tim's experiment

Look people I no longer expect to get a publication which could be mistaken for one of the world’s great newspapers, but can we please avoid decisions so crass that they spoil the day.

The back page of the Sunday Post is usually a pleasant read. At the top is a long thoughtful piece which manages to be a bit different from the daily stuff. Sometimes we get Regina complaining that all her Exco colleagues are dumb. This week it is Philip Bowring, who is original and interesting, as usual. Across the middle we have a decorative string of pictures recalling the events of the week. Down the middle column we have “quotes of the week”, which vary for the good reason that is some weeks good quotes are plentiful and in others they are thin on the ground. Bottom right this week we have a piece on the mainland media by Cary Huang, which explores changing attitudes to eating dogs. Good reading so far.

This brings is to the bottom left corner, where there is a piece which exemplifies the continuing merits of newsprint. When you read a piece like this you can throw the newspaper away in despair — not something you would wish to do with your iPad. The offending item is a piece by one Amy Feldman — no details of her provenance supplied — about the problems of selling silver cutlery. Eh?

It seems in the 50s, way back where Ms Feldman comes from, married couples were often given a box of knives, forks etc, in Sterling silver. This is silver adulterated with enough other metals to make it strong enough to cut a potato and hold an edge. I presume Ms Feldman comes from the USA. Indeed readers of The Help (excellent book by Katheryn Stockett – read it if you get the chance) will suspect that Ms Feldman comes from the part of the USA where domestic help was available on terms barely distinguishable from slavery. Because Sterling silverware, especially in fancy shapes, takes a lot of cleaning.

Ms Feldman’s parents were among the lucky recipients and now wished to dispose of the present. Ms Feldman goes on for 22 paragraphs on the ins and outs of disposing of silver cutlery, before coming to the unsurprising conclusion that selling it to a scrap merchant works quite well. And the question which arises is: who cares?

I suppose something like three quarters of the Post’s readership regard knives and forks as something you come across in Western restaurants. Many of the rest are not American, or are American but do not have parents who were married in the 50s, or have parents who did not get the present, or have parents who wish to keep it. In fact my guess is that the number of people in Hong Kong who might have a personal interest in this topic is probably in single digits. The management of the newspaper should apologize to the tree which was sacrificed for this meaningless piece of non-journalism. I do not blame Ms Feldman. No doubt there is a publication somewhere where this item fits in perfectly. It just isn’t in Hong Kong.

I am left to wonder what further editorial brainwaves we can look forward to:

Cooking: Ten nifty things you can do with left-over yak milk

Pets: what to feed your pregnant lama

Fashion: What the well-dressed reindeer herder is wearing this year

Homemaking: Pimp your igloo!

Time: Obsolete wind-up watches you can buy for half a million bucks

Oh, sorry. That last one is already a regular feature in the Magazine