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Archive for March, 2026

OK, Donald, your boat is not a toy, but do the toilets work?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 31, 2026| 1 Comment »

Excuse an excursion into territory I do not usually cover here. In my youth I had some qualifications as a naval historian. I even once applied for a job teaching naval history.

Such posts are of course extremely rare and involve teaching future naval officers. The interview was quite pleasant and was conducted inside the actual Admiralty Arch, in case you were not sure what you were getting into.

I fear I blighted my hopes by being rather critical of Admiral Nelson, still a cherished icon in Royal Navy circles. I had encountered him in a detailed study of the years 1798-1801. This brings you the Battle of the Nile, but also an adulterous passion for Lady Hamilton, and a disreputable incident much neglected by biographers, involving the massacre of prisoners who had surrendered “on terms”, on the grounds that an agreement with rebels was void.

So I never became a part of the naval infrastructure, and remained a critical observer of a national institution. It has a wonderful history, but standards wilted a bit when ships were no longer built of wood, and the battle cruiser was a bad idea. The RN’s main claim to fame in the 20th century was the pioneering of naval aviation.

So I bristled when the Orange Tornado, the Liar-in-Chief, the draft dodger whose take on military life is that it’s for “suckers”, ventured the opinion that the Royal Navy’s two aircraft carriers were just “toys”.

This is an illiterate assessment. If there was one thing that all serious navies discovered in the 20th century it was that aircraft carriers are the new capital ships, and all navies need to deploy one or two if they hope to operate away from their home waters and the land-based aircraft which can support them there.

It could be argued that Britain is now a medium-sized nation ill-equipped financially for the burdens of a blue-water navy. But if there is to be one then it has to have some sort of aircraft carrier.

No doubt the British carriers are smaller than their American counterparts. But the American models have other problems. The USS Gerald R Ford, it was reported, was being withdrawn from combat in the Eastern Med after a fire in the laundry. Reports added that this would also allow work on a long-standing problem with the plumbing.

As the BBC politely put it, “In January, the vessel suffered a malfunction in its toilet system, with US media reporting clogged toilets and long lines for restrooms on the ship. The Navy acknowledged that there had been some issues, but ‘clog incidents are addressed promptly by trained damage control and engineering personnel.’”

Well, patriotic Americans may if they wish dismiss British carriers as toys. But at least they are not full of shit.

Can you say the same of your President?

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Legal logic: there was no baby, but if there was it was only a small one

Posted in Uncategorized on March 26, 2026| Leave a Comment »

It sometimes seems, when listening to lawyers in action, that they live on a different planet from the rest of us. Consider the performance this week at the on-going Wang Fuk fire inquiry from Senior Counsel Jenkin Suen.

For those who have just come in, the Wang Fuk fire was a blaze at a housing estate in Hong Kong last November which left 168 people dead. The inquiry is into causes and the other usual topics.

Inquiries of this kind are often a little gold mine for the legal profession and this one will be no exception. Mr Suen is an eminent practitioner not usually on the government payroll, though he is a part-time High Court judge and chairman of the Copyright Tribunal. However Mr Suen is appearing on behalf of the Hong Kong government, the official permanent legion of lawyers being presumably too busy.

Last week the counsel for the inquiry, another Senior Counsel, Victor Dawes, revealed that the inquiry would be told that the Housing Bureau’s Independent Checking Unit – which was supposed to conduct safety checks on building sites, had habitually warned the consultant firm overseeing the Wang Fuk renovation project when an inspection was imminent. The consultants, Will Power Architects, had passed this intelligence to the contractor, Prestige Construction.

Mr Dawes said the contractor had as a result been able to “tamper with” the work site before inspectors arrived.

All this was reported, as you might expect. Mr Suen, addressing the tribunal on the government’s behalf, was not happy with this. In some reports the checking unit was “was portrayed as tipping off or colluding with the firms,” said Mr Suen. “Such characterisations were completely groundless.”

Now we must note in fairness to Mr Suen that this was in Cantonese, so there may be some scope for misunderstandings here. But I think most of us would take that to mean that there was no tip-off, and consequently could not have been any collusion.

Bafflingly, though, Mr Suen went on to explain and defend … the tip-off. There was a practical need for government departments to arrange inspections in advance, he said, so that the inspected party would be available to provide samples and explanations. And, he added, the advance notice was given only a day ahead of the actual inspection.

I am reminded of the woman who was accused of giving birth to an illegitimate baby and said it was “just a small one”.

There is an old joke about a lawyer’s son who got into trouble at school because he hit a cricket ball through the headmaster’s window. Asked to explain himself he said that “the window is not broken; if it is broken it was not by a cricket ball, if it was broken by a cricket ball it was not hit by me, and if it was hit by me it was an accident.”

Lawyers are allowed to do this. Mr Suen’s line appears to be that there was no tip-off, but if there was a tip-off it was a legitimate bid to improve the inspection.

Of course there is a place for inspections with advanced warning. They are often used in military circles. The inspected unit has an incentive and an opportunity to spruce itself up, tick off all the little maintenance items which have been awaiting attention, and put its best foot forward.

Many years ago I found myself unexpectedly the head of the then Department of Communication in what was then the HK Baptist College. I discovered that as well as the teachers I was also responsible for a warren of studios, workshops and darkrooms in which the students could practice the communicative arts with the help of suitably qualified technicians.

I did not know – indeed I still do not know – what the standard academic management solution to this situation is. But I borrowed from the Royal Navy the idea of doing a ground floor-to-roof inspection about once a month, accompanied by the Chief Technician. There was no warning; I did not particularly want to surprise people but I did not want them wasting time preparing for my arrival either.

I suppose we should leave to the inquiry the question whether monitoring renovation projects was an appropriate task for an inspection with prior warning. But I fear the general public’s view will be that an Independent Checking Unit should be a bit more carnivorous.

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Our government is worried about our weight … or do they mean fatness?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 6, 2026| 1 Comment »

Many years ago I read a short story about a man who successfully summoned a genie, and on being offered the traditional wish said he wished to lose weight. “Certainly,” said the genie, and in a matter of seconds the lucky fellow was glued to the ceiling, having become lighter than air.

The point of this story is, of course, that what the man really wanted was not to lose weight, but to lose fat. Euphemism can be dangerous when making wishes.

But here we have our friendly local government, taking up the urgent task of persuading us that most of us are too fat. Or as they prefer to put it, launching a three-year action plan on Weight Management.

This involves an Inter-departmental Weight Management Working Group (I am not making this up) which will open proceedings with a year-long campaign to raise awareness. The group will monitor, encourage, “foster a social environment to support weight management” and “enhance collaboration between Chinese and Western medicine”. I feel thinner already.

This is a serious matter for some people. Being very fat – or as the medical types prefer to put it obese – is bad for your health. On the other hand there is nothing so amusing as a solemn government preparing to tread on a banana skin.

Having conspicuously failed to persuade most of the population to vote, our leaders are now going to persuade many of us to stop eating? We missed out on the Matterhorn; let’s try Everest.

Behind all this is a survey, part of a series regularly conducted by the local Department of Health. The ensuing report announced that some 32 per cent of the population were obese and another 20 per cent were overweight.

I have two quarrels with this survey. One is that it defies common sense. If half the population was seriously overweight you would see this on a daily basis. Wandering through shopping malls or MTR stations half the people you see would be fat. Clearly “overweight” is being used in a rather special sense. After all half of us are of above-average weight. That is what the average means.

The other quarrel is with the timing. The survey was conducted in the years 2020-2022. Does that ring a bell? The COVID epidemic was in full swing. Beaches and exercise halls were closed. Gatherings were banned. Hiking in groups was legally hazardous. Entertainment wilted. Eating was the only pleasure left and a lot of us put on weight. I know I did.

To extrapolate this result to a general assessment of the population and base a policy on it is perhaps a bit hazardous?

And is it really necessary to have a government effort to raise awareness? Awareness of weight management is one area where the private sector is extremely active, sometimes dangerously so. We are constantly bombarded with helpful slimming suggestions which involve spending money. Progress in the hunt for slimming aids of all kinds is eagerly reported in the media.

Indeed this constant harping on weight loss is sometimes blamed for serious mental health problems, particularly among young women. Social media sites like Tik Tok and Pinterest are lambasted for their willingness to host images of skeletal victims of the resulting eating disorders.

The problem, surely, is not lack of awareness. People who are seriously overweight are well aware of the medical implications of their condition, and are occasionally reminded of them by doctors and friends. Just as most smokers know the price of their addiction, so do most over-eaters.

We all know that we should avoid the double cheeseburger with fries, eat more veggies and get out for regular walks, if we can manage nothing more strenuous. The problem is in the implementation. And the solution, I suspect, is not for the government to take on the role found in many families of the nagging aunt whose major contribution to conversations is unwanted advice.

May I at least humbly suggest that the Health Department desist from what appeared in one recent publication to be an attempt to get us all to give up booze. True there are a lot of calories in alcoholic drinks. But people have been drinking alcohol for thousands of years and they are unlikely to stop now.

More constructively, in a crime film I watched recently the prime suspect was asked to account for his whereabouts on the night of the murder and produced a porch camera video of him taking the dog out for a walk. “You walk your dog in the rain?” says the detective incredulously. “Sure.” says the suspect. “When you’ve got to go you’ve got to go. He’s a 200 lb dog. You want to clean up after him?”

Keeping a dog gets you out, rain or shine, pounding the pavement or walking the park. It’s good for you. Yet half the population lives in housing owned or managed by the government, where dogs are not allowed. An easy win for the Working Group?

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