tim's experiment

The so-called Silent Majority, which is neither silent nor a majority, has made a video, which is circulating in the usual internet places. This is a lavish production, complete with animations and computer graphics, dedicated to the idea that Occupy Central with Peace and Love will bring Hong Kong to a standstill in a matter of hours. It’s called “They can kill this city”, runs four minutes and describes itself as “a Silent Majority production”. It is palpable nonsense. It is distressing to hear, in the English-language voice-over, the unmistakable tones of Mr Robert Chow Yung, for many years regarded as an honest journalist. The whole thing is a tribute to the generosity of the unseen millionaire who has financed this sordid enterprise from the beginning, and his willingness to pay people to lie on his behalf.

The facts about Occupy Central go like this. The plan ostensibly is to have 10,000 people turn up in Central, there to sit in the road. Peace and Love being on the menu, active interference with passers-by is not intended. This is a lot of people – the equivalent of a small Infantry Division or a large Battalion in a continental army – and would normally require a further force of hundreds to provide its needs for food, drink, sanitation etc. I suppose the organisers are going to avoid this logistic Matterhorn and expect their supporters to supply themselves, thereby gratifying those Chambers of Commerce who object to the whole idea on the grounds that it will be bad for the business of restaurants and pavement hawkers. This suggests that the 10,000 figure should be regarded as an aspiration for peak hours rather than an on-going prediction. Probably in the small hours of the morning the remaining protesters will be outnumbered by the police.

However for the purposes of the Instant Death video we shall ignore this, because their thesis is that fatal territory-wide blockage will occurr in a matter of hours, if not minutes. Let us note, firstly, that a complete blockage of traffic through Central is not going to happen. If we have 10,000 people sitting in the road they will occupy – give or take a bit – 10,000 square yards. This means that they will occupy a square 100 yards on each side, or some distortion of that basic shape. A crowd derives its strength from the consciousness of its own numbers, so we are not going to have little knots of protesters scattered here and there. We shall have one more or less cohesive lump. If it is 400 yards long it will be only 25 yards wide. At this point blockages can be cleared rather easily by small numbers of arrests so that is probably as thin on the ground as the demonstrators can afford to get. If you look at a map of Central you can see basically three East-West routes. One of these is Connaught Road, a six-lane monstrosity which would be a difficult target by itself. The Instant Death video seems to expect that the main target will be Des Voeux Road, because is has stalled trams in the picture. But this would not be very effective unless the blockage was accomplished at its junction with Queen’s Road Central, which would otherwise provide a convenient by-pass. But in that case (the Google map has a convenient scale in the bottom-right corner) even including Chater Road would be a stretch and doing anything serious to Connaught Road would be out of the question. Looking at the map one also observes that people who wish to go round Central without visiting it can detour via the mid-levels or the new Central reclamation. The point of all this is not to deny that the occupation of Central could cause a great deal of inconvenience. But it reveals as a stupid attempt to deceive the public the notion that within an hour or so of the demonstration beginning there will be queues of people waiting to get to Central blocking the Western and Causeway Bay tunnel entrances. Traffic will get through, albeit slowly. In any case, the arrival of a queue at a tunnel exit does not mean, as the video script puts it, that we have “lost the tunnel”. The other half of the tunnel is still perfectly functional. The part going to Hong Kong Island may have problems. There is often a hold-up already at the Causeway Bay exit when the queue for the Happy Valley fly-over trails back into the tunnel, forcing people who have no desire to visit Happy Valley but are stuck in the outside lane to crawl until they get to the end of the double white lines. Cautious motorists may avoid this tunnel. The Western one, which has three lanes to play with and only one lane going to Central, will clearly still be perfectly usable by people who wish to go to destinations other than Central.

This is not enough for the Instant Death crowd, though. They have the queue stretching up through Kowloon until we “lose” the Lion Rock Tunnel as well. This is prime bullshit, if you’ll pardon the phrase. If the worst predictions come true, Central is jammed solid and traffic is backed up to two of the three tunnels, motorists are not going to flock lemming-like towards Central by their usual routes. Many of them will doubtless opt to stay at home. People will adapt. Hongkongers are not stupid. Consequently they will regard the whole video as a hilarious piece of nonsense.  It assumes that everyone will try to do what they usually do, except for those who switch to the MTR, which the video makers expect to collapse under the extra load. Nobody is allowed to adapt, take reasonable precautions, change their habits or — a popular solution — I fancy, take the first day of “occupation” off. Anyone would think Hong Kong had never had a typhoon.

Much money mis-spent. Serves him right.