tim's experiment

Dear Henry,
Sorry mate, it’s time to pack it in. Always a shame to abandon a dream, but some things are just not meant to be. Watching you on television last night, trying to slide the Building Ordinance blame gently towards your wife, was the most stomach-churning spectacle to grace the Hong Kong goggle box since a python regurgitated a half-digested calf in Saikung 20 years ago. If you still had a serious chance we might at this point spend some time on the need for a Chief Executive to be a person of character, willing to take responsibility, willing to recognise that sometimes the buck stops on his desk.

The fact is, though, that your Kowloon Tong fuhrerbunker has not just revealed you as a man with an easy way with the law and a distressing faculty for half-excuses. Worse than that, it has made you a laughing stock. The idea of a multi-millionaire with a secret underground retreat and a bottoms-up view of his own swimming pool is going to launch a thousand jokes, many of them hardly compatible with the minimum level of respect appropriate to a Chief Executive, even in the eyes of an old anarchist like me. As this point somes home to selection committee members you are likely to be in more danger of coming third than of winning. You had a good run, you don’t need the money, and no doubt our imperial masters will be able to find some prestigious consolation prize in the vicinity of the CPPCC. Get off the stage while we’re still laughing, before we all start throwing fruit.