’s name, the “Times” of “Times Square” has not led to that mall being shuttered, HKSARG’s own Sun Yat Sen Museum is rife with “revolution” and the “liberate” also seems fine when in reference to Hong Kong in 1945. A liberation that came about because Japan’s Emperor announced its surrender on August 15th. Busy, busy, busy.
“And why the programme to encourage births when there are not enough teachers to handle the existing number of students????”
Because The Party doesn’t give a rat’s, Mary. All it wants is warm bodies. Preferably dumb, warm & patriotic bodies. As Tou Git (here we speak Hoeng Gong waa, so I write everything in jyut ping [minus the tone numbers]) notes, the Hon have a ‘peasant mentality’ that explains EVERYTHING. You seem pretty clued up, surely you know of Tou Git?
And yes James, it does seem we have Septics amongst us. They’re not all that bad… just like the pommie bastard diaspora.
I forget how many times over the past nearly four decades I’ve seen some tosser here – in the way of an ambulance or fire appliance (or coproaches before they became coproaches) with beacon lights & siren going – sitting there not willing to get the F out of the way.
By comparison, in Septic Land, traffic in both directions moves to the shoulders & STOPS. NOBODY IN THEIR RIGHT MIND would stop in front of a bloody fire/ambulance station… AND THEN IGNORE an emergency vehicle trying to exit the station.
I’m disappointed that the pedestrians that gave way to the ambulance didn’t start kicking the Benzie ML & DLLMing the f-ing moron “driving” it.
“Insane in the membrane” comes to mind reading the subsequent comment from Brain Damage.
Perhaps the driver was RatShit #4? |^(
institution of further education
Is that what used to be called in England a teacher training college?
I need to get me one of those t-shirts
@MeKnowNothing: Rant of the day! Love it! Septic approved!
The only reason the pedestrians didn’t let the abortions in the Benz have it was because they knew in the New Hong Kong court system, they would have been sued by the owners AND prosecuted by the government for not showing fealty and respect to someone likely in a higher financial bracket than they were. You know…being pedestrians and all that.
@Brain Damage: “People’s” and “LIBERATION” and “Army”? Seems pretty goddamned seditious to me…
U-S-A! U-S-A!!