tim's experiment

One of my students who has emigrated, as alas many have, recently brought me a curious present. It was a tin of biscuits from Fortnum and Mason. F and M is the grocery shop for people who think the Harrods Food Hall is middle class. The biscuits were delicious.

The tin, part of the celebrations of Queen Elizabeth’s Jubilee, had a Coat of Arms on it: not the Royal one, a made-up job. If you wound it up by turning the base it also played the National Anthem, God Save the Queen – or King as appropriate. And this, it seems, is still about as far as patriotic passion gets in the UK these days.

In Hong Kong we do things differently. I am not sure what a court would make of a biscuit tin which played March of the Volunteers when wound up. But I am sure if such a thing appeared then some government zombie would point out that it “might” be a violation of the national security law.

There are similar differences with regard to flags. The UK has the Union Jack. Flag pedants love to point out that it is strictly only a Union Jack when flown on a jack staff, a small flag pole at the front of a ship. The rest of the time it is the Union Flag. Whatever you call it, it has no legal protection at all, and routinely appears on underwear, supermarket bags, American sports shoes and in other dubious places. The SAR flag, on the other hand, is a closely guarded virgin of the flag world and may, like the name of the Polytechnic University, only be displayed with permission.

The SAR is now rolling out further innovations which appear a bit on the weird side for those of us raised in places where patriotism was an assumption rather than an aspiration. All university students will be required to undertake some sort of short course on legality in general and the charms of the national security law in particular.

Early indications are that this requirement will be met with a variation on e-learning, culminating in a multiple-choice examination which can be graded by a computer. The whole thing can then be run without the intervention of a human brain. The idea behind this seems to be a sort of educational homeopathy, in which a tiny squirt of machine learning cleans and corrects a whole personality.

More exciting is the proposal, outlined in a recent on-line post from the Secretary for Education, for compulsory mainland study tours as part of the required subject formerly known as Liberal Studies and now – liberalism being off the menu – known as Citizenship and Social Development.

According to the bureau this will involve the government paying (the tours will be free for the tourists, at least for now) for some 50,000 trips a year. A total of 21 itineraries have been arranged, ranging from three days in Macau to five days in more distant spots like Hunan and Guizhou.

There are some interesting legal questions ahead about this. Will the tours be compulsory for international schools, or for international schools following the local curriculum, or for students in international schools who happen to have chosen the local curriculum rather than the IB? Will they be compulsory for local students who are not Chinese, and may indeed be citizens of countries which specifically advise their nationals against visiting China?

I leave these questions for more legal pens. What bothers me is the practicalities.

I should insert here that I have considerable experience of study tours. Early in my career as a university teacher I had a careless moment during an alcohol-fuelled gathering for journalism teachers and hatched a plan with an Australian academic to run a study tour of Queenslend for my students.

This was an insanely expensive ambition but as nobody had, apparently, done such things before my university coughed up a generous subsidy. The students made a splendid video of the proceedings which went down well at JUPAS briefings for some years – although we never managed to do Australia again – and the idea spread to other departments and in due course to other universities.

When my department sprouted an MA course we found there was a well-established price cartel which required us to charge far more than we needed for the programme. So we tagged on an optional but heavily-subsidised week in London, later moved to Prague.

I imported some rules for the conduct of study tours from a course for Scout leaders taking kids on camps which I had attended. One of these was that there should always be at least two adults present, so that in moments of crisis one could go to the hospital, police station, consulate or whatever, while the other could stay with the rest of the group.

This modest requirement was enough to create a permanent shortage so I had several trips to Boston for an annual Model UN and was even roped in once to make up the required number in Shanghai. Of course I knew nothing of Shanghai and noticed after a few days that the student who had organised the whole thing had arranged for two people to keep an eye on me every day and ensure I did not get bored or, more importantly, lost.

One thing all these trips had in common which will not, I fear, be a feature of the Education Bureau’s brainwave: they were voluntary. All the students attending wished to be there. They might be as interested in the tourism possibilities as the educational ones, but they were volunteers, not conscripts.

The same could be said of the reachers who went along. One of my colleagues managed, by heroic economies, to organise a trip to London for our journalism undergrads. This involved a week in a youth hostel which achieved an ambience somewhere between a Russian barracks and an Iranian prison. It was, though, only two minutes walk from Piccadilly. Nobody complained.

It is difficult to believe that this will be true of the government’s compulsory visits to China.

Let us start with the question of staff. Depending on the ages of the children, prudent organisers arrange a ratio of students to staff. For very small kids the ratio is 2:1, so that if necessary each adult can hold a child by each hand. For primary kids when I was doing these things it used to be 6:1. For university students you probably don’t have to worry too much as long as you have the necessary two staff but I think in practice we always ran around 20:1.

This suggests that a reasonable compromise for senior secondary students might be about 12:1. And this in turn means the Bureau will need to find some 4,000 teachers every year who are willing – or can be compelled – to go along on one of these jaunts. In my experience this sort of thing is not popular – though I quite enjoyed it – even when the destination was somewhere quite attractive.

Then there is the question of travel and accommodation. Rooms for students in mainland universities are … well rather along the lines of Piccadilly youth hostels. Boarding schools are, I imagine, even more Spartan. Is the Education Bureau proposing to pay for hotels?

I suppose inter-city travel will be on the high-speed rail network, which should be a boost for national pride. But who is making arrangements on arrival? Many Chinese universities have a department specialising in entertaining visitors. The woman from the relevant department of Fudan University who helped out in Shanghai was wonderful. But the tours will presumably involve more interaction with schools, which are not so well equipped.

The Education Bureau claims that they have lots of cities willing to entertain Hong Kong study tourists. You have to wonder why. Frankly if our government is waving gazillions of money around the place for study tours there will be some enthusiastic applicants who are not primarily concerned with education, patriotic or otherwise.

And the results…? People on the mainland have a rather different approach to education from the one traditionally adopted in Hong Kong. It is very solemn, didactic and traditional. No doubt Hong Kong students will be happy to behold the natural and manmade wonders of the mainland but will the experience generate enthusiasm, attraction … or profound relief that Hong Kong still has some differences.

I understand what is being wished for here, but compulsory exercises have a poor record of inducing change, precisely because they are compulsory. Encourage and subsidise visits to the mainland by all means. If they are a requirement they will turn people off.

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It’s the little things that give you away. I mean $140,000 is not a lot of money in terms of government spending, but it is our money, and the way in which it slipped through our collective fingers tells you a lot about how things are run these days.

The story starts last October, when a “community group” (which has so far managed to remain nameless, but is I suppose one of those small birds which eats the fleas off the DAB’s black rhinoceros) decided that it wished to see PRC and SAR flags hanging from New Territories lamp posts to celebrate National Day.

The time-honoured way of gratifying wishes of this kind was to get the local District Council to pay for it. The Transport Department’s charge for the use of its lamp posts was paid for by the council funds and was simply a transfer from one government account to another. Flying the flag was a piece of costless performative patriotism.

However the district councils have effectively been abolished. After the purge produced by the oath-taking requirement and official lies about what would happen to councillors who were disqualified, very few councillors were left. The by-elections required by law were unlawfully postponed by Carrie Lam on the grounds that the government was too busy with the Legco and CE elections. Mr John Lee has no such excuse but there is still no sign of by-elections.

We do not have the rule of law. We have the rule of selected laws.

Anyway, here we have our nameless group of rural superpatriots suddenly confronted with a bill for the use of lamp posts, running to $147,670. Apparently the transport people charge $6 per post per day. I have no idea whether that is reasonable but there is a safety angle because errant flags will presumably drop onto passing traffic.

The plight of our lamp post lovers came to light when a columnist, Chris Wat, wrote a piece about it in a pro-Beijing freesheet, Headline Daily. It was, Ms Wat opined, “ridiculous” that people should be charged for “patriotic behaviour”.

The following day two legislators wrote to the Director of Highways about the matter, posting the letter on Facebook for maximum brownie points. And the day after that the Chief Executive announced, also on Facebook, that he had “instructed administrative and inspection fee exemptions for national and SAR flags hung on lamp posts”.

The Highways Department then promised that the flag fanciers would get a refund.

As a piece of public expenditure this represents an interesting departure from traditional procedure. No budget, no Finance Committee, no quibbling. The decision-making flow goes from pro-Beijing columnist to DAB legislator to Chief Executive to the relevant department.

And henceforth, patriotic adornments to lamp posts will be free of charge. Who knows what other variations on “patriotic behaviour” will attract spontaneous support from public funds. May I charter an airship to float over the SAR for ten days flying the flags?

Actually it seems a bit backhanded to insist that patriotism should be free of charge. It ought to be a pleasure for a true patriot to fork over $140,000 for the honour of being the sponsor of the celebration. If it is not costing them anything, where is the virtue?

But it is a serious mistake to expect deep thought, or even superficial thought, from our legislators these days. Consider Mr Chu Kwok-keung, who now sits for the Education functional constituency.

Mr Chu was consulted by local media about a curious little scandal involving mermaids.

Wah Yan College, a fairly up-market boys school (it’s the one across Waterloo Road from Kwong Wah Hospital) has a swimming pool. In the summer, like most similarly supplied schools, it lets outsiders rent its pool, which would otherwise be idle and produces a small income.

Some parents were surprised to discover that one of the uses to which the pool was being put was a “mermaid movement experience class”. People were swimming in mermaid costumes and were allowed to take photos in the pool.

Parents characterised this as renting to an organisation that “claimed to be a sports group”. The school promptly collapsed in a heap, announcing that “someone had violated the school’s rental terms and the school had immediately terminated the rental contract.”. I am sorry the rental term was not specified. No fishtails?

Enter Mr Chu. Schools had the right to let their facilities but “the school must review the background and activities of the organisations, otherwise it will lead to irresponsibility. The affected school received complaints from parents and their opinions and concerns are reasonable.” Mr Chu has a condition commonly found in senior teachers: he talks to adults as if they were children and happily orates about matter of which he knows nothing.

Because the fact is that the parents concerns are not reasonable. There is nothing indecent or illegal about mermaid movement classes, which are offered by several organisations in Hong Kong. Not my cup of tea but it makes exercise, which is fundamentally boring, more interesting for some people.

I quote from one website: “Mermaid Dance is different from typical swimming and can be used as a unique form of exercise. Because both legs are held together in an iridescent fishtail, kicking really develops the core and leg muscles to develop an overall healthy body. It also teaches grace and is a fun way to express yourself creatively underwater!”

Some people offer it as a variation on yoga; some simply see it as a form of exercise likely to appeal to girls, many of whom do not warm to more traditional sports.

Mr Chu had a chance to stand up for freedom, reason and common sense, by pointing out that if people wish to be photographed disguised as fish then that is their own business and does not justify ill-informed parental puritanism. He blew it.

The new-look patriots-only Legco: living down to expectations.

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You would think our leaders were aware that the last thing Hong Kong needs at the moment is another piece of vague, indiscriminate legislation which will provide a whole new plethora of opportunities for toxic interactions between officials and the public they are supposed to serve.

Is there, one wonders, a bureaucratic disease called national security law envy. If there is, treatment is now required in the Environment and Ecology Bureau, which unveiled its latest stroke of genius at a recent meeting of the legislature.

The bureau, I do not dispute, has a problem. Wild pigs occasionally intrude in the urban area, attracted by the soft suburban life and the insecure dustbin, as many smaller animals have been before them. However a wild pig is a rather alarming thing to find in your housing estate, and the pigs are in danger from traffic.

The current policy, inaugurated by an interesting coincidence after a wild pig bit a policeman, is to capture pigs found in the urban area and kill them. This goes down badly with a lot of people, including me.

The bureau believes that the reason the pigs frolic in urban areas is that misguided people are feeding them. I do not dispute that this takes place sometimes, but there are some doubts as to whether it is really the main source of the problem. A lot of urban estates put their rubbish out for collection in the morning in plastic bags, which are not much of a challenge to a peckish pig.

Indeed the Agriculture and Fisheries Department’s supposedly animal-proof litterbins are not much of a challenge either. During the period when restaurants were forced to close at 6 pm many people picnicked in or around their cars in the carpark at the top of Sui Wo Road. I am a regular nocturnal visitor here for dog reasons.

These visitors were respectable folk who put their rubbish in plastic bags and put the bags into the animal-proof bin provided, until it overflowed and the bags were then stacked beside it. I suppose it took a day before our local wild pig (I have never seen more than one) discovered this bounty and another night before he found his way into the “animal-proof” bin.

After that I saw him most nights until the restaurants resumed evening service. A pig with the smell of rubbish in his nostrils is resourceful and determined. No doubt people should not feed them, but we seem to be picking an easy target here which will not solve the problem.

Anyway, what is the bureau’s preferred legal solution to the pig feeding problem? Will it ban feeding wild pigs in the urban area, ban feeding them in other places, attempt something like “feeding wild pigs in places whereby the general public is likely to be inconvenienced”, ban feeding wild pigs at all?

Too timid, apparently. The bureau wants to ban feeding any wild animal anywhere in Hong Kong. It also wishes to raise the maximum penalty (there is currently a law against feeding monkeys in some places) for feeding anything to a year in jail or a $100,000 fine.

Apparently officials believe the present level of fines is too small. I rarely find myself defending local magistrates against charges of excessive leniency, but perhaps the fines are small because they ought to be. Feeding a monkey in a country park is not an offence of moral turpitude or financial gain and does very little public harm because the places where feeding is banned are the places where monkeys congregate anyway. So there is no obvious victim.

The bureau would also like to institute a system of fixed penalty tickets – on-the-spot fines, in effect — with the specified fine to be $5,000.

I am not sure which parts of this are most objectionable. In the first place the making of a new law should not be an opportunity to blanket the territory with unwarranted prohibitions. The bureau says that the sweeping new law will reduce the “difficulty in enforcement” expected if the new law merely covered the things it is supposed to stop. This is not the way the Rule of Law is supposed to work.

The new law will cover, or threaten, lots of stuff currently regarded a harmless and perfectly legal. What is a “wild animal,” for example? Will it cover feral cows, feral cats, feral cats only outside official feral cat colonies recognised by the Society for the Protection of Animals?

Our local minibus drivers often eat their lunch outside our estate and toss the odd bit of bread to the local birds. This has allowed some residents to become quite well-informed about the local birdlife. We sometimes spot examples of the Eurasian Magpie, the Red-whiskered Bulbul, and an interesting grey thing which some observers say is a wood pigeon but I think is a wild dove. Having said which the vast majority of our birds are Eurasian Tree Sparrows, which are quite cute but very common.

No doubt spokespeople will say that of course such trivial peccadilloes will not be prosecuted, even if theoretically illegal. But citizens should not have to depend on the discretion of officials to keep them out of trouble.

A government which wants to ban feeding pigs should ban feeding pigs and leave other possibly more deserving animals alone.

As for the on-the-spot fines, this is another item which is hardly compatible with our oft-repeated dedication to the Rule of Law. Citizens are supposed to be able to go about their lives without worrying about being instantly fined by some officious flunky of the government for a minor offence.

Fixed penalty tickets are acceptable if the offence is simple and unlikely to be disputed, and if the fine is modest. The thin end of this wedge was of course the ticket for motoring offences, which had the advantage that anyone who was driving a car could be presumed to be a person of means. As the idea has spread to other areas the acceptable level of instant fine has increased exponentially.

A fine of $5,000 for many Hong Kongers is about half a month’s wages. According to the Census people about 10 per cent of workers earn less than $10,000 and about 25 per cent less than $20,000 a month. Most Social Security recipients get less than $5,000 a month, as do all the Fruit Money eligible.

This is too heavy a penalty to be thrown about without at least the possibility of a trial. I know we have had $5,000 on the spot fines for COVID-related offences, but that has not been a happy experience. There have been far too many cases in which the exact requirements of the offence were not explored in sufficient detail, and some in which the only offence involved appeared to be failure to offer to police people the deference to which they believe themselves entitled.

Levelling this blunderbuss at domestic workers on their days off was not a good look, and the penalty looks incoherent compared with the case of the restaurant which entertained a birthday party for 100 people, including a lot of bigwigs, and was fined only $6,000.

Perhaps the Environment and Ecology Bureau could benefit from a word with our new Secretary for Justice, who seemed to admit the other day that it was difficult or impossible to define “sedition” and may not want another legal Rubik’s cube to play with.

Or they could talk to the Housing Authority. Among public housing residents the urge to adopt wild animals is easily explained by the ban on tenants keeping dogs.

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I have been walking the dog on the same Country Park path for 25 years. Over the years different dogs have come and gone. The path remains pleasant, and a few years ago the District Board paved the whole thing, which is probably offensive to serious hikers but suits my aging legs fine. The resulting warm relationship with Nature was rudely disrupted last Saturday when a large snake emerged from the undergrowth and made a grab for the current dog.

This was a distressing moment for everyone concerned. Lemon gave a pained yelp. The snake, though silent, must have been disappointed. Lemon is large and agile so the snake was clinging only to a back leg. I was bewildered.

I have since been told by my son, who takes an interest in these things, that on occasions like this you should grab the snake’s tail and crack it like a whip. This is clearly intended for smaller snakes than my antagonist, which was about six feet long and as thick as a drain pipe. But no doubt if you follow this advice the snake’s head will eventually stop what it is doing and come back to sort you out.

However having no relevant training I just did what came naturally and grabbed the snake’s head. The snake retaliated by coiling its bottom half around my left leg and squeezing. There followed an inconclusive passage in which I tried in vain to find some way of discouraging the snake by working on its head. Then I had a moment of inspiration – I still had the dog’s lead in my hand. So I made a loop with this round the snake’s neck, held it down with the still free right foot and garroted it.

This did not produce any immediately obvious results but the snake got the message, and opened its mouth. The dog retired to a safe distance, and at that point everyone just wanted to go home. I retrieved the lead, the snake unwound itself from round my leg and we all left.

The dog needed stitches and I have some interesting new scars. Whether the snake was injured I don’t know and don’t much care. It left under its own steam. No doubt the snake was just doing what comes naturally to a wild carnivore. Nature, as we used to be told, is red in tooth and claw. But I also have instincts, and they include a violent dislike for anything that tries to eat my dog.

Clearly this snake is potentially dangerous. It let me pass unmolested but Lemon is quite an ambitious target – she is a big dog, about two foot six tall at the shoulder, and weighs 40 pounds. A snake which is hungry and big enough to tackle that might well be tempted by a small child, or even by a small adult.

So I sent an email to the government’s all-purpose hot email line and got a reply half a week later saying that if personally threatened by a snake I should call 999 and if I thought this one was generally dangerous I should report it to Shatin Police Station. It’s a bit late for that. Anyway I rather suspect that the snake has little to fear from the Law as long as it doesn’t bite a policeman.

But if any collectors are listening, go up the path from Wong Chuk Yeung Village, turn right and you may find a somewhat chastened python. Approach with care. He’s probably hungry.

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We have repeatedly been told by fans of the National Security Law that it may seem a bit mysterious at the moment but we will discover soon enough where the “red lines” are – presumably when someone else trips over them.

So I suppose it behoves those of us who retain writing ambitions to pay close attention to cases as they come up, in the hope that the “red lines” will be revealed.

Here is the prosecution in the case involving publication of children’s books about a mythical “sheep village”:

The prosecution argued on Monday that the books about sheep and wolves were alluding to 2019 extradition bill protests, the arrests and detention of 12 Hong Kong fugitives by the Chinese authorities, and a strike staged by Hong Kong medics at the start of the Covid-19 outbreak.

The books were said to have “indoctrinated” readers with separatism, incited “anti-Chinese sentiment,” “degraded” lawful arrests and prosecution and “intensified” Hong Kong-China conflicts.

This all seems rather heavy stuff for a kids’ book. It is difficult to do nuances in an animal story. I also noticed a complaint that the book gave the impression that China was a “surveillance state ruled by a brutal dictator”. Shocking. Quite how you would do that in an animal fable is a puzzle.

Anyway in the light of this guidance on the “red lines” I have been wondering what would be an acceptable animal story, which you could publish without legal anxieties or fears of an early morning knock on the door.

Clearly separatism should be mentioned only to be condemned, if it is mentioned at all. Encouraging protest, whether lawful or the other kind, is out. Legal process must not be degraded – whatever that means – and conflicts between Hong Kong and China must not be intensified, or better still not be mentioned either. What is left?

Something like this:

One upon a time there was a great Sheep Empire. One day it was beset by a pack of Jackals who wished to fleece the sheep by selling them addictive sheepdip. In order to keep the Jackals quiet it was agreed that they should be allowed to run one small Sheep Village for themselves.

Many years went by. In time the small Sheep Village became a big Sheep Village, the great Sheep Empire became the Sheeples’ Republic, and the Jackals fell out among themselves and no longer impressed anyone. So it was agreed that the Sheep Village should be returned to the Sheeples’ Republic.

But the Jackals, being devious and nasty creatures, tried to sell the Sheep Villagers the idea that after the handover they could run the Sheep Village themselves. This made it very difficult to run the Sheep Village smoothly and in time the Sheep Villagers became very disorderly.

At this time the Sheeple’s Republic was run by a sheep of great wisdom and benevolence known as Sheep Jinping. He decided that what the Sheep Village needed was a return to order and mutual affection. Unruly lambs should get the chop, and the village would then continue to make a mint.

So a few recalcitrant sheep were locked up, and many others were baaed from office. This had the desired effect. The Sheep Villagers learned to love each other, the Sheeple’s Republic and Sheep Jinping. And they all lived happily ever after.

I believe (but who knows) that this passes muster from a national security point of view. It seems to lack a certain flavour as a possible children’s book. Where are the bad guys? Would we be allowed an over-zealous sheepdog taking over the village?

Probably not. But in fairy stories, unlike present-day Hong Kong, anything is possible.

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Well according to the official media we have all been celebrating 25 wonderful years in the bosom of the Motherland. “Stability, prosperity and opportunity” are the catchwords and they are apparently being pursued in that order.

Clearly the word has gone out from some very persuasive quarter that celebrations must occur. And a variety of freebies have been offered by a variety of companies and organisations to cheer up the city, which has also seen a great efflorescence of flags – large PRC ones and somewhat smaller SAR ones. We know our place.

The only discordant note, or at least the only one to make it into media reports, came at Ping Shek Estate. This is an elderly public housing estate near Choi Hung MTR station. Like many estates of its vintage it consists mainly of high-rise blocks built as hollow squares. Inside the square is a balcony going all the way round on each floor, and the tenants’ front doors open onto the balcony.

One of the local United Front astroturfs decided it would be a nice expression of patriotic fervour to decorate the balconies with flags – as above, big for PRC small for SAR – and this was done on a generous scale, so that every flat on every floor had at least one flag hanging right outside the front door.

With hindsight this was perhaps asking for trouble. Within a day or two it was noticed that some of the flags had been vandalised – or as the government’s poodle press put it “desecrated” – and one or two had simply disappeared.

All the flags were then removed, and the estate was allowed to spend the rest of the anniversary celebration period without bunting. For some mysterious reason – full report here – the ground floor courtyards were also closed “for cleaning” after the deflagging.

From the pictures supplied this seems rather a minor matter. Someone seems to have sprayed black paint on the big star on a PRC flag, which is an offence these days, though I have some theological misgivings about the use of the word “desecrate” in this context. One flag had come loose at one end, which with so many to put up may have been an accident.

I would not be surprised if one or two had been stolen. Putting so many flags within easy reach of passers-by is a bit inviting. Better if they are safely up a pole.

It may be that there is no political angle to this at all. Whatever the legal position may be I expect tenants feel a certain sense of ownership of the part of the public balcony immediately outside their front door. Having a political symbol hung there without consent or consultation might seem provocative.

The fence between the gardens of the houses on my estate and the main road is, as far as I know, entirely the province of the estate management, who look after it and hang cameras or lights on it where necessary. Still, if someone hung a banner on my bit without asking I would feel put upon, and might well desecrate or remove the offending flag myself.

On the other hand we have to consider the possibility that there was a political angle: residents of Ping Shek Estate, and indeed of other parts of Hong Kong, are not feeling as jubilant as our leaders would have us believe.

After all many of us have seen changes which we did not ask for and maybe did not welcome. Readers of the territory’s once most popular newspaper have had to change their reading habits.

The district council member you elected in the last election has probably been disqualified, jailed, or conned into resigning on the basis that he or she might otherwise be presented with a bill for a million dollars. There was no legal substance to this threat, but as Vaclav Havel observed, in a totalitarian society you have to choose to live in truth or to live in lies. Not everyone makes the right choice.

Many residents of Shek Pik Estate probably know a few of the 10,000 or so people arrested for public order offences in the last three years and will have heard stories of robust policing. Indeed many people who were not among those arrested may also have stories of robust policing.

Then there is the changing legislative scene. Many people have found that the person they voted for before was not on the ballot in the last election. Instead they were offered a choice which was no choice.

We have also seen the disappearance of some traditional public gatherings. This was presented as a public health measure but few believe the passing of COVID will see a revival. Too many of the people who used to organise such things have been jailed.

In fact quite a lot of people have been jailed, in many cases without the formality of a trial first. Not all of them, no doubt, are household names in Ping Shek Estate, but their former Legco representative is on the list.

Independent trade unions and other grassroots organisations have been disappearing. This may be good for stability but all these clubs had members…

I do not suggest that any of these things can justify or excuse inflicting damage or theft on a flag. But flags are symbols and damage to flags is usually a symbolic act. The protests in 2019 started as an objection to the proposed extradition law and became an objection to robust policing. Now the author of the extradition law has been replaced as our leader by the author of the robust policing.

Stability and prosperity are wonderful things but they come more easily to governments which enjoy the affection and respect of the governed. We are, I fear, a long way from there.

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