tim's experiment

The rule of law requires, or so it seems to me, not only that the law should be obeyed but also that it should know its limits.  The rule of law is sabotaged, not served, if laws are passed which cannot be enforced, or if courts presume to sit in judgement on matters over which they have no control. Traditionally one of the limits on the powers of the courts was the geographical terrain covered by their jurisdiction. There have always been some exceptions to this. Treason, for example, would still be treason if the offending action took place abroad, as it often did. Lately we seem to have seen a good deal more. Some countries feel their courts should be prepared to try people accused of serious crimes committed elsewhere, like General Pinochet. Some feel that their own citizens should face criminal charges at home for crimes against children in other jurisdictions where such matters are pursued less avidly. At least in these cases the defendant, if not the place of the crime, is in the country claiming jurisdiction and the court can inflict punishment on him or her. So the proceedings are not pointless.

Which is more than you can say for the Hong Kong government’s decision to hold an inquest into the Manila bus tragedy. The Coroner, we were told last week, had “called” or “summoned” more than 100 witnesses from the Philippines. The correct word here is “invited” because it is entirely up to such witnesses whether they wish to spend a day or two participating in a Hong Kong legal circus. Or not. Anyone who has anything to hide would be well advised to stay away and probably will. Actually it is difficult to see what this exercise can be expected to achieve. The UK government has occasionally held inquests into the deaths of Brits abroad, when there was genuine uncertainty about how they died. But this is hardly the case with the tragedy in Manila, which has been very thoroughly explored already. We know who killed the victims and how they died. That is all a Coroner is supposed to be concerned with anyway. When I reported on inquests we were frequently reminded that the purpose of the proceedings was merely to arrive at the right choice from a limited selection of verdicts: the proceedings were not intended to produce a detailed account of the death, not supposed to gratify the curiosity or resentment of surviving relatives, and not supposed to lay the foundations for civil action later by or on behalf of victims.  People may feel disappointed that the very thorough inquiry by the Manila government was not followed by more stringent punishment for officials who erred. But that is hardly an argument which can be advanced seriously by our government, whose idea of suitable punishment for an official who commits a gross error of judgement is that she should apologise. But only if she has not done so already.

Fans of our local system will wish to interject at this point that errors in considering applications for post-retirement employment from former mandarins do not lead to loss of life, unlike errors in handling hostage situations. This is true in a restricted direct sense. Nobody dies if a senior civil servant cuddles a property mogul. In a broader sense it is not. Two people died during last week’s cold snap because they were sleeping in the street. If Hong Kong’s housing policies were driven by social need instead of the wish to cosset a small circle of property developers then maybe we would not have people dying under our flyovers like the heroine of the Little Match Girl.

To return to our bus tragedy, what is going to happen after the inquest? Normally the Coroner might make recommendations. Even our government frequently ignores them. It is difficult to imagine any great new insights emerging from the Hong Kong proceedings. In fact as there will be a general absence of such useful formalities as a visit to the scene of the tragedy it is rather easier to imagine the proceedings producing some thoroughly unhelpful observations which will give grievous offence without helping anybody. The inquest may publicise some things in Hong Kong which are not widely known here, but it will hardly have anything to say which is news in Manila. The government there can afford to greet any suggestions made with one of those phrases which our government uses when contemplating an unhelpful public opinion poll – something along the lines of all views will be considered with the attention which they deserve. Basically the Philippines may have problems but it is not a sort of diplomatic domestic helper at the beck and call of the Hong Kong government.

Well the inquest will produce a lot of media fodder, enrich some lawyers and perhaps gratify some Hong Kongers who want to watch a Manila official squirm in the witness box. No doubt it can be defended along roughly the same lines as the Asian Games – it will encourage local legal culture, boost interest in judicial matters and give our aspiring competitors a chance to perform before a large sympathetic audience. Students now still in Form Three will later attribute their choice of a legal career to the inspiring and educational effect of a long inquest on an overseas gunman’s victims. It will be worth the expense, about which we have so far been told very little. Meanwhile our Travel Advisory people continue to pretend that the Philippines are more dangerous to travellers than Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia or Colombia, which suggests that either ignorance or political vindictiveness is polluting what should be a source of objective information.

I wonder. The official inquiry in Manila concluded that the affair had held up a mirror to a society and showed distressing levels of corruption and incompetence. That was a brave conclusion. Hong Kong’s official reaction suggests distressing levels of arrogance, ignorance, and racism. But I fear introspection of this kind is not our leaders’ forte.

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Never let it be said that our Mainland brothers have no sense of humour. The morning before Liu Xiaobo’s chair was awarded the real Peace Prize in Oslo, readers of the local newspapers were treated to the news of a rival award, called the Confucius Peace Prize, bestowed in Beijing. Clearly no trouble had been spared to make this an occasion beyond satire. The recipient, a Taiwanese politician, was not present, so the bauble was bestowed on a sweet but puzzled 6-year-old girl. Her connection with the prize-winner, or peace, was not explained. The winner was supposed to be selected by an internet poll, but it eventually emerged that this had been cancelled because of “technical problems”.  So quite how the winner was picked remains a mystery. The shortlist, however, was compiled by four professors at Beijing universities. The eight people on it comprised, reportedly, the winner, one poet who works at the Ministry of Culture, the Panchen Lama and six foreigners. The prize money came from – ah, another mystery, – someone who “loves peace and wishes to remain anonymous”.

The idea, apparently, is that peace (like democracy?) has a Chinese version visible only from Beijing, and those who pursue it should be honoured in their turn. Although I noticed that on the same day the Foreign Ministry was being less modest. The Nobel committee, said a spokesman, “are in the minority. The Chinese people and the overwhelming majority of people in the world are opposed to what they do”. Let us all hail another symptom of China’s peaceful rise; the Beijing Foreign Ministry now speaks not only for the Chinese people, but for the overwhelming majority of people in the world.

Well we must not be unkind to something which is still in its infancy. But I do wonder whether giving a peace prize is the most promising option, if the Chinese government wishes to give international prizes. Norway may be a small country, but it is demonstrably peaceful. It has never invaded anyone. Admittedly this is partly because it only became an independant country in 1905, but some countries manage lots of invasions in a mere 50 years. Like the PRC. Frankly the idea of “peace with Chinese characteristics” is not very convincing. Giving the prize to a Taiwanese KMT politico suggests that the Chinese idea of peace follows that of Carl von Clausewitz. The great military theorist pointed out in one of his more sardonic moments that the person who invades your country is always a pacifist: he wants nothing better than that you should submit to him without fighting. Anyway, in view of the PLA’s rich military history – not to mention its huge size – it may be a bit early for China to be regarded as an international authority on the pursuit of peace. Distributors of international prizes should stick to matters on which they have demonstrable expertise.

So I suggest that the Chinese government should institute a Confucius Prize for the world’s top despot. This is a matter on which China, with its eclectic collection of international friends — and its own venomous internal habits — can speak with authority. Indeed they can skip the shortlist phase of  the selection and go straight on to vote. All the likely candidates will be found on the list of countries which boycotted the Nobel ceremony this year. I dare say that any of this fine selection of nasties and ne’erdowells would be very happy to get a prize. And for people like this, such chances do not come up very often.  At least we could trust them to turn up to receive it.

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Well the good news is that a Hong Kong restaurant has been awarded three Michelin stars. The bad news is that if you ask for it, this restaurant is quite willing to serve you sharksfin soup. That was enough to get local tree-huggers, or fish-huggers, up in arms. Michelin should take sustainability into consideration, said a WWF spokesperson. “Excessive consumption is driving sharks to extinction,” she said, “and the award will indirectly encourage further consumption.”

I have several quarrels with this approach. One is that sharks are nasty carnivorous creatures which do not reciprocate the warm and cherishing feelings which they evoke from some human beings.  Species are going extinct all the time. This is nature’s way. If it is the shark’s turn, well it coundn’t happen to a more deserving fish.

Leaving the lovability of sharks aside, though, the WWF seems to be taking the oppportunity for a good whinge on a slender foundation here. I suppose they were put up to it by the newspapers and the opportunity was irresistible. But the restaurant concerned is not going to ram shark fins down the throats of reluctant diners. The consumption of fins will be entirely at the discretion of the customer. If the customer has any sense he will spurn an over-priced and under-flavoured dish. Sharks’ fins don’t actually taste of very much at all.  The WWF has every right to urge diners to consider sustainability in their menu choices. Asking restaurants to participate in the latest conservation PR stunt is another matter. Fins are expensive because they are hard to get hold of. If they are banned by some restaurants, or some restaurant guides, they will become more, not less attractive. And that “indirectly encourage further consumption” phrase looks dangerously vague. How much further consumption? Presumably there is a threshold below which the WWF would admit it was wasting people’s time. Have we passed it?

Also I think the Michelin people have the right to say that politics, the environment, and other worthy causes are important and interesting, but not what their guide is about. The guide is about the food. All that a Michelin star says is that the food in a restaurant is good. It says nothing of the sustainability or other worthy qualities of the restaurant’s menu policy. This is a sensible arrangement because it would be very difficult to run such a guide any other way. Lots of food is the result of processes open to one objection or another. The things done to geese to produce foie gras, for example, are painful and disgusting.  As for veal … These are matters which a sensitive diner should consider carefully.  WWF has every right to persuade people to stop ordering shark’s fin. If that is not producing the desired results, try harder. Restaurants give their customers what the customers want. This is the way to stay in business.

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There is something endearingly antiquated about the row over a Catholic priest, Father Thomas Law, who was rather misleadingly reported as “likening Li Ka-shing to the devil”.  Generally the modern habit is to keep the religious rhetoric for religious contexts and condemn the exploiters of the poor or gullible in terms borrowed from sociology or economics.  Perhaps this is a shame. Anyway I thought Father Law was subjected to a certain amount of poetic licence by local reporters. Actually he did not compare anyone to THE devil. In a clearly jovial speech at a party he compared property developers generally to devils,  an obvious metaphor because he was speaking at a Halloween party. Devils in the plural are a different matter from Beelzebub in  the singular. Plural devils used to flourish in mediaeval paintings, where they could be found pitchforking sinners into the furnace, but they don’t really feature in modern mythology, at least outside the wilder fringes where exorcism in still practised, and in the resulting movies.  This was not a devastating figure of speech in its context. It seems this point was not lost on the property developers, because none of the others has complained.  Mr Li featured by name in the next sentence, which contained the observation that he should be worried about what would happen to him when he died. This was perhaps a bit personal. As I understand it in the Catholic view we are all sinners so most of us should share the same concern.

On the other hand I seem to recall that Father Law’s boss — the real boss, not the one in charge of fund-raising for Caritas — did say something to the effect that it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. If the difficulty is proportionate to the wealth it seems a legitimate theological observation that Mr Li will have a lot of talking to do when he reaches the Pearly Gates.  Father Law then went on to say something critical about Cafe de Coral, but so many people have done that lately that this was not considered newsworthy.

The really interesting bit comes next. There was a telephone conversation. On one side we have a senior member of the Li empire. We were assured that this was not Mr Li in person but that is not surprising. Being rich means never having to do anything for yourself. Even procreation can be outsourced these days. On the other end of the conversation we have a senior spokesman for the Church who, we are also assured, did not apologise. It seems he offered some carefully worded assurance that Father Law’s views were not necessarily shared by the Pope, and in return received an assurance that Mr Li would continue to donate to Caritas.

It seemed to me rather unfortunate that these two topics had come up at the same time. Many years ago it was considered acceptable for the Church to sell what were called “indulgences”. The way this worked was that you supported the Pope of the day in his purchases of hand-painted chapel ceilings and other artistic extravagances, and in return were promised a reduction in your stay in purgatory, a sort of half-way house between Heaven and Hell where moderate sinners could pay for their errors before joining the Choir Invisible. But that was many years ago. While I cannot say the Beatitudes are my daily reading I think I have visited them often enough to say that in the traditional version there is nothing along the lines of “Blessed are the property developers, because they shall be cossetted by the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong”, and nor was there one saying “Blessed are donors to Caritas, because all their sins shall be forgiven them.”

Well, Mr Li’s charitable impulses do him credit. Quite how much credit I leave to Saint Peter. Where a church which is supposed to “hunger and thirst after righteousness” should draw the line in its fund-raising is a tricky matter. I realise that the church sincerely wishes to help the poor and the money to do this has to come from somewhere. Also, local standards in these matters are low. Few charities refuse the assistance of the Jockey Club, whose money comes from the industrial exploitation of a notorious vice.  Still a church is a church, not the Heung Yee Kuk. Like most Hong Kong people I am not a Catholic. Quite a lot of non-Catholics, I imagine, found Father Law’s original observations refreshing and apposite, if expressed in what seemed to us rather picturesque language.  The subsequent non-apology was … shall we say less inspiring?

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I am not often moved to comment on American politics but I see the new Speaker is a gentleman who spells his name Boehner … which, The Economist observed for readers who might be confused on this point, rhymes with “trainer”. This will have come as a profound disappointment for many readers who will have supposed that it rhymed with “loner”.  This is, after all, in conformity with the usual practice. The “oe” combination usually comes out as a long “o”, as in Boeing or Goebbels. Putting an “h” on the end of it shouldn’t make any difference. If it was meant to rhyme with trainer it would be spelled Behner, you would think.

Now of course there is a reason why Mr Boehner might prefer to rhyme with “trainer”. Boner, in the slang of many English-speaking countries, is not only the word for a butchery implement; it is also the word for – um – an erect male sexual organ. Indeed before Mr Boehner’s pronunciation preferences had been pronounced in Hong Kong, the internet was already alive with some rather indecent plays on words. Mr Obama was to face “stiff opposition”. His opponent would give him a “hard time”.  Other authors speculated on the headlines which might accompany Clintonesque indiscretions on the part of Mr Boehner, supposing he perpetrates any. Clearly for a politician who wishes to be taken seriously the Bayner pronunciation is rather important.

Still it is, I fear, wrong. We must salute Mr Boehner’s exemplary persistence and success in persuading people to adopt a thoroughly implausible version of his name for public purposes. Even TVB is rhyming with “trainer”, which considering the problems they used to have with Leicester City is a remarkable achievement. But there is a cost to Mr Boehner’s success. Many of us have suspected for a long time that Americans are a puritanical lot who also cannot be bothered to pronounce foreign names properly. A plausible theory, it seems.

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The whole town is talking, as journalists say in their usual exaggerated way, about the goings-on in the Lee clan. The story was that the elder Lee (otherwise known as Henderson Land) was keen to have grandsons to inherit the family firm. His second son had married and done his best, but produced only daughters. Eldest son is not married, but did his duty by getting a surrogate mother in the US to give birth to triplets on his behalf. The three babies have now arrived in Hong Kong.  The Standard reported this entirely as a feel-good happy story, which seemed a bit odd to me, but I must in fairness report that it was a better effort than that of the Post, which missed the item completely.  It did not seem to occur to anyone, at this stage, that some people might find the whole idea a bit controversial.

In the Standard’s follow-up story the next day some misgivings had appeared. One radio caller apparently thought the whole deal was morally wrong and unfair to the kids. A millionaire was quoted as saying that “it’s more reasonable to have children after marriage”, which could be considered a bit of an understatement. Another caller said that “they are not harming anyone and everyone has gotten what they needed,” which seemed to be rather missing the point.

Which is, I think, that using medical technology to help people with medical problems is one thing. Using it to allow very rich people to, in effect, buy babies, is another. This is not a question of the acceptability of surrogacy. In fact, strictly speaking, the woman who bore the babies is not a surrogate. A surrogate is, according to the Oxford Dictionary, “a substitute, especially a person deputizing for another in a specific role or office”.  In this case there is no wife for whom the surrogate is a substitute so she is not a surrogate. She is, I suppose, a sort of rented incubator. We were not told where the eggs came from – from the incubator or someone else – but it seems that the “father” was able to stipulate the sex and that a multiple birth was not unexpected, so I suppose the actual meeting of sperm and egg was done in a laboratory dish. The father’s part of the proceedings was limited to 20 minutes with a test tube and a copy of Playboy, and paying a very large bill.  

The new father of three now says he is studying fatherhood and intends to be a hands-on Dad, changing diapers like any other single parent. On the other hand I suppose being a vice chairman of Henderson Land takes up quite a lot of his time and he has left an awful lot of the proceedings so far to the hired help, so there may be some doubts about this. He also says he hopes to get married eventually, though I would have thought that finding a Miss Right who is romantically inclined to a pre-existing family of four may be a bit challenging, even for a millionaire.

I believe there is some reason to worry about the babies. Firstly, being a twin (as I am) has some serious disadvantages. I suppose being a triplet is even worse. The appearance of Mum, when Dad gets round to it, is going to raise some tricky questions. Are further offspring on the cards, and if so will they be treated differently? Or are they not on the cards, and will the future Mrs Lee have to live with the fact that some nameless American lady had done her job for her before she even reached the altar?

Clearly the Lee clans’ activities are legal. Whether they are moral is not a question on which I feel qualified to have an opinion. I just think the whole thing is in very poor taste. If you  are rich enough you can buy almost anything. “Can”, not “should”.

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The government web page has now sprouted a little logo which invites you to go straight to what officials call the Outbound Travel Alert system. This would he a kind thought if the alert system was trustworthy. It is not. The list supplied has three categories. There are countries in which travellers should exercise caution and monitor the situation:  India, Indonesia, Iran, Nepal, Pakistan and Thailand. This is a reasonable observation given the recent history of the countries concerned, though the inclusion of Indonesia may be a bit unkind. Then there is a category of countries which should be avoided unless your travel is essential. There are currently no countries at all in this category. Then there is a category to which all travel should be avoided. There is one country in this category: the Philippines. And this is of course preposterous. There are some hazards to travelling in the Philippines, no doubt, but to suggest that the country is in a class of its own, two degrees more perilous than the scenes of recent civil wars, is too outlandish to be taken seriously.

Now of course we know how this happened. After the bus tragedy in Manila the Hong Kong government in essence put the Philippines on its no-go list as a sign of displeasure. There may have been some justification for caution in the immediate aftermath of the killings, when there was at least a theoretical possibility that the victims had been chosen because they were from Hong Kong, rather than just being an unlucky pick by the hostage-taker. This possibility has now wholly receded. None of the millions of words devoted to the tragic event has suggested that it was in any way connected with the nationality of the hostages. Having put the advisory on, though, officials are now faced with a difficulty: having had no good reason for putting it on they now have no good excuse for taking it off. So it sits there, a shameless lie, commemorating our officials’ contempt for the people they serve.

Because the travel advisory system is an important safety measure. But it only works if people trust it. If it is used as – say – a way of imposing economic sanctions on governments we are having a tiff with, then it loses its informational value entirely. If the alert on the Philippines is ostentatiously unwarranted, why should people feel worried by those for India, Indonesia and other unhappy spots?  Actually there are probably parts of the mainland where one would be well advised to exercise caution and monitor the situation. But I somehow do not think we shall ever see a travel advisory for them. If the government is not going to offer honest advice it would be better if it offered no advice at all.

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One of my more easily shareable birthday presents was a translation of a poem:

At the foot of Shade Mountain

The sky, a woolly tent over the wilderness

Blue is the sky; boundless is the wild.

Grass bends in the wind, cattle and sheep showing

Since I first heard of it 30 years ago I have found something strangely haunting about the vision of tall grass bending in the wind, revealing previously hidden cattle and sheep. I would love to see it. One suspects a certain amount of poetic licence here. Grass tall enough to hide a sheep I can accept, but a cow?  On the other hand experience has taught me not to jump to conclusions about these things. I used to think that the odd-shaped mountains in so many Chinese paintings were purely conventional, perhaps partly motivated by the desire to fill a very vertical canvas. Upon coming to Hong Kong, where photographs of Chinese mountains are everywhere, I discovered that the paintings were no more than faithful renditions of some unusual but perfectly authentic pieces of landscape. So I am keeping an open mind on the cow-high pasture. Still the place sounds beautiful, and reading things like this brings on a vigorous urge to get up there and see it.

This urge is then attenuated by reading the daily news, in which the picture of China, while still doing justice to the scenery, also includes currupt officials, violent policemen and a pervasive absence of anything recognisable as the rule of law. It is one of life’s little mysteries that a government which cannot protect the constitutional rights of citizens in the suburbs of its own capital should be so eager to extend its rule to distant islands and provinces. This poroduces a dilemma, particularly for foreigners who have studied Chinese history and culture before making the aquaintance of its modern manifestation. There used to be occasional complaints in Hong Kong that Foreign Office mandarins who had studied up on China developed a romantic attachment to the Tang Dynasty version of the country which was a severe handicap when dealing with the Deng Dynasty. One of my friends who, after growing up in Hong Kong, studied Chinese in the UK, lamented the number of his classmates who were distressed by the discovery that the country they had come to admire in its literary manifestations was in real life a nasty police state.

Of course the situation is in a way much worse for Hong Kong people, who would like to take their place in the great historical epic which is the heritage of China but are all too well aware that the epic has had some nasty moments in the last 50 years and not all of them have finished yet. In this morning”s papers was a story — not at all unusual — about a security firm in Beijing which had been caught rounding up petitioners, robbing and beating them before sending them back to their home provinces, under a business arraangement with the local governments concerned. What, I wonder, goes through the mind of a faithful local left-winger when he reads a story like that? It cannot be dismissed as capitalist propaganda. Like most such stories it comes from a mainland newspaper. One can say that China is better than it was, but when you start from a condition in which politically motivated persecution, violence, murder and even cannibalism are not just tolerated but encouraged as a matter of state policy, then a lot of improvement can still leave much to be desired. I suppose the solultion to the problem is to say that the government represents the country and “my country right or wrong”. G.K. Chesterton observed that this was like saying “my mother drunk or sober”.

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It is nice to see it almost universally recognised that the cost of housing in Hong Kong is becoming outrageous. Last week saw the passage of another grim landmark – a former public housing unit sold for more than a million dollars. I hope this made the idiot ideologies who insisted that public housing flats should be available for purchase by their occupants feel better. It made me feel that a flat which mighrt once have housed the desperate was now available to house millionaires. No doubt there will be limits to the gentrification of former public housing estates, if only for reasons of prestige, or lack of it. Still, we are left with a situation in which buying a small flat for a newly wed couple is beyond the reach of even two of the sort of salaries which most young Hong Kong people can command. Buying a flat in which one might wish to raise a few kids is simply beyond the reach period.

I do not seek your sympathy for me. Actually the Hamlett family benefited greatly from Mr Tung Chee-hwa’s demonstration that a government which controls the market in land can make house prices go down as well as up. While everyone was complaining about negative equity we bought a house which we could never have afforded before and we have not been able to afford since. What this experience illustrates, of course, is that price movements in any direction are not good or bad in themselves. They benefit some people and cost other people money. This explains why there is a certain infirmity of purpose in the government’s present attempts to reduce the rate at which the cost of housing is increasing. I put it in this rather elaborate way because I think to say that the government is trying to lower housing costs is to give them credit they do not deserve. There are two reasons for this.

One is that actually our legislators and their sycophants and small horses have their own interests at stake. If you look at the register of members interests, or take the trouble (thank you, SCMPost) to look up the interests of the political appointees who, at enormous expense, carry their briefcases, you will find very people who own no flats, quite a lot who own one, and a clear majority who own two or more. No doubt in a few cases the extra flat is for a relative, the domestic servants or the book collection. But in the majority of cases our leaders are investors in the very racket which they are now pretending to deplore. They have bought flats in the hope of making money by selling them at higher prices. I do not suggest that we shall see anything as shameless as people seeking to boost housing prices as a way of increasing the value of their own investments. I do believe that people in this position are likely to find arguments which tend to complacency more persuasive than those which tend to urgent action.

The second reason is the “negative equity” con. Look, if you buy a house its value as a resale object is a matter of pure fiction. You own a house or flat. You can live in it. If the price goes down you can still live in it. It is just as warm and waterproof as it was before. Now there is a catch in some places, and that is that you may need to move. If you live in a mining town and the mine closes then you will probably not be able to find a job locally. As large numbers of people are in the same position it is quite likely that the value of your home will fall, and you may well find it is worth less than the amount you still owe the bank. This presents an agonising dilemma and explains much of the pain caused in places like America and Spain by the bursting of local property bubbles. The choices lie between bankruptcy and unemployment, with a strong possibility of both. But this will never happen in Hong Kong, because ours is a small city with decent public transport. One would not, if given the choice, choose to commute between, say, Chai Wan and Tin Shui Wai. But it is possible, in the sort of times commonplace in sprawling commuter cities in other countries. So a Hong Kong person whose flat is having a downmarket moment can sit it out.

Negative equity is not a threat to home-owners. It is, of course, a threat to real estate investors. If the flat is worth less than you borrowed to buy it then your prospects of a profit are dim. It is also a threat to banks. Owners whose homes are worth less than the outstanding loan may be tempted to throw in the towel, send the bank the keys and leave it with a house or flat worth less than the loan for which it was supposed to be security. So any time there is negative equity we will here a concerted moan of dismay and sympathy for the victims, which is actually a hymn to hypocrisy. It will, though, be heard by Hong Kong officials, whose ears are particularly sensitive to any communication from the real estate business or the banks which support and batten off it.

So do not expect too much. It has been interesting, in recent months, to see how many people now recognise that Hong Kong enjoys government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. It has been even more interesting to see many commentators suggesting that unless this is changed there will be some kind of violent explosion. This is all rather theoretical, though. And anyway, in a competition between greed and fear, greed usually comes out on top.

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It is beyond dispute that the tragedy in Manila was a tragedy. Grief is fully justified. Frustration with the local police is equally understandable, but perhaps less justified.

Should such an unhappy event take place in Hong Kong we will have to consider ourselves very lucky. Because it seems that everyone and his dog in this town, from Donald Tsang downwards via various pundits, columnists etc. to the man in the street. is an expert on the way in which such problems should be handled. The consensus among local talking heads is that the attempts to rescue the hostages were bungled, the police were bumbling, and this is why the whole thing ended in tears. Comparisons with the Keystone Cops were commonplace. The Phillipines, we were told, was a hotbed of corruption and incompetence, and that was why it should be punished with a government-organised travel boycott for not having a well-organised police force like ours, in which deranged cops only shoot themselves or – occasionally – each other.

The one thing which all these commentators have in common is, if you will excuse a blunt expression, ignorance. How many of us have watched live coverage of a hostage situation lasting several hours, after all? Answer, probably, none. We know that as hostage rescues go, having half the hostages killed doesn’t count in anyone’s training manual as a success. On the other hand having half of them rescued more or less unharmed is a distinct improvement on the worst possible outcome. Nobody learns anything about hostage rescues from news programmes, because on news programmes time moves very quickly. If the drama lasts an hour, or a week, you will only see 30 seconds of it: the SAS man swoops through the window, stun grenades pop distantly, the triumphant prime minister says a few words and it is on to the next sensation.

Consequently, I fear, most of us get our idea of what a hostage situation should look like from on-screen dramas of one kind or another. The problem with this is that they follow the rules for drama, which go roughly like this: the situation has to be sorted out in 90 minutes; the hostages, unless extremely obnoxious, must survive; the hostage taker, unless extraordinarily sympathetic, must die; the hero, who is usually a policeman, will unerringly make the right decisions. This is not because scriptwriters are dishonest, it is because time is money, viewers are easily bored, and they have to meet the standards set on other programmes. When do you ever see the hero go round the block in search of a parking place? He doesn’t, because there isn’t time for that sort of thing. What comes next has to come next.

The consequence of this long period of media training is that most people have no idea what a real hostage taking should look like. I have no idea either, but knowing your limitations is important. Some things – like construction sites and slaughter houses (or, to use the American euphemism, meat packing plants) – look a mess even when they are working properly. Others, like the annual meetings of listed companies, look smooth and well-organised even if the underlying reality is chaotic.  You have to wonder what the people who are complaining about the performance of the Manila police are comparing it with. Would they rather have German efficiency? At the Munich Olympics all the hostages died. Would they rather have the Brits running things, and have innocent foreigners blown away in the underground? Or should we call in the Yanks, and hope we don’t get the people who were in charge at Waco? I get the distinct impression that what most commentators really want is not the SAS or the Navy SEALS or the Los Angeles SWAT team or the Russian Spetznaz. What they want is Keanu Reeves.

Some of the complaints were clearly of cosmetic matters. One columnist complained that some of the Manila policemen were overweight. Another thought the hammer used on the coach windows disappointingly domestic. Oddly enough the only person I met who did not complain about the Manila police was a Hong Kong police person who might find himself in charge of a similar event here, if we are so unfortunate. His only comment was “There but for the grace of God go I.”  It is about time people recognised that hostage situations are unpredictable, difficult and do not always have happy endings. The Manila police may not be the bees’ knees of law enforcement. But they could be seen approaching a bus containing a homicidal lunatic armed with an M-16. Those of us who are not up for such dangerous activities would do well to shut up.

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