fashion beach

A hysterical (in both senses) article in Beijing mouthpiece The Global Times castigating Hong Kong for selfishness in not wanting to be flooded with ever more mainland tourists asks:

The answer to this question is easily illustrated:

The Pro-China Morning Post has a talent for quoting from "experts" whose opinions are at variance with those of any intelligent observer.   Of course analysts and property consultants welcome the chance to make money from the despoliation of Lantau Island; those who care about Hong Kong's environment shudder at the prospect.  No doubt the same analysts are wetting their knickers in alarm at the empty shops in Causeway Bay; the rest of us hope this presages more affordable rents that will no longer drive out businesses serving local needs in favour of those purveying overpriced tat to mainland tourists.
I have tended to oppose the government's curbs on the property market on the grounds that they have made it harder for existing owners to sell while doing little to assist new market entrants to buy.  However, if they help to delay the erosion of one country two systems - which is what "closer integration with the mainland economy" really means - and reduce the flow of additional unwanted immigrants into our already overcrowded city - then I might be persuaded to change my mind.

It appears that Chief Executive CY Leung has a new tactic for dealing with differing views.  Following his recent speech suggesting that the government had already explained the HKTV issue and we were just too dumb to understand it, last night's TVB news reported that "The CE also said thee were no more concerns about the plans for developing the Northeast New Territories".

As my wife said "Not for him maybe, only for everyone else in Hong Kong."  Still, if you can't solve the problems, pretending they no longer exist is an interesting alternative.

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?

Now here's an idea.  It occurs to me the the 46 million annual mainland visitors to Hong Kong must be responsible for generating a substantial proportion of the SAR's 6.4 million tons of waste swamping our overburdened landfills each year.  So why not introduce a new policy: anyone who wants to visit Hong Kong has to take a 20 kg bag of rubbish back across the border with them when they leave.  This would remove nearly a million tons from the local waste stream, significantly extending the life of our landfills.

For most people, the impact of this flood of visitors is largely negative - overcrowding; luxury goods stores forcing out affordable local shops and restaurants and pushing up rents, causing a general rise in prices - so this way we could ensure that every visitor makes at least one positive contribution to our welfare.  And if it discouraged them from coming, well, only big landlords and luxury goods retailers would be greatly saddened.

So let me see: I have to Love Hong Kong - no problem, but becoming increasingly difficult as more and more of the Hong Kong I love is under threat or disappearing.  Love China - hmmm, let's see.  It's not my motherland, but I do appreciate the great architecture, art, food and magnificent scenery.  Not so fond of the repressive government, environmental degradation, adulterated milk, secret prisons, corruption, and censorship.  I find it easier to Love Democracy ("the love that dare not speak its name" as far as the Chinese government is concerned).

Now it seems I have to Respect and love the elders as well.  Isn't this taking the whole love thing a bit too far?  I hope I treat everyone with the respect they deserve, but do I really have to share my limited supply of love with every cantankerous old wrinkly in Hong Kong?

Videos here and here.

Having commented a couple of days ago on the Singapore government's plan to build housing on golf courses, I now learn from the excellent Big O that Singapore's official "Vision 2030" is "Live better through sports".To promote this in parallel with destroying sports facilities reaches unprecedented heights of absurdity.  It must be a rather short-term vision.

Still some Singaporeans are already living better - or at least richer - through sports, since the city is alleged to be the base for a major football betting syndicate accused of fixing nearly 700 matches around the world.

From today's South China Morning Post:

Looking at the South China Morning Post online, I was struck by the irony of the headline "China media urges transparency over pollution", but shortly afterwards, the headline was switched to "China state media urges action as smog hits 40 times safe limit" - though the original headline can still be sen on Aljazeera and other sites.  I think transparency is the last thing Beijing residents are likely to see in their air for a while - and we thought we had it bad here in Hong Kong...

The Civil Servants General Union issued a statement a few weeks ago supporting the government's plan to build an artificial beach at Lung Mei in Taipo - a plan opposed by a broad coalition of green groups in Hong Kong because of its damaging impact on an area rich in marine life, including the increasingly rare seahorse.  Explaining the union's stance, Chairman Chung Kwok-sing said on TVB news that his members "just want the public to respect mechanisms that are put in place", saying that "the District Council is elected by residents, so if the Taipo Council approves the plan, that should represent the views of people living in Taipo".

Wrong, wrong, wrong, on several levels.  First of all,  it is naive to assume that because the District Council wants something, this necessarily reflects the views of local residents.  District Councillors often have their own agenda to pursue which may not represent the wishes of their constituents.  I have lived just a couple of miles along the road from the proposed beach site for the last ten years, and they certainly don't represent my views.  In fact, I never even heard of the proposal until it hit the news a couple of months ago, and although the beach site is in my constituency, I don't remember it being mentioned in either of our local candidates' manifestos in the last District Council election in 2011.  I suspect that many other Taipo residents were similarly unaware of the plan before and do not support it now that they know about it.

Secondly, the civil service should not be making political statements - it is not their job to decide whether something should or should not go ahead, only to implement it once it is decided to proceed.  Civil service neutrality is a key element of our political system, and needs to be understood and respected.  One who does not seem to understand it is former civil servant and now New People's Party leader in LegCo, Regina Ip, who commented on the case, saying that "in a democracy political neutrality means not favouring one party or politician over another".  Ip says this doesn't mean civil servants are not allowed to express opinions.  True, as individual members of society speaking in their private capacity; but collectively, they should stay out of arguments about whether or not a particular policy is correct.

Thirdly, it is clear that governmental consultation mechanisms in place are totally inadequate - but I will keep that for another post.

I wouldn't mind having a swimming beach close to my home, but the environmental price is too high to pay.  Why doesn't the government look into the possibility of constructing an artificial beach at the base of the Plover Cove dam, just round the corner from Lung Mei?  I have no idea whether it's possible, but if so, the damage would probably be much less since that's already an artificial environment.

I've just been playing around with Blogger's template options, so this post brings a new look to the blog.  In the conversion process, Blogger somehow lost my list of blogs and quote at the right side, but they were overdue for an update anyway, so I'll work out how to restore them later.

Apart from the colour scheme, the biggest change you'll see is the picture above, which is of the beach I think of as my private beach.  Of course I don't actually own it, but it's far enough off the beaten track in Hong Kong that relatively few people know of it.  And no I'm not going to tell you where it is - if I did, it wouldn't be private, would it?

Many years ago in 1986 I bought one board lot of shares in the Cafe de Coral fast food restaurant chain when the company had its IPO.  A few years later I sold the shares, but the company still  kept sending me dividend cheques and reports.  I wrote to the share registrar telling them I'd sold the shares, but they replied that the new owner had not registered them and therefore so far as they were concerned I was still the registered owner.  I have no idea why someone would buy shares and not bother to register them or collect the dividends, but the result is that for 20-odd years I have been receiving dividends on shares I no longer own.

Over those years, the company has done well (unlike other shares I have owned - one company went bust; another's shares are so worthless they would cost me more in broker's fees to sell than the amount I could sell them for) - well enough that I wish I'd bought more shares in the first place - 25 years of increased turnover, and continuous profit growth until Hong Kong's minimum wage law finally dented this record.

However, the downside of still receiving the dividends is that I still receive the company's reports.  These have grown with the business - having once been magazine-sized, the latest is 320 pages long and the thickness of a telephone directory, half in English and half in Chinese.  How many of these pages do I read?  Just one - the highlights, to see how the company is doing and what dividend it will pay.

I strongly suspect that many small shareholders only glance at the highlights, which means that most of these pages are totally wasted.  Ironically, the cover of Cafe de Coral's latest annual report depicts a grove of fruit trees - ironic because at least that many trees were probably cut down to print it.  And while my copy goes straight to the recuycle bin, not all shareholders are so environmentally consciopus and a fair percentage of copies probably end up in landfills.

What can be done about this enormous waste of resources, with its negative impact on the environment?  Hong Kong Stock Exchange rules permit a company to print its report in English only, with a separate Chinese translation available to shareholders on request, but so far as I know, few companies take advantage of this.  But even that is not enough - why can't companies do as the London Exchange allows its listed companies to do: send out a brief highlights document only and send the full report only to shareholders who specifically request it?  After all, every company's full report is posted on its website anyway.

If we truly want to be "Asia's World City", shouldn't we be taking better care of the world?.

No matter how many pictures of trees Chinachem may erect on their construction sites, the reality is they are covering another bit of Hong Kong with concrete. I know we need more housing, but let's not pretend that Hong Kong's future will be green unless we make some big changes.

Some LegCo members have recently been objecting to the government's policy of granting land for development by the MTR Corporation to fund the construction of the South Island Line. The problem with this is that they don't seem to be offering any alternative.

No one who observes the air pollution and traffic congestion in Hong Kong can doubt that the territory's railway network needs to be extended. And most would agree that it makes sense to integrate any extension with the existing network, which means putting it under the MTR rather than a new operator.

If we accept these assumptions, the several planned new lines will not build themselves. Given the vast sums of money required to construct them, what is the least painful way of financing these developments? The government could hand out cash to cover the cost, which means taxpayers would bear the burden directly. Or it could require the MTR to fund it out of its own revenues, which would almost certainly mean fares rising substantially to pay for it. With many already objecting to the recent modest fare increase at a time of inflationary pressure, this would be politically unacceptable and would probably drive many passengers back on to the overcrowded roads as a cheaper alternative.

Of course, the property method is also depriving the taxpayers of the potential revenue that would otherwise accrue to the government from the sale of these sites, but in the current circumstances it seems the least objectionable way of achieving the desired goal. The real objection in my view is that, since the MTR is partly privatized, some of the eventual return from this handout will go into the hands of private investors at the expense of the taxpayers. The MTR should have been left in full public ownership.

Q. What's the definition of stupidity?
A. Building nuclear power plants all over one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world when you're sitting on a vast reservoir of free geothermal energy that you could use instead.

And a really bad joke:
Q. What do you call a tiny tsunami?
A. A microwave.

Yeah, I know, it's not funny. And incidentally, why is Iran so insistent that it needs to develop nuclear power when it's sitting on the world's fourth largest oil reserves? I think we can guess the answer to that one.

The Hong Kong government's decision to implement a pilot project for glass recycling in East Kowloon is a waste of time. The fact is there is absolutely no need for a pilot scheme when glass recycling has already been proven to work well in countries such as Britain and Canada for more than two decades. What we need is not a timid pilot project but a full-scale recycling scheme for the entire SAR immediately, before the government tries to steal any more of our irreplaceable country parks as landfills.

If we're truly "Asia's World City", why aren't we leading the world instead of always lagging lamely behind?

I added the Hong Kong Observatory to my RSS feeds a while back, then forgot all about it because it never actually fed me anything. Suddenly yesterday it's woken up and started actually feeding me local weather forecasts.

Perhaps this is a sign that there is hope for the Hong Kong government yet. Now I am waiting eagerly for other government departments to similarly stir from their slumbers and get on with what needs doing around here: rein in the big property companies, extend recycling, move quickly towards full democracy, fulfil the long-delayed promise to extend the North Lantau Country Park, clean up the air, reform the widely abused village house policy, conserve what little is left of the city's architectural heritage, spend police effort getting dangerous drivers off the roads instead of giving out unnecessary parking tickets, and a million other things.

Dream on...