fashion beach

My 9-year-old niece in Britain was too upset to sleep the other night, crying inconsolably because the book she'd been reading at bedtime told her that the universe would come to an end in two billion years. Assurances that she wouldn't be around by then to worry about it only seemed to make matters worse!

My own contemplations today are somewhat closer to home in both time and space. What's up with these girls who sit opposite me on the MTR wearing tiny miniskirts, then spend the entire journey tugging at the hem in an attempt to avoid showing anything? If they're so worried about revealing the colour of their knickers, why don't they just wear a longer skirt? Or would they stop tugging if I looked like Brad Pitt instead of my mature weatherbeaten self?

Hong Kong is full of speculation about the "real" reasons for Chief Justice Andrew Li's early retirement - indeed, I seem to be the only person who accepts his stated reasons at face value.

Li sad that after working for 37 years, he wanted to take the time to pursue other interests in life. I have no problem believing this, because I have also been working for 37 years and would love to give up in order to pursue other interests. Unfortunately, I don't earn a Chief Justice's salary, so unlike Li I will have to soldier on for a few years longer.

If anyone had any doubt that the Heung Yee Kuk is an agent of the Dark Side, today's news makes it absolutely certain. Their brilliant plan for solving the problem of illegal waste dumping, which is ruining much of Hong's once beautiful countryside, is... to make it legal. This is about as sensible as solving the problem of burglary by legalising theft. When is the government going to stop giving favoured treatment to this gang of vandals?

(Yeah, the picture's not from Hong Kong, I know, but it makes the point nicely. I couldn't find a good local one, so I borrowed it from here.)

The system that enables you to listen to your car radio when driving through tunnels in Hong Kong also allows the tunnel companies to override the radio signal with their own transmissions. This is fine when they use it to make helpful traffic announcements, such as telling you that a particular exit road is closed or when a blockage will be cleared. And indeed they sometimes do this (though as my wife noted, only in Cantonese - perhaps English or Putonghua speakers don't drive?).

Unfortunately they don't limit themselves to this. It is intensely irritating to be listening to the RTHK news in the Lion Rock Tunnel, only to have the airwaves hijacked by some inane do-gooder relaying unnecessary government propaganda, like telling you not to drink and drive. Almost as irritating, in fact, as watching television and having the government exhort you to "love your family" (seriously) during the commercial breaks. Where do these people think we are - Singapore?

In the spirit of Gowers' Plain Words and Orwell's Politics and the English Language (two works that should be read and digested by anyone who aspires to write good English), this is the first of what I hope will be a series turning recent political statements into plain English.

China says that other nations should leave Myanmar to resolve its own problems.
Translation: China will keep its mouth shut about the abuses committed by the murderous regime in Burma in exchange for being allowed to loot the country's abundant natural resources.

Donald Tsang says that this year is a time to focus on the economy.
Translation: Donald Tsang does not want to have to answer tricky political questions like when we will get the democracy promised in the Basic Law.

Two cases reported on last night's news make me wonder if Hong Kong's judges live on the same planet as the rest of us.

In the first case, a part-time music teacher was convicted of indecent assault against two of his pupils. In passing sentence, the judge stated that the assailant was neither a paedophile nor a homosexual, noting that he had been with his girlfriend for ten years. In the real world, men who are neither paedophile nor homosexual do not usually go around groping little boys, but perhaps they have different rules where this judge comes from.

In other news: Oscar Wilde was married.

In the second case, a young man who blew off most of his fingers when a home-made bomb he was holding exploded was sent to a training centre. The judge noted that he only made the bomb "to relieve his anxiety". Well, don't we all? Though if I was forced to live in Tin Shui Wai, I might be anxious to blow the place up myself.

Sitting in the airport departure area yesterday (don't get your hopes up, I wasn't the one leaving), I found myself in front of a massive information board advertising Morgan Stanley with (curiously) a picture of an Indian temple, presumably to emphasise the worldwide nature of their services. Along the top and bottom of this board were scrolling bars of financial information - currency exchange rates, stock indexes and the like - provided, so the board said, by Thomson Reuters.

I happened to notice that among the Hong Kong share prices listed was one for "Amoy Properties". Amoy Properties changed its name to Hang Lung Properties in 2002. If it takes one of the world's leading banks and possibly the world's largest financial information provider more than seven years to notice that one of Hong Kong's biggest companies (a constituent of the Hang Seng Index) has changed its name, it's no wonder we have a financial crisis.