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Are our leaders too keen on locking people up?

February 11, 2026 by timhamlett

So the new regulation requiring us all to wear seat belts on buses was cancelled after five days, apparently because of public opposition to the measure. It is nice to know that the government cares what people think, at least about some things.

At one level this is an everyday story of careless constitutional design. The reformed system is set up to stuff the legislative and consultative machinery with people who will tell the government what it wishes to hear. You can’t expect it to provide an accurate report of public opinion on anything and it doesn’t.

At another level this is a typical performance from a department which seems to have strong opinions of its own. Observant residents in Sui Wo Road are baffled by the apparently random placement of a variety of street furniture, culminating in the curious insistence on providing bus shelters in places where nobody will use them, while adamantly refusing to put them where they are needed.

In the days when I occasionally visited government departments to interview their occupants the Transport people came across as intelligent and thoughtful. No doubt they still do. But the results of their collective efforts are, alas, sometimes difficult to understand.

I am personally an enthusiastic user of seat belts. They have saved many lives, including mine. Tour buses, on my last trip to Europe, all featured seatbelts and we were regularly reminded that using them was a legal requirement.

But in a Hong Kong public bus? Regardless of the numbers painted on the side they are, at busy times, packed. The driver has no control over the number of passengers admitted, and quite understandably imposes a limit only when the number of standing passengers threatens to block his view of the nearside wing mirror. Insisting that the seated passengers should wear a belt seems a bit of a token gesture.

Anyway many writers have chewed over the transport aspects of this matter. What I thought should have been given a bit more thought was the matter of penalties for not belting up. Of course there must be some penalty or the rule will not be taken seriously, but what on earth was going through the head of the person who thought it appropriate to threaten offenders with three months in prison?

Failing to fasten your seat belt is, as the late lamented Judge Caprio used to put it, “not an offence of gross moral terpitude”. It is a victimless crime, in the sense that the only person likely to be hurt as a result of failure to fasten is the perpetrator. Most offenders will have been guilty of nothing worse than absent-mindedness.

Willingness to jail people for this minor offence sits uneasily with the government’s total helplessness when faced with equally minor offences committed by people who can afford cars of their own, and the general immunity enjoyed by the perpetrators of potentially dangerous peccadillos like double parking in busy streets or obstructing roads reserved for emergency use.

Not wearing a belt is surely the sort of offence which can be easily and quickly dealt with by the issuing of a fixed penalty ticket, preferably for some modest sum within the means of bus travellers, who are not a wealthy bunch.

Sending people to prison for a few weeks used to be common in many jurisdictions but is now often considered an abuse to be avoided as far as possible. It inflicts the sort of disruption which makes a return to law-abiding citizenship difficult; the prisoner may lose job, home or spouse. At the same time it provides no opportunity for the sort of rehabilitative and educational activities which can form the constructive part of a prison sentence.

The inmate is more likely to emerge resentful than reformed.

Our government seems, sadly, rather over-enthusiastic these days for throwing people into prison, regardless of their age or condition. This may be a difficult point to put across to retired policemen turned politicians, but the government is in some ways different from a police force.

Success in police work may be measured by the number of criminals jailed. Success in government is measured by the happiness of the governed. Are we happier this week?

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How did ‘lady’ become a four-letter word?

January 26, 2026 by timhamlett

What went wrong with the word “lady”? Until recently it just appeared to be the polite way to refer to females. It appeared on their public toilets without giving offence, and public speeches were routinely addressed to “ladies and gentlemen”.

Esteemed singers like Tina Turner were routinely referred to by their road crews as “the lady”. It would perhaps be going too far to say that the use of the word was a sign of respect. It was just a polite word in routine use.

I first realised that something was going on here when I despaired of the managerial merry-go-round that was Chelsea FC and started following the club’s female team instead. Female football teams at that time were generally called Personchester Ladies, or whatever. This had been the way since the pioneering days in the 1890s when a mysterious person using the name Nettie Honeyball started the British Ladies Football Club.

The greatest club name of those early years was the Dick, Kerr Ladies (Dick, Kerr was the name of the factory where they started) who drew crowds in excess of 60,000 before the infamous day in 1921 when the Football Association banned women from playing.

Back in the modern era ladies remained the term of choice until one day quite soon after I started taking an interest, when the clubs – or at least those which attracted news coverage – changed direction with the unanimity of a shoal of herring threatened by a shark, and “ladies” was replaced by “women”.

I then noticed that something similar was happening to my copy on its way into the Hong Kong Free Press. The words “lady” or “ladies” were routinely replaced with “woman” or “women” as appropriate. I did not complain, firstly because I do not complain about editing as a matter of principle; it is a thankless task and for every editing error (we are fallible) the writer is saved from ten faux pas of his own. I also thought I was perhaps being rescued from trampling on some new taboo, introduced after I left the UK.

It remains a puzzle. No such odium appears to have descended on “gentleman”, which is usually the other half, as it were. I have occasionally been accused of being a “gentleman”. I always accepted this is a kindness, even if it was preceded, as it usually was, by one or both of “old-fashioned” and “English”.

There was a time when “gentleman” was a class marker. When Henry V promised that “He that sheds his blood with me … this day shall gentle his condition” he was clearly offering social promotion as a reward for military performance. Ladies similarly used to be a rank. In 19th century India the military rule was that “officers have ladies; sergeants have wives; Other Ranks have women.”

But this had long gone by the time I was a kid. Being a lady or a gentleman was something to which anyone could aspire. As Vin Diesel (of all people) has put it “Being male is a matter of birth; being a man is a matter of age; being a gentleman is a matter of choice.”

For males this involved stoicism, self-control, politeness and (outside of law enforcement or warfare) non-violence. Honesty was important, as was respect for ladies, a status which was the default for females.

We were also taught some rituals which have long gone. A male, on meeting a female in the street, would raise, or at least touch, his hat. Men no longer wear hats. If a woman joined your table you were expected to stand up briefly – a habit to which I occasionally still succumb on formal occasions. If you were walking along the pavement side by side the man was expected to take the side next to the road, a meaningless rule after horse traffic disappeared.

I do not know what was inflicted on girls in those numerous books of “advice” with Grace Darling on the cover, but a bit of internet ferreting suggests that much of it was quite similar: intelligence, kindness, honesty and reading are praised, gossip, rudeness and swearing are condemned. There are probably serious objections on the grounds of foot health to “keep your heels, head and standards high” and age has I fear withered the suggestion that ladies should “not kiss before the third date.”

Still I am not sure that there is anything there which parents would not wish for their daughter.

Well it seems that these days no oppressed minority can hold up its head in public unless it has insisted on being referred to by its preferred term. Cautious publications now shy away from “disabled”, “eskimo”, “negro” “Chinaman” and many others. The curious thing about preferring “women” over “ladies” is that “ladies” was always intended to be flattering and respectful. But if women want “women” that is their choice.

I also note with concern that what is being discarded here is not just a word, but an ethic.

Let us digress for a moment. Steven Pinker has achieved much fame by propounding the view that mankind has become notably less violent in the last 300 years or so, and there is indeed much evidence for this. There is less evidence for his inferred cause, which is that people became more sensitive to and conscious of other people’s feelings.

An older theory is that the reduction in violence was due to a change, not in sensibility but in manners. Polite society was set about with rules. These rules condemned violence and encouraged polite modes of intercourse. Some of them were meaningless – it really doesn’t matter how you eat your peas – but they formed a rules-based society in which most people obeyed the rules because they were the rules. In a sense it did not matter whether there were good reasons for them.

Those of us who were young in the 1960s will remember the glee with which many old rules which no longer made sense were swept away. But eventually the idea that there were rules which we should all follow went the same way.

Nobody goes to church any more. Teachers dare not condemn misbehaviour. It seems that politeness, honesty, sincerity and respect are no longer requirements. So we are free to enjoy … Donald Trump.

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Time for an old tree to bough out

January 15, 2026 by timhamlett

I have never written an obituary for a tree before, so this is a first.

The tree in question stood close to the footpath which connects the car park at the top of Sui Wo Road with the Lions’ Lookout.

The Lookout, a tasteful rendition of a traditional Chinese pavilion in reinforced concrete, used to be an important bit of infrastructure; officials would take visiting bigwigs up there to look down at the huge building site which would become Shatin.

Nowadays it leads a quieter life, still popular with tourists and morning exercisers (in daylight) courting couples (after dark) and picnicking domestic helpers (on Sundays).

However its significance for me is that the walk to the Lookout and back is an ideal distance for the day’s shorter dog walks, before breakfast and after dinner. So I have walked past that tree four times a day for about 30 years. I must literally have looked at it thousands of times. Four Hamlett dogs have watered it

Recently a government tree inspector seems to have decided that this tree was a menace to passers-by and it had to go.

Sad though I am about this it must be admitted that the tree had not been looking too well for a long time. There are many similar trees round our way, all planted some time around 1980 when the road, our estate and the Lookout were all new.

Comparing my tree with its many siblings it was clearly not flourishing. They are all some variation on the pine: evergreens with needles instead of leaves. The tree had some foliage, but it looked sparse compared with the bushy hairstyle of its siblings.

Its most interesting feature was a parasite, which had attached itself to one of the bigger branches – not mistletoe, but the same principle – and may have contributed to the tree’s ill-health. Well if it did, punishment arrived last week, because the demolition of the tree left the parasite homeless.

The dog and I noticed as soon as we left the house in the morning that some sort of bandsaw festival was taking place near by. From the car park you could see the team in action. I say the team because there were clearly enough people for a cricket or football team, though a different choice of sport might have been advisable because some of the workers were women.

Clearly the days are long gone when ailing trees were felled by a solitary specialist using a two-handed axe inherited from his grandfather, and dressed like an extra from the live action version of Babes in the Wood.

A little crowd, attired with a praiseworthy care for health and safety in high-vis jackets, helmets and ear protectors, were milling around the bottom of the tree. Near its top a man had been hoisted on one of those elevating platforms that TV crews use to look over people’s garden walls at their illegal swimming pools. He was cutting chunks off the tree with a large bandsaw.

As the pieces hit the ground they were dragged away, cut into more manageable bits with smaller bandsaws, and then another group took them off to a growing roadside heap of amputated tree limbs.

Also on the team were the drivers of two vans (one sporting the logo of the Civil Engineering and Development Department, which I assume was responsible for the work) the operator of the lift, and a man who appeared to be in charge. He was operating like a World War 1 General, dressed for the office and standing a safe distance from the front line.

The overall impression was quite impressive, and we watched for a bit. Later in the morning the dog became restless, I became curious and we ventured out again to see how the work was going. This was about 11 and the job was done. There were two large heaps of tree remains (they disappeared a day later) and a neatly finished stump about a foot or so high.

I suppressed as ungrateful the thought that if they had left a bit more it would have made a nice picnic table.

The question which now arises is: will there be a replacement? Official policy on trees seems to vary, possibly with the department concerned. Sometimes when one is removed there is a promise that it will be replaced, and this promise is kept.

A problem spot next to the carpark has hosted a succession of unfortunate trees, and is now occupied by an interesting newcomer, a frangi pangi tree. This is a weird thing, native to the Hawaian Islands, but it is a solid-looking low-rise tree and has already survived two major typhoons, so we have high hopes for it.

Isolated frangipani or plumeria tree without leaves on white background

But usually the big old trees are not replaced if they go. The stump sits and rots gradually. This is disappointing. There was a time when the government decided that Hong Kong needed more trees and District Boards were encouraged to plant them in any plausible spot.

We were also encouraged to go en famille to a distant hillside where you would be issued with a baby tree each and a trowel, to be used to plant your saplings. I remember going to this interesting event with my son but he was quite small so it must have been a long time ago. I remember we took careful bearings so we could return and see how our trees were doing, but we never did.

A similar wilting of interest seems to have afflicted the government, because after years in which my tree had lots of company from newly planted trees – few of which survived – planting on my short walk route has almost stopped altogether. Family tree planting is still encouraged elsewhere. Green my walk, please.

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Slow-motion justice: not just for political cases and not just a problem for defendants

January 7, 2026 by timhamlett

Long delays in bringing criminal cases to court have been an unlovely feature of the Hong Kong legal system for a long time. Critics, including me, have tended to assume that this was mainly a problem affecting defendants with whom the government had a political beef.

Keeping defendants waiting for trial was particularly objectionable – and, if deliberate, effective – in national security cases, because the wait for a day in court was commonly spent in custody, not on bail.

Two recent cases suggest that the problem is more widespread, and also more harmful in its effects, than this simple narrative suggested.

Some background: pre-extradition bill case involving umbrella movement defendants, with an outline of international standards. Some figures. Recent horror story. The government’s defence and some comments on it: Connoisseurs of legal bullshit will particularly enjoy Mr Greville Cross’s reliance on a doctrine which never applied to criminal cases and was formally abolished by the English parliament in 1769.

Now to recent events: consider the case of Dr Franklin Li, a plastic surgeon who unwisely continued to practice after reaching an age at which the attractions of the golf course and the retirement home should have been irresistible.

In 2018 Dr Li, in a moment of negligence while performing a face lift, killed an investment banker. The doctor was then 86 years old. The legal wheels started turning, and they were still turning in 2022, four years later, when Dr Li, then 90, hit his head in a fall.

Late last year, now 92 years old, Dr Li finally appeared in the High Court charged with manslaughter, and was found to be so afflicted by dementia that he could not receive a fair trial. The case was accordingly dismissed. Justice was not served. The banker remains dead.

A curious little footnote: last week the Department of Justice (sic) was in action in the Kowloon City Magistrates Court, where Dr Li was supposed to face two counts of misleading a police officer and 12 of failing to keep accurate drugs records. The prosecution was allowed to drop the charges on the basis of the High Court’s decision that the doctor was unfit to plead.

And the lesson of this sorry story is that the passage of time changes things, and if six years elapse between alleged crime and prosecution then things can change a lot. The usual concern in complaints of this kind is that this may harm the defence; memories fade, witnesses disappear, evidence erodes… But the change may be bad news for the prosecution too.

Manslaughter is a serious matter with no political hooks. Presumably the investigation started promptly with the discovery of the dead victim. Why so long?

Business as usual, perhaps. Let us now turn to the case of Jeffrey Tam, also in court recently. Mr Tam was working as a police officer in 2019, when he had a hernia problem. This was successfully treated, but required some post-operative restraint in physical activity.

However Mr Tam told his doctor that he was a physical fitness trainer and could not avoid strenuous activity as part of his job. The doctor then provided a sick leave certificate covering 54 days, which Mr Tam duly took off work, with pay.

Magistrate Amy Chan took the view that Mr Tam was trying to avoid further participation in the tear gas festival which was in progress at the time, and sentenced him to six months in jail, where he will no doubt be warmly received, poor chap.

It seems the case against Mr Tam was boosted by a Watsapp conversation with his supervisor, in which Mr Tam admitted lying about his job to avoid the street fights. It is not clear from news reports when this conversation took place, but it is difficult to believe that the matter came up recently.

Anyway, Mr Tam is rather coyly described in news reports as a “suspended police officer”. I take this to mean that he was, as the Police General Orders put it “interdicted from duty”, while remaining on the payroll. This is a common arrangement in Common Law jurisdictions, and a cause of ongoing arguments.

The practice of suspending accused policemen while still paying them is defended as enshrining the principle that a person accused of an offence is innocent until proven guilty. Taxpayers groan that the system bestows a large amount of money on an officer who is not working for them and may indeed in some places actually take another job while awaiting trial.

What cannot be disputed is that a long wait for a case to come to trial does nothing for the rights of the accused policeman but costs the public funds a great deal of wasted spending, if the police person is eventually convicted.

Mr Tam was accused and convicted of fraud for collecting 54 days worth of pay. It would be interesting to know how much pay he collected perfectly legally for doing nothing while waiting for the prosecution to get its act together.

Mr Tam, I record in the interests of fairness, still maintains his innocence and plans to appeal. It may also be that sick leave claims in our beloved police force are often spurred by a desire for paid leisure. One of my police friends was for a while in charge of handling sick leave claims. The force is beset by continuing epidemics of two ailments difficult to diagnose: depression and lower back pain.

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Sadly, Olympic gold may not lead to a political podium finish

December 18, 2025 by timhamlett

​The only part of the recent Legco election which cheered me up was the success of Ms Vivian Kong.

This is not because I warmly support her political views. I know nothing of what she thinks, but my rule in these matters is that the vetting and selection of candidates is now so effective that anyone allowed to run can be considered someone I would not wish to vote for.

On the other hand Ms Kong’s gold-winning Olympic efforts tickled the memory because I, too, was once an épéeist.

My career was much shorter and less glorious than hers. I was recruited at short notice by the Lancaster University fencing team because the league in which they played (North Lancashire had a fencing league? I was surprised too) required every team to include one épée person.

I had no relevant experience. Perhaps they thought someone who was used to waving an oar about would be able to handle the épée, which is heavier than the other two sport fencing swords, and has much simpler rules.

I expected to be massacred every week, but in practice it appeared that many of the other teams had a similar shortage of épée specialists, so I did reasonably well apart from the rare occasions when I came across a real épée person who knew what he was doing.

The following year such a person appeared at Lancaster U so I retired to do other things. But fencing can be recommended. I enjoyed the ritual side of it, and for a military historian it is a treat to practise a skill which was cherished by soldiers for centuries.

Ms Kong says she has learnt a great deal from her career as a professional sportsperson. She is a bright spark, has two real degrees and is working on a third. But the track record (if you’ll pardon the phrase in this context) of sporting superstars in politics is not impressive. Huge if rather patchy survey here.

Clearly winning an Olympic medal requires an impressive amount of dedication and toil, typically spread over years. Putting the legendary 10,000 hours in to acquiring one highly specialised skill must teach something. But how much of that is transferable?

It appears that a lot of former sportspeople have reached, and no doubt loyally served their respective communities in, what you might call the foothills of politics. In small countries they may hope for ministerial posts connected with youth or sports. But getting on the podium is much rarer.

There are examples of political gold medal winners, though none of them actually managed an Olympic gold as well. There is Lester Bird, a distinguished cricketer who became prime minister of Antigua and Barbados, or George Weah, who after playing for many of the best football clubs in Europe became president of Liberia.

Combat sports have a mixed record. Khalimaagiin Battulga, a star of Sambo (nor did I; here it is) later became president of Mongolia. The boxing champ who went on to become president of Uganda was the appalling Idi Amin.

Hong Kong citizens hoping for a livelier Legco will note with approval that Ms Kong has at least excelled at something outside of politics, and hope that she does not drop her current day job.

An ominous trend in Hong Kong politics is the rise of the full-time politician who does nothing else, and indeed in some cases has never done anything else.

Looking at the list of Legco candidates, for example, of the 161 hopefuls 28 described themselves only as “district councillor” and 16 offered only “lawmaker”. Some of the jobs offered were also political (NPC member, trade union official) and some of them did not look as if they would take much of the candidate’s time (company director).

More than a third of those actually elected did not have a “day job”: ten district councillors and 23 “lawmakers”. We must suppose that some of the others will decide to give up, or become part-timers, in the professional activities they have declared, once the rather generous remuneration provided for Legco members hits their bank balances. Other pursuits may be difficult to combine with regular meetings. Lam Ming-fung, for example, is a “vessel captain”.

So I suppose that in the end quite a lot of our representatives will be spared any contact with life as it is lived by the average voter. This is perhaps a pity when it seems the average voter was not terribly impressed by them.

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Being bitten is not so painful. Can’t say the same for the treatment

December 3, 2025 by timhamlett

I owe regular readers a word of explanation for the recent silence in this space. I was bitten by a dog.

This is not, in the great scheme of things, a big deal. People are being starved in Gaza, massacred in Sudan, arrested in Hong Kong. My problem was minor. But it wasn’t minor for me.

In the first place, for a while I could not type. In fact I had for a week a taste of what my father (his right side paralysed by a stroke) had to put up with for two decades. The hand I usually do things with was not available (I am left-handed) and the other one turned out to be incompetent. Even eating was an embarrassment.

The actual experience of being bitten – small teeth sinking into my hand – was not that traumatic. As a promiscuous petter of other people’s dogs I have always known that something like this was possible. The person walking the dog, who was not the owner and had not been warned about his charge’s homicidal propensities, was more upset than I was.

The treatment is another matter. My local GP sent me to the Chinese U hospital, which for some obscure reason they prefer to call the Chinese University Medical Centre. It has an Emergency Medicine Department. Is there something behind this preference for different labels? Do they not want accidents?

Anyway the standard treatment for dog bites these days involves keeping the wound open for a week or two until any chance of infection can be excluded. I do not dispute the medical justification for this, and indeed it has worked as intended. But if you judge the efficacy of a medical procedure by the amount of pain involved then this one really gives you your money’s worth.

Every day I was wheeled into the ominously numbered Room 13, where a nurse (you only get a doctor for the needlework) would squirt disinfectant into my holes, wipe them with the surgical version of those sticks with a cotton bud on the end which people stick in their ears, and stuff them with lint, which would be pulled out at the beginning of the next day’s session and examined for evidence of corruption.

The nurses were all skillful professionals who were kind, careful and as gentle as the circumstances permitted. They were all women young enough to be my grand-daughters. So etiquette, at least for males of my vintage, demanded that a stoical indifference to pain should be deployed, or at least simulated.

Post-operative recovery was aided by a fun fact about the CUMC: it has a super coffee bar. If you’re down that way it’s “worth a detour”, as the Michelin people used to say.

Long-term consequences? My left hand is now fully functional, though it still has some interesting scars. I have noticed that at some sub-conscious level I no longer feel so confident around dogs. Some furry friend I have been fondling for months will come bouncing up and my hand twitches a bit, and avoids his mouth. This may pass, I hope.

It would be unfair to blame a whole breed for the actions of one individual but I am avoiding him and his relatives anyway. I am confirmed in my suspicion that pedigree dogs, like thoroughbred racehorses and Hapsburg emperors, are often inbred and consequently may land on the mental health scale somewhere between “highly strung” and “barking mad”.

Adopt an interesting local mixture from one of Hong Kong’s many dog rescue organisations and you will not get an entry in the canine Almanach de Gotha, but you will also not finish up with a psychopooch.

Happily I am still on cuddling terms with the lovely Lemon:

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Education and Chat GPT: time for a return to the bad old days?

October 26, 2025 by timhamlett

Happily I retired from the university teaching scene before Chat GPT and his mates came along, because it has apparently made life rather difficult.

Generally the most subtle assessment method, at least in the humanities, is the essay. You set the topic, send the student away, and assess the resulting masterpiece a week later.

People in other necks of the woods have other choices, of course. Mathematicians can be asked to tackle a problem on the spot. Subjects which consist primarily of absorbing a lot of memorable material can be tested with multiple-choice questions, which have the additional advantage that they can be graded by a computer.

The most picturesque assessment method was applied to trainee aircraft engineers. The class assembled at 9 am and each member was presented with a small engine. At 1 pm the examiner returned, by which time the engine had to be dismantled entirely into its component parts. The class then had lunch, then reassembled to reassemble their engines.

At 5 pm the examiner returned and tried to start each engine. If it started first time you had passed, and if not…

But I digress. The problem with setting essays now is that you do not know if the result was partly, or indeed wholly, written by artificial intelligence. This has in turn produced a lot of interest in detection, which is sometimes possible. The person who told me about this problem recalled a case in which the essay included the word “albeit”.

This is not the sort of word which comes up often in sociable chat so the writer was asked what it meant… and could not answer.

Clearly though there is going to be an ongoing arms race here between AI users and programmers, trying to produce ever more convincing forgeries, and teachers and other detectives looking for ways to spot traces of computer composition.

The answer, I fear, is going to be a return to the primitive practices of the past.

When I took my first degree, half a century ago, there was no continuous assessment, multiple choice was regarded as simplistic, and computers were monstrous machines which had to be fed punched cards.

We wrote essays at least once a week and these had to be submitted and discussed, but they were not part of the assessment. There was also a small examination each term intended to reassure your personal academic adviser that you were still alive and working, but this was not part of the assessment either.

After three years of this regime you encountered an ordeal more like the old Chinese civil service exam (in which candidates were locked up for a week and, according to legend, invited to write down everything they knew) than modern gentle testing methods.

Starting on Wednesday we had three-hour exams each morning and afternoon until Sunday, when you had a day off, a relic of the days when universities were mainly intended to train clergymen. The ordeal resumed on Monday and ended at lunchtime on Tuesday, at which point there was an understandable tendency for the survivors to get resoundingly drunk.

The actual examination was quite Spartan. You were allowed (times had changed) to use a Biro. The paper was white and completely blank. People were agitating for lined paper, to help authors whose writing tended to diverge gradually from the horizontal as they got down the page. This came eventually, but too late to help me.

There was a list of about a dozen questions, of which in your three hours you were expected to attempt four. As the marks available were divided equally between your four answers it was an elementary point of exam technique to get to four somehow.

There were no “open books”, bringing in notes of any kind was cheating, and the examiners were not – with rare exceptions – the people who had taught you. We were not asked our opinions of the teachers, but because the examiners were applying consistent standards, the outcomes of individuals and groups could be compared.

This was a stressful system and I would not recommend copying it in all its details. It favoured glib bullshitters and people who could write quickly. It was a great preparation for journalism, which is perhaps not a recommendation.

But as AI tramples its way across the academic landscape it may be time to rediscover the merits of putting the students in a room with paper, pen, questions and a time limit. At least you know who has written what.

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A yacht economy, certainly, but no subsidies for rich men’s toys please

October 16, 2025 by timhamlett

That pitter patter of little feet you heard after the policy address came from a herd of hogs heading for the public money trough, which naturally follows the announcement of a new hub. Consider the government’s newfound enthusiasm for the “yacht economy”.

The policy address had barely finished echoing down the corridors of power before a spokesman for the Boating Industry Association was pushing a list of “supporting facilities” which visiting yachts would require and which, it seemed, he expected the government to provide at the taxpayers’ expense.

According to a report in the Standard the association’s chairman, Lawrence Chow, clearly had a longer list in mind but started with “landing facilities, public restrooms and waste collection stations”.

Over this issue hangs a small technical confusion. The government, and the Standard’s headline writer, referred to “anchorages”. Mr Chow referred to “berths”. These are not the same thing.

An anchorage is a place where a yacht can drop an anchor. It needs a lot of water space round it for this and communication with the shore requires another, smaller, boat … or for the really affluent owner a helicopter. This is not a great boost for tourism. Also you would not wish to be on an anchored yacht in a typhoon.

A berth is a place where the yacht can tie up next to a jetty or pier, and its occupants then merely have to step ashore or, if the yacht is really big, walk down a gangplank. This is obviously much more convenient and places which take the “yacht economy” seriously all have facilities of this kind.

Most of the government actions announced so far consist of removing bureaucratic obstacles. Yachts will, for example, no longer be required to have a reserved berth before they arrive. Skippers will be able to take the exam for local waters remotely. And so on.

We have not seen so much detail about how the proposed “five new anchorages” will be produced, but I take it what what this actually means is five new marinas.

Clearly there will have to be some official contribution in the shape of space: a patch of water on which a marina can be built and a patch of land next to it for the necessary “facilities”. There is no reason why the operator of the marina should not provide everything else at its own expense, or indeed pay a reasonable fee for the land and water. After all users of the marina will be paying. Operating a marina is a commercial enterprise.

If visitors require public restrooms and waste collection stations it will be in the interest of the operator to provide them, and the resulting increase in custom will provide a reward.

There are two reasons why the government should be extremely careful to avoid the appearance that it is subsidising this activity. The first is that it would be undignified, indeed obscene, for a government which cannot afford to provide its elderly citizens with a decent pension to use public money to subsidise millionaires’ recreational activities. Or to put it in words of one syllable, rich men’s toys.

The second reason is that it would contrast rather fiercely with the government’s indifference to the possibility that Hong Kong people who are not millionaires might enjoy boating activities. Walking along the edge of Tolo Harbour is a pleasant experience but it is also frustrating. There is sunshine, there is a gentle breeze, there is a large expanse of more or less clean water but … no boats.

Ma On Shan, Taipo and Shatin are large populous towns on the edge of the harbour and the grand total of boating facilities offered to their inhabitants is … zero. There is a Taipo Boat Club but since the construction of the Tolo Harbour Highway it has been exiled to Tai Mei Tuk, which is miles away.

It would be nice to have a “yacht economy”. Could we not have a “dinghy economy” as well?

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On Mr Trump’s aspirations to nobility, or Nobelity

October 13, 2025 by timhamlett

Quite the mind-boggling headline of the week announced (wording varied in different places of course) that the government of Norway was bracing itself for some retaliation from the USA if American President Donald Trump was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Well no doubt it would be good if all international statesmen were eager to qualify for the Peace Prize. On the other hand there is a widespread suspicion that Mr Trump’s ambition owes little to a passion for peace and much to resentment of the fact that Barack Obama got one.

Students of the history of international relations will no doubt have noticed already that standards drooped when the professional diplomats were elbowed aside by national leaders, whether elected or hereditary. But this is surely a new low.

I may be biassed. It is true that English culture traditionally sets a high value on modesty and self-deprecation. One may hope for honours but one does not ask. There is a character in one of CP Snow’s novels who is a senior civil servant and thinks he is due for a knighthood. So instead of signing with an initial he starts signing with his full Christian name (John Smith instead of J. Smith) in the hope that his seniors will see fit to put a “Sir” in front of it.

This is regarded as a serious, if amusing, character defect and the knighthood does not materialise.

The press pioneer Alfred Harmsworth had better luck. To the suggestion that he should agitate politely for a peerage he famously replied “When I want a peerage I shall buy one like an honest man.” He did later (without paying) become Lord Northcliffe. When I worked for the Derby Evening Telegraph we still had a rather poor portrait of him in the hall.

The presentation of honours in Hong Kong has never caused much controversy. The colonial ones were not taken very seriously because they were … well … colonial. Their post-handover replacements have not established themselves as a big deal.

I once did a rough study of the arrival of honours in the Legislative Council. It appeared that if you were a loyal supporter of the regime there was a fairly predictable time-line along which, as long as you survived re-election, you would travel from Justice of the Peace through bauhinias of various colours. One DAB member seemed to be stuck on the launch pad, as it were. I suspect he had refused to participate.

I am not aware of any similar study of how life treats those who go “seeking the bubble reputation” through the consultative apparatus.

There were some misgivings a few years ago when some people with qualifications in engineering adopted the pretitle “Ir”, which works like “Dr”. The “I” is because the title originated in French. Lawyers suggested that they should perhaps put in a bid for “Lr” before the librarians grabbed it.

Some people disapprove of this sort of thing. One of the idols of my youth was Charles Carter, who was the first Vice Chancellor of Lancaster University. Mr Carter was a devout Quaker and spurned titles of any kind. He always signed, and described himself, as plain Charles Carter and I only discovered that he was entitled to both Dr and Prof when I got a look at correspondence from polite outsiders.

He did tell me – a point lost on holders of honorary degrees in Hong Kong – that such honours should only be worn in the premises of the university awarding them. So if you have an Hon Doc, whether or not you earned it or “bought one like an honest man”, it should not be on your business card.

Anyway all this suggests that there may be an easy way to propitiate the unpredictable Trump. Countries which wish to bow before the president should look into the possibilities of honorary degrees, orders, knighthoods, perhaps (lucky old England) even a Lordship.

Alternatively, at the risk of punishment, they could refer him to the work of Thomas Gray:

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r,

         And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,

Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour.

         The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

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Travel trade illusions: sportfests are good for the economy and travellers want to shop in airports

October 1, 2025 by timhamlett

Goodness, a whole page in Monday’s Standard was devoted to Routes World, an international conference held in Hong Kong.

Routes World is an annual get-together for people building and running airports. It is held in a different place each year. Hong Kong was a happy host because links with other airports can help its ambition to become, or remain, an international air transport hub.

This is one of the more plausible of our hub ambitions, which now number about 20. What is the collective noun for a multiplicity of hubs? A hubbub? A hubble bubble? A hubris?

Most of the Routes World proceedings were no doubt routine conversations about things only interesting to people in the industry, or with a morbid fascination for the economics of airports.

It does seem, though, that the travel business suffers from some shared delusions. This is not surprising. Many professions have them. Journalists had a shared delusion for a long time that their consumers were mainly interested in accurate information. Now that the internet is up and running it has become clear that most people find inaccurate information much more interesting.

One of the air people’s shared delusions concerns sports. Consider this offering from Philipe Karat, head of the transport part of the Brazilian Tourist Board. He reportedly said that “Brazil’s experience hosting the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics significantly raised its global profile, attracting more tourists and new airlines…”

This is wildly at variance with the growing consensus among people who study such things that hosting international sports circuses of this kind does not provide an economic boost, the extra income from visitors is grossly overstated, and is off-set by an increase in the number of locals taking holidays abroad to avoid the circus.

As two sports economists put it:


The World Cup coincided with the start of Brazil’s longest recession since the 1930s. That rather undermined claims that it would boost the economy. The impoverished country then had to fork out another $4.6 billion (predictably 50 per cent over budget) to host the Rio Olympics.

Outside the tourism bubble most people now agree that it was a terrible mistake to hold World Cups in Brazil, or in South Africa, since both countries had more important needs than a bit of fun and a temporary influx of foreigners. Brazil, as Kuper and Szymanski put it, “sacrificed a little bit of its future to host the World Cup.”

For another interesting delusion we can turn to the panel discussion on “the transformation of airports into sought-after travel destinations”. This is the idea that people will plan flights so that they can visit airports they particularly fancy.

As one speaker put it, “If passengers can enjoy a comfortable and pleasant shopping experience at Hong Kong airport there would be little incentive to seek transit through … other destinations.”

Someone needs to grab these people firmly by the ear and explain that air passengers are not looking for a “comfortable and pleasant shopping experience.” In fact attempts to turn air travel into a shopping experience are more resented than appreciated.

The preoccupation with lucrative retail outlets leads to difficulty in finding the things which travellers really need, like bags or electrical adapters. And the comfort and pleasure will not compensate for a poor range of goods on offer. Hong Kong airport would be a more attractive destination if it had a decent bookshop.

It is a basic axiom of international air travel that all airports are very much the same. The differences between them pale into insignificance compared with matters like the date and time of the flight, the intended destination, the impact of a mid-journey change, if any, and above all of course the price of the ticket. The flight, we hope, will be comfortable and pleasant. The airport merely has to be efficient.

I have been processed through a wide variety of airports. The only one I would really like to transit through again is Istanbul, which has excellent local shops starring Turkish Delight and paklava with a wide variety of colours and ingredients. But I am not going to choose Turkish Airlines just so I can taste these delicious marvels again.

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