Marriage Enhancement

I once picked up on a colleague's threefold use of the word "enhance" in the same memo and wondered why she hadn't varied it a bit by using "improve". Salandria looked quite shocked and was eager to put me straight.

"'Improve' means what you were doing before was no good."

"But doesn’t ‘enhance’ have the same kind of implication?" I said.

"No," she said categorically. "'Enhance' means we've further refined our service."

"You mean made it better than it was before?" I said, doing my best Socrates impression.

"Exactly," she beamed.

That was some years ago, since when "enhance" has achieved a place in the pantheon of Hong Kong English words alongside "hub" and "cum".

A graphic demonstration of the power of the word was provided to me yesterday when I stepped into the lift to be greeted by a poster advertising the latest offering in the HR Healthy Workplace Talk series.

A "registered" social worker by the name of Herman Chan will be giving a talk next month on "how to vitalize your marriage" by offering the "top 10 sentences to touch/hurt your spouse".

The title of the talk? Why, of course, "Marriage Enhancement".

ICAC KO’ed by Lam and Egan

From top:

Oh my God! Andy Lau’s going to play me in the film!

I don’t need a wheelchair, mate – just get me a double whisky.

No, actually I use L'Oréal Professionnel Serie Expert Shine shampoo.

I wouldn't want to be a fly on the wall at the gleaming headquarters of the ever so slightly kinky ICAC in North Point today, after the Court of Final Appeal quashed the conviction against Aussie bruiser Kevin Egan and local solicitor Andrew Lam Ping Cheung.

What the Standard article doesn’t mention is that Lam is a former ICAC employee, having worked there as an investigator, I am reliably informed, before he undertook legal studies and went legit. That's a joke, of course. To paraphrase what Michael Flanders once said of his partner Donald Swann, "no one has a higher opinion of the ICAC's work than the ICAC do themselves".

So, in lieu of further evidence, I think I'll take Lam's claim that he will be doing no more criminal work, or work involving the ICAC, under advisement. As for the Aussie battler, seeing Egan head straight down Battery Path to the Foreign Correspondents Club was enough to restore my faith in the Aussie spirit after watching Lleyton Hewitt crumble like an Englishman against a sick Novak Djokovic last night.

I look forward immensely to the next round in this long-running saga, and also to the film that is, I hear, already in pre-production, the title of which was top secret until revealed by Egan over his second double whisky yesterday – Vendetta.

Phantom Goal Cannot Hide England’s Ineptitude or FIFA’s Failings

Rugby does it (both codes), tennis does it, cricket does it, horse-racing does it, even golf does it (if a spectator is caught on camera throwing Tiger Woods' ball onto the fairway from the rough, it gets replaced in the long grass), so the big question remains, why doesn't the world's most popular sport do it?

The excuse most commonly trotted out by the world's governing body FIFA is that stopping to check on a key issue such as whether the ball has crossed the line would slow the game down. To most football fans, though, it seems rather a waste to rig the three main match officials up with microphones and headsets and then prevent them from doing more than communicating with each other in a way that too frequently resembles the blind leading the blind.

How hard would it be to get a video referee to give his opinion on a goal-line issue after watching a few replays from different camera angles? It would slow the game down no more than a challenge at tennis, an innovation which has added to spectator enjoyment by becoming a keenly anticipated sideshow in itself.

Most importantly, judicious use of technology would go a long way to ensuring that the results of matches were not travesties, satisfying in turn not just the demands of equity and justice but also the huge betting markets.

Six hours after England's fightback from 0-2 to 2-2 was stymied by the defective eyesight of the only two people in the stadium who didn’t see that Frank Lampard's shot had bounced two feet over the line, Mexico were undone by another appalling offside decision (there have been plenty of those in this tournament), which allowed Tezez to open the scoring for Argentina. To add insult to injury, the players and officials were then treated to the sight of replays on the giant television screens which proved that referee Rosetti's decision to allow the goal to stand (based on the say-so of his linesman) had been errant, to say the least. Yet, under FIFA's rules, the referee was powerless to rescind his decision. Farcical – and a situation that responsible stewardship of the game would wish to address and repair.

Of course, a decision would have to be made as to what aspects of the play video technology would cover, but that is a challenge the administrators of other sports have addressed and overcome. For their part, Sepp Blatter and his cronies bury their heads in the sand, appearing all the while more concerned about their job security than about the integrity and health of the game they control.

Let there be no mistake about it – apart from a 15 minute period in the first half, England resembled nothing more than KMB double-deckers against Porsches and it's a fair bet they would have lost anyway. The same may be said for Mexico. But just what is required for Blatter to take action and bring the beautiful game into the twenty first century?

Germany dumped out of the tournament by a refereeing error from Howard Webb in their quarter-final clash against Argentina? Now that would be worth getting up in the wee hours to watch ...

Unanimous Majorities are Bad for Morale

Beijing doesn't need Karl Rove to tell them this. That's why Mad Dog, Long Hair et al perform such a useful service for the PRC, providing a veneer of democracy as they are permitted to feast on the carcasses left lying around by its divide-and-rule policy.

All foreshadowed by the remarkably prescient Prisoner episode, "Free For All":

No. 6: "It looks like a unanimous majority."

No. 2: "Exactly, that’s what’s worrying me. Very bad for morale. Some of these good people don’t seem to appreciate the value of free elections … You are just the sort of candidate we need."

Follow the Leader

Is it only I who am scared by the resemblance between the brainwashed residents of the Village and those who take to Hong Kong's streets to enjoy a nice day out – a slap-up seafood lunch followed by a spot of pro-government slogan shouting?

The Ten Hour Tennis Match

Two blokes who whack their serves so hard that the crowd on Court 18 were wearing full-body armour and carrying TV monitors so they could see replays of each point will lock horns again this afternoon for a place in the second round of the men's singles at Wimbledon.

American giant John Isner, whose serves come down from out of the vapour trails that criss-cross the SW19 skyline, and Frenchman Nicolas Mahut resume at a staggering 59-59 in the fifth set, having sent down a total of 193 aces in a match that began on Tuesday.

Apparently, the scoreboard went on the blink when it was 47 all. Maybe the computer was playing a practical joke like Holly in Red Dwarf, but more likely it was just plain pissed off at having its light emitting diodes pummeled all day.

Meanwhile, having tipped England to meet Germany last night, I’m going to go out on a limb today and predict Denmark beat Japan to claim second spot in their group behind Holland. What defence in the world, after all, can contain the wiles and talents of the great Nicholas Bendtner?

England Stumble On

... and the Yanks make a meal of it, but finally qualify top of the group. Which will mean they will face Serbia in the round of 16 if Serbia and Germany both win; Ghana, if Serbia win and Ghana beat or draw with Germany; or Germany, if both Ghana-Germany and Serbia-Australia end in draws, or if Germany draw and Australia win. Of course, after their last gasp winner, the USA will actually be praying that Germany lose and Australia win, in which case they will play Australia.

Remember, you read it here first. Except you probably didn't until the matches had already been played. Anyway, forget all the technical stuff - as usual, England will play Germany and lose on penalties, while those buggers from across the pond will get Serbia, a dodgy referee and proceed to the quarter finals.

Slovenia's big mistake tonight? They wore all white and played like England.

Tsang Defines Universal Suffrage for 2020 LegCo Election

Every eligible voter will be able to cast his or her vote for one and only one of the 35 functional constituencies.

Radicals and Lackeys

The linguistic entertainment I derive from the Hong Kong Government's attempts to present its proposals aimed at entrenching and prolonging the status quo as if they were in fact aimed at change is little affected by the news that the Democratic Party has decided to ease the proposals through LegCo tomorrow.

The temptation to focus attention solely on a "reform" package that is a far cry from the three Reform Bills which did actually broaden the franchise in Great Britain in the nineteenth century must be resisted if we are to avoid the trap of failing to spot the power of "package", with its reference to a combination of related elements that must be accepted or rejected as a single unit.

The fact that Hong Kong people are being presented with a "take it or leave it" proposal (which fulfils the latter part of the definition) shouldn't divert our attention from the first part of the definition, for no one but the most hardened pro-China figure can see any relation between adding five more geographical constituencies and adding five more functional constituencies beyond the fact that each phrase shares the word "constituencies" in common. There again, so do fishmonger and whoremonger, and no one would suggest that one's not a foul and stinking trade and the other a perfectly respectable way to earn a living.

Nothing testifies better to the kind of problems you face when you take old words and try to imbue them with new meaning than the campaign slogan, "Act Now", with its faintly menacing undertones of "Accept what we're offering or face the consequences". But what is one unintended side-effect for an overworked government spin doctor who's been tasked with inventing a tagline and has been charged at all costs with avoiding the true meaning? I mean, he can hardly justify his six figure salary by penning "Accept this reactionary rehashing of the same old same old, or else".

In what might appear to be a victory of sorts for those who prefer a form of government in which they can get rid of their leaders from time to time, Sir Donald has been granted permission by his masters in Beijing to create new functional constituencies, consisting of all those people who don't already belong to any other functional constituency, with the power to vote in five District Councillors.

Now, this may at first sight appear a step in the right direction if it were not for the fact that several alarm bells went off in my head at the same time, jerking me back to reality like the blast from 20,000 vuvuzelas. First, most District Councillors are power-hungry old saddos who are prepared to spend, nay, positively salivate at the idea of spending their twilight years in interminable discussions about the relocation of bus stops and the refurbishment of the Mutual Aid Committee’s mahjong parlour. Second, and related to the first point, the job typically attracts older people with entrenched ideas and very few brain cells of their own, i.e. members of the DAB. Third, the government declines to give full details of the most critical part of the process, namely, the selection and nomination process.

We have been told that the number of nominators for anyone wishing to stand as a member of LegCo's District Council functional constituency will be increased from ten to 20, but what we haven't been told is how many individuals one District Councillor will be able to nominate. If it were to be only one each, then, with the dearth of pro-democracy types within the ranks of the District Councillors, the field from which we, the functional constituency of "everyone except those who already belong to a functional constituency", could choose is likely to be limited to a raft of pro-Beijing candidates plus a few pro-democracy types.

This is the way Beijing likes it – a veritable Hackney Marsh of unlevel playing fields, with no white lines in some places and blurred and overlapping white lines in others, so that no one knows what game they are playing or even that they are playing the same game.

It is in this spirit that I have looked closely again at the latest smear word to be favoured by Sir Donald and his masters: "radical". And the results have been staggering. A reversal of the word, together with a suitable dash of reinterpretation, shows beyond all doubt what the opposite of a radical like Long Hair and Wong Yuk Man – even dear old Martin Lee, bless him – really is: a "laci-dar". Which, by application of Grimm’s Law, turns out to be a "lackey" – defined in the dictionary which, like a reinterpretation of the Basic Law, I have just conjured out of thin air, as a "silly little man in a bow tie who is an embarrassment to Hong Kong, to China and to himself".

Tsang Defines Universal Suffrage for 2017 Chief Executive Election

Every eligible voter will be able to cast his or her vote for absolutely any of the three candidates that Beijing selects.

Tsang Offers Assurance on Functional Constituencies

I can say absolutely categorically that we have no intention whatsoever of keeping half the LegCo seats for functional constituencies until 2047.

Head Denies Teachers Told to Face the Music or Dance to Donald’s Tune

Things cannot get much worse for chief executive Sir Donald Tsang, whose Toad of Toad Hall antics threaten to hammer the final nail into Hong Kong Disneyland's coffin by rebranding Mickey Mouse as a statesman of substance and stature.

On the same day that his hapless performance in a televised "debate" against Hong Kong's very own Gandhi, barrister-turned-agitator Audrey Eu Yuet Mee, saw his stock fall even lower with locals, who have watched enough TV soaps to recognise a bad actor when they see one, his Orwellian "reform" package was dealt another blow when a secondary school head teacher in the pollution capital of Hong Kong denied having told a staff meeting on 9 June that no excuses would be accepted for teachers who failed to attend today's pro-Government rally.

Well, that isn't exactly true, as Dr. Jenny Chung Sin-ling (that’s "Sin-ling", not "Sin-ning", although the pronunciation is much the same in Cantonese) has declined to return journalists' calls.

Dr. Chung, who has been principal of Federation of Education Workers Wong Cho Bau Secondary School in Tung Chung since its foundation in 2003, allegedly told her teachers that attendance at the aptly named "Act Now" march was required as part of their professional development and that she would accept no excuses for absence without prior approval. She failed to mention, so it would seem, whether her staff would receive the HK$200 marching fee that is on offer from other pro-Government groups, which have also, according to the Chinese press, been offering seafood lunches for a cut-price HK$30 and asking participants to bring their domestic helpers along to boost numbers.

The school's sponsors, the pro-Beijing Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers (HKFEW), is the territory's second largest teachers’ union, set up in 1975, two years after its rival the pro-democracy Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union, with whom it is commonly at loggerheads. The HKFEW's president, Yeung Yiu-chung, BBS, JP, as well as ticking the pro-China boxes by being a Hong Kong Deputy to the PRC's National People's Congress and a member of the DAB, is also supervisor of HKFEW Wong Cho Bau Secondary School.

I don't know whether he was the brains behind the school's motto "Be pragmatic and innovative" or whether it was he who came up with a mission statement that refers to a campus built "with harmony and respect through the fostering of a culture of love", but, presumably, together with his principal, he has been the driving force behind the patriotic education which the school’s website proudly vaunts as part of its curriculum. (The website is only available in Chinese and, oddly, the link to the school's staff list is no longer working.)

Of course, I may be downplaying the influence of the "sponsoring body manager" on the school’s Incorporated Management Committee, Leung Siu-tong, who also happens to be principal of the HKFEW Wong Cho Bau Primary School and number two to Yeung as vice president of the Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers.

Leung, who cut his teeth as a Basic Law Consultative Committee member in the mid-1980s, further bolstered his credentials as a friend of Beijing by being one of the 800 Election Committee members who in 2000 cast a vote among themselves for six of the 60 seats in the Legislative Council. Through this convoluted and quintessentially anti-democratic process, he shared the responsibility for bringing the likes of Rita Fan Hsu Lai-tai, David Chu Yu-lin and – you’ve guessed it – Yeung Yiu-chung to the legislative table.

Which brings us back to Sir Donald, for it was he who, just two and a half years ago, rubberstamped Leung's appointment as a District Council member, making him one of the lucky 129 out of 534 that don't need to bother with pesky things like elections.

Just another day in Hong Kong, really ...

Irish Eyes Are Smiling as Les Bleus Face Elimination

France, which caused Ireland to rethink its neutrality after a footballer controlled the ball with his hand before passing the ball to another footballer, who scored a goal, stand on the brink of elimination from the World Cup after another pathetic performance, this time against Mexico.

Along with the United States, Mexico is the other major beneficiary of FIFA's determination to limit the number of European countries that participate in its showpiece. Their quadrennial stroll to the finals sees them trample over the non-existent hopes of the likes of the British Virgin Islands, Nicaragua, Bermuda and … Canada.

Intriguingly, in a scenario almost identical to the one I described yesterday, no matter how the Froggies do against South Africa in their final group game, a draw between their group rivals Mexico and Uruguay would be enough to see Les Bleus fall at the first hurdle, a feat they managed eight years ago as defending champions. So, forget Mark Six and stick a bucketload on a draw between the Hispanophones.

Even more intriguingly, just four days after that infamous November night in Paris, which Irishmen are still bleating about like big girls' blouses, another handball goal was scored in the English Premier League. This time, however, there were no diplomatic incidents; indeed, it hardly rated a mention.

Now, this may have something to do with the fact that the victims of this pernicious cheating won the match 9-1, or it may have something to do with the fact that it was yet another bloody foreigner – an Austrian, to boot. Me, though, I think it was because any bloke who wears a hairdo like that is crying out for attention so badly that everyone agreed the best thing to do was just to ignore him entirely.

Ghost of Gijón Set to Send Spain Packing

As South Africa builds momentum towards their inevitable first-round exit, the interest turns to Group H, where reigning European Champions and one of the pre-tournament favourites Spain face possible elimination after a performance against Switzerland that achieved the near impossible of making England look full of ideas.

The Spaniards even managed to work in their own Robert Green moment, when Iker Casillas (considered by many the world's best goalkeeper) decided that using his hands to dispossess the raiding Swiss would give him an unfair advantage and opted for a sliding tackle instead. This set in motion the best Keystone Cops sequence of the World Cup so far, from which Spain, for all their vaunted attacking talent, couldn't recover. If I wanted to be really harsh, I'd say their shooting was like Frank Lampard on a bad day; but if I had to be honest, I'd say it was like Frank Lampard on a normal day.

To rub salt into the wounds, anyone tuning in late for the second half and hearing the commentator yelling the name of Gelson Fernandes would have thought it was Spain who had scored, as it was the Manchester City reject with the Iberian name who finally bundled the ball into the old onion bag.

Although Spain should still make it through to the next round, as anyone familiar with the wit and wisdom of Jimmy Greaves will know, football is a funny old game. Plenty of strange goings-on (many involving goats) will be afoot on Monday, as the winter solstice is celebrated in the southern hemisphere. Given that everyone’s going to beat Group H whipping boys Honduras (this year’s beneficiary of FIFA’s largesse to the CONCACAF region, which includes the footballing powerhouses of Trinidad and Tobago, Costa Rica, Panama … and Canada), the key match is set to be Switzerland’s meeting with Chile on the June 21 in Port Elizabeth.

A draw in this game would virtually guarantee both sides go through at the expense of the Bullfighters, assuming Chile get at least a draw against Spain – not difficult to see on current form. In years to come, long after they've forgotten the "Shame of Gijón" (the non-aggression pact that saw West Germany and Austria go through to the next round at Algeria's expense in 1982), will they still be talking about the "Nonviolent Resistance at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium"?

If so, expect fits of midsummer madness from Madrid to the Molinón … and put a truckload of cash on a 0-0 next Monday.

Spain might think they are the entertainers:



... but there's only one Robert Green:

Refusing to Pay the Attention one Exacts

"If we look without prejudice, we shall find that men, whose consciousness of their own merit sets them above the compliances of servility, are apt enough in their association with superiors to watch their own dignity with troublesome and punctilious jealousy, and in the fervour of independence to exact that attention which they refuse to pay."

(Samuel Johnson, "Life of Thomas Gray" – he of the churchyard)

Anyone who can write so deliciously deserves a better fate than being lampooned by Oxbridge types on account of the occasional apotheosis of a generally quiescent predilection for prolixity.

Spain: Smoke and Solar Mirrors

With Spain's ailing economy being blamed on a variety of factors – monetary union that halved interest rates overnight, the collapse of its building industry and massive investment in green power initiatives that has brought more benefit to industry than to consumers, to name a few – the Cassandras at Madrid research group RR de Acuña are predicting unemployment of 25%. That sounds pretty horrendous, until you realise that unemployment currently stands at 20%, the highest in the developed world.

The Spanish flair for building – much in evidence when we were there three years ago – has resulted in a glut of unsold properties, with a staggering 1,623,000 buildings standing empty or still being built. The bursting of the building bubble has also resulted, of course, in mass unemployment in the construction and related industries, in response to which parliament has rushed through a rescue package guaranteeing €420 a month to the long-term unemployed. Whether this measure will work any better as a boost to the country's financial prospects in the longer term than as a social palliative in the short term is anyone's guess.

In terms of the green bandwagon, few countries can match Spain for jumping on and, some would say, jumping the warning red lights. With thousands of installations making power at considerable cost from sun, wind and biomass, sky-high subsidies enable solar-plant owners such as General Electric Co. to earn around 12 times what’s paid for power from fossil fuels, while charging customers – including businesses and potential employers – the earth.

As Bloomberg puts it, "Spain is lancing an €18 billion ($24 billion) investment bubble in solar energy that has boosted public liabilities, choking off new projects as it works to cut power prices and insulate itself from Greece's debt crisis."

If Spain can live in denial, then it seems churlish to begrudge the people at Berlitz a little fantasising of their own. Half way through their Advanced Spanish course, we have an interview with Don Atanasio Feliú, a fictitious character who is still living at the improbable age of 112.

Asked for the secret of his long life, Don Atanasio replies: "I've always eaten and drunk everything – when I was a young man I smoked and drank, but always in moderation."

In case we haven't got the message, fellow pensioner Doña Rosario pipes up a little later to teach us how to say, "Smoke, but in moderation."

I'll be sure to bear that in mind when we set off on our grand tour of the Sierra and the Basque Country next month.

Asking for Trouble

Just yesterday I made the mistake of asking a colleague (or "colLEAGUE", as they're known in these parts) how old her son was. She'd brought him into the office, where he was chewing on a Kumon brochure, which I thought a very commendable attempt to put the "learn-by-doing" approach into practice, and quite possibly his first step to greatness.

It was at this point that I made my fatal mistake of asking Mum how old little Ethan was. More to the point, my fatal mistake lay in the fact that I didn't ask; I had a stab at it myself.

"So, is he three?"

Mum laughs so loud that the tea-lady leaves the pantry, where she has been busy shredding documents all morning, and comes over to join us.

"Three!! No!!! He’s two!"

She's laughing so much now she's close to entering a state of Bacchanalian ecstasy. Suddenly, I see the three of them wearing flowing robes and tripping the light fantastic to a Mamas and Papas number with leering satyrs.

While she's translating for Kwan Jeh, I try again.

"So, when’s his birthday?"

"On the 21st of June," she responds, Kwan Jeh tugging on her sleeve all the while for the translation and little Ethan showing he's definitely destined for greatness by pointing to the noseless cartoon face that makes up the O of Kumon and shouting "Waatdaat! Waatdaat!"

"He’s nearly three then," I say, but by now it's too late. They've gone off to give the hotline girls an account of my solecism.

I've only made it half way back to my office when the hoots of laughter breaking through the soundproof walls tell me that my gag's set to take its place in the company pantheon.

Class System

"Classes never rule, any more than nations. The rulers are always certain persons. And whatever class they may have belonged to, when they are rulers they belong to the ruling class."

(Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, p. 344)

Reflections on Tan Zuoren

The news that an appeal court in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, has upheld the five-year jail term given to writer and environmentalist Tan Zuoren comes as about as much a surprise as the Hong Kong Government's use of the word "reform" to describe its proposals to further bolster a reactionary and inequitable electoral system whose sole purpose is to keep power out of the hands of the people.

When it comes to Orwellian newspeak and doublethink, the apprentice has some way to go before it can match its Mainland Master, who reminded us that totalalitarian governance knows only two ways to conduct its business (railroading on the one hand and filibustering on the other) by taking just 12 minutes to confirm Tan’s sentence.

The PRC Government, aware of the dulling effects of both the passage of time and the materialism it has worked hard to see replace any incipient idealism in its young people, disingenuosuly based its lamentable charge of "inciting subversion of state power" on articles Tan published online about Beijing's crushing of the 1989 Tiananmen protests rather than on his investigations into the shoddy construction that caused 7,000 schoolrooms to collapse in the 2008 earthquake – while most other government buildings remained intact.

As an antidote to the stream of thought-killing prefabricated phrases churned out by our regional masters, I have found solace in Plato’s Apology of Socrates, especially in this snippet of Thomas West's commentary:

"The city's justice is embodied in the public laws and customs, while its nobility is seen in the visible reputation, honour, and beauty of the outstanding public men, the heroes of the poetic tradition, and the gods as they appear in sculpture and stories. Without such public justice and nobility, the city's unity cannot rest upon anything except the mutual competition of self-interested factions or the outright rule of force. And the alternative is conquest by one’s inevitable foreign enemies." (West might have added "or inevitable phantom foreign enemies, created as a tool to control an ignorant populace", if he had wanted to extend his commentary to China.)

The importance of tradition, or custom, is a theme that runs through Karl Popper's writings. Popper argues that while a tradition may be neither sacrosanct nor valuable in itself, we need to respect traditions, since without an intellectual tradition we would be unable to take even our first step towards the truth. It is only by adopting a critical attitude towards a tradition, i.e. by thinking about it and by engaging in critical discussion with others about it, that we can decide whether we should reform it, reject it or critically accept it.

Cambodia already stands as an example of what happens if despots destroy tradition: civilisation disappears with it. China may yet stand as an object lesson of what happens when critical discussion – our greatest means of learning and thus our most precious educational tool – is banned.

Monarchies where Law is King

Does a legal monarchy represent the best of both worlds? At least it saves us from those presidential systems where the "president-king" is himself the law, and from pseudo-presidential systems such as the EU where meddling nobodies impose their loony laws.

"I am not of opinion that simply in Kings the most, but the best limited power is best both for them and the People: the most limited is that which may deal in fewest things; the best that which in dealing is tied unto the soundest, perfectest, and most indifferent rule, which rule is the Law ... Happier that People whose Law is their King in the greatest things, than that whose King is himself their Law. Where the King doth guide the State, and the Law the King, that Commonwealth is like an harp or melodious instrument, the strings whereof are tuned and handled all by one, following as Laws the rules and canons of Musical Science."

(Richard Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book VIII)

Bourne Lite

Green Zone is far from being the 4-star film of Roger Ebert's imagination. It might have Matt Damon in the Waspie Everyman role he's made his own (in this film they call him Roy Miller; he's already been David Webb and Jason Bourne. What next? James Stewart?), it might have the same director that helmed two of the Bourne movies, it might have the geeky dialogue (we're still treated to "assets", aka assassins, or Americans who bump off foreigners with the merest nod to legality), it might have the improbable orienteering skills ("He’s going up the central alley - west", Damon, being shot at from every side, confidently reports back to HQ over his headset from a rabbit warren of bombed out backstreets he's never set foot in before – at night).

It might also have a Nicky Parsons substitute – a gawky, aging, stick-insect blonde playing a dumb journalist – and it even has two references to the Guardian newspaper, clearly the only British media outlet that the Bourne/Green Zone film makers consider capable of running a decent exposé of anything more serious than a politician's dodgy expense account or a celeb's peccadilloes.

Set in the weeks after allied troops entered Iraq, it's also got an arch villain. The troops may have been issued with playing cards from the ace of spades downwards, but this movie isn't concerned with the small fry, even if the greater part of the film is concerned with hunting down and offering the full asset treatment to Saddam Hussein's top general, who's clearly displeased that he rates only as a rather lowly jack of clubs.

No, the chief antagonist of this film is none other than the commander-in-chief of the United States armed forces himself, President George W. Bush. The pivotal moment of the film comes not when the knave of clubs meets his maker, nor when Damon realises that he's been naïf all along in thinking that the CIA, the Pentagon and the White House all work together like Barney and Friends, it comes when the troops are relaxing in their canteen and Doubleya comes on the telly.

Over a caption that reads "Mission Accomplished", the POTUS tells the world that the allies have "prevailed over" the forces of darkness and a bright new day is dawning for humanity. And everybody cheers. One doesn't have to think the invasion of Iraq was a good thing to find fantastical nonsense like the Bourne series preferable to watching this kind of propaganda.

Ebert's readers (who give the film 3 stars out of 4) and the critics at Rotten Tomatoes (who give it less than 3 out of 5) are much closer to the mark than the man himself. Ebert shows us again that his weak spot remains filmic treatments of issues he feels strongly about. If it was almost beyond the bounds of credibility that he should give zero stars to The Life of David Gale, merely because it showed that people who oppose the death penalty can be subject to moral weakness just as much as those who support it, or, to put it more positively, just as human as them, then it is a pity that he should place this effort alongside the likes of Platoon merely because it makes a fool of George W. Bush.

Every third grader worth his salt can do that.

Queen Fumes as Nation Rejoices

Damned shame, Bessie - the dog lost out on Britain’s Got Talent.

Whatever possessed them to ask Susan Boyle back, Philippe?

Canine Set to Cane Competition

Paw de deux?

Pensioner Set to Win Britain’s Got Talent

Her first performance:

Prose and Contrafibularities

These days Samuel Johnson is perhaps best known as the character played by Robbie Coltrane in Blackadder the Third – the irascible pedant who is discomfited, nay, discombobulated, by a butler with ideas above his station and a talent for creating neologisms.

It is a measure of the influence of Johnson’s 2,300-page Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755, that it reigned supreme among lexicons until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1928.

If the dictionary was Dr. Johnson’s magnum opus, not far behind it in scale is his three volume Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, mostly written towards the end of his life, which Matthew Arnold described as a "compendious story of a whole important age in English literature, told by a great man, and in a performance which is itself a piece of English literature of the first class".

Curiously, Johnson has become a byword not just for his studied wordiness ("That he understood his authors cannot be doubted; but his versions will not teach others to understand them, being too licentiously paraphrastical" [Life of Addison]) but also for the pithiness of his observations. Everyone knows "when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life", but gems are to be unearthed everywhere. Take his indictment of Irish writer and politician Sir Richard Steele as one whose "negligence kept him always in a hurry", also from the Life of Addison – a nugget that might be framed and hung in many a modern office.

One of the most powerful prose passages I have read in a long while is the opening of his Life of Savage, written much earlier than the other biographies in tribute to his friend, the tragic poet Richard Savage, shortly after the latter’s death.

"It has been observed in all ages, that the advantages of nature or of fortune have contributed very little to the promotion of happiness; and that those whom the splendour of their rank, or the extent of their capacity, have placed upon the summits of human life, have not often given any just occasion to envy in those who look up to them from a lower station: whether it be that apparent superiority incites great designs, and great designs are naturally liable to fatal miscarriages; or that the general lot of mankind is misery, and the misfortunes of those whose eminence drew upon them an universal attention, have been more carefully recorded, because they were more generally observed, and have in reality been only more conspicuous than those of others, not more frequent, or more severe.

That affluence and power, advantages extrinsic and adventitious, and therefore easily separable from those by whom they are possessed, should very often flatter the mind with expectations of felicity which they cannot give, raises no astonishment; but it seems rational to hope, that intellectual greatness should produce better effects: that minds qualified for great attainments should first endeavour their own benefit; and that they who are most able to teach others the way to happiness, should with most certainty follow it themselves.

But this expectation, however plausible, has been very frequently disappointed. The heroes of literary as well as civil history have been very often no less remarkable for what they have suffered than for what they have atchieved (sic); and volumes have been written only to enumerate the miseries of the learned, and relate their unhappy lives and untimely deaths."

Jack's Terrazza Ristorante

After vacating its old premises on Harbour Road, Jack's Terrazza Ristorante reopened at the end of March on Lockhart Road (entrance on Fenwick Street).

Last night, after watching a very creditable performance by teenagers in their own production, Epic Fail, at the Arts Centre as part of the Faust International Festival, my daughter, ever partial to a little Italian, and I decided to try it out. We had booked for 10pm, but they were able to squeeze us in – literally, we had the narrow table by the loos – when we arrived at 9.15. The place was still full when we left nearly an hour and a half later, so reservations (on 2827-1687) are definitely recommended.

The staff were very accommodating: not only offering to move us to a window table when we were still "prospects", but actually making good on that offer when we had become customers – an offer we turned down, as we have a bit of a thing for washrooms. In fact, they're tucked away down a mini corridor, so there’s minimal inconvenience. Unless you go there, of course, in which case it's a different story.

Since a comment has been made on Open Rice about the smoky atmosphere, it's worth mentioning that three quarters of the tables are separated from the room sans window frames which the management has established as a ploy to circumvent recent legislation. So, if you phone, just ask for "no smoking". (Presumably following the owner's line-to-take, one of the waiters called that room the "alfresco" dining area, which I thought was a bit rich, on a par with Donald Tsang calling his plans to introduce more Functional Constituencies a "reform" package.)

What about the food, then? My daughter started with a Caesar’s salad, which tasted fine when I swapped some of my starter, the garlic bread, for some of hers. I must say I haven't tasted better garlic bread in a long while – the bread was fresh, the garlic plentiful and the temperature hot.

For mains, Natalie had carbonara with squid ink noodles, while I plumped for the New Zealand sole, which took 25 minutes to arrive (held up at customs?) but was worth the wait. The bill came to HK$464, which included a pint of beer and a glass of red – which I walked off with a quick tour of the girlie bars before driving home.*

Well worth a visit, I'd say. **

* No need to start a board war. We took the 680 back to Sun Hung Kaiville.

** I mean the restaurant.

Smart Park

My owner's completely out of his box.

Please Vote for Me

If you missed it first time round, Weijun Chen's documentary on the fight to become class monitor at an elite elementary school in Wuhan, Please Vote for Me, is now available on YouTube. There's something for everyone, as the Karl Rovesque TV producer, the divorced school administrator and the policeman bearing gifts square off against one another in front of a grinning, Machiavellian form teacher.

Their children provide their fair share of entertainment too, as Lord of the Flies meets and woos The X Factor. Horror is never far from the surface as China's one-child policy spawns its bastard offspring.

Please Vote for Me follows modern China down the rabbit hole into an Orwellian world where "democracy" is unleashed on 8-year-old children, many of whom appear worryingly well equipped to ensure it never shakes off the shackles of its inverted commas.