tim's experiment

So many crazy things happening lately I wonder if something deeply serious has gone wrong with the world.

Let’s start with the great Cathay junket scandal. A group of Legislative Councillors, with one hanger-on/family member each, were jetted to Toulon to see an aeroplane emerge from the factory. Side trips to other European destinations were also available. Apparently (I find this barely credible) none of them thought this arrangement would raise eyebrows if it became known. Of course it did. The Post pro-government attack poodles fell noisily on the neck of Albert Ho, on the grounds of hypocrisy in the light of his complaints about similar offences by other people. This little festival lasted until it emerged that all the councillors in the group had either apologised or paid the money to charity or both … except the DAB man. We were also treated to a strange piece by a former journalist saying that junkets were a normal part of doing business. Now let us get the journalists out of the way first. Junkets are often offered to journalists on the grounds that if not offered free an event will not be covered at all. How news outlets deal with the resultant ethical dilemma is up to them. If they are fussy they either refuse or put a note on the story indicating that the writer was entertained. If less fussy they just pass the invitations round the office as a perk. Councillors and senior officials are in a different category. For them the rules are very simple: if you or you employer pays it’s work (or for academics, a conference); If the visitee pays for you it’s a junket; if the visitee pays for you and your wife (or girlfriend if you prefer) and throws in a quick flit to Paris then it’s a bribe. Other interpretations not helpful. Got it?

Then we had the Secretary for Development musing on the merits of allowing housing to be built in country parks. Now I have no objection to officials asking themselves if this would be a good idea, although I think the answer is no. The mind-blowing detail was that the Secretary was wildly wrong (it’s 40 percent not 70) about the amount of land in this category. Now if some humble blogger made an error of this kind we could put it down to laziness. To check the figure you would have to resort to Wikipedia (unreliable) or the government web site (unnavigable) or a rough estimate from a map. But a Secretary is not in this position. If he wants to know how much land is devoted to country parks he can ask a permanent civil servent in the relevant department, who will have the figure at his fingertips. Or he can ask the nearest office lady to dig out the figure for him. Mistakes on this scale make you look dumb.

Still on the land front, letter writers have leaped to the defence of the Hong Kong Golf Club, which occupies a large and convenient swathe of the New Territories. I can see a case for the club having one course, but three? Other writers pointed out that the government’s land shortage was entirely bogus, even without getting round to the two untouchables – the PLA, whose considerable holdings are visibly empty, and the Jockey Club, which long ago promised to give up Happy Valley in exchange for a swathe of Shatin, but then changed its mind. I sympathise with people’s wish to keep things they are used to having, but the distribution of leisure space in Hong Kong is at least as skewed as the distribution of wealth and if that is hampering the achievement of basic standards of housing then there should be no contest. And people who describe the Hong Kong course as “world class” are deluding themselves. The course is too easy for a serious tournament. The players come for the money.

On to the law, where something seriously weird is upcoming in the Court of First Instance. The Director of Immigration is seeking judicial review of a decision of the Immigration Appeals Tribunal. I say nothing of the merits of the case at issue, which concerns a rejected application for an ID card. But what is the director thinking of? The Immigration Appeals Tribunal is a wholly government-appointed entity which has not, over the years, established a reputation for inconveniently robust independence of spirit. Judicial review was not invented so that top officials could appeal against the decisions of their own pet kangaroos. I am surprised the Director appears to have given no consideration to the possibility that if the tribunal did not endorse his position perhaps that is because his position was resoundingly and flagrantly wrong.