tim's experiment

There is a story about an old lady in New York who used to emerge from her house every morning and let off a firecracker. Eventually a curious neighbour plucked up the courage to ask her why she did this. “It keeps the tigers away,” she replied. “But there are no tigers around here,” said the neighbour. “You see,” she said, “it works.” This is a fairly simple logical offer to spot. An equally classic example was offered on the letters page this morning by a Mr Wergin, who said that “the crime rate figures clearly show that the Hong Kong Police’s stop and search tactics are working”. Well Mr Wergin had somehow got his statistics in a twist, because he claimed that the crime rate in New York is twice that in Hong Kong, and the crime rate in London ten times as high, which is nonsense. But even if it were true, the causes of crime are a complex matter. Hong Kong had a low crime rate long before it had an honest police force or the compulsory ID cards which provide a pretext for stopping people. If promiscuous use of stop and search was the cure to all criminal ills then police forces all over the world would be doing it. They aren’t and it isn’t.

Mr Wergin though, was a model of dispassionate logic compared with our glorious leader Mr CY Leung, who is either a real dimwit or posing as one because he thinks that will make him more lovable. A couple of days ago the under-secretary for financial services and the treasury, whatever that is, resigned. The lady gave no reasons but said she had been intending to leave for a while. Naturally this produced a rash of headlines suggesting something was rotten in the state. This lady was the fifth political appointee to resign since the team took office. Now I have no idea why this lady resigned. I also have no idea whether the rate of resignations from what Mr Leung is pleased to call his team is remarkably high, or just normal. People do move on from time to time for a variety of reasons. If you have a larger team you will in the normal course of events have more departures. Still, this lady is being replaced by a 63-year-old retired civil servant, which does not suggest an abundance of willing recruits. This is not the way it seems to Mr Leung, though. He honoured the occasion with this priceless quote “Our politically appointed team of secretaries, under secretaries and political assistants is the biggest ever in all government terms.  What does it show? It shows that many are willing to join our new government and serve society.” Oh no it doesn’t. Nobody has ever suggested that the comparatively small politically appointed teams of the Tung and Tsang administrations were constrained by a shortage of willing recruits. The only reason Mr Leung’s team is bigger is because he was willing to waste more money on it. Actually these positions are very well paid and there would be no difficulty in filling a much larger roster with people who were “willing to serve society” for a directorate-level salary and all the perks that money can buy. What the size of the Leung team shows is that he has shamelessly mass-produced expensive non-jobs for political cronies. It is hardly surprising that people can be found to sign up. Beats working for a living.