tim's experiment

Say what you like about Occupy Central, it seems to bring out the worst in some people. I suppose Chambers of Commerce are entitled to their views on the matter, but a motley collection (the General, and chambers of Canada, Italy, Bahrain and India) went effortlessly from hyperbole to hypocrisy in their advertising campaign unveiled this week.”Newspaper vendors, restaurants, fast-food shops, and many other small businesses in Central all depend on a daily flow of customers for their livelihoods,” bleated the chambers. To be sure they do. But I do not recall the travails of Central pavement businesses ever attracted the attention of Chambers of Commerce before. Cut the crap about newspaper vendors, gentlemen, and admit that the looming prospect of Occupy Central is a threat to your interests.

Then we had the Secretary for Security, Lai Tung-kwok, who had an article published in several newspapers today, according to the Post, which was not one of them but ran the whole thing on its front page anyway. Mr Lai, as is customary with our government, is in charge of matters about which he knows very little. His career in the security business was spent entirely in the Immigration Department. Mr Lai, though, has a nice line in gloomy prophecy: “the radicals will take the opportunity to hijack the movement and turn peaceful public meetings into violence.” He goes on, “once violent confrontation occurs the situation may become irrevocable (?) and things could get out of control.” Well whether things get out of control could depend on many things. One of the things on which they depend is whether we have a sensible Secretary for Security who avoids provocative statements which could be interpreted as an order to get rough. Like Mr Lai’s conclusion: “We will ensure that the law enforcement agency will act in accordance with the law and will take robust action to uphold the rule of law and to maintain public safety and public order.” In other words, carte blanche for pepper spray?

Mr Lai’s predictions are a monument of lucidity, though,  compared with the nonsense peddled by Robert Chow Yung, spokesman for the Silent Majority which is neither silent nor a majority. Mr Chow thinks schools could be charged with neglect if their pupils skip classes to participate in Occupy Central, which is manifest nonsense. Students skip school all the time, for a variety of reasons. School are not expected to send out search parties. This piece of silliness is a close relative of another scare story, the idea that students convicted of public order offences might as a result lose their chance of going to university. Not so. I was involved for more than 20 years in university admissions and at no time did the question of candidates’ criminal convictions come up. The only vaguely legal problem was a boy who asked to be considered although his trial for a serious offence was after the interview period. He was interviewed and given an offer conditional on him not being in prison when it was time to take it up. Unfortunately he was convicted.

Now look, people, Occupy Central may be a first for Hong Kong, but there are plenty of similar examples from which we may learn. The lesson that history teaches is that it is very easy to stop road traffic in a big city for a day or two. This has no effect on the economy at all. Business continues. The sort of business which is conducted in modern business centres does not rely on road traffic at all. Indeed when some roads in the City of London were closed to hamper IRA car bombers the restrictions were so popular that they are still there. Some of the overseas examples, like the disorders attending the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968 or the evenements in Paris the same year, have been subjected to very detailed examination and we can as a result say with reasonable confidence that Occupy Central may produce much telegenic traffic paralysis but it will not bring the economy to its knees. Nor will it lead to violent disorder unless the minority of violent demonstrators can get together with the minority of violent policemen. Nor will it lead to mass arrests and convictions of participants. Remember the Korean farmers’ protests during the WTO meetings in Hong Kong in 2005? Lots of pepper spray, tear gas, police cordons, kettling, arrests… The number of people eventually convicted after all this was precisely none. Zero. People who wish to continue to work in Central will continue to do so. Blocking access to a building is much harder than obstructing a road (see Wapping blockade, for example) and there is no sign that anyone intends to try it. Not everyone needs to travel by car. I imagine most Central workers commute by MTR, though I dare say Peter Woo is not one of them.

The real objection to Occupy Central is not that it will damage the economy, the livelihoods of Central hawkers or the prospects of local schoolkids. It is that it will embarrass the PRC government. This is a necessary precondition to any real progress in Hong Kong, as the latest PRC White Paper makes very clear. The Communist Party of China is not subject to the rule of law. The government is an extension of the Communist party so the government is not subject to the rule of law either. This is why the judges are party puppets and the PRC constitution is a work of fiction. Clearly a party in this situation does not regard itself as in any way limited by the Basic Law either. It is in China’s interests that Hong Kong should appear to be autonomous, and this represents an opportunity for Hong Kong because the easiest way to keep up this appearance is to allow matters which are much more important to Hong Kong than they are to China to be decided in Hong Kong. This of course still allows for plenty of influence to be exerted by the party through its local lackeys. Yes Peter and Robert that includes you. Clearly people who wish to see meaningful political progress will not get it by relying on the Basic Law, or on Beijing’s benevolence. Vociferous demands from Hong Kong might help. Exaggerated reactions to the prospect of Occupy Central just encourage people to believe that.

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It seems the Financial Secretary, John Tsang, also has a blog. There is no need to read it, because the contents are usually taken up by local newspapers. This is a pity, because they do not inspire confidence. Mr Tsang’s latest outburst is a good example. Hong Kong’s low unemployment rate was in danger, he feared, because of the decline in the number of mainland visitors and the somewhat smaller decline in their spending. “I was quite worried when I saw the figures for retail sales in April,” the Standard quoted, “If the external economy does show obvious improvement [shouldn’t that be doesn’t?] while retail sales continue to fall, the employment rate will face immense pressure.” As so often in pseudo-intellectual discussions of the economy, we are in the presence of a mixed metaphor here. What it means in concrete terms is that if mainland shoppers are less numerous or less profligate then some shops will close, thereby throwing their staff out of work. This might lead to an increase in the jobless rate, which is currently 3.1 per cent. As there are always some people resting between engagements this is virtually zero.

What Mr Tsang is ignoring is the huge change which has swept Hong Kong’s retail sector in response to local landlords’ discovery that selling over-priced handbags to mainlanders is the most lucrative use to which they can put their properties. Shops which used to sell goods which local people needed have closed and been replaced by locust-orientated luxury outlets. Before the influx of mainlanders we did not have rows of empty shops, bereft of staff. We had a flourishing retail sector catering mainly for local needs. If selling expensive crap to mainlanders is no longer the retail racket du jour then it will be replaced by something else. This is the way the Invisible Hand works. The big difference will be that landlords will no longer be able to charge such high rents, a change which I am sure will produce widespread joy. Employment will not be affected at all.

Of course Mr Tsang may well be expecting the employment rate to increase anyway. The current rate is the lowest in 16 years. This suggests that it is a bit of a statistical blip and the next figure will be higher. This can then be blamed on anti-mainland sentiment, Legco filibustering or the Occupy Central movement, the three things which get blamed for everything these days. Actually I find it difficult to believe that Mr Tsang is seriously concerned about the unemployment figure. It is of course one of the things by which Financial Secretaries are judged, but Mr Tsang would have resigned long ago if he cared what people thought about him. Financial secretaries, chancellors, Fed Chairmen and such like people go through a regular process. For a year or two after they are first appointed they are indoctrinated by rich people, their lobbyists, liars, supporters in university economics departments etc. so that they realise their main function is to serve the interests of the rich – or in the popular euphemism, business. Once they have learned this lesson they become a valuable asset, and are described as flatteringly indispensable to the health of the economy (by which we mean business, by which we mean rich people). In Mr Tsang this process has now gone so far that the primacy of the interests of landlords is taken for granted. The only thing that needs thought is finding an acceptable explanation for running the economy in their interest. Nice try.

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One of my friends consulted a GP the other day about a puzzling ailment and was told to make an appointment to see a specialist in the nearest public hospital. So she went to the Prince of Wales Hospital, where the specialist clinic brandishes the name of Mr Li Ka-shing. I think Mr Li should ask for his money back, because this is not doing much for his reputation. The first thing you see when you get into the appointment-making area is a sign, which so stunned my friend that she took a picture of it. This tells you how long you should expect to wait before the day of your appointment comes up, depending on the type of specialist you need to see. Thus your appointment for a “general medicine” specialist will be in February. Look closer: that is February 2016. If your problem is cardiac, then April of the same year. If you need Geriatric care they make a special effort to fit you in before you join the Monty Python parrot. Your appointment will be in November … next year. Something illegible which might be Renal beats that by a month. No doubt some of these ailments proceed slowly, but I felt a twinge of sympathy for respiratory customers, who are apparently expected to hold their breath until March 2016.

Now I accept that everyone concerned is working hard and doing his or her best. I am sure also that waiting periods at other public hospitals are as bad if not worse. But asking people to wait for 18 months to see a specialist is not providing a public health service; it is just drumming up business for the private sector. Consider the scenario: you see your doctor. He confesses some puzzlement. Don’t like the look of that; think you should see a specialist. You go to your specialist clinic and discover that you have to wait somewhere between 15 months and two years to have your first encounter with a specialist.  This is not a wait for a bed, or for an operation, it’s just the wait for a chat with someone who will tell you whether what you’ve got is serious or not and what needs doing about it, if anything.  Clearly at this point in the proceedings, unless you are down to your last cent, you are going to go private.

Interestingly, there are lots of private specialists. In fact in recent years it seems that in those buildings where lots of doctors flash their names on the lift board, everyone is a specialist. A cynic might, indeed, suppose that it is rather easy for a private doctor to become a specialist, which makes an interesting contrast with the extraordinary obstacles facing doctors who qualified in perfectly respectable medical schools overseas and wish to practise in Hong Kong.

It may be, of course, that doctors have a different sense of time to the rest of us. This is certainly the kindest explanation for the report last week that the Medical Council, which regulates the profession with a gentle hand, had decided to suspend a doctor for an error she made more than nine years ago. This is not quite in the same class as the old 19th century Court of Chancery. It is generally considered that Charles Dickens was exaggerating in the account of its proceedings which he gives in Bleak House. But there is in existence a perfectly genuine recorded judgment by the then Lord Chancellor which starts with the ominous phrase “Having considered this Will for 15 years…” Indeed the Medical Council’s effort is not even a record for Hong Kong. The legendary Yaqub Khan’s case against the Hong Kong Government for unfair dismissal lasted 11 years, no doubt helped by the government’s desire to see him reach retirement age before they lost, as they did. Still, nine years is a long time. It suggests that it might not be very rewarding to complain if your doctor cuts the wrong leg off, because medical careers only last 40 years to so. By the time the Medical Council gets round to your problem there is a one in four chance the offending doc will have packed in the game anyway.

A spokesperson for the council did not help matters by parading an unusually limp set of excuses – difficulty in getting people together, finding rooms for meetings, etc. This suggests that the council does not approach some of the matters in its remit – like disciplinary proceedings – with a great sense of urgency. Part of the problem is that the council is too big. It has 25 members. No useful meeting has every been held between 25 people. The corresponding UK body has 12 people on it. Half of them are not doctors. a feature which Hong Kong has not copied.

Another problem is that the Council, and indeed the Hong Kong Medical Association, are dominated by private practitioners. This gives rise to a suspicion, which is hard to dispel, that the local profession is mainly interested in a most painful medical procedure: the amputation of the patient’s wallet. No doubt the profession would like us all to hold it in high esteem, while continuing to ensure that hospital carparks display an admirable crop of recent-model Mercedes equipment. These two objectives may not be entirely compatible.

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Dear me. People who know Professor Anthony Cheung personally speak well of him. But it becomes increasingly clear that he is a square peg in a round hole as Secretary for Transport. It is not just that he knows very little about transport in general and large railway projects in particular. This knowledge is not expected in a political appointee. Indeed our CE is so short of bright friends that it is a relief to find a secretary with a degree. But Prof Cheung seems to have no idea what the job requires.

When he said that he was completely surprised by the news that the express railway was going to be two years late there remained only two possibilities. Either the good Professor had been sleeping through every meeting on the subject, or he was being, shall we say, economical with the truth. This is not a matter which requires a commission of inquiry to explore its depths. We evidently cannot trust the Secretary for Transport to keep even vaguely in touch with the flagship project of his branch. Or if he is in touch, we cannot trust him to tell us the truth about what is going on. End of story. No need for judges, experts etc. Prof Cheung should go. Indeed it seems that Prof Cheung himself came to the same conclusion and, as the SCMPost put it “tendered his resignation”, only to have it “rejected” by C.Y. Leung. Prof Cheung now says that he will resign (perhaps with more enthusiasm?) if one of the inquiries now exploring the delayed white elephant decides that he personally did something wrong.

This is not acceptable. The whole point of a ministerial system is that the minister is responsible for everything which happens in his department or branch. This is not based on the foolish notion that the minister is actually making all the decisions personally. When, if we may take a distant example, Lord Carrington resigned as Foreign Secretary at the outbreak of the Falklands War nobody supposed that His Lordship had been devoting a great deal of pre-war attention to relations with Argentina. He had the Cold War, the UN, the European Community, relations with Washington and such like to worry about. But if you are in charge you are in charge. If you cannot attend to a matter personally it is your responsibility to ensure that the underling in charge is able to do the job. This is what responsibility means. The Policy Secretary gets the fat salary, the big office, the personal car, and the invitation to the tunnel opening, at which he will no doubt be praised for his crucial role in bringing the project to a successful conclusion. In return he relinquishes the right, if something goes wrong, to say that it was not his fault because a subordinate erred.

Prof Cheung’s current line that he will resign if he is proven to have personally done something wrong is, accordingly, a cop-out. Secretaries are not judged by their personal contribution, but by results. If the results are not satisfactory the secretary has failed.

Prof Cheung is also misguided in supposing that a resignation, once made, can be “rejected”. If you want to go, nothing can stop your going. Of course if by “tendering your resignation” you mean you expressed a willingness to resign if asked to do so, then that is not a principled action at all. It is merely an attempt to get your face-saving description of the transaction in before you are fired, if you are fired. If Prof Cheung believes he should take responsibility, and resigns, that will be an example to all of how the system should work. If he believes that his Branch has lived up to its responsibilities and does not resign, then that is at least logical. Transferring the decision to the Chief Executive looks horribly like reaching for a politically-motivated lifebelt.

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Linguistic point first: the so-called filibuster is not a filibuster. A filibuster consists of one speaker droning on until the opposition gives up or he keels over. This is not possible in Legco because there are limits on the length of members’ speeches.

So what is going on is not a filibuster, it is an attempt to amend legislation on a grand scale. The large number of amendments have already been pruned. The President of Legco has the right to rule out amendments which are frivolous and he has exercised it. What is left, we must suppose, comprises amendments which a sane person, possibly of extreme views, might propose in the hope of improving the enactment under discussion. Clearly the public is now being prepared for some kind of ban on excessive amendments, or a mechanism for cutting off debate on a measure altogether.

I am not convinced by the sudden discovery of all sorts of worthy activities which might be jeopardised if the budget is delayed  Different speakers come up with different sets of endangered items, which does not inspire confidence. But in any case, the government has pots of money. Any bureaucrat worth his salt should be able to find a way to keep the wheels turning for a few more weeks.

Nor was I much moved by the distressing passage in Mr John Tsang’s latest blog, in which he lamented the suffering of legislators forced to attend long meetings and subjected to the further torture of periodically hearing the bell indicating that the number of legislators actually in the chamber fell short of a quorum. In other words even the ones who bothered to turn up were absent from the meeting, having perhaps found a nook where they could peruse soft porn websites in peace.

The basic problem is not an excess of amendments; it is a shortage of working hours. One early complaint about the flood of amendments was that it would take 30 hours of debate for Legco to get through them. A whole 30 hours! This may come as news to some of the more well-brought-up members, but most people in Hong Kong get through 30 hours work in a bit less than four days. Members may object that they have other calls on their time. Tough. Being a legislator pays something in excess of 15 times the average household income in Hong Kong. Not to mention the free parking in Central, the social prestige, the networking, the “work trips” and other perks. Taxpayers have a right to expect that their representatives should be willing to work a normal working week, if on rare occasions that is needed. There are far too many people in Legco whose only ambition is to have the Honourable on their business cards without doing any work for it. They do not wish to speak, they do not wish to propose amendments, they do not wish to ask questions, and they do not want to listen to the people who do.

Of course it is true that the flood of amendments is not a serious attempt to improve the budget. The government has a built-in majority of sycophants; amendments from other sources are not welcome. What puzzles me is why the government expects people outside this flaccid group to participate meekly in the charade of representative government. The legislators labelled “radical” are not consulted or considered. They know they are only in Legco because of an unintended wrinkle in a bent electoral system. Any suggestion they may make will be spurned precisely because it comes from them. Their speeches are not listened to and their desires are not satisfied. In a sane system the Financial Secretary would dangle some costless carrot – like, say, removing the more flagrant abuses from the MPF system – as an inducement to support the budget. But in Hong Kong nobody in authority has a word to say to those outside the charmed circle. Is it any wonder that they act up?

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There is a whole book (Cannibalism and  the Common Law, by Brian Simpson – a good read) about a 19th century court case, known as the Queen versus Dudley and Stephens, which is a landmark in the British Common Law on murder. The two defendants were among the four survivors from a yacht which sank. After 20 days in an open boat the two defendants decided to kill and eat the cabin boy. The third man, who had dissented from the plan though he shared in the gruesome food supply, appeared as a witness for the prosecution. The defendants’ plea of necessity failed. An interesting part of the book is Mr Simpson’s survey of maritime history, which reveals a widespread belief – occasionally acted on in emergencies – that the “Tradition of the Sea” permitted starving sailors to choose one of their company by lot, and eat him. One of the curious features of these cases is that the supposedly random choice of food fell with suspicious regularity either on the cabin boy or on some sailor who was an outsider, being from a different nationality than his shipmates or otherwise an odd man out. I do not doubt that a similar bias will appear in the definitive work, when it emerges, on the corresponding Russian habit, when in a sledge pursued by wolves, of throwing one occupant out that the rest may escape. It seems there is a deep-seated human instinct at work here.

These lugubrious thoughts are prompted by the continuing saga of the Great Late White Elephant, otherwise known as our high-speed rail connection to Guangzhou — or to Shenzhen, which the mainland system has already reached. Now clearly there are a variety of people who could be held responsible for this, some of whom have already in effect resigned. Realistically, though, there is nothing to blame anyone for. Large rail projects, especially those involving long tunnels, commonly go over time and over budget. The problem with building a tunnel is that until you dig you don’t really know what you will find. One can of course dig bore holes to sample the underground scenery but they only give you a sample. Surprises are still to be expected. A good cure for the whole problem would have been to settle for a less ambitious surface line ending somewhere in the New Territories. But it is too late for that.  No doubt something in the nature of a head on a plate will be demanded eventually, and the question which then arises is whose head it should be.

And I’m afraid tradition suggests that we shall shortly be looking at a severed souvenir of Mr Jay Walder, not because he is the CEO of the MTR Corporation, but because he is, apparently, American. This conforms to the first instinct of a Hong Kong administration in trouble, which is to find a foreigner who can be blamed for the whole thing. It happened with the airport opening. It happened with Harbourfest. It happened with the cable car. Less public examples are also numerous.

Let me suggest one other person who might usefully also be sacrificed. It seems that the MTR board was filled by the Home Affairs Bureau computer which churns out occupants for government appointed seats of all kinds, without much regard for any quality except loyalty. Among the resulting crop of usual suspects are two legislators, Abraham Razack and Ng Leung-sin. Like the rest of the board, these gentlemen were clearly hopeless at their fundamental task of keeping track, in broad terms, of what was going on. Lack of knowledge of railways is a tactful explanation. Mr Ng nominated himself for the chop by having the brass face to tell the South China Morning Post that “big changes could undermine staff morale and disrupt railway projects”.  Any more than they have already been undermined and disrupted by the board’s total incompetence?

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Oh, the irony! On one page of this morning’s newspapers, another irritating lecture from a Beijing bigwig about the importance of the rule of law, and the need for Hong Kong people diligently to observe the restrictions designed to ensure that the arrival of universal suffrage does not disturb our imperial rulers. And on another page, the law flouted, and flouted by the current example of the sort of leader Beijing officials thing we ought to choose.

Let us be more specific. The Beijing bore is vice president Li Yuanchao, of whom we can confidently assert that he would not recognise the rule of law if he found it floating in his bath. This was a “don’t do as I do; do as I say” moment. Business as usual. Meanwhile in Hong Kong our lovely Lufsig was appearing at the opening of a publishers’ conference. Mr C.Y. Leung paid fulsome tributes to the importance of free media, a piece of infrastructure which he believes we still possess. He then ill-advisedly moved on to consider the attack on former Ming Pao editor Kevin Lau. Nothing to worry about there because, as the Standard quoted, “the assailants and others were quickly apprehended on the mainland and turned over to the Hong Kong police.” The version of Mr Leung’s words in the Post is slightly different but just as illegal.

Illegal? Yes indeed. Every beginning reporter learns, and over the years many of them have heard it from me, that once someone has been arrested judicial proceedings have begun, and it is a serious offence to imply in speech or writing that the persons arrested are guilty … or for that matter innocent. I do not know whether the two persons arrested on the mainland are the assailants or not but in either case they are entitled to be treated as innocent until proven guilty. It is scandalous that the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong SAR should express an opinion on this important point while the trial or trials are still pending. Normally one would expect to see the newspapers prosecuted for reporting it, but I fancy under the circumstances everyone is going to pretend it never happened, or pretend that there is nothing wrong because we know the pair are guilty anyway, or pretend that this is an irrelevant little legal point and it is not in the public interest to pursue the matter.

As we move on towards Occupy Central, though, this is going to bring a little problem. Can a Chief Executive lecture us all on the importance of the rule of law while carelessly breaking it on other occasions? This is not just a matter of an illegal vine trellis or two, after all. The offence this time is called contempt of court and people are occasionally jailed for it. I suspect if the Secretary for Justice had said what Mr Leung said then half the legal profession would be baying for his resignation. But as it is Mr Leung himself who has dropped the legal brick I wonder whether anyone will bother. It is already clear that he doesn’t care what we think.

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Well I hope none of you were surprised to hear that the great new White Elephant High Speed Railway to Shenzhen is running two years late already. Large projects of this kind often succumb to what is called the Planning Fallacy: over-optimistic assessments of the prospects for early and below-budget completion. Academic controversy continues over whether this is due to an innate bias in the human brain towards optimistic projections of the future, or it should more properly be blamed on unscrupulous contractors who make unrealistic promises, knowing that once the project has started it is unlikely to be cancelled however bad the news gets.

I must congratulate the MTR on contributing to the great tradition of offering limp excuses for rail delays, pioneered by the UK’s former Southern Region, which was often paralyzed by autumnal avalanches of fallen leaves. The MTR’s problem, it seems, is that it rained. What a shock that must have been. Also the tunnelers ran into some rocks under Lai Chi Kok. You can imagine the two great men in their Baker Street flat musing over this item. “See, Holmes, according to the newssheets people who were digging a hole under Lai Chi Kok found rocks there.” The great man took his pipe from his mouth. His lip curled. “Indeed, Watson, and what were they expecting to find, marshmallows?”

The great international example of this sort of catastrophe is the Sydney Opera House. Work on this started in 1958, at which time the budget was A$7million. When the building opened in 1973 it had cost A$102million. A more recent example is the building which houses the Scottish Parliament. Work started in 1997, with the projected cost at GBP40 million. When it was completed in 2004 the estimated final cost was GBP431million.  Rail projects are the specific hobby of a Danish prof called Bent Flybjerg. He been trying to foster more pessimistic planning by beating people over the head with the past statistics, like these: between 1969 and 1998 the average over-estimate of passenger numbers for major new rail projects was 105 per cent. The average (not the maximum, the average) cost over-run was 45 per cent. Interestingly the early casualties did not produce any more caution in the later estimates. the error rate remained the same. This suggests that it is probably the same now.

More recent international examples are equally ominous. Barcelona’s ninth underground line was supposed to cost 1.9 billion Euros. It came in at 8.7 million Euros. The modernisation programme for the UK’s West Coast line was originally supposed to cost between 2 and 3 billion GBP. Revised estimates effortlessly zoomed to 14.5 billion GBP, at which point the track company became insolvent. A new rescue strategy was brought in in 2003 which would, it was hoped,. keep costs down to GBP 8.3 million. These hopes have not been entirely realised; work is still in progress and the final bill is expected to surpass GBP 9 million.  In this company the Edinburgh tram system, which should be opening next month, looks a bargain. When work started in 2006 the budget was GBP 498 million. Final bill with financing costs is expected to be only GBP 1 billion. But this is deceptive. Nearly half of the originally planned network was cancelled to save money.

What can we hope for, then, from the MTR’s Great White Elephant? Well there was no competitive bidding for the contract (our two railway companies having been merged with each other) so the original number offered – $80 billion – can be considered an honest guess. Unfortunately this was considered politically unacceptable so it was massaged down to $68 billion. This is now the figure used in hand-outs and press reports, although the project was not trimmed in any way; all that happened was that some parts which could plausibly be inserted elsewhere in the public works budget – like roads – were excluded from the headline figure on the grounds that they “would have to be built anyway…”  The MTR has now produced a $4billion contingency fund, which is going to cover the latest glitches. So this is now presumably a $72 billion project. It is difficult to believe protestations that the two-year delay now expected will have no further impact on costs.

I infer two things. Firstly about suggestions from Shenzhen that the Hong Kong Government should accept some financial responsibility for disappointing ridership on the already existing line between Shenzhen and Guangzhou: these should be resisted strenuously. Two years may not be the end of it. Secondly there is the position of the responsible minister, who despite  being on the MTR professed himself totally surprised by last week’s news. If I were you, mate, I would resign now. It’s all downhill from here.

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It is nice to see that somebody still has a kind word to say for the old colonial government of Hong Kong, which comes in for a lot of gratuitous stick these days. Still I must say that Regina Ip’s piece in the Sunday Post was laying it on a bit thick. I do not doubt that Ms Ip in her career encountered some expatriate civil servants who were humane and intelligent men, genuinely dedicated to doing the best possible job for the people of Hong Kong. There were such people. I met some of them and Ms Ip must have encountered a lot more civil servants than I did.  But are we then to go on and say that “Hong Kong … afforded those elite administrators a chance to build an economic miracle and a successful society by blending the finest of British and Chinese administrative traditions, unencumbered by the divisive, debilitating effects of parliamentary politics”? Let us leave aside the inconvenient fact that most of the economic miracles and successful societies in the world have managed to combine those happy attributes with parliamentary politics. Was the colonial government really the apex of British and Chinese administrative tradition?

This is not how it seemed at the time. No doubt that line about blending the best of the two traditions was a good morale-booster for local recruits, who could hardly be told that they were contributing to the last dying flicker of the glory that was the British Empire. But even Ms Ip’s mentors would, I suspect, be surprised to see this line taken so seriously. After all anyone who has a background in colonial history will recognise in the old Hong Kong system the standard colonial arrangement, in which conservative traditional leaders are recruited to support alien rule by the promise that the wealth and privileges to which they are accustomed will be preserved. No doubt many people thought that Hong Kong was better run than the obvious alternative. But colonial administrators were not all disinterested Platonic philosopher kings. Many of them were a by-word for greed, racism, snobbery, homophobia and above all corruption.

Then we have an interesting passage about the effect of electoral politics on those who practise it. “No geographical constituency legislator could have got elected without honing their (sic) skills in sloganeering, staging public protests, mobilising the masses, attacking their (sic again) opponents and generally all the chicanery of political campaigning,” says Ms Ip. But just a moment, one of the directly elected members for the Hong Kong Island constituency is one Ip Lau Suk-yee, GBS JP, alias Regina herself. So is this a confession that Ms Ip has mastered all the chicanery? Or is she just talking about other people?

I fear Ms Ip is not the only colonial bequest who finds it difficult to understand how a government can manage if it is under public pressure to provide education, health, pensions and such like. Well this is how it works in most of the world: to govern is to choose, and the choices are made by the people who will suffer the consequences, ill or otherwise. Ms Ip has a notoriously tin ear for public sentiment. So does the government of which she is a part. That is its problem. Not the fact that some legislators entertain the sacrilegious notion that the people should get what they want.

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Readers may have been wondering, as I have, for many months how the election by universal suffrage of the next Chief Executive was going to be fixed. That it was going to be fixed was never in doubt. We are dealing with democracy with Chinese characteristics here. Elections are only allowed if they can be fixed.

The broad outlines of how this will be done are now clear. The Nomination Committee will be pretty much the same shower who were the electors last time round. Any candidate who wishes to run will need more than half of the votes of the committee. Of course this would leave us with a maximum of one candidate, and we can’t have that. So each committee member will be given three votes, thereby ensuring that there will be three candidates. This will produce three trusted candidates, every one of whom will no doubt be a notorious creep owning at least two illegally-adornment-infested houses in the best parts of town. And we will be graciously allowed to choose between any of them who survives the election period without coming up with some no-no like a noisy mistress or an illegal basement.

This is a preposterous arrangement. Even if the nominating committee were genuine  it would be a recipe for three identical candidates offering a minimum of genuine choice. The nominating committee is in effect a vetting committee. And we can all guess what sorts of candidates will be vetted out. No doubt we will be told that candidates who wear the label of a major political party or have massive visible public support can still be nominated. But they can also still be not nominated, and that is what will happen to any of them who threatens to divert the election from its intended course, which will probably be the re-election of C.Y. Leung.

Any derogation or dilution of this catastrophic arrangement will be presented as a major concession by the comrades to the people of Hong Kong, the implication of this being that we should gratefully shut up and accept the result as a legitimate representative of us all, even if the winner turns out to be Lufsig again.

Next year: how to fiddle Legco.

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