fashion beach

So, goodbye Lou Reed.  According to Brian Eno, not many people bought the Velvet Underground & Nico album first time around, but everyone who did went out and started a band.  Sorry Brian, I guess I'm the exception that proves the rule.  But I've been a Lou fan ever since, and apart from seeing him live in the 1970s, I was lucky enough to catch the Velvets reunion tour in 1993.  Though my original copy of the first album is long gone, I also own more Velvets box sets (vinyl and CD) than I have space for.

Lou was notoriously tough on journalists, who commonly asked him stupid questions and got things wrong (not that he was above feeding them contradictory stories for the hell of it), so he would not have been too surprised to see the BBC report that he was survived by his second wife  - in fact Laurie Anderson was his third, not counting the mysterious Rachel.


There are millions of musicians, but only a handful change the direction of music: Lou was one.  And even Susan Boyle recorded one of his songs...

Is there anyone left at the Pro-China Morning Post who knows English?  This headline on their website suggests not.

Nancy Kissel can appeal all she likes against her husband's murder, but that won't bring him back from the dead.  What they presumably mean is appeal against her conviction for her husband's murder - a very different thing.

Those with limited imaginations - a category which sadly includes most members of the Hong Kong government - invariably see only one solution to any problem and are blind to other ways of looking at the situation. Former Canadian Gregory So, Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development, speaking on TVB news a few days ago about the negative impact of mass tourism from the mainland, said: "The solution must [my emphasis] lie in the fact that we need to expand our capacity so that we can take in the visitors".

Why must it?  If a highly-regarded restaurant is so popular that one needs to book a table weeks in advance, the owner's first response is not usually to rush out and expand his capacity.  Given that mass tourism benefits only a few in Hong Kong and reduces the quality of life for everyone else through overcrowding, higher prices, and the disappearance of popular shops and restaurants in favour of more profitable luxury goods outlets targeted at tourists, why should we encourage more visitors to come?  Perhaps we should decide, as Bhutan for example has done, that the benefits of mass tourism are not worth the cost, and limit the numbers allowed in - possibly through a quota system or a tourist tax.  Furthermore, those who do arrive will have a more enjoyable experience.

Another group unable to see an obvious solution to a problem are those who demonstrated recently demanding that mainland mothers of Hong Kong-born children whose fathers have died or abandoned the family - they claim there are 7,000 of these - should be given accelerated entry to Hong Kong to care for their offspring.  Again, why?  The one-way permit system is supposedly intended mainly to allow mainland residents to be reunited with their Hong Kong spouses (which doesn't explain why a man already deported from Hong Kong after serving a sentence for homicide here was allowed back to settle in the territory, but that's another question that needs asking).  If there is no husband here for the wife to be reunited with, wouldn't it be more natural to send the child back to live with its mother?

Interesting that the BBC news obituary of the late journalist Alan Whicker (famously parodied by Mony Python) should include this photo:

 - though one does wonder from the sloping horizon and lack of focus whether the photographer was drunk!

--Jeremiah 22:3

Anyone who kills children for any cause (assuming the Boston Marathon bombings were some kind of political act) amply demonstrates that their cause is not worthy of support.

Yesterday when I heard the news, my first thought was for a close friend who is visiting the city, where her daughter, son-in-law and grandchild live.  Thankfully they are all safe.  This boy, Martin Richard, was not so lucky.  Rest in peace, little one.  And rot in hell, whoever did this.

I sometimes respond to the South China Morning Post's opinion polls on its website, but I just as often find them irritatingly meaningless.  Take today's, for example: the question asked is: "Is India still a safe destination for foreign tourists?"  Pertinent, after recent widely-reported rape cases there, certainly, but totally unscientific.

First of all, note the implied assumption that India was previously safe.  Then consider the impossibility of summing up the safety level of a large and enormously diverse country of more than a billion people in one snap judgement.  Are you safe at the Taj Mahal?  Probably.  In Indian-occupied Kashmir, or the poorest slums of Kolkata - probably less so.

And what do you mean by "safe" anyway?  Likely to get raped or murdered - even with the occasional case that hits the headlines, not very.  Likely to have your pocket picked?  Much more probable - but not only in India.  Safe from your own stupidity?  Thousands of tourists die in foreign countries every year because people tend to take foolhardy risks on holiday that they would not take at home, from overdosing on drugs to riding motorcycles without a helmet to swimming in dangerous waters to eating in places with dubious hygiene standards - or even over-exerting themselves sexually!  Most Hong Kong people consider Thailand a safe destination for tourism, but apart from the country's appalling level of road safety, five foreign tourists and a Thai guide died in 2011 because of over-exposure to a pesticide used to kill bed bugs!  Who would have seen that coming?

Then there is the question of what one means by a foreign tourist.  In a tour group or travelling independently?  Male or female?  Travelling alone or with a companion?  Able to speak the local language or not?  Staying in luxury resorts or local flophouses?  All of these factors - not to mention one's visible "ethnicity", as officials like to call race these days - could affect how safe one is.  But a white female friend of mine lived for two years in India, travelling alone on a limited budget, with no problems, and loves the country.

My advice: don't let this kind of question put you off travelling except for avoiding obvious trouble spots (two other friends enjoyed a wonderful trip to Syria some years ago, but I wouldn't advise it at the moment)..  Just take sensible precautions, remember shit happens everywhere, and as they used o say in Hill Street Blues: "Be careful out there!"

Whether or not a country exercises the death penalty is usually a pretty good indicator of how civilised it is - or at least, aspires to be.  When a country shows executions live on TV, you know for sure it's barbaric.  Whether it also violates the country's own law which provides that executions shall not be held in public, is a legal question I am not qualified to judge.

Making It Better
Amnesty International

A couple of classic typos this morning: the online programme guide on BBC Entertainment TV has the hottest stars performing live "to a 1, strong audience".  That doesn't sound very strong to me!  Meanwhile Rupert Murdoch's British rag The Sun, reporting on some loony guru who claims the tragic rape and murder of a young Indian woman was partly her own fault, says that the victim "was flown to Singapore for treatment to her catastrophic industries".  Yeah, hard work can be a killer.

The Sun also wins today's award for most tasteless headline of the day: "Lesbians 'tortured pensioner before leaving him to die'".  When you read the story, the fact that the assailants happened to be a lesbian couple has nothing to do with their crime - "Women" would have told the story perfectly well - but The Sun being what it is, no doubt some sub-editor couldn't resist spicing up the story with a bit of titillation in the headline (let's see if it works for me, above).    Or perhaps Sun reporters are secretly terrified that gangs of rampaging lesbians are on the prowl, Night of the Living Dead style, looking for helpless pensioners to torture.  I'm terrified already...

I've noticed over the years that Boxing Day usually brings a rash of headlines reporting disasters, natural or man-made.  This year the disaster season seems to have started a day early - the South China Morning Post leads today with a bus crash that killed 11 children in China, while the BBC features yet another senseless shooting in another small town in America.  This time the shooter, who subsequently killed himself, had already served a 17-year jail term for killing his grandmother.  No doubt the NRA would argue that he nevertheless had a legal right to own a gun for self-defence.  They appear to be blind to the irony that so did Nancy Lanza, and it killed her.  They also want every American school, at a time when many are already reducing teaching staff because of budget cuts, to have the extra expense of hiring armed guards - a strategy that obviously worked so well at Columbine.  The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, argues the NRA, is a good guy with a gun.  Personally I agree with the late Isaac Asimov that "violence is usually the least intelligent solution to any problem".

Back here at home, anyone who drives in Hong Kong knows that the roads are full of pedestrians seemingly hell-bent on suicide, because they wander all over the street totally oblivious to traffic.  (If they can do it wearing black clothes at night, so much the better.)  For some reason, the number of these lemmings seems to multiply around Christmas time - any idea why?

Oh well, Merry Christmas to all my readers!  And hey, hey, hey, be careful out there!

"Renowned Beatles Influencer Dead at 92" says the Huffington Post's daily email of links to its headline stories.  The story itself is headed "Ravi Shankar Dead: Indian Sitar Virtuoso Dies at 92".  MTV's website has another version: "Ravi Shankar, Beatles Influence, Dead at 92".

Then there are numerous variations on another theme: "Sitar superstar Ravi Shankar, Father of Norah Jones, dies". "Norah Jones' Father Ravi Shankar Dies at 92 After heart Surgery".  Some headlines even manage to combine the two: "Beatles Muse Ravi Shankar, Father of Norah Jones, Dies".

Somehow I find all this offensive.  I love Norah Jones' music, but to write of her father's death as if his most noteworthy achievement was to sire her - or to teach George Harrison how to play the sitar - is insulting to a man generally recognised as the leading Indian musician of his era, so renowned that the Indian Prime Minister was among the first to pay tribute to him on his death.  It's particularly ironic when you consider that Shankar had little contact with Jones during her childhood, unlike his other daughter - also a respected musician in her own right, and the bearer of her father's musical heritage - Anoushka.

Furthermore it's insulting to the readers of these various publications to imply that they are so ignorant that they will not have heard of Shankar, or that they will not be interested in him unless there is a connection to someone they have heard of.  CNN gets it right: "Sitar legend Ravi Shankar dies at 92".  If you're a legend, you don't need any introduction.  Nor do you need to be defined by your relationship to others - Woody Guthrie's legacy stands secure with no help from Bob Dylan, for example.

There are many famous fathers of famous children.  I suspect Loudon Wainwright III is resigned to being labelled "Father of Rufus", but when Paul McCartney eventually passes on (at well past 64) will we see "Oasis Influence Paul McCartney, Father of Stella, Dies" headlines?  I hope not.

It seems to be taken for granted in the UK that the popular Prince William will one day become King, and that his expected child will follow him to the throne in due course.  But curiously, there seems to be almost no speculation on a possibility that could upset this scenario.

Queen Elizabeth, unlike her younger sister Margaret who drank and smoked her way into a relatively early grave, appears to take good care of herself and to be in excellent health for a woman in her late 80s, and given that she presumably gets the very best medical care available, could go on to match her mother by living to 100 or beyond.

Prince Charles has those same genes for longevity plus more on his father's side - Prince Philip is now in his 90s and still in good shape for his age.  Charles is already older than any previous heir in waiting, but there is no guarantee that he will outlive his mother.  Men tend to have shorter life expectancies than women, and there is always the possibility of accidental death - say a fall from a horse, or a plane crash.

So what if Charles were to die first?  Then by tradition the crown passes to the eldest surviving son of a deceased monarch, followed by the eldest daughter if there is no surviving son.  So instead of succession passing to William, the Queen's second son, the not enormously popular Prince Andrew, would be next in line to the throne, followed by his two daughters.  With Prince Edward and Princess Anne and their children also in the line of succession, William would move a dozen places down the list.

What would the British people make of that, I wonder?

An "Eats Shoots and Leaves" moment on last night's TVB news, reporting on the arrest of a woman suspected of stabbing her husband to death:
"Police said the woman had a history of mental illness and took away the knife for further investigation."

The more I think about Richard Mourdock's views, the more bizarre they seem (though he now claims they've been misinterpreted).  If he believes that the biological consequences of rape are God's will, then wouldn't it also be God's will if the rape victim contracted HIV as a result?  His God maybe; but not any god I would choose to worship.

Following Todd Akin's support for punishing rape victims by making them carry the rapist's child to term in case of pregnancy, another Republican candidate has gone even further, with Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock declaring that "even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."

What next: if pregnancy from rape is something God intended, then how about death from murder?  What's wrong with these people?

The Hong Kong government has acted quickly to appoint a Commission of Inquiry into the Lamma ferry disaster which killed 39 people.  Its mandate is to look into the causes of the accident, review maritime safety conditions, and recommend measures to be taken to avoid similar tragedies in future.  The Commission has been given six months to complete its work.

With all due respect to the two-man panel appointed - a respected senior judge and a former Director of Audit, who will certainly perform their duties conscientiously - there seems to be a glaring omission here.  In view of the fact that much of the evidence examined will inevitably be technical in nature, wouldn't it be desirable for the panel to include at least one member with expertise in maritime affairs?  Or is this just another of the many occasions on which something that seems obvious to me does not to anyone else?

US Republican Representative Joe Walsh (not the rock star of the same name) is, he says, "pro-life without exception".  And in his view that means not only the widely accepted exceptions for rape and incest, but even cases where the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother.  Like his party colleague Todd Akin, who famously and wrongly argued that women's bodies are able to prevent pregnancy in cases of rape, Walsh shows an alarming ignorance of female physiology.  Apparently he believes that medicine has advanced to the point where no woman's life is endangered by pregnancy.

If Walsh had been able to impose his ignorance on my sister-in-law, who suffered an ectopic pregnancy a few years ago, she would be dead now instead of the healthy mother of two young children born subsequent to the operation that saved her.  I can't help wondering why any woman would support the Republican Party when such ignorant prejudice is becoming increasingly characteristic of its leading figures.

In fact I have difficulty understanding the entire mentality of the so-called pro-life movement.  The same people who are most fiercely opposed to abortion in any circumstances are often also opposed to sex education and even to convenient access to contraception, making it likely that more women will experience unwanted pregnancies which they will seek to terminate.

But the contradictions don't end there.  If Walsh is really "pro-life without exception", why does he belong to the party that plans a massive increase in America's military budget (contrary to its claims to want to reduce the country's budget deficit).  And why is it also the party more supportive of capital punishment?  It seems that "without exception" really means "without exception unless the child is already born, in which case it's OK to put them into uniform and send them off to be cannon fodder somewhere; or OK to strap them to a gurney and inject them with lethal drugs".  And this in the name of a god who said "blessed are the peacemakers" and commanded his followers to love their enemies.

Whether all this is hypocrisy or just stupidity, I will leave you to decide.  But I hope American electors will think about it when they choose who to vote for this year.

The day after the Lamma IV sinking last week, which has now claimed 39 lives, I was walking through Causeway Bay MTR station and found long swathes of one tunnel wall taken up by advertising for the Venetian Macau, which is holding a Titanic package promotion.  This features a Titanic Exhibition and a Human Bodies Exhibition.  Of course they couldn't have foreseen last week's events, but could there possibly be more insensitive timing?

It will probably be many months before the public inquiry into Monday's tragic ferry disaster officially assigns blame for the fatal collision, but one thing that's already clear is that it has been a Public Relations disaster for Hongkong and Kowloon Ferry.  While Hongkong Electric was quick off the mark in bringing out senior figures - including the company's ultimate owner Li-Ka-shing - to answer questions, show concern, express sympathy for the dead and injured and their families, and promise practical assistance, it took HKF around 24 hours to put out a statement and another half a day before they held a press conference.

By this time, quotes from various sources had managed to plant an impression in the public mind - and some sections of the media - that the HKF ferry - the Sea Smooth - rammed into the Lamma IV, then sped away from the sinking vessel without trying to assist the passengers.  I suspect this is a distorted and simplistic account of the evening's events.   As Ulaca points out, we don't yet know which vessel was in the wrong place - perhaps both.  But beyond this, the captain of the Sea Smooth - which was also damaged in the collision and had injured passengers on board - may well have feared that his own vessel would sink as well.  In that case, his decision to head on to port and disembark his passengers as quickly as possible would make more sense than taking people off one sinking ship onto another.

This is of course speculation - but so is the other version of events.   Anyway, what should HKF have done that they didn't do, and which the mighty Hutchison empire's PR machine did so effectively?

• In the event of a major incident, make senior executives available to the media as soon as possible.
• Don't wait until all the facts are known - admit frankly that the incident is still being investigated, and express willingness to cooperate fully with any inquiry.
• Express sympathy for the victims.
• Offer them practical help (financial or otherwise) "without prejudice" (i.e. without acknowledging any responsibility for their plight until the facts become clearer).
• If an unfavourable version of events is circulating, characterise this as speculation and suggest an alternative possible scenario which casts your staff in a more favourable light, while repeating that the facts are not yet known.

Pretty basic crisis management, really.

See also Joyce's post:

The grand arrival of the "Buddha's parietal bone relic" in Hong Kong last night, to be displayed at the "China-backed" World Buddhist Forum in the Coliseum, was certainly a colourful spectacle, but the whole event reeks of fakery.

Leaving aside the irony of an avowedly atheist regime sponsoring a religious event, the relic itself is of dubious provenance.  Claimed to be part of the Buddha's skull, it was apparently only unearthed in Nanjing, China, in 2010 (or 2008 - China's propaganda organ, the China Daily, does not even seem sure of the date).   I have seen no clear explanation of how a fragment of bone dug up in Nanjing can be positively identified as coming from a body cremated 2,000 miles away 2,500 years ago.  In fact the whole business of religious relics has historically been mostly about persuading the gullible faithful to part with their money - it has often been jokingly said that there was enough "wood of the true cross" in Europe to build a battleship.

Even if the relic is genuine, why are believers being invited to worship it?  This is surely contrary to the teachings of the Buddha that suffering is caused by excessive attachment to the material world.  Whatever remains significant about Sakyamuni, it is not his physical body.

Further evidence that the Forum is more of a propaganda event than a religious one comes from the presence of the so-called Panchen Lama.  In fact no one knows the whereabouts of the real Panchen Lama - or even whether he is still alive - other than the Chinese authorities who abducted him and engineered his disappearance after his recognition by the Dalai Lama.  The person attending the Hong Kong event is the fake Panchen Lama chosen by the Chinese government, who have no more authority to appoint the Panchen Lama than they do to select the next Pope. - which they would probably like to do if they thought they could get away with it!