tim's experiment

One of the small fears which haunts newspaper design departments is the possibility of an advert clashing painfully with the story next to it. Airlines do not want their ads next to stories about air crashes, car makers do not with to be neighbours to complaints about the safety of their chariots, oil companies do not wish to wallow in warming stories, and so on. Still, accidents do happen, sometimes just because of coincidence. There was a memorable specimen during the problems in the Congo many years ago. The story was headlined “Two nuns raped in Congo”. The ad underneath was for pipe tobacco. It went “Gentlemen prefer Three Nuns”. In my early page planning days the ads people would try to avoid this sort of thing by putting on the plan they sent you the spaces to be reserved for ads, and some indication of what the ad was. However in these electronic days nobody uses paper plans any more so this habit has subsided. Hence the unfortunate coincidence in Thursday’s Hong Kong Standard.

The ad concerned a “Business Opportunity in the United Kingdom”. This was described as “a large, successful and profitable property business in Birmingham”. Investors could take a half share for about 10 million Sterling or buy the whole thing for twice as much. I have no reason at all to doubt the bona fides of this offer, and if I had a few million pounds to spare I would be happy to consider it. No doubt more details will be forthcoming to serious inquirers. I suspect, however, that there will not be many of them, because the story next door was about a couple who had pocketed HK$22 million of investors’ money by promoting a fraudulent enterprise involving the sale of preserved fruit. Readers who had waded through ten paragraphs of prune fraud were probably not minded to pursue property investments in Birmingham, however prosperous, if the only contact was a yahoo email address.

Moral? Advertise your business opportunities in the business pages, perhaps.

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I have wanted to visit Tai O for a long time. Many years ago, when the Standard was a real newspaper for which you had to pay, it had an investigative reporting team of which I was a member. Somewhere I still have the prize we were awarded for a story about Tai O. But we did not all actually go to Tai O, which was even less accessible then than it is now. One member went on a freebee, ostensibly to look at, and spend the night in, one of the stilt houses, of which more later. My main contribution was to tell her to keep her eyes peeled and ears to the ground, for it is axiomatic that in neglected outlying areas rarely visited by reporters there are stories waiting to be discovered. She duly returned with the expected feature on stilt houses and the makings of a cracking story on the local smuggling scene, with which we did very well.

So, at last, to Tai O. This is much easier than it was, because there is now an MTR line to Tung Chung. From here you can get a ferry, which is rather intermittent, or a water taxi. Or, cheaper, you can take the bus. This is quite a luxurious model by Hong Kong standards (Lantau has its own bus company) and is very frequent. It chugs over a pass through dramatic mountain scenery to the south side of the island. It visits a few seaside villages, and then chugs over another pass through even more dramatic mountain scenery to the north western corner of Lantau, which is where Tai O is. There is a bus station and a car park. From here on you are on foot.

The main tourist attraction is the stilt houses. As most of Tai O is either swamp or mudflat the inhabitants built out from the slim slice of terra firma on thin piles driven into the dirt. The effect looks a bit haphazard and fragile, but it seems they are safe enough. Some eager NGO has been renovating the stilt houses so most of them are now coloured the silver of, I presume, unpainted tin sheet. A few curmudgeons still have the traditional rust and some extroverts have painted their stilt houses in lively colours. Most of the houses look very much like those wood and tin sheet structures which used to carpet Hong Kong hillsides and were called squatter huts. Squatter huts were regarded as a plague and new ones were frequently demolished by a special unit of the Housing Authority. Whether the official hostility was due to the dangers of landslips and fires, the desire to free land for development, or sympathy for hut occupants is hard to say. Anyway most of the urban squatter huts have disappeared, though you can still find a few if you know where to look.

The inhabitants of Tai O managed to persuade the local sprig of the Hong Kong government to try a different approach. The huts have legal water and electricity. Emergency phones and public fire extinguishers dot the hut areas. Tai O people are said to be keen on keeping their traditional arrangements. A few of the huts still have an odd shape, like a small railway carriage or a large loaf. I presume these are modelled on the structures people used to have on live-aboard sampans.

Like most distant villages, Tai O has a large and prosperous primary school and a lot of old folks, but not much in between. It is a noticably hospitable spot. Ancient citizens will happily show you round their homes if you look interested. Other attractions: there are a lot of temples. The streets, which are too small for motor vehicles, make for pleasant walking. A variety of street food is offered and there are some pleasant eating spots on the river side of some stilt houses. I would like to note here the particular kindness of the staff in Solo: when I fell asleep on their sofa they did not throw me out, they put a blanket over me so I did not get cold.

It will be interesting to see how things go for Tai O. It obviously gets more visitors nowadays and is trying for s many as it can attract. There is a small museum. Sino Land is turning the old police station into a boutique hotel.  I understand they do not expect it to make money, which is perhaps just as well. There is a bed and breakfast in the main street with a promising bar but it closes when the owner is tired or busy with other things, so you need to book in advance. There are almost no “village houses” of the usual type, which perhaps goes to show that the demand depends on the ability to abuse the policy by selling to outsiders, which is hardly practical in Tai O because it is so far away. If you are trying to amuse someone in Hong Kong for a few days and you want something completely different, I recommend the trip. If you have time this is also the centre for dolphin watching.

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No doubt we all rejoice in the news that Mr Michael Suen has recovered from Legionnaires’ disease. Bulletins on the subject provided an interesting sidelight into the secret lives of our leaders.  It was reported that the malevolent microbe was lurking in the plumbing of Mr Suen’s personal accomodation in the new Central Government Offices. Specifically, it was reported that Mr Suen’s aministrative infrastructure includes a personal toilet.

And the question this raises, of course, is why? I presume Mr Suen was not personally responsible for the arrangement. I presume also that the Educational portfolio is not the only one believed to require a personal privy for the overpaid placeman in charge of it. This means that among the unsung assets of the new government HQ there is a large collection of personal loos, provided at unimaginable expense, invvolving not only a great deal of superfluous porcelain and space, but a lor of otherwise unnecessary plumbing. There is of course no need for this sort of thing at all. There is no magical quality about a Policy Secretary’s privates which requires them to be pointed only at a personal pissoir. Secretaries could use the facilities provided for their colleagues. It would give them some incentive to make sure that these facilities were of a high standard, and give them some opportunities for informal interaction with colleagues they might otherwise not meet.

Unfortunately this nonsense has filtered down from the top. The new paperwork palace features not just a private entrance for the Chief Executive but a private drive. Civil servants who recall meeting Chris Patton in the lift find that they do not meet his successor there because if Donald visits a government building he always has a lift reserved for his private use. In the light of the revelations about Mr Suen’s arrangements we may speculate that a toilet is reserved for Donald on there occasions as well.

I wonder what our eager would-be CEs think of this. Is Henry Tang, now masquerading vigorously as a Man of the People, also the proud possessor of a personal office toilet? Does CY Leung, also a paper proletarian pro tem, approve of special facilities for Exco members? Is it any wonder that people in the street regard policy secretaries with contempt when our leaders go to such lengths to avoid contact with the victims of their activities?

There is a small serious point lurking here. There will certainly be a surplus of male toilets in the new government palace, firstly because architects cannot get their heads round the point that women take longer, and secondly because the provision of such facilities never takes into account the number of people of each gender who will be using them. There will be a shortage of female toilets for the same reasons. Nothing will be done about this because all the senior staff have toilets of their own. This is a small specimen of the great overall principle that our leaders have no idea what they are doing becaue they are so sedulously segregated from contact with ordinary people and the circumstance in which they live.

A small prize for the Legislative Councillor who asks how many officials are entitled to personal toilets provided at the public expense. And for Mr Suen, an interesting thought: you wouldn’t have caught the horrible disease if you had been using the same plumbing as everyone else.

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Has our glorious government changed its policy on land sales? The SCMPost seems to think so. On December 22 we were treated to a headline which went “HK selling less land to avoid market turmoil”. The headline accurately reflected the first paragraph, which went “The Hong Kong government is reducing land supply sharply to pre-empt possible turmoil in a market that is already feeling the chill of the Eurozone crisis.”

That seems fairly clear: market feeling Euro-chill, turmoil looming, government cutting land supply to avert said turmoil. But that was not what the newspaper said in the rest of the story at all. It seems that the sub editor (not a very bright specimen – “pre-empt” indeed!) worked out what he thought the story ought to have been, and stuck that on the front.

Reading on we came to the solid figures. Last quarter’s land sales were sufficient for about 1,770 flats. This year’s first quarter will add a further 430. The government’s most recent official plan was to build about 30,000 flats a year, so there is clearly something funny going on.

Over to Carrie Lam, who is in charge of these matters. The five sites to be sold in the next quarter would not be  “a huge supply”, she understated. Perhaps, she continued cautiously, 430  flats was a “modest figure”. But, she went on, “taking into account what we have done already, I think this is a very good initiative to continue the momentum of supplying land.” Which suggests, to put the matter bluntly, that the lady is out to lunch. The question of initiative does not arise. The government sells land all the time. “What we have done already” was to provide for 1.770 flats in the last quarter, when the official target called for 30,000 divided by four, which is 7,500. And we are not continuing “the momentum”, such as it is, if the next quarter’s figure is less than a third of its predecessor. But there you have it: no Euro-zone, no turmoil, no policy to cut the supply of land.

Some of this we get from Louis Chan, who is not an official of any kind: he works for Centaline. He said the government had noticed the proprerty market was “struggling” and was trying to use the land supply to “stabilise the market”. Still no mention of turmoil or Eurozones.

Then we came to another property professional, Alnwick Chan, who thought the constriction of supply was a simple accident, because some large sites were not ready. And then the story turned, very properly, to the comments from politicians. It did include the interesting statistic, for those wondering what a “struggling” market meant, that property prices had fallen 2.53 per cent from their peak last May.

Nobody concerned in this story comes out of it looking very good. Carrie Lam seems to have some difficulty in finding words to describe her Bureau’s activities which have any connection at all with reality. The SCMPost seems to have managed to recruit someone who can edit stories without reading them, or thinks he can. The property people are squeeling like stuck pigs at the possiblity that prices might actually droop a bit. And the fall so far is very disappointing.

What is going on here, I suspect, is that we are in the midst of a property bubble, which has nothing to do with the Eurozone and everything to do with vastly inflated prices. When bubbles burst there are recriminations. If officials are not selling land they will escape blame, or so they hope. This grubby desire effortlessly trumps their clear duty to increase the supply of a commodity which is in short supply, otherwise citizens would be living in proper homes instead of subdivided flats or illegally converted factories. Government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich continues.

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Both our declared candidates for Chief Executive had a bad day on Tuesday, on the same topic. They have discovered, or been advised, that people are highly concerned about the number of mainland mums coming to Hong Kong to give birth. Henry fielded a question on the topic on a radio phone-in programme. Asked if the government could solve the problem by denying the right of abode to the resulting off-spring he said this could be done only by changing the Basic Law or having it “interpreted” by the NPC standing committee in Beijing.  In fairness to Mr Tang he was reported to have said afterwards that seeking an interpretation would be “a blow to the rule of law in Hong Kong”, which is true, but beside the point.

CY Leung, meanwhile, was pushing the idea that pregnant mainlanders should be stopped at the border. Actually I understand that they are already stopped at the border if they do not have a reservation at a Hong Kong hospital. Mr Leung also considered seeking an interpretation, but said it would “only address issues concerning the children’s identities”.

What both our would-be future leaders seem to have missed is that interpretation is not supposed to be an alternative to legislation. It is not properly used to let the Hong Kong Government circumvent some administrative inconvenience by changing the meaning of the Basic Law. The objection to interpretation as a solution to the pregnant mainlander problem is not that it would take time, though it would, nor that it would be a blow to the rule of law, though that is also true. The fundamental objection is that interpretation should only be considered if there is difficulty in understanding what the Basic Law means. The right to interpret is the right to resolve issues where the Basic Law is not clear. It is not carte blanche for instant amendments along the line of “where the Basic Law says ‘black’ it means ‘white'” variety.

If the government does not wish people born in Hong Kong to have the right to live here then it must change the Basic Law. Where the law is clear, “interpretation” is not on the menu.

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Driving through the Lion Rock Tunnel the other day I noticed that the car in front of us was going very slowly, and wandering about its lane. Was the driver drunk? Hardly, at 11 in the morning – though my only encounter with the new hi-tech random breath test machinery was at a similar time on a Sunday, so perhaps there is some wrinkle to local drinking that I have not spotted. After a while we came to the other side of the tunnel, and the end of the double white line down the middle of it. I changed lanes and overtook. If there is a nutter on the road I always feel you are safer in front. My wife then explained the mystery: the erratic driver was deep in conversation on her telephone.

I cannot imagine how anyone can be foolish enough as to suppose that they can conduct a serious phone conversation and drive at the same time. Of course we all think we can do two things at once and if the road situation is peaceful or you are waiting at a traffic light then no harm is perhaps done by a few words. But a conversation the length of the Lion Rock Tunnel?

I suppose fossils like me are spared a certain amount of temptation by our old-fashioned relationship with the phone. When I was growing up a family thought itself lucky to have one phone. Indeed at one time because of a shortage of connections we shared a “party line” with a family across the road. This was an interesting arrangement because it meant that when one user picked up the phone he might be treated to an ongoing conversation conducted by the other. In those days the family phone sat in the living room, or sometimes the hall. It was securely moored in place by the wire which connected it to the wall. There was little temptation, or indeed opportunity, to do anything else while you were using the phone. Things were a bit more flexible in the office, but not much. Some people would sell you a piece of rubber which would enable you to perch the phone on one shoulder. This would leave both hands free for typing. But serious typists used headphones. So you will not be surprised to hear that while I am fond of my mobile phone and make some use of its non-phone abilities I also occasionally still forget to take it with me in the morning.

Digital natives who have grown up with this sort of thing are less inhibited. I received an email the other day inviting me to sign (electronically) a pledge not to text while driving. Apparently AT&T had agreed to donate $2 per person who took the pledge to an organisation seeking to improve the safety of young drivers. I am not sure I am quite the sort of pledger they had in mind but I earned the $2. Really, though, I thought the pledge request was a bit insulting. What sane person could possibly be tempted to try to key in a text message while driving? Apparently the answer to this question is you would be surprised. Texting while driving is a recognised cause of accidents among young drivers in countries where there are numerous young drivers. If you ferret on Youtube you can find some fairly gruesome propaganda videos intended to discourage the practice.

A less serious problem from the same source is that many young people now assume that they are always calling a mobile phone. When there was only one phone in the house it often happened that nobody was particularly close to it when it rang. Also, some people in those days thought there were more important things to do that answering the phone, and would carry on with whatever they were doing. “You get it,” would be shouted, and then there would be an argument. The caller, meanwhile, would be patient. After all the person who was going to answer might be upstairs, in the garden or on the toilet. So most callers gave it a couple of minutes.

This is no longer the case. When at home I still use an old-fashioned wire-in-the-wall job. This is not because I am a hopeless nostalgic but because on our hill the mobile reception is bad. You can get text, you can connect calls, but you cannot really hear each other. So the phone rings, I drop what I am doing and proceed at a reasonable speed to the warbling machine, and when I pick it up … silence. The caller has already abandoned hope.  This category of failed calls should not be confused with the one where a cold caller from some survey or marketing company hears “hello” and concludes that he or she is not going to be able to conduct his conversation in Cantonese. Then you hear an audible click.

The moral of this story is that if you are calling someone, give him time to answer. He may be in the bath.

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It is interesting to see that the SCMPost’s editorial writers now implicitly reject most of their newspaper’s analysis of the District Council elections. After the polls had closed we were treated to a rich variety of verbal sauces poured over the cold statistical figures to make them warm enough for public consumption. The voters, we were told, had punished the democrats for neglecting local issues. They had punished the democrats for lacking that unity found so effortlessly in the pro-government camp where all the strings are held by the same puppet master. The voters had rejected the throwing of bananas and shouting of abuse in the Legislative Council chamber. Or they had punished the Civic Party for having leading members who had appeared in court in cases against the government. The revised explanation for the poll results is simpler: the winners cheated. We will not go into the further ramifications of this story, which are that the government was warned long ago about loopholes in the election regulations but the official in charge of such matters, who happened to be Stephen Lam, was too busy for such things, being heavily engaged in the effort to abolish by-elections.

Let us just accept that there is a problem. If you want to register as an elector there is at present no effective check to stop you pretending that you live at an address where you do not. Even, it seems, if your bogus address does not exist. This means that you can vote in the constituency of your choice, whether it is the one you live in or not. We must I fear believe that there has been a good deal of this going on, the tip of the iceberg being represented by those electors who were stupid enough to claim residence in the same small flat as 14 other people, or in non-existent flats, buildings etc., leading to trouble with the police or the ICAC, depending on whether the elector actually voted or not.

The solution proposed for this problem, unfortunately, is totally ineffective. It is that when a voter registers, he or she should be asked to produce “proof of address”. Now if someone wants you to prove who you are, that is easy. You produce the ID card issued by the Hong Kong Government. This contains data which have been verified and compared with your birth certificate or passport. The ID card has a unique number and a variety of anti-forgery features. It is a durable piece of plastic with the government’s authority behind it and is not issued lightly. Proof of address is a different matter.

Oddly enough I was reminded the other day that the Transport Department now demands “proof of address” when you renew your car’s licence. The department thoughtfully provides on the back of the relevant form a list of possible “proofs” , which goes “e.g. water/electricity/gas/mobile phone bill or bank correspondence.” Note that “e.g.” What it means in practice is that almost any respectable piece of correspondence will do, providing it has your name and address on it. And this is actually no proof of anything at all. Indeed there is a flourishing black market in proofs of useful addresses. When I lived in Kowloon Tong we received regular offers to pay our electricity bills. The generous supporter asked only that he or she should be registered as the consumer of the electricity concerned. This would enable him or her to take advantage of Kowloon Tong’s superior educational infrastructure by “proving” residence. Naturally, people who send out bills do not really care who is receiving them as long as the bill is paid. So there is no “proof of residence” corresponding to the “proof of identity” provided by the ID card. Requiring proof of residence will make cheating a little harder, but not much.

What could be done? Well we could consider the British system, where every householder is required to report annually who lives in his dwelling. Giving false information on this topic is a fairly serious matter and abuses are, it seems, rare. People who move at inconvenient times may find it hard to vote and individuals who happen to be in transit or abroad may be left off the register. But on the whole the system automatically registers most of the population. Our government prefers a non-automatic system in which people have to register themselves. I hope this preference is not connected to the well-known implications for the turn-out. Other things being equal in electoral systems with automatic registration this runs to 60-70 per cent. If registration requires a separate effort on the part of the would-be elector then turn-out struggles to beat 50 per cent.

Anyway, officials had better come up with something. Many of us already have a distinct impression that our leaders are not too keen on elections.

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I have never had much time for the Broadcasting Authority – a bunch of Government-appointed twerps who frequently panic in moments of public excitement, real or simulated. The decision to fine ATV $300,000 for an erroneous report that Jiang Zemin had snuffed it (premature is perhaps a better word than erroneous – the old bastard must die some time) means the authority has now earned promotion from the harmless joke category to the leading menace one.

The decision is not going to help ATV. After all the station’s recurring problem over the years has actually been shortage of money. It just doesn’t make as much out of its share of the market as TVB does. If it tries to spend enough to match TVB’s programmes it loses even more money. If it tries to cut its spending to match its income, the viewers desert it. The station is in a bind. A six-figure fine is not what it needs. Still,  if the BA’s decision was just unhelpful to ATV that would be a small matter. The serious aspect is the human rights implications.

It is a platitude invariably trotted out on occasions of this kind that the right to freedom of expression is not absolute. It is not like the right not to be tortured or killed, which governments are supposed to preserve all the time. Freedom of speech may be limited when this is necessary for the preservation of other freedoms. Every constitutional document from the UN Declaration of Human Rights downwards has roughly the same list. Restrictions on freedom of speech must be specified by law and must be necessary for some other purpose, the usual exceptions and typical laws they permit being the right to reputation (libel), to a fair trial (contempt), public morals (obscenity) and public order (sedition). None of the permitted exceptions relates to a right not to be misled by rumours that some aged ex-autocrat has popped his clogs, fallen off his twig or joined the Choir Invisible. This means, I take it, that the Authority’s decision is unconstitutional and the station should appeal.

Whether this happens or not, it is worth dwelling for a moment on what the authority has done. Years ago the colonial government tried to make it a criminal offence to publish “false news”. This occasioned great controversy and in the end was not proceeded with. The BA has now smuggled the offence into existence through the licensing conditions imposed on broadcasters. Newspapers remain free to bump off retired statesmen whenever they like. The problem with legislation against false news is that what is “false” is all too often itself a tricky matter. Generally to commit a criminal offence you have to have a guilty mind. In the context of false news this means that you must either know the news was false or be so careless that you should have known it might be. But the Broadcasting Authority is not a court. It does not have to concern itself with such niceties. Mr Jiang weas reported dead. He is still alive. Wack!

Realistically I have to agree with Michael Chugani. Media organisations make mistakes all the time. We do our best to be accurate but news is produced in a hurry and not all sources are as reliable as they might be. People make honest mistakes, misprints creep in, it happens all the time. Even that most careful of publications, The Economist, runs one or two apologies most weeks. Many newspapers in other places (the idea has not caught on in Hong Kong) have an ombudsman to investigate and respond to reader complaints. We all try to avoid expensive mistakes of the kind which lead to court cases, but if people are going to be fined $300,000 for innocent mistakes which have no consequences then reporting will become impossible.

Perhaps that is what the BA wants. Broadcast news should consist entirely of government press releases.

Actually as far as the local news is concerned it pretty much does already. China is a more difficult target because news is assiduously managed by the government, which means the official line is often a lie. Under these circumstances people are bound to report rumours if they look plausible, whether they are denied by Xinhua or not. This is a universal feature of regimes which do not permit a free press. Under these circumstances it will often be difficult to confirm a story. You are lucky to get one version of it. Executives have to make a judgement. If the BA is waiting in the wings with a massive fine for mistakes then that judgement is going to be a very conservative one. This is known in freedom of expression circles as the “chilling effect”.

The disappointing thing about the fine imposed on ATV is the response from other people who should know better. The BA is attacking the media. The fine is not a punishment of the management for interfering in the news department, unwelcome though such interference may be. Journalists all prefer a proprietor who does not wish to influence content and some proprietors are good in this way. When Roy Thompson owned The Times he used to carry a little card which he showed to people who wanted to discuss his newspapers with him. The card said simply that the content of his newspapers was selected entirely by the editorial staff employed for that purpose. When Conrad Black owned the Telegraph he sometimes wrote to the Letters to the Editor page to complain about things he disapproved of. On the other hand in this matter, as in others, Rupert Murdoch has set a deplorable example and standards generally have as a result fallen. Anyway, if the owner or his representative wishes to take the risk of tampering with the news output there is nothing to stop him. Local journalists need to grow up and accept this, instead of deluding themselves that the Broadcasting Authority is an ally in the defence of editorial autonomy.

There is a principle involved here which is much more fundamental than the imaginary right to repel advice from your managing director. If we are not free to make mistakes we shall soon not be free at all.

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Since the handover in 1997 the death rate among local media has been rather higher, not because of official skullduggery by the Chinese government, but because of bumbling interventions by its local supporters.

Businessmen who wish to curry favour are prone to the delusion that they can buy some more or less flourishing media outlet, tone down the content a bit by removing items which will annoy their friends, and nobody will notice.

Most of the early casualties were small magazines. The syndrome would follow a predictable path. The buyer would be someone who had shown no previous interest in media ownership, but was well known for his connections further north. He would announce that the decision to buy the magazine was a purely business matter and there would be no change in editorial policy. This was not believed by the staff or the readers. Those staff who could find other jobs – who tend to be the best ones – departed. Quality sagged, readers deserted, and in a year or so there was another purely business decision: to close the magazine.

Of course if you start with a large and prosperous media organisation the process takes far longer. Five years or so ago most of us regarded the South China Morning Post as a durable landmark, though even then the constant comings and goings of chief editors suggested that the proprietors were not sure what they wanted to do with it. Lately a lot of people seem to think the newspaper is a shadow of its former self, prone to fence-sitting and mistakes, and weakened by misguided economies. These are, we know, hard times for newspapers everywhere, although the sort of upscale advertising in which the Post specialises will probably be the last kind to move to the internet. Anyway I am still buying the thing, though I seem to get less for my money than I used to.

I am not qualified to comment on the other local landmark of “quality”, Ming Pao, though my students’ opinions of it are not flattering. But then there is the case of RTHK, now headed by a civil servant whose media experience is non-existent. Now I realise that some government departments are the scene of a constant tussle over whether their leadership demands experience in the work of the staff, or can be exercised by an Administrative Officer whose main skill is in the drafting of an elegant memo. I remember an awful row when an AO was put in charge of the Marine Department, for example.

Previous Directors of Broadcasting were all people who might be supposed to know something about broadcasting. In the early days of RTHK the Director was seconded from the BBC. Later he (or she) was recruited from within RTHK itself. Clearly the job as it was done in those years required broadcasting experience and knowledge. The new incumbent will have to do a different job, because those items on which his predecessors exercised their knowledge and skill will have to be passed on to other shoulders. The question is whether he will feel, as all those other proprietors did, that the content can be shorn of “sensitive” items without diminishing its quality or appeal to consumers.

I rather suspect he will be encouraged to feel this way, because after all the whole point of putting a civil servant in mid-career into the job is that his independence will be curtailed by the desire to have a further career back among the mandarins. I do not suggest anything so crass as people offering threats or inducements. I am sure also that the new Director will not consciously seek to enhance his career prospects by giving his colleagues a quiet life.

Still, there is a consensus among Administrative Officers that they are wonderful in every way, and consequently the government is a wonderfully well-run organisation. If RTHK is going to propagate this curious illusion then many viewers and listeners will in the long run feel it necessary to view and listen to other stations. RTHK cannot, of course, go bankrupt. But if the audience shrinks, so will the budget. And down the slippery slope we go.

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A quick update. My letter to the SCMPost was not printed, nor did it elicit a reply. The case continued, as did the reporting. I did notice though that the ban on names has disappeared, so that we now know the names of the parties. The lady concerned, who was awarded more than $1 billion, was Florence Tsang Chiu-wing. If you know this lady she owes you a drink.

The gentleman concerned was Samathur Li Kin-kan, who is the son of preoperty money pile Samuel Lee Tak-yee (can nobody in this family spell?) aka the Prudential Hotel.

The judge has now retired — nothing untoward: he reached the age of 65 — and received the usual bouquet of farewell compliments. I am sure these were richly deserved, but I wonder if judges approaching the end of the line suffer from the short-time twitches…

I have written to the Department of Justice to see if they can shed any light on the situation. I am not holding my breath.

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