tim's experiment

It is not often I feel moved to write, or even read, about competitive swimming, but a story the other day was provocative. Readers will recall that a year or two ago swimmers started appearing in a new suit, which covered everything, and was constructed from some high tech material which made them a bit faster. Records tumbled, people who could not afford the new duds complained, and the speed suits were eventually banned.

Now everyone is back in the old gear, records are no longer tumbling. In fact they are not being broken at all. This is apparently disappointing for spectators, who like to see records broken. I can’t think why, as you can’t tell until the announcement afterwards whether a record has been set or not, but there it is. We may note in passing that spectators are in for a disappointment sooner or later because speeds will hit limits set by biology. Racehorses, which have been racing a lot longer than human swimmers, have reached this stage. They go as fast as a horse can go without turning into a Pegasus and speed records are rarely broken.

Anyway, in the meantime, according to the story, the swimming authorities are wrestling with some way to keep crowds interested in a record-free meeting, and also struggling with the sponsors. It seems that the cover-everything Superman suit provided plenty of space for advertising. Now the male swimmers have gone back to something more like traditional briefs there is nowhere to put a logo on the upper half of the body, which is the only part likely to appear on television.

Now in the first place it seems clear that the suit problem is not going to go away. Hundredths of a second make a difference at this level so people are always going to be looking for an edge. The answer, it seems to me, is that the swimmers should wear no clothes at all. This would also solve the problem of attracting an audience, though no doubt it will not be exactly the same as the audience they get now. I suppose in the interests of hygiene they could keep those funny hats. They won’t be wearing much less than the beach volleyball people do.

This will considerably reduce the demand for competitive swimwear. But I suppose other sponsors will be interested. Of course there will be nothing to stick a logo on but where there’s a profit to be had people find a way. Some sort of removable tatoo?

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Many years ago in the UK there was a lady called Mary Whitehouse. Mrs Whitehouse was frequently quoted in newspapers and invited to appear on television to comment on media matters. This was because she was the spokesperson of a thing called the National Viewers and Listeners Association. Whenever a reporter was looking for someone to give a view which could be presented as that of the consumers of radio or television, Mrs W was the person to call.

Actually it was widely known in media circles that this was a con. The National Viewers and Listeners Association was not national. Mrs Whitehouse was a member of a nutty religious group and the NVLA drew most of its members, who only numbered a few hundred anyway, from the same Godsquad. Its claims to speak for anyone but a few Puritans were minimal. But it had no competition, so the phone calls kept coming.

Mrs Whitehouse’s counterpart in Hong Kong is Joseph Law, who rejoices in the title of Chairman of the Hong Kong Employers of Overseas Domestic Helpers Association. With this on his business card he is routinely wheeled out to pronounce on matters like the minimum wage for helpers or the requirement that they leave town in two weeks if dismissed. Mr Law’s opinions on these matters are entirely predictable. Whether they are typical is another matter. I have been an employer of an overseas domestic helper for many years. I have never been invited to join Mr Law’s association. I have never met anyone who has, though many of my friends also employ domestic helpers. The association has, it seems, no function other than allowing Mr Law to parade his greed and insensitivity in public and foist it on the rest of us. If the association has meetings they are not reported. If it has other useful and constructive activities they also remain below the public radar. If it has a website the Google machinery has so far failed to find it. Next time a reporter is tempted to ask Mr Law for a quote it might be a good idea to insert a request for his membership figures.

Mr Law’s latest public outburst showed that he is moving on from offering mean quotes about matters concerning domestic helpers to things which have nothing to do with his members, if any, at all. Wednesday’s papers were full of the DAB’s latest campaign, which is a disgraceful attempt to influence the court which will shortly be considering a request for judicial review of the rule that overseas domestic helpers do not qualify for the right of abode after being here for seven years. As this is in marked  contrast to the treatment of overseas bankers – and for that matter butchers, bakers, candlestick makers etc – there is some reason to suppose that the plea will succeed. That is no excuse for campaigning for a particular result. Does the DAB beieve in the rule of law? Of course not. Stupid question.

The party’s spokespoodle, one Starry Lee, explained that the DAB was publicising its spectacular predictions of social doom if helpers were allowed the right of abode because it was “only putting forward an estimate of the possible consequences and remind the government to be prepared for all possible outcomes.” Cobblers. The DAB is putting forward its lurid lies in an attempt to broaden its electoral prospects by appealing to racism and snobbery in the middle classes.

I am a little puzzled as to why Mr Law felt called upon as an employer’s spokesperson to join in this particular row. After all from the employer’s point of view it makes little difference whether maids qualify for the right of abode or not. Some may leave the business when they qualify for the ID card.  But if Hong Kong offers the additional attraction of the right of abode then no doubt replacements will be easier to come by. So as employers we may be attracted or appalled, but this is nothing to do with us.

Nevertheless Mr Law sailed in with the promise (threat?) that “If they rule in favour of the maids, I will ask the Hong Kong Government to seek an interpretation of the Basic Law from China. We cannot accommodate such a large influx into the population.” This suggests two possiblilities. One is that Mr Law erroneously supposes that any domestic helper who is awarded the right of abode will be able to claim a permanent home with her current employer. The other is that Mr Law is not really interested in labour issues at all, he is just another left-wing loony who thinks the world will end if the Basic Law is criticised in any way.

Or perhaps he’s just thick.

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To Lam Sang Wai this weekend, to see it before it disappears. Lam Sang Wai is an area of wetland near Yuen Long. It was certainly wet when I saw it because we had constant rain, but some of it is wet all the time. It is a rare piece of landscape for Hong Kong, being completely flat throughout. Neglected fishponds and paddy fields abound. Some of it looks like the Norfolk Broads, or like the Norfolk Broads before they were tidied up for tourism. Some of it looks a bit like the famous West Lake, with causeways dotted with trees running along the horizon. Few of the traditional residents are still there. The place is very quiet, though parts are within distant earshot of the Yuen Long Industrial Area. Birds chirp, butterflies flutter by.

The place boasts Hong Kong’s only remaining manpowered ferry. You stand on a sampan and a gentleman rows standing up and facing forward, with two rather short oars fitted with handles  on the end to make them easier to feather. I have never seen this arrangement in Hong Kong before – the fishing boatpeople scull over the stern with a single oar. No doubt it’s a good arrangement for a river boat.

There is a long road round the outside of the area, which seems to have been built to provide the Drainage people with access to the river bank. This has been extensively remodelled. We tried to cut through the middle of the peninsula, which was very quiet and spooky, but the path petered out. There are very basic public toilets. Three or four restaurants are run by surviving obstinate inhabitants. The place is a bit awkward to find but well worth a visit and quite out of the ordinary.

I fondly supposed that it was waiting to be engulfed by the Yuen Long New Town, at which point the government would shower money on the local landowners, half of whom would turn out to be Lau Wong Fat. But this is not the case at all. The whole place, apparently, has already been bought up years ago by Henderson Land (owned by the Lee clan which buys its babies in bulk) and there was actually an application to turn most of the wetland into a housing estate, golf club, commercial complex – the usual catastrophe. The application was approved, but for some reason Henderson did not go ahead with the work and a court case last year decided that the permission had now lapsed. The next move from the vandals – I beg your pardon the developers – is now awaited. Knowing the way Hong Kong works one cannot be optimistic about Lam Sang Wai long escaping transition into a golf course, etc, with no doubt a corner reserved for nature somewhere. So enjoy it while it lasts. Map and instructions here: http://www.wetlandpark.com/en/tour/nsw.asp

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I can’t believe the News of the World is actually going to close. It was a landmark. It should have been declared a piece of Unesco cultural heritage. When I was still at school it was already notorious. The News of the World’s basic idea — often imitated but never surpassed — was that court stories are an endless source of the magic ingredients: sex and violence. In those days the treatment was far from graphic. There would be a good deal on what you might call the foreplay but when you were expecting what is now, I believe, known as “the money shot” you would be fobbed off with something like “he then committed the offence.” Still, this was a good deal more than you got anywhere else — including at school, where sex education had not yet been invented. So the newspaper was compulsive reading for boys of a certain age.

When I was a court reporter it was well known that certain stories would get a warm and lucrative reception from the News of the Screws, as we called it. As our newspaper printed on a Wednesday it had no objection to your selling the same tale to the News of the World for use the following Sunday. Sadly stories of the necessary kind rarely seemed to come my way. I did once send them a story about a man who, arriving home drunk on a Saturday night, accused his wife of infidelity and shaved her eyebrows off to make her less attractive. As usually happened in such cases the wife turned up in court — still without eyebrows — to say that her husband was a good man when sober and deserved mercy. The News of the World’s copytaker greeted the story with enthusiasm but they did not use it. This was rather a relief; on reflection it seemed rather unfair that this particular couple should become nationally famous because he had chosen an original method of wife abuse. They did send me some money though. This was before the paper fell into the hands of Rupert Murdoch, for whom I am happy to say I have never worked.

One cannot of course escape the ogre’s influence completely and I have at various times met and even occasionally worked with people who had been employed in senior posts in the Empire of Darkness. I have to say that I cannot recall any from whom I would willingly have bought a used car and one or two of them were clearly crooks. It seems Mr Murdoch, though undoubtably talented in giving the people what they want, was prone to recruiting the ethically challenged.

However it is difficult to believe that the News of the World was the only British newspaper with ethical and legal deficiencies. I have no idea how widespread phone hacking may be — I left the country before mobile phones arrived so in my day we were not tempted. In the matter of bribing policemen and other people, however, I fear there is plenty of scandal to emerge at other places. All the popular papers do it, and have done it for years. If you talk to them or tip them off they will pay you. You expect it; they expect it. The reporters come equipped with large sums in unaccountable cash for the purpose. Occasionally someone gets into trouble for bribing a policeman or a prison officer, but usually everyone winks. Sometimes it leaks out: during the Falklands War several of the more patriotic popular  paper reporters endeared themselves to the troops by “sponsoring” bombs. This was meaningless and produced no news more interesting than a picture of a bomb with a message painted on it. I think the reporters concerned just did it from habit.  During the handover period, when almost everyone in Hong Kong was interviewed at one time or another, you could tell the British pop press. They were the ones who offered to pay you.

The moral of all this from Hong Kong’s point of view is that people should be more grateful than they are for the press we have got.  Even the popular papers do cover serious topics, don’t pay for stories and don’t make stuff up. Not everyone can say this.

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We get a flight every two minutes or so round my way. We are under what I think is known as the final approach, but the planes are still about 3,000 feet up. As it is quiet in the area and we are on a hill which occupies some of the 3,000 feet they are noisy enough not to be ignored completely. When the airport first moved some of our neighbours tried to get up a petition against the flight path going over us. I had to tell them that though I sympathised we have just moved from Kowloon Tong, where aeroplane noise was really noise. So I didn’t sign it.

After all there is still something wonderful about watching planes flying, at least for me. My only complaint is that it is a lot less wonderful than it used to be, because nowadays all the planes are the same. There are, after all, only two manufacturers. If you are looking at an airliner the only question is whether it is an Airbus or a Boeing. You can then consider the individual model, but this is not very satisfying, because the model is only identified by a string of numbers anyway.

This was not always the case. I still remember the first aeroplane I ever rode in. It was called a Lockheed Constellation and had a strikingly elegant shape. The Lockheed company apparently thought that if the fuselage was shaped in wing-like curves it would contribute some lift. Nobody else copied this innovation so I suppose it was a mistake. But it did produce a strikingly handsome aeroplane. Pix here http://www.google.com.hk/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1128&bih=695&q=lockheed+constellation+aircraft&gbv=2&oq=lockheed+const&aq=6&aqi=g8g-m1&aql=undefined&gs_sm=c&gs_upl=3085l7103l0l16l12l0l1l1l0l253l1657l1.8.2l11

And like other airliners it had a name. One took this for granted and the Douglas company (which still make airliners in those days) was considered very eccentric for sticking to numbers. Travellers by air were supposed to partake, in a high-speed way, in the romance of sea travel. And ships had of course always had names.

This convetion has now been abandoned. I notice Boeing is calling its latest invention a Dreamliner but their heart did not seem to be in it and the new machine already has the usual boring three digits. As well as the terminology it seems the aeroplanes are increasingly undistinguishable from each other. I suppose American windtunnels and European windtunnels produce much the same result so the best shape for the usual speed emerges from everyone’s research as the same thing. Engines are now invariably worn in pods under the wing. Consequently there is no need for the eccentric tails which used to distinguish some models. The number of engines seems to be standardising rapidly on two, more or less regardless of the size of the plane – or for that matter the length of the journey; the convention that long trips over oceans required four engines seems to have been dropped.

I suppose this is all a result of air travel becoming routine, at least in the technical sense. There are no longer any great surprises in store and accidents on respectable airlines are gratifyingly rare. Still it seems a shame. I remember much the same thing happening on the railways. When steam locomotives, which usually had names, were replaced by diesels there was an attempt to give at least the larger diesels names. They did not catch on. As all the intricate practical arts involved in steam locomotion were replaced by the sort of controls you get in a car, the whole business became routine, efficient … and dull.

I suppose it is a bit ungrateful to be picky about a system which can whisk you to London in 12 hours but I obstinately hope that we will eventually see a return of airships, which will sail serenely and rather slowly through the sky at heights where you can still see the ground. And they will have names.

Hope: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/06/aeros_pentagon_deal/

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