Financial Secretary Breaks Silence on Reform Package

You dwarf everyone, Donald.

Donald Tsang in Reinterpretation Furore

You know, Snow White was very lucky. She only had to think up seven names.

Donald Tsang Issues Clarification

Let me make this absolutely clear. When I say "Act now!" I don't mean to imply I haven't been acting all along.

Foxconn Epigram

I look at the behemoth that is Foxconn, China, and wonder what Karl Marx would have made of it all, a Communist system providing evidence for his dictum that the inherent tendency of capital is to increase the exploitation of workers.

Hobbes has never seemed more relevant:

"No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."

The Singing Bouncer

Introducing Brummie clubland’s answer to Susan Boyle, Neil Fullard (the song starts at 1:30):

Exiling Pensive Thoughts

I rather like this reflection ascribed to St. Gregory of Nice by Richard Hooker in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity:

"St. Gregory Bishop of Nice complaineth and inveigheth bitterly against them, who in the time of their Penitency lived even as they had done always before; 'Their countenance as cheerful, their attire as neat, their diet as costly, and their sleep as secure as ever, their worldly business purposely followed, to exile pensive thoughts from their minds, repentance pretended, but indeed nothing less expressed'." (Book VI)

People who keep themselves busy, are always in a rush, just so they can avoid the rigour of thinking? Greg obviously ran across a few Hong Kong managers in his time.

Band of Brothers

An almost perfect match between theme and theme tune:

Naffest Name Nemesis

For those of us who still remember the good old days when Robin ("quite obviously") Parke's Ulster tones were supplemented by the drone of Lawrence Wadey at a Wednesday night meeting at Happy Valley, nostalgia's not what it used to be.

In those days, before the Hong Kong Football Club won the jackpot by cashing in on its good fortune of being the one remaining obstacle to the Jockey Club’s dreams of upgrading its city track to international grade one status, televised racing from the Valley was interspersed with highlights from an array of international sports. No sooner were the jockeys weighed in after the 8.30 than ATV would whisk us off to a second division football match from England, a frame of snooker between Ray Reardon and John Spencer or a three-round bout for the ABA light-middleweight crown from Wolverhampton Town Hall.

The racing was different in those days too. The Valley had not one track, but two, one inside the other, much like the current arrangement at Sha Tin – the huge but soulless course built on the one expanse of local marshland not snapped up by Sun Hung Kai in the 1970s – where an all-weather track provides the inner ring. There was one major difference, though, related to size. Since you can fit two Happy Valleys into one Sha Tin, and since the corners are tighter than a Russian gymnast, the thoroughbreds used to spin off at the bus station and disappear up Blue Pool Road, never to be seen again.

This wasn't a problem on the sand track, however, as in the old Class 6 races (long since abandoned as racing became a plaything of syndicates and rich Mainlanders) it was very much a case of "last man standing", as pit ponies and shire horses fought it out with donkeys from Weston-super-Mare – who, naturally, had an unfair advantage.

Another thing that makes me long for the old days is the names Hongkies used to give to their horses. Twenty years ago, Robin Parke may have mixed them all up, but at least you knew where you were when Lucky Star, Star Dragon, Dragon Star, Star Lucky, Winning Luck, Lucky Dragon, Dragon Luck and Dragon Win faced off in the first. These days, you’re just as likely to get fancy-dan names like Koenigsberg or cringingly embarrassing ones like Stillyouturnmeon, the message sent out by one Li Wai Yin to co-owner Mrs. Li Wai Yin on Sunday.

Trained by another local racing figure with a silly name, Manfred Man, Stillyouturnmeon trailed in last of a field of 14, sixteen and a half lengths behind the winner, the admirably named Splendid Champion. I hope that's sufficient lesson to everyone out there with nothing better to do with the HK$30,000 a month it costs to keep one of these beasts in training.

The Pacific

As an antidote to US Marine Corps sanctioned propaganda films such as the John Wayne vehicle, The Sands of Iwo Jima, or musical diversions like Rogers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, both of which appeared in 1949, when productions brimful of American ideals and values were galvanising public opinion during the Cold War, HBO's mini-series The Pacific brings the kind of gritty realism modern audiences have become used to since Platoon.

If Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks's follow-up to the excellent Band of Brothers fails to hit the same heights as their earlier collaboration, part of this can be put down to the difficulties inherent in depicting the monolithic nature of the war fought by the Americans against the Japanese in the Pacific. The Japs are cruel and remorseless, the rain relentless, the conditions appalling, the equipment inadequate.

The makers of The Pacific attempt to break the monotony by interspersing romantic interludes among the fighting, and by interweaving a separate story about the exploits of Guadalcanal hero John Basilone as he embarks on a war bond drive across the States. These scenes are particularly weak. For the disillusionment experienced by humble fighting men suffering exploitation at the hands of careerist military officers and ambitious politicians, the Eastwood/Spielberg co-production Flags of Our Fathers, with its story of how the Federal Government cashed in on one of the most famous photographs ever taken, provides more compelling viewing.

Another familiar theme, the difficulty of reintegrating into a society that doesn't want to know about the suffering of combat veterans, is touched on more successfully, but not with the impact of The Best Years of Our Lives, released just a year after the end of the war and arguably the pick of the late-1940s' "social realism" films.

But the major weakness of the 10-episode series is that it fails to draw the viewer in as Band of Brothers managed to do so successfully. Half way through the series, many viewers will still be having trouble identifying more than two or three characters. Part of this is due to the high number of casualties, part due to battle scenes shot in wet and gloomy conditions. The main reason, though, is that, with the exception of the young volunteer from Alabama, Eugene "Sledge" Hammer, the characters are simply not developed with sufficient depth for us to care about them as much as we grew to care about Winters, Nixon, Compton, Lipton and Guarnere.

Diner Cuisine at Tai Mei Tuk

Credit where credit is due: the Hong Kong Observatory may not have bought the cake, but they did their best to ensure that my girl's 14th birthday celebrations went with a swing yesterday by predicting apocalyptic weather conditions for Sunday. As things turned out, it was cool and fair, perfect conditions for enjoying a trip to Tai Mei Tuk, the Tolo Harbour village that nestles in the shadows of the Pat Sin Leng range.

With only the most intrepid day-trippers willing to put their faith in the evidence of their own eyes rather than in the Government's gloomy prognostications, it was that rarity in the bicycle-rental capital of the New Territories – a Sunday when you could park the car right outside the restaurant and make the short crossing without being mown down by a maniac who's swapped his Alphard for a demotorised tuk-tuk.

Armed with a 20% discount card courtesy of one of our party, our destination was the quaintly named Diner Cuisine (感覺煮意), a restaurant that is very easy to miss as it is both small and unassuming and also set back a little from the cycle track in the lee of the bustling Eco Farm Restaurant (the one that hopes to attract customers with fading photos of former governors "Fat Pang" and David Wilson shaking hands with bemused looking chefs).



Mushroom and chicken fettuccine

The food was pretty good overall (forget the ribs-equivalents – you'll find more meat on Keira Knightley), with the potato salad with salmon, the angel hair pasta, and the mushroom and chicken fettuccine in a butter sauce all hitting the mark. The baked rice with mangos may not be to everyone's taste, but the tomato and mozzarella pizza was so good we ordered one more for the road. With the discount, the bill added up to less than a thousand Hong Kong dollars for 11 people, which would have been more if we'd gone the alcoholic route.



Tomato and mozzarella pizza

Diner Cuisine (8103-2320) is opposite the 75K bus terminus at 63 Tai Mei Tuk Tsuen, 8 kilometres east of Tai Po.

Fergie Tries to Cash in on Royal Connections Shock

God, it's not like I owe as much as Greece

Hooker on False Modesty

Not your common or garden variety of hooker, but the sixteenth century Anglican priest and theologian, Richard Hooker, whose emphasis on reason, tolerance and the value of tradition had a great influence on the development of Anglicanism as well as on the thought of CS Lewis.

A snippet from his seminal Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, in which he reflects on the arrogant superiority of those who consider esteem, position and influence their due, regardless of their actual ability to do the job:

"Let not a Prelate [Bishop] be ordained for reward or upon request, who should be so far sequestered from all ambition, that they which advance him might be fain to search where he hideth himself, to entreat him drawing back, and to follow him till importunity have made him yield. Let nothing promote him but his excuses to avoid the burden. Notwithstanding, we ought not therefore with the odious name of ambition to traduce and draw into hatred every poor request or suit, wherein Men may seem to affect honour; seeing that ambition and modesty do not always so much differ in the mark they shoot at, as in the manner of their prosecutions. Yea, even in this may be error also, if we still imagine them least ambitious, which most forbear to stir either hand or foot towards their own preferments. For there are that make an idol of their great sufficiency, and because they surmise the place should be happy that might enjoy them, they walk every where like grave pageants, observing whether Men do not wonder why so small account is made of so rare worthiness; and in case any other Man's advancement be mentioned, they either smile or blush at the marvellous folly of the World, which seeth not where dignities should offer themselves."

Coalition Leaders Grab Olympic Photo Op

Hi! I’m Dave Cameron!
And I’m Nicky Clegg!

Enough to Make Kant Turn in his Grave

Occasionally, just occasionally, a blogger likes to think that he – or she – can make a difference. That among the thousands who come by each month will be numbered the well-informed, the influential, the trend-setters, the opinion-makers – even the occasional journalist.

It's mornings like this when I feel close to giving up, when stark reality hits me with such overwhelming power that, like a post-Darcy Colin Firth, I want to zip myself into my nylon sleeping bag, put my revolver upside down in my mouth and end it all.

Last night, I tuned in to Race Seven at the Valley to see whether my words of wisdom on the correct pronunciation of the five-year-old bay gelding Koenigsberg had been taken on board by ATV’s Racing to Win team. With four Aussies at the mics, I wasn't holding my breath.

At first, I have to say the signs were encouraging. Clint Hutchison was the first to have a go, coming up with a pretty creditable Cone-igsberg. Clint handed over the reins to Darren Flindell, who articulated Kernigsberg with all the confidence of a man who'd spent six months absorbing European civilisation from a bedsit in Earls Court.

One swallow doesn't make a summer, though, and there still lurked race-caller Brett Davis in his perch above the grandstand, so I wasn't counting my chickens. As fate would have it, three horses had converged on one another at the end of Race Six like Hong Kong pedestrians zeroing in on a gweilo committing the offence of walking in a straight line. This meant that Race Seven was delayed for 15 minutes as the stewards issued fines and showed civic education videos to the offending jockeys.

The tension was becoming almost unbearable by the time the baton passed to Jenny Chapman, who plunged me back upon despair with the reintroduction of the dreaded Jewish moniker in her Cohens-berg.

The red light on the stalls started flashing and we were handed over to Brett. One slim hope remained. The horse had drawn off the course in Gate 12, so there was a chance that Brett would never get the opportunity to call the nag's name at all, if it played its part by just cantering around unobtrusively near the back.

Fat chance! Instead of slouching out of the gates as it had done on debut, the horse rushed out as if it had a point to prove, as if it wanted to show that it was more than just an unpronounceable East Prussian city fated to become a Soviet exclave. Brett was ecstatic. It was "Cohen Eggs Berg this" and "Cohen Eggs Berg" that, as the steed attempted valiantly to negotiate a circuit with tighter corners than a Scalectrix track.

In the end, despite Brett's urgings, it was all in vain, as Koenigsberg trailed in eighth. Don't write him off yet, though. Not for nothing did owner Kanny Ng give him the Chinese name Kap Si Yu ("Arriving Just in Time). This fellow’s definitely one to follow when he gets a decent draw – not to mention, a bit of empathy from the commentary box.

A Single Man

A Single Man is a film directed by a fashion designer, and it shows. It is also a film directed by a gay man, and that shows too. These two elements – design and homosexuality – are integral to the movie, and first time director Tom Ford's greatest achievement is the way in which he blends his two passions to create such a fine film, the kind of movie you find yourself pondering over long after seeing it.

For me, the greatest weakness of the film, which is based on the semi-autobiographical book of the same name by English writer Christopher Isherwood, lies in an evangelical zeal that sacrifices depth and layering on the altar of an all-consuming desire to preach its message. Ford is committed to showing that the love between homosexual men is as strong as that between any heterosexual couple, when cinema is at its best when showing how fragile and difficult human relationships are – all human relationships – as evidenced by the magnificently bleak Revolutionary Road.

My beef with the character played by Colin Firth is that almost everything is made subservient to his sexuality. In one scene, Firth, playing an English professor, hints at a darker, deeper side to his personality – reflecting on "moments of clarity" which visit out of nowhere, only to vanish as quickly as they have come. This nod to an underlying depressive aspect to his make-up, separate from his sexuality, remains undeveloped, as it is the death of his long-term lover – and only that – which has driven him to the brink of suicide. And it is only when the possibility of new love appears that meaning returns to his life and he is free to live again.

The stylised aspect of the film is the part that works best. Whether it is cigarette smoke being exhaled seductively or a smoggy sunset over Los Angeles, the visual element is in almost perfect harmony with the film – a "picture" in every sense. The stylisation reaches its apogee in the pivotal scene in the film, set in the swanky house belonging to divorcee Julianne Moore, a former lover of Firth's, who still lusts after him.

After dinner and dancing, Moore enrages Firth by belittling his relationship with his recently deceased partner and suggesting they could have a long-term relationship of their own. The message for all those who choose to live in denial about the reality of same-sex relationships is hammered home by the director, in case we have missed it, as the film slips into something close to proselytising mode. Firth and his lover were together for "16 years", while Julianne Moore could muster a mere nine with her husband. Even then, as the heterosexual confesses, hers was a loveless marriage in contrast to the seemingly unalloyed bliss that Firth and his mate enjoyed.

Support Volunteerism and Help Create a Government Job

On the day when the sexiest partnership since Dolce & Gabbana pledged to take on civil service pay in the UK, here in Hong Kong, the Government, sitting on a surplus the size of Eyah-Fyatla-Yerkutul (I can't spell it, but I had to learn how to say it when my daughter christened our new Winter White Russian hamster after the Icelandic volcano), is throwing money around as if the words Greece and Spain had never entered the lexicon.

Cameron and Clegg's attempt to stem the lava flow of civil service bonuses may be doomed to failure (one can almost hear Sir Humphrey saying, "What a novel and courageous idea, Prime Ministers!"), but there’s nothing that can stop Asia's world leader in spending money on useless projects when it's in full spate.

My office has been asked to display an enormous poster produced by something calling itself the Agency for Volunteer Service, a quango subvented by the Social Welfare Department. The purpose of the poster is to tell me that on Saturday 3 July the annoying schoolkids who will be attempting to slap a sticker on my collar before I am able to take evasive action will be undertaking this mindless exercise to collect cash for them.

That's right. Every cent you are badgered into giving will go towards the "sustainable development of volunteering", i.e. towards paying people to sit in an office (and indirectly for others at the Social Welfare Department to sit in another office to "launch, implement and oversee the initiative", as Hong Kong quango speak would put it) and educate people how to become volunteeristic.

"Volunteerism is underpinned by human love, caring and sharing", the poster gushes. Well, I'm going to show my human love in the best way I know how (my inhuman love is none of your business): by just saying no to shameless attempts to create jobs for the boys and to drive another nail into the coffin of what remains of Hong Kong people's sense of personal responsibility and ability to think for themselves.

Automated Programmers

Monsters vs Aliens is nothing on the latest threat to civilisation, showing now on a screen near you: Members of the Human Race vs Computer Guys.

On the one hand, there's the geeks' long-term plan to have us all writing dialog box-style prose (“type specifier omitted for parameter”); on the other, there is now no one left on the planet under the age of 80 who has not fallen prey to a CAPTCHA program.

These are the evil things that ask you to prove you're not a robot by entering letters and numbers you see in a fuzzy image. Ostensibly, this is so they can tell whether the user is a machine or a human being. Yeah, okay. But what about people who fall in between? Does Hillary Clinton get a program all to herself?

Heaven help the long-sighted when confronted with these demoniacal devices. What are they meant to do? Carry a magnifying glass?

And who but sadists could give you Fs that look like Es, and who but single guys who don't get enough sunshine could write the letters small "l" and capital "i", and the numeral "one", in exactly the same way and then punish you when you aren't able to guess which one they meant.

Give me robots any day. At least they have more brains than to come up with really nerdy acronyms.

Vote and Stop the GOP!

That's the "Gradual and Orderly Progress" lot, exemplified by the clowns at the Evangelical Free Church of China Kong Fok Church.

I'll be giving LSD stalwart Leung Kwok Hung my vote again this time round in Hong Kong’s LEGO by-"elections". His mates in Kowloon West and New Territories West, Wong Yuk Man and Albert Chan Wai Yip, could also do with a bit of support, and I’d probably vote for those smarmy Civic Party types if I had the misfortune to live in Ngau Tau Kok or Mid-levels.

Nice to see a bit of effort going into the LSD's election leaflet, which had a couple of paragraphs in English – real English, too, not your common or garden SCMP variety. Here's a sampler:

We must abolish the Functional Constituencies. Our government must be accountable to the people, not to fat cats and the well-connected.

Now, I wonder which Long Hair Lover wrote that ...

Tiger and Elin Set to Divorce Swedish-style

I'll let you keep the Abba CDs

Transport of Delight?

It’s that time of year again when annual reports land on my desk with a regular thump. Each year the thump gets louder as the size of the reports gets bigger. I'm not convinced there's any more information in them than before – to be sure of that I'd have to read the things – but the width of the margins and the number of photos have been "enhanced", as local parlance would have it.

Gone are the days when you'd get all you needed to know in fewer than 100 pages (most of this year’s crop came in at double that). The humble "motto" of yesteryear has been supplanted by the quartet of Profile, Mission, Vision and Corporate Values, each cannibalising the other and written in the kind of prose that lulled readers of The Tally Ho into sleep and obedience.

How one yearns for a chairman's statement and an MD's report, a review of the year followed by a financial review, all by way of an aperitif to the main course, the financial statements! Instead, one's confronted by propaganda in the shape of a Corporate Governance Report – possibly the most unreadable promulgation since Mein Kampf – and a Corporate Social Responsibility Report, the latter containing a spiel about the company's green initiatives trumpeting the fact that the annual report has been printed on paper from "well-managed forests and other controlled sources", but failing to mention that it could have been half the length.

But I'm leaving out the part that possibly gets more "hits" than any other bit – the directors' profiles. Picking up my bright orange copy of the Transport International Holdings annual report this morning, the weighty tome – all 205 pages of it – fell open at p. 115, which turned out to be a veritable essay from Winnie Ng, the person responsible for foisting bus television on us, or, as she puts it, for spearheading "listing of RoadShow, which business model has been adopted by many companies in HK, China and over the world".

What Winnie fails to mention is that, when the company was listed on the main board of the Hong Kong stock exchange in 2001, its shares started trading at HK$2, hitting HK$3 in pretty short order. At yesterday’s close, they were worth one third of that opening quote.

Paul Lewis Plays Beethoven

It was interesting to watch the way the Hong Kong Philharmonic's horn players rotated at last Friday's Paul Lewis concert at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre. Interesting, but also instructive, as it was two of the local players, who had struggled in the opening Leonore Overture, who returned after the break to struggle once again in Beethoven's Fifth. Full marks, though, to hornists Natalie Lewis and pin-up girl Lisa Rogers for strong performances both before and after the interval.

If the Hong Kong Sinfonietta is the Volkswagen Beetle of the local music scene, then the Phil makes every effort to position itself as the Rolls Royce, from full-page ads promoting the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation (established by Stanley Ho's cousin, according to its website, "to promote Chinese arts and culture and foster a deeper understanding of Buddhist philosophy" – well, if the Chinese invented spaghetti and football, only a niggard could deny them Beethoven) through a double-page spread for the main sponsor, CIC Banque Priveé (the bank that turns your cash into cachet), to our very own David M. Webb.

Though not yet, as far as I can see, on any of the multitudinous committees run by the orchestra – the Phil must be one of the few bands in the world where the number of admin staff threaten to outnumber the players – Webbie is a member of Club Maestro, a funding scheme set up to support the orchestra's long-term development. Not just any old member, either. Hong Kong's one-man corporate watchdog isn't slumming it with the emerald or pearl members (which include the troubled Fortis brand) but is up there with the big boys at platinum. And it doesn't get much bigger than Meifoo Plaza and Sun Hung Kai Properties.

I knew David M. was doing well – he claims a two-year increase from 17,000 to 19,000 in the number of subscribers to webb-site.com – but well enough to shell out HK$100,000 a year? The man must have made a mint from his Christmas share picks before shelving the project last year.

But our very own Jason Bourne is nothing if not a canny fellow, and who would want to be associated with the more popular sponsorship options, the Annual Fund and the Student Ticket Fund, when a) these donors are gauche enough to proclaim how much they give (it needed a call to the Phil's offices to find out how much Club Maestro members donate) and b) the programme notes descend into Chinglish to describe them: "Annual Fund enable (sic) us to continue to reach artistic excellence … Student Ticket Fund help (sic) to subsidise half-price student tickets and benefit all full-time local students". Not with their English, it doesn't.

Which brings us to Paul Lewis, the English pianist who played the "Emperor" concerto. I'd recommend listening to International Tchaikovsky Competition Peter Donohoe any day. And watching him, for that matter, unless you have a thing for tics and twitches.

Lewis committed what is to my mind the cardinal sin when playing this concerto, taking the second movement too quickly. It's marked Adagio un poco mosso, which means "at ease, just a little motion", i.e. slow. The composer was pretty much stone deaf by the time he wrote this; he was pissed off by the war with the French; he'd seen the value of his savings plummet. It's one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written – when played in a way that evokes melancholy and contemplation.

Here it is in all of its nine and a half minute glory, played by Sylvia Capova with the London Festival Orchestra under Alfred Scholz.

Tarantino Trilogy

Quentin Tarantino hit the jackpot with Reservoir Dogs, but it's been all downhill from there for the nerdy writer/director. He plumbed new depths with the sophomoric Inglourious Basterds, where misspelling the film's title was the cinematic equivalent of a cat peeing on the carpet because it's not getting enough attention.

In that effort, at least Tarantino wore his gimmicks on his sleeve. In Pulp Fiction – a contender for most overrated film of all time – you have to sit through two and a half hours of Tarantino the writer indulging himself with borrowings, allusions, in-jokes and dialogue that's so pleased with itself that you want to have a word in the ear of the Ezekiel-misquoting gun-toting black guy and do to the script what some other fellow did to John Travolta on the toilet.

In Jackie Brown, Samuel L. Jackson is back as the cool killer type. This time round, though, he's got two ponytails, one on the back of his head and one on his chin. Once more, you have two and a half hours of Tarantino to sit through, as a wafer-thin story is spun out to accommodate more gimpy talk, as Tarantino gets to be the kid he always dreamed of being – not the one that gets his head pushed in the can by his classmates for being the TMI Guy.

Having showed us that he couldn’t act with his turn as Mr. Brown in Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino’s back in Jackie Brown as the ultimate oxymoron, a wimpy hardman. Whatever possessed him to go back in front of the camera we may never know, and of one thing you can be absolutely certain: I will never ask him. I don't have 150 minutes to spare.

Scary Speakmans

I like to think I'm not easily scared, but I'm still recovering a couple of hours after making the mistake of opening an email promoting a visit to Hong Kong by a peroxide husband and wife life-coach team called Nik and Eva Speakman. (Are men really called Nik, or did he do this as a marketing ploy so they both got to have 3-letter first names?)

A quick look at their website was enough to confirm me in the prejudice which I had instantly adopted towards these two "qualified psychotherapists", who want me to part with my hard-earned so that I can Make My Life Fantastic and Think Myself Slim. With breakfast and lunch forming the centrepiece of the "seminars" that will be held at the swanky Four Seasons Hotel next month, I don’t hold out much hope for all the fatties who go there hoping to punch a new hole in their belts.

The Speakmans' choice of inspirational figures with which to bolster their webpage is curious, containing as it does the photos of two dead people, Mahatma Gandhi and Steve Irwin (the crocodilophile from Oz) and one brain-dead person, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The prose is pretty much what you’d expect from people who boast they have learned "to totally master" their lives. They are fit to bursting to give us (for a price - HK$5,600, to be exact) their "personal recipe for success, forgiveness, acceptance, focus, inner peace, passion, drive and true happiness", while they cure us of assorted addictions, disorders and phobia's (sic).

Reading this drivel, I was grateful for the sixthteenth century Anglican priest and theologian, Richard Hooker, whose Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity warn against those who purposely follow worldy business/busyness "to exile pensive thoughts form their minds".

Gambling Syndicates Predict Early Exit for Hong Kong's Finest

With average attendances at first division matches of 117 people, comprising security guards intent on honing their skills in a non-threatening environment shouting across the pitch at blokes who cycle the wrong way up Mong Kok's one-way streets with 16 gas cylinders soldered to the frame of their Flying Pigeons, the Hong Kong Football Association is truly deserving of its nickname "Sweet FA".

In the latest swoop by the ever so slightly kinky ICAC, a fellow called Yu Yang has been charged with trying to fix a football match last October – a charge which perfectly sums up football here, as the hapless Mainlander wasn’t even capable of fixing it properly.

Proof, if any proof were needed, that the ICAC wants to leverage its reputation as a bunch of comedians is the homage it pays to the coke-snorting protagonist of the cult BBC comedy Absolutely Fabulous in the codeword it has chosen for its latest operation, "Monsoon". The smart gambling syndicate money's already on "Operation Patsy" for the next sting by Hong Kong's knights in transparent armour.

With interest in local club football at an all-time low, it comes as no surprise that local bus companies are taking no chances with services for next Tuesday's AFC Cup clash between South China and Al Riffa of Bahrain at the Hong Kong Stadium. An announcement has been made that a bus to pick spectators up and take them back to the one-way streets of Mong Kok will leave an hour before the match finishes.

The smart money's clearly on a half-time exodus.

UK’s First Green MP in Historic Pledge

I further pledge that all our sleaze will be fair trade and ethical.

Jacqui Smith Defiant in Defeat

And don’t expect me to hand over the book on how to fiddle your expense claims.

Gordon Brown Bows Out Graciously

Finally, I’d like to thank my core support: the bald undertakers with goatees and shades who knocked on so many doors that they’ll be in physio for the rest of their lives.

Recusez s’il vous Plâit

Have my appeal heard by Jockey Club members? But they’re a bunch of crooks!

From the SCMP: “John Terence Hung, a former Hong Kong Jockey Club voting member serving a two-year jail sentence for taking a bribe to help along a membership application, is making an appeal against his conviction likely to be heard before judges who are members of the club.”

And Hung, who has already served nearly a year of his sentence, doesn’t like the idea of that.

Well, John, I’m afraid asking local judges to step down because they're Jockey Club members is like a disgraced academic asking Hong Kong judges to recuse themselves because they studied at the University of Hong Kong. The fact is that half of them did.

To rub salt in the wounds, Sabina, Hung’s ex racehorse now owned by Yu Kwok Leung since its confiscation by the Jockey Club, attempts to make it three winds out of four on the dirt at Sha Tin tonight. The horse was winless for the former Wheelock man.

I'm Through

Enough's enough, or "fair dos", as my mother would say. I know when I’m beaten. In my 22 years in Hong Kong, I've had my successes – some of them quite notable, like the time I outsmarted a Cable TV hotline "customer service representative", who kept trying to get me to fax in my cancellation notice when their website had no such form, by telling her I was about to emigrate from Hong Kong … that shut her up – but I have also had my share of failures. Like the times when I've been unable to give my telephone number without the hotline "customer service representative" interrupting to finish it off for me … before I'd even got through it the first time, and before the days of caller display.

But then that's all part of the fabric of Hong Kong, a place where people will typically answer any question you ask them (however innocent and trivial) by shooting a question back at you. Where, rather than ask you where you're going on holiday, they'll guess it for you.

"So, you going to Thailand for your vacation?"

"No, actually, we’re very excited - we'll be staying in a casa rural in … "

"So, you like Thailand?"

Like the times when you know someone's going to say the very thing that most perfectly combines the most obvious thing that could be said with the most annoying. It happened to me recently, when the car alarm decided to play up, going off at irregular intervals, complete with light show, like R2-D2 on speed.

[A basement car park, miles away from, indeed, beneath, the nearest habitation. A car alarm sounds.]

Balding Chinese man shuffling hard to catch up with me as I head towards the stairs: “Is that your car alarm?”

Me: weak smile intended to signify "No, I like to drive other people’s cars, park them in other people's spaces and then sabotage the wiring."

Baldie (with some kind of bizarre smile): "Did you leave it on deliberately?"

Me: accelerate up staircase, head full of so many responses that none comes out, which is probably just as well.

If there's one thing I've tried to drum into the heads of my "staffs" it's that the reason there are the two English words, "equip" and "install", is that they don't mean the same thing. All went well for a while, as the respective staffs observed and followed the above-mentioned point.

And then, today, I get this from one of the more senior managers:

"By using the new technologies, 93% of our minivan fleet has been installed with Black Boxes."

It's enough to drive Tiger Woods to the nearest fire hydrant.

Chicken in Kiev

D'ye fancy a time-share in La Manga?

It’s been a bad week for the Scots. First, Gordon Brown's infamous intemperance puts paid to the Socialists' chances of winning the General Election in Britain, then world snooker champion, John Higgins, gets caught on Ukrainian camera asking how he can best launder the €300,000 he'll get for losing a few snooker matches.

It's at times like this they always start calling themselves British …

Gordon Brown Explains Bigot Comment

I would like to make this absolutely clear. I was not calling Mrs. Duffy a bigot. I was in fact referring to anyone who votes Conservative.