Chart of the day: monthly remuneration of ‘politically appointed officials’ in the Hong Kong government…
Rank and file civil servants’ pay – look at the ads in the SCMP on Saturdays – is similarly generous. People who work in the public sector like to claim that their jobs are so different in nature from private-sector ones that accurate comparisons are not possible. Or that the senior positions are equivalent to high-flying business executives (who must create value in a competitive environment and answer to shareholders).
There are ways to benchmark civil service pay. One would be to take Hong Kong’s total government salaries bill as a percentage of total GDP, and then compare it with the equivalent stat from, say, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Oz, Canada, the UK, the US, France, Germany, etc. Or maybe compare average civil servants’ pay and average private-sector pay as percentages of GDP per capita across different countries. That would be interesting.
When I was a kid, I would avidly read Every Big Boy’s Book of Manly Things Savages Do (or something), which included descriptions of trial by ordeal. Supposedly, some African tribes would require suspects of wrongdoing to plunge a hand into boiling water. In practice, the water wasn’t really dangerously hot, but guilty people would reveal themselves by freaking out beforehand. So another approach would be to announce a rigorous comparative survey of any sort, and see how the civil servants react. Extreme wailing and panty-wetting would suggest that they are indeed overpaid and know it.
The HK Police tell Transit Jam he must remove the little Hong Kong flag on the header of his website, following a complaint.
Maybe we could all find hundreds of other social media accounts and other sites using the flag and ‘complain’ about them.
“The HK Police tell Transit Jam he must remove the little Hong Kong flag on the header of his website, following a complaint.”
Now that the euphoria and adrenaline of the vigorous, heady 2019 pro democracy movement persecutions are starting to wane and with few other people or civil society groups to target, the popo are settling into more mundane things to pick, prod, annoy and harass the populace with to show that they’re “on top of things” and who the overlords really are.
Semper Vigilantes, lads!
Musk would trim the budget in no time.
First cut, eliminate the Political Assistants. These positions are nothing more than back handers for ‘loyal’ political parties.
Cut the Legco members by 50%, and that would still ensure a bloated rubber stamp.
The empty offices could be allocated to Carrie and future retiree CE’s.
Stipulate that the increasing numbers of non local students at our unis pay the full cost of their education.
Introduce standard ‘I am a Patriot’ apparel to replace the wear once gear produced for each and every ‘event’.
Ditto for the banners, design a multi-use formula.
And these are just tip on the iceberg.
You cannot compare Hong Kong’s Senior Civil Servants’ salaries with their colleagues’ in democratic countries.
In places where jobs are being handed out by unelected patriots, acting like they are following orders from a colonial power, at crazy salaries, who would ever dare to bite the golden patriot’s hand? Or speak up?
It’s just a very subtle indirect form of corruption, No?
Invented by Lee Kum Kee (or whatever his name was) from SingaBore.
Love today’s link. It certainly can’t for our useless unelected ‘so-called’ government.
The government publishes a handy guide to allowed and prohibited uses of the national and Hong Kong flags: https://www.protocol.gov.hk/en/proh/proh.html. The regional flag “must not be displayed or used in trademarks, registered designs or commercial advertisements.” Also, oddly, in connection with funeral activities, however patriotic the deceased. However, I can’t see any prohibition that would cover Transit Jam’s case.
@ Low Profile
I suspect they will find a way to shoehorn TJ’s usage as advertising. In China you must not use the national, party, regimental, or military flag/emblem in your advertising. In addition:
1. The national flag, national anthem, national emblem, military flag, military anthem, and military emblem of the People’s Republic of China shall not be used or used in disguised form.
2. Foreign national flags can be used but must be free from any negative content. For example, study abroad service advertisements can use foreign national flags as the background.
So Chinese authorities grant you permission to use any other flag, just not your own!
Interestingly, the flag crops up as an emoji across Microsoft Office applications, Safari, WhatsApp and Apple Messages (in the emoji pop-up type “Hong Kong”). I wonder if the owners of those businesses have (illegally?) trademarked their flag emojis, or they simply presume – like most sane folks – that they are in the public domain provided their use is “appropriate”.
So using the HK emoji in a WhatsApp message praising our civil servants would be acceptable perhaps. But beware any use of the emoji accompanied by pejorative messaging such as “HK civil servants grossly overpaid, lazy and incompetent”.🇭🇰
Perhaps Transit Jam should not only remove the flag emoji from his site but also further steadfastly aid the police in this matter by starting a worldwide campaign to get the offending Hong Kong flag emoji removed from the Unicode system and any emoji fonts as a public service to avoid any future infractions of this nature.