tim's experiment

As headlines go, “Opinion leaders believe business trumps heritage” certainly has the “read-me ingredient”. Because you have to wonder: how on earth did the SCMPost discover that?

The answer, alas, is that they didn’t. I should in fairness note here that people who think the old Central Government Offices should be turned into a shopping mall are, in my opinion, wrong. So I exemined this report with a certain extra skepticism. It was based on a poll, conducted by a market research company, which concluded, according to the newspaper’s report, that “The city’s opinion leaders believe Hong Kong means business and that the need for more commercial space overrides the need for preservation”.  So good by to the West Wing of the CGO.

Later in the story the opinion leaders had turned into “elite respondents”. In the small headline under the main one they were “the city’s elite”. Wow.

Which of course raises the question who are these opinion leaders who are the city’s elite? Or vice versa, if you prefer. Now opinion leaders in this context is a dangerous term. It arise in research into the way people formed their opinions about public issues in American towns. Researchers discovered that a lot of people did not generate their own views about such matters. They tended to follow influential individuals who were prominent in the community, like priests, newspaper editors, the chairmen of clubs and owners of the town’s more important enterprises.  But this is a slippery concept. Some people are opinion leaders because they have strong views, some because they have a lot of contacts. We must note also that this finding related to rather distant matters from most of the people forming the opinions. Remember the old joke: my wife decides the trivial things like where we should live and what we should eat, and I decide the important stuff like who should be the next president and whether we should sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty.  Actually we do not know if opinion on matters like heritage works the same way, or indeed whether opinion on anything in Hong Kong works the same way.

So the pollsters, I suppose, had to guess. We were given two indications of how the  “elite” was selected.  One was a list: “included writers, businessmen, lobbyists and strategists”. Well Shelley said that poets were “the unconscious legislators of mankind” so we can give them the writers, though I suppose they were not numerous. The businessmen are unavoidable because the polling was done by a market research company. Of course they think highly of businessmen. Whether the rest of us are very impressed by the opinions on public issues of this selfish bunch of bandits seems dubious. I do not know any sane person who would accept a second-hand opinion from a lobbyist, because lobbyists spend their time saying what they are paid to say. And what the hell is a strategist in this context? Did we include a few modern Major-Generals?

If you weren’t happy with the list we were given two rules. Respondents had to be aged over 25 and live in households with a monthly income of more than $40,000. In other words, no students, and as Basil Fawlty would say, “no riff raff”.

I really don’t know why we should give a hoot about the results of this exercise.  There is no reason to suppose that there are such things as “opinion leaders” in Hong Kong, still less that the Post and its paid pollsters know who they are. And no group which comfortably includes me can be considered “elite”.

I do wonder, though, why the newspaper thinks this sort of thing worth doing. After all the elite, whoever they are, do not lack opportunities to put their views before the public. Many of the writers and lobbyists polled are for hire. PR people and lawyers will queue up to speak for the rich. If the Post wishes to support the idea that Hong Kong means business it can print editorials on the matter. There is no need to manufacture non-news and the money spent on this exercise might have been devoted to real reporting.

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I seem to be spending far too much time pointing out the deficiencies of our beloved government (no shortage of material, thanks) so let us keep this quick.

The Hong Kong government appoints judges. The Hong Kong government also makes laws. So when one of the judges whom the government has appointed finds that the government is in breach of one of the laws it has passed, the correct response is contrition, not a public attack on the motives of the plaintiff. It does not matter whether the person who asked the court to rule against the Environmental Impact Assessment on the Macau Bridge was motivated by spite, public spirit, affection for clean air, affection for the rule of law, or affection for the Civic Party. The judge is not a member of the Civic Party and his verdict requires respect and contrition from our Chief Executive, not a freshly minted conspiracy theory.

The government is, it says, going to appeal. Now it is of course a fundamental legal principle that judges in the Court of Appeal would not be influenced by anything they would read in the newspapers. Nor would they discuss an upcoming case with a government official, however senior. Still, for the benefit of those lay members of the public who did not receive a full legal education it would be a good idea if officials did not continue to complain that “the judgement” was going to cause delays, cost increases or both in all sorts of White Elephants planned or under construction. What is going to cause the delays etc, is the government’s attempt to get away with impact assessments which meet bare minimum requirements, instead of the careful job required by the law and a proper concern for the local environment.  Hearing constant complaints about “the judgement”  people might naively suppose that officials were trying to influence the judges. And that would never do, would it?

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More than 600 cyclists pedalled from Tsim Sha Tsui to Chaung Sha Wan and back on Wednesday night. This was a “Ride of Silence” in memory of cyclisats killed on the roads. It was apparently timed to coincide with similar rides in more than 300 cities worldwide. It seems rather touching that cuyclists should be so eager to commemorate fellow cyclists who died in road accidents. One does not see “Walks of Silence” to commemorate dead pedestrians. And as policies, driving habits and attitudes to cycling vary considerably around the world, this is not a political event, though no doubt a useful reminder of the importance of safety to all road users. That did not seem to be how local riders saw it, however.

The facts – and they are highly regrettable certainly – are that cyclists are killed on Hong Kong roads at an average rate of one a month. Serious accidents average about 20 a month and others about 140. This is a rather small contribution to death on the roads. Society seems to be willing to contemplate a steady flow of accident casualties, although we all feel painful grief if the victim is someone we know. Whether the figures for Hong Kong are unusually high on a regional, or global, basis we do not know. Nor were we offered any comparisons on — say — the number of accidents related to the number of cyclists. Instead we were offered the simplistic complaint that the figures were unreasonably high and it was all the government’s fault.

Michael Turner, chairman of the Hong Kong Cycling Alliance, said the consistency of the figures over the years proved (!) that cyclists had been neglected by the government. As a result, he said, drivers did not know how to deal with cyclists and treated them “aggressively”. He complained (and I think with good reason) that the government did not take cycling seriously as a form of transport (at least outside Shatin) but also accused it of failing to inform the public that cycling was “” normal, legal and cyclists deserve respect”.

In other words, the steady stream of dead cyclists is all down to the government and killer drivers. Now hang on a minute. No doubt there is something in these complaints. It is a commonplace observation in traffic engineering circles that cycling is safer in cities where there are lots of cyclists, because motorists are more perceptive of things they expect to see often. Standards of driving in Hong Kong are not high and driver education does not seem to include a great deal about dealing with cyclists. On the other hand complaints from cyclists would go down better if they were preceded by some self-criticism. Many cyclists seem to have a death wish.

In the urban area they are usually riding a heavy black sit-up job with a huge basket. Riders of this kind of bike wear neither bright clothing nor head protection. They routinely ride on whichever side of the road suits their purpose, whether that is the left or not, and totally disregard all traffic signals. The bike is frequently loaded to the point where the rider has difficulty keeping it going in a straight line. In rural areas you meet the sporting types. They do at least wear sensible headgear and bright clothing. They seem to be much attracted by Sui Wo Road, where I live, because it is a long hill. Unfortunately these people have jobs so they usually practise in the evening and many of them do not bother with lights. Sometimes they ride two to four abreast, which is asking for trouble. I must say also that the speeds they do going down the hill are well in excess of what I think reasonably safe in my four-wheeled carapace, Of course they are practising for races. This may not be a safe thing to do on a public road.

The report on the silent ride came with two touching stories of recently deceased cyclists, one of whom was “rammed by a minibus” and the other “struck by a car, sustaining serious head injuries”. Both of these accidents were tragedies for the two men concerned, for their families and for their friends. But I am afraid that drivers who have seen their share of local cyclists will also have some questions about these incidents. Was it dark, and if so were the cycles carrying lights? What was the gentleman who sustained fatal head injuries wearing on his head? Were the cyclists on the correct side of the road? Was there a red light in the vicinity? Were they racing, or practising for races? I do not know the answers to these questions and it may be that in the two cases concered the cyclists were conscientiously taking every possible precaution. But in that case they were not, I fear, typical.

Safety needs the cooperation of all road users. Including cyclists.

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There are times when the government has what we used to call a credibility gap. Not everything it says is easy to believe. But the explanation given for the abolition of by-elections floated over a credibility Grand Canyon. I suppose the luckless spokesperson who was put up to say that the government was abolishing by-elections so that the people’s will might prevail had no choice in the matter. He didn’t look as if he believed it and I didn’t either.

The proposal is that instead of holding a by-election the government will simply appoint the loser who collected the most votes in the last election. Clearly this has nothing to do with reflecting the people’s will. If we wished to preserve the election result we would appoint the person next on the list behind the legislator who has died, resigned, or whatever. But of course the People’s Will has nothing to do with it. Nor despite the helpful suggestion from the TVB reporter covering the matter, is this anything to do with the allaged cost of the multiple by-elections which were Not A Referendum, according to the Comrades. I thought the figure given for this was grossly exaqggerated. Anyway our government is not short of money.

What was bothering them, clearly, is the discovery that if a legislator dies, resigns, falls under a bus, is jaled for having an illegal structure on his rooftop or whatever, then the resulting by-election is in effect run on a first-past-the-post basis. There is only one seat on offer, so there is no room for the elaborate electoral subterfuges adopted to compensate for the low levels of support enjoyed by the DAB. Every time the democratic camp will win, unless they contrive something suicidal like running two candidates against each other.  When Anson Chan prevailed over Regina Ip in a by-election this could be put down to personal factors. Ms Chan was famous and Ms Ip had a controversial history. But in the by-elections which were Not A Referendum all the democrats, including the ones you had never heard of, effortlessly prevailed. So this will happen all the time.

Not only does this mean that every time there is a by-election the government and — indirectly — the Comrades will be humiliated. It also means that if the legislators who disappear happen to be government supporters then its automatic majority in the chamber will gradually shrink. And we can’t have that, can we? No such perils attend by-elections in the Functional Constituencies so by-elections there will continue. What a give-away.

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Many observant readers of the SCMPost will have noted, perhaps with more amusement than dismay, that the paper managed to mark the demise of Osama bin Laden by breaking the first rule of journalism and spelling his name wrong.  Having fed the conspiracy theorists the idea of Obama bin Laden the paper then made another error in the correction, which suggests that someone was perhaps not concentrating. This sort of incident generally serves as a peg for age-encrusted former reporters like me to hang a gloomy tirade about the fact that times have changed for the worst and young people in the news business are not as careful as we were.

Well you are not going to get that here. I do not know if the Post prints more mistakes than it did when I first worked there in the early 80s.  But if it does, this is not a result of an increased human failure rate, but changes in the way things work.  In the days when a computer was a mysterious object with a room to itself at the local university, a piece of news was the work of many hands, all of them attached to functioning human brains. Your reporter typed on a piece of paper. In some offices he was expected to produce a carbon copy (known as a black) as well, but usually there was just one copy of the copy. The pieces of paper were intentionally small, because the story would have to be split up and put together again later in the process. So your story, now a pile of pieces of paper, would be passed to the News Editor, or some such title, who overlooked the reporters. He would probably glance at it to make sure that the story had lived up to its possibilities, and pass it to a person picturesquely entitled the Copy Taster. This person would assign it a space on a page, according to its comparative importance and other considerations. It would then go to a page designer, who would attach to it a series of instructions which would produce the desired shape on the page when the story was translated into type.

Then the story, plus instructions and pictures or other adornments, would be passed to another editor who would go through it in exquisite detail, correcting errors and adding instructions to the printers, to whom it goes next. But first, at least on careful newspapers with time, another editor would look through it to make sure the finished result made sense. Then, typically, you would drop it down a hole. The printing machinery was always on the ground floor because of its weight, the eidtorial was upstairs and one-way communication was often achieved through a vertical tube running down the building.

At this point the story fell into the hands of the type-setters and compositors. These were skilful and literate artisans whose training took much longer than ours did. The standard apprenticeship for a journalist was three years; for a printer it was seven. This was a cherished opportunity for bright working class kids who would be urged by older relatives to “learn a trade” to ensure their lifetime employability. Only males did it. Nowadays one would wonder why this was so but in those days it was a common feature of skilled manual jobs and we did not question it.

Your story would at this point be split up, because any part which needed a different type size or column width would have to be done on a different machine. After the type-setter had turned it into a lot of small pieces of metal they would be passed to a table called the random, each still accompanied by its original  piece of paper. Here the story would be reassembled. Its metai version would go in a tray called a galley, from which a galley proof could be made – which is where that phrase comes from. The proof and the original story on paper, would then be passed to another department, known formally as the Correctors of the Press and less formally as the proofreaders. In some newspapers this department was used to meet government requirements that a certain proportion of disabled people should be included in a firm’s employees, so everyone in the room seemed to have a limb missing. In other newspapers the overwhelmingly male atmosphere in the printing department was countered by the recruitment of lots of young women as proofreaders, leading to occasional complaints from their supervisor if the copy was too raunchy, in his view, for young ladies’ eyes.  In theory the proofreaders’ only job was to ensure that the type as set had followed the original copy. In practice a detailed examination of the story often disclosed other problems which could at this stage still be corrected. Meanwhile the story in type form would travel to a place called “the stone” because a slate-topped table was the traditional piece of furniture. Here a whole page would be assembled. At this point there would also be an editorial representative called the Stone Sub. In theory his only job was to resolve problems in fitting the stories into the page according to the plan provided. In practice the stories usually had to be cut a bit, so the Stone Sub would read the proofs as they arrived with an eye to parts which could be pruned without sending the whole story back for resetting. So again, another pair of eyes, another chance to rescue Mr Obama from a terrorist’s tomb stone.

I must not give you the impression that this system produced infallibly correct results. In fact when produced in this way The Guardian included so many misprints that even its own staff called it The Grauniad. But on the whole the system worked. Unfortunately from the point of view of avoiding mistakes most of it has been replaced by the computer. There is no paper copy, there are no type-setters or compositors, there is no Stone Sub and there are no proofreaders. Careful readers will note a small tragedy lurking here, with eager young men spending seven years learning a trade which was wiped out overnight by the microchip. Technology marches on, leaving mangled bodies in its trail. All these people who no longer have to look at a story leave more opportunities for error. To compensate we get the spell checker, but that is, as you might say, knot mulch kelp because it misses a mis-spelling if the erroneous word is a legitimate one in its own right.

A less technological question is the way we produce reporters these days.  When I started it was unusual to meet graduates in the business (outside the Financial Times) and only one UK university offered a journalism degree. Most reporters started on local newsopapers where they did rather boring and repetitive jobs reporting things like whist drives and school sports days, which did not do much for the writing skills but cultivated accuracy about names and numbers. Being a reporter was exciting but not prestigious and it attracted enterprising types who had had discipline problems at school. Nowadays you get complaints, at least in English-speaking countries, that the switch to a graduate in-take has filled the business with fully paid-up members of the middle classes who can draw an inverted pyramid but lack the skills or the inclination to hang about in grubby pubs on the scent of a good yarn. It would be easier to dismiss this as the wails of a few dinosaurs if the newspapers now staffed entirely by graduates and computers were not losing readership in most places…

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Who are they? Who is this “Concerned group of financial professionals” who can afford to rent acres of local newsprint to beg victims of the minibond scam to let by-gones be by-gones? After all if you are going to pose as a friend of all the world, defender of humble shopkeepers and timid tourists, we are entitled to know whether this is a sincere piece of public-spirited peace-making, or a hypocritical attempt to dress financial interests in the garb of concern for public order. There are times, we all know, when honest man may wish to express an opinion pseudonymously. But the Financial Professionals are not seeking to criticise the PRC, call for independence in Tibet or seek the liberation of the latest jailed “subversive”.  The pursuit of peace and quiet on Central pavements is not controversial. So why are we left to ponder the possibility that the people now calling for peace are the same sorry crew who caused the problem in the first place?

Personally I do not go to Central that often, but I must say that I have never been intimidated or otherwise distressed by the protests going on there. It is a cherished right of the ripped off to demonstrate outside the premises of the bandit concerned, and I am quite willing to make whatever small sacrifices may be involved for the rest of us if people exercise that right.

The financial professionals are, it seems, a pretentious lot. I am not sure that anyone in the finanncial business is a professional in anything but the broadest sense. Mostly they sell things. On the whole the suiting is better than in brush sales but the principles involved are the same. Professionals in the more restricted sense are people with ethical obligations which over-ride their personal interests. Can you say “ethical banker” without giggling?

Certainly our financial professionals are not hampered by any old-fashioned notions about truth. The interesting thing about their advertisement is the way it starts with something we can all agree with and gradually escalates the rhetoric. Of course there are protesters in Central, sometimes dressed in funeral garb, sometimes carrying coffins, sometimes talking through bull-horns and usually just sitting on the pavement. This, the financial professionals believe, is making Hong Kong a laughing stock the world over. Well really? Everywhere from Belize to Beijing morning coffee is interrupted by raucous laughter at the spectacle of Hong Kong minibond protests? Pull the other one.

A couple of paragraphs later the amusing crowds have turned into “howling mobs”.  Through the howling mobs “sophisticated international customers” have to push. This is making them so uncomfortable that they are taking their business elsewhere. Rubbish! International business is driven by the same greed that motivates the local variety. Your sophisticated international customer is not going to go home to his sophisticated international boss and say he missed a good deal in Central because he was too intimidated by a mock funeral on the pavement.

The verbal escalation then continues. We are now dealing with “violent uncivil protests”. Two examples of the boodcurdling violence involved are provided. People have resorted to “lying down or sprawling across the roadways” and “camping out at the Cheung Kong Centre”. On the basis of this threatening behaviour “visitors are right to question whether Hong Kong is still a safe and friendly tourist city.” Are they indeed?

Others may find it more interesting to ponder what is going on here. Do the banks think that it is bad for their business to have a grzphic reminder on their doorsteps of the facts that investments may go down as well as up, and that this is a point on which your salesman’s advice is unreliable?  Or is there some deeper significance in the fact that the only detailed complaint is about the Cheung Kong Centre?

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During my occasional run-ins with the anti-smoking loonies I have occasionally suggested that they were by now so addicted to making decisions for other people that they would be opposed to smoking even if a version of it emerged which was entirely healthy. This was necessarily a hypothetical statement, and one which I did not really expect to see in the real world. Traditional snuff is quite harmless compared with the inhaled versions, but that did not save it from being banned. Still it does at least have nicotine in it.

Happily, however, on Tuesday my point was elegantly demonstrated. A company called Shortcut has begun to market a rather expensive gadget which looks like a cigarette, but isn’t one. There is no tobacco in it whatsoever. The user inhales flavoured water vapour. I suppose some people might go on to the real thing. But then some people might not. Some smokers might find that sucking something else helped them to quit. Despite these uncertainties, though, the Post’s intrepid reporter had no difficulty in finding members of the tobacco Taliban who wanted the new gadget to be regulated, or better still banned.   An assistant professor at the HKU School of Public Health (was no real professor available?) said there was “no good evidence that e-cigarettes were safe to use”.

I fear the School of Public Health and the rest of us are not going to see eye to eye until the school gets its head round the idea that we ban things which are proven dangerous. We do not ban things because they have not been proven to be safe to use, at least when ostensibly harmless activities like inhaling water vapour are concerned. Of course what was bothering the True Believers was the effect of the new gadget on young people. Puritans who wish to curb adults’ freedom of choice always claim to be motivated by the desire to protect young people. Heavens, they might get the idea that sticking something in your mouth and sucking it was pleasant. On this basis we shall I suppose soon see calls for a ban on oral sex…

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The news that one of our senior officials has to be hooked up to a gadget every night to make up for the deficiencies of his kidneys unleashed a wave of heartrending stories about the hard life led by ministers. Recent casualties were enumerated, and touching quotes provided about the difficulty of being constantly answerable to the public. Some officials were reported to be working 14-hour days, some to be wilting from overwork.

Well hold your tears. This is predominantly a government of mature to elderly men. Such men generally have the odd medical problem. There is no evidence that being a minister in the Hong Kong SARG is more dangerous or wearing than other jobs commonly taken by men in their 50 and 60s. There is no evidence that appointees are sicker as a group than others of a similar demographic make-up. Nor is there any evidence that being answerable to “the public” is any more difficult and stressful than being answerable to some individual boss who may have his or her own prejudices and caprices.

I also doubt that they actually have that much to do. The big decisions are made in Beijing. I presume people would not have accepted appointment to our puppet regime if they were not happy with that. The small decisions can be left to one’s ever more numerous underlings and assistants. Anyone who is finding himself bowed by an excess of real work needs to sort out his priorities.

But on closer inquiry one finds that they are not bowed by an excess of real work. When you ask how the Secretary for Sewage can possibly justify working 14 hours a day you are told that he has very time-consuming social obligations. So the secretarial day goes something like this. The clock starts at 8 am, when he is collected by the office car and driver. By 8.30 he is in the totally unnecessary daily meeting known as “morning prayers” with all the  other bigwigs. At 9.30 he gets back to his own office and spends a couple of hours with the correspndence, emails, files, etc. Then it’s off to an official luncheon of the Sewage Conractors Association, at which he is the guest of honour. The afternoon is spent on an official visit to the North Kowloon office of the Department of Sewerage Services. Here the staff have spent the last two months making sure he will have a good time. Half an hour before he arrives a lift has been reserved for his exclusive use. The toilet seat has been warmed and the champagne has been cooled.

In the evening we are off to another formal dinner or two. Leading to our hero arriving home about 10 and feeling that he has clocked 14 hours on the job, after a strenuous day of meeting, eating, inspecting and adding to his collection of souvenir plaques. Now of course I realise that this is not as much fun as it sounds. Going to parties as a job sounds wonderful. It soon palls, even on reporters with a well-developed taste for free beer.  On the other hand, and considering the remuneration and the perks involved, the secretary’s routine  certainly beats a great many other jobs you can think of.

So one can offer two suggestions for ministers who feel the job is killing them. One is “get organised”. Send your deputy to morning prayers, limit your engagements, delegate. You are part of a municipal government, not a global empire. Rule one is don’t sweat the small stuff.  Rule two is: it’s all small stuff.

 The other possible course of action is to resign. You can then relax, take a lucrative job with the company which builds Hong Kong’s sewers, and explore the world’s golf courses. Do not be dissuaded by the argument that the government will have trouble finding a talented, enterprising and effective replacement for you. Why should they? How many of your present colleagues are talented, enterprising and effective? Conformist mediocrity is what they really want, and of that there is no shortage.

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While driving home the other day I found myself leading – or at least preceding – a white Ferrari. I had some difficulty in identifying it at first, because you rarely see a white Ferrari. Many Hong Kong drivers will not consider white for a car because it is the colour used for the government fleet.  I suppose if the car you are painting is a Ferrari then that question does not arise. Anyway, the traffic was heavy and neither of us was racing. He did not seem to be in a hurry and I am too old for that sort of thing. So we remained more or less in formation from the traffic lights in Waterloo Road to the traffic lights before the bridge over the Shing Mun river in Shatin, though by that stage he was in front of me. When the lights changed we both advanced, and I was treated to the music of his four exhaust pipes. I noted that he had to change gear twice before we reached the speed at which my Prius, with no prompting from me, abandoned the pretence that it was an electric car and started the petrol engine.

Now clearly a Ferrari — supposing I could afford one — would be an impractical choice for me. I often want to carry more than one passenger. Even if that were not the case I could not consider a car which could not accommodate a bass drum in the boot. The Ferrari drinks petrol, it is far more polluting than my Prius, and it would not fit in my garage. There is no road in Hong Kong where you can legally approach its maximum speed. And yet… I felt that little irrational burst of suppressed emotion. It’s impractical; it’s expensive; it’s polluting, but what red-blooded male – or for that matter female – would not like, at least for a while …?  This makes no sense, but then many instinctive feelings about cars make no sense.

Consider Jeremy Clarkson, whose work – both broadcast and print – I enjoy and admire. He nurtures a violent hostility for the Prius. On one programme he took great delight in destroying one with a heavy machine gun. And I understand the hostility. When you drive a Prius you finally lose contact with the old world in which “motoring” (so called to distinguish it from “driving”, which meant steering horses) was fun. The Prius does not pretend to be a sports car. It does not make those lovely noises. It does not make the nice smells. It is as far as you can get from the old days when the roar of the exhaust drowned out the non-existent radio, the wind ruffled your hair and the characteristic odour of Castrol R tickled your nostrils. The Prius admits that modern travcl is functional. It is a good car to drive in a tunnel queue. It doesn’t have a rev counter but it does tell you how much petrol you are using. It is a sort of metrosecxual motor – practical but in touch with its feminine side.

No wonder Mr Clarkson hates it. It is the wave of the unwelcome future. Mr Clarkson’s affection for a world in which drivers changed their own gears, rode with the roof down and frequently let the tail hang out round a corner is charming, eminently shareable and totally anachronistic. It is on a par with the nostalgic yearning for sailing ships, aeroplanes with four wings and steam locomotives. The world is changing and future cars will increasingly take over the work now done by the driver. This is a pity if you happen to enjoy the work, but on crowded roads enjoyment is anyway in short supply. Where in Hong Kong can you really drive a Ferrari as it ought to be driven?

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Interesting column by Albert Cheng on Saturday urging us all to “unite against violence”. This started with the observation that vulgar language and radical action were OK if within the law, and went on to say that civil disobedience had a moral basis, whether the public agreed with it or not. So far, I thought, rather radical for the SCMPost. Mr Cheng went on to strongly condemn violence in terms which few people would quarrel with, citing as unacceptable the attack on him some years ago, and also the suggestions by people who thought his opposition to the link Reit was costing them money that the attack should be repeated. He also said the media had been remiss in not condemning this suggestion more forthrightly, which may be true; frankly I don’t remember. Mr Cheng went on to say that the media had not improved since, and it became apparent that some long-overdue reference to a current event which had sparked this line of thought was now going to forthcome, as it were.

Here it was. During a protest outside the Legco building one group had staged a “street drama” in which an actor representing Mr Li Ka-shing and other actors representing his bodyguards were attacked by another group of actors representing an angry mob. Mr Cheng’s objection to this performance was that it was “encouraging the public to use violence”.

To which the only possible answer is “Oh no it wasn’t.” Protest is protest, real life is real life, and drama is drama. People do not imitate what they see in dramas. Teenage couples do not emerge from Romeo and Juliet feeling suicidal. Ladies do not go home from performances of Antony and Cleopatra to clasp an asp to their bosoms. The “Rape of Lucrece ” is not generally considered Shakespeare’s best effort but it has never been accused of encouraging sex crimes. Violence is used in drama as a metaphor. Viewers have no difficulty in distinguishing it from real life. I do not suppose the simulated overthrow of Mr Li Ka-shing was very good drama, but it was drama, not violence. If Mr Cheng wants a peg in which to hang a condemnation of violence it should be a specimen of real violence, not a piece of artistic expression, however low in quality.

I was left wondering, actually, if he was really up to something else, and perhaps the objection to the street theatrics was not so much to the violence as to the fact that it was rude about Mr Li. No doubt there is a perfectly good column to be written about how Mr Li is a nice man who is kind to children, dogs and needy universities,  though readers will not find it here.  Probably there is also a good column to be written to the effect that local media are not appropriately vociferous in their condemnation of violence. But that needs better evidence than the fact that street theatrics are reported without comment.

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