tim's experiment

This blog has been neglected lately because I have been away so much. One trip to Jakarta. Indonesia is a friendly and fascinating place, but Jakarta provides a chilling glimpse of where we might be heading. Basically there are two cities. One is inhabited by the rich, including the corporate expat set. This consists of large hotels, shopping malls, large houses with numerous servants and upmarket clubs, ditto. These places have elaborate security of the sort found in Hong Kong only at the more controversial consulates. Bags are examined, metal detected, car boots opened for inspection. Travel between these secure enclaves is usually by car. Visitors will take a cab, but residents tend to have something large and solid with a paid driver and smoked glass windows.

Leave your cocoon and go round the corner, and you enter another world. The wardrobe is by Les Miserables and the environment is clearly not disturbed by considerations of Food and Environmental Hygiene. Small children ask you for money and “ladies” of uncertain gender offer services which Bill Clinton dows not count as sex. Elderly folk can be seen settling down for the night in other people’s doorways. Life is precarious and basic. Intruders from the other world will feel uncomfortable – perhaps they should – if not unsafe. And this is all, I suppose, the standard arrangement where many people are very poor and a few people are very rich.

This is not where we are but it may be where we are heading. Statistical measures of Hong Kong’s wealth distribution have been moving in an ominous direction for years. Under a government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich the upper end of the income distribution is bound to prosper. The only question is what happens to the rest of us. At the moment there are no places in Hong Kong where a rich person need feel unsafe, and — apart from clubs — few places from which a poor person is barred if he can handle the dress code. Some senior civil servants and top business bods appear to live in a different world; that is by choice, not necessity. But how long will this last?

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Went to the Institute of Education this week for the inauguration of a new show at the Museum of Education, a small but delightful few rooms which nestle in the middle of the IEd’s stunningly beautiful campus. The latest exhibition concerns Hong Kong’s village schools, which usually started as voluntary efforts by villages or groups of villages. There would be one class, the premises were often the clan hall, and the education provided was, I suppose, basic. One slightly chilling exhibit is a small cane. Apparently new pupils were supposed to present their teacher with a group of symbolic presents. The cane indicated a willingness to be chastised in the pursuit of learning. Eventually most of the schools were adopted by the government, provided with proper buildings, and then in due course closed as too small. Some of the exhibits brought back personal memories. There is one of those stencilling machines which we used before photocopiers came along. You prepared a stencil by typing on some special, and rather expensive, paper. This was mounted on the drum and the operator then wound a handle – once for each copy, which discouraged gratuitous copying quite effectively.

Then I came across a little unheralded gem. I have often wondered what happens to those sheets on which guests are invited to sign their names at weddings, openings, ribbon cuttings etc. Well many years ago (late 50s or early 60s I think) they had one of these sheets at the opening of a new school campus in the New Territories, and somebody carefully preserved it. And there it is. In the midst of a forest of Chinese names, which I could not read, there were four English ones. They are not terribly well written because the only implement available was apparently a Chinese brush. But a careful observer can distinguish the names of David Akers-Jones, Denis Bray and their respective wives. Sir David, as he now is, is of course still with us. Mr Bray, alas, is not.

This is a shame because we got on well in our occcasional meetings, and also because in rowing terms Mr Bray was an important landmark. I stumbled across this by accident. All rowing men in England have heard of a frightfully exclusive rowing club, which only admits people who have won certain events. As the mere captain of an Oxford college which rowed in the second divison I did not qualify. The club is called after Leander, a mythical Ancient Greek oarsman, and it is so old that the tie has none of the usual stripes found on club ties. It is simply one solid colour, a rather alarming shade of pink. One evening I attended the  annual Christmas drinks thing which the Information Services Department threw (I don’t know if this is still going on) for the press. Mr Bray was the man in charge of the department at the time, so he was greeting new arrivals. He was wearing a conspicuously pink tie, so thinking that he had been at Cambridge and would understand the joke, I said, “Hello, I see you’re wearing your Leander tie.”  And it turned out that in fact he was wearing his Leander tie. He was immensely chuffed that someone had recognised it, and seems to have spent the rest of the evening talking about it. Because I received a succession of visitors who wanted an explanation of what was so special about The Tie and why Mr Bray was chiding colleagues who had not recognised it.

You can find the whole story behind this in the Bray book, which is now on-line and a good read. During the first half of the 20th century British rowing was divided into two hostile camps. There were the Orthodox, who sought men of a standard shape who were taught to row in a standard, geometrically efficient way. Then there were the followers of a coach called Steve Fairbairn, who propounded the view that this was all unnecessary nonsense, and the coach should concern himself only with what happened at the end of the oar which went in the water. The Orthodox people had science on their side. A good Orthodox crew also looked good. Fairbairn crews sometimes looked a mess. People could do different things as long as the eventual result was the same. On the other hand people who were too small or oddly shaped for Orthodox crews often more than made up for their physical shortcomings by trying harder. The great stronghold of the Fairbairn school was Jesus College Cambridge, and their greatest triumph was the crew from that college which won everything, up to and including the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley, in 1947.

And Denis Bray was a member of that crew. So when they’ve finished with his autograph in Taipo they might consider sending it to Cambridge.

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Our nearest shops are the small mall surrounded by Sui Wo Estate. This was an early Home Ownership estate and the mall provided does not have the luxurious appointments found in later models. There is no airconditioning. but an elaborate two-storey structure on vaguely Moorish lines. It provides shade and ventilation but does little for you in heavy rain. There is a wet market, a supermarket, some eateries, a hardware shop and so on. The shops seem to do quite well because there is no competition in Sui Wo Road and not much in Fotan, the nearest town with a small shopping centre. The mall is also a bit of a social centre. Old folk sit under the trees, buses and minibuses discharge their loads, the shopkeepers know each other and many of their customers. The upstaits part, which you would really only visit if you wanted something in particular, is home to a curious combination of music shops, tutorial centres and doctors’ clinics. The whole thing is about 30 years old and, it must be said, looks it. But it works all right.

Like many other similar spots, a few years ago it fell into the clutches of the Link Reit. A certain amount of mythology has collected around this which we may quickly dispel. It is simply not true that under the management of the Housing Authority the malls lost money. On the contrary the authority’s commercial properties always made a profit, which was used to subsidise the housing account, which did not. There was a certain justice to this because the tenants had, in many cases, little choice but to use the commercial outlets which came with their estate. No doubt the authority was to some extent subject to non-commercial temptations to keep its tenants happy by running the commercial properties in a way that maximised residents’ convenience rather than proprietorial profit. And what, one wonders, is wrong with that?

Anyway the arrival of the Link is Sui Wo did not produce a great deal of change. The car park lady who stamped your ticket and took your money was replaced by a machine which takes Octopus. Unfortunately the car park entrance requires a rather complecated regime, because the machine has to distinguish between delivery people, who pay nothing, shoppers – who pay if they stay longer than half an hour – and residents who pay by the month. This may explain why the tentacle occasionally breaks down. So the car park is still attended. At one stage a few signs appeared complaining about rent increases. But most of the shops have survived.

The notable exception was our bakery, a local enterprise. This disappeared, to be replaced by one of the two chains which have bakery shops everywhere. This is something of a recurring theme. We have a convenience story run by one of the two chains which have such stores everywhere, a chemist by one of the two chemist chains, an ETC machine from one of the two networks you find everywhere, a supermarket from … well you get the idea. It is difficult to believe that all these duopolies run on a basis of ferocious competition, especially as the more numerous oil companies have no difficulty in tacitly coordinating fuel prices. So while distant dimwits hail Hong Kong as a shining example of the merits of free markets we are left at the whim of a variety of virtual monopolies. Of which of course the Link Reit is one. You want to let out a shop within a mile in any direction of the Sui Wo mall and you can’t. Planning regulations do not permit it.  

I am not sure which parts of the Hong Kong economy really display the freedom which makes us so popular with teh Chicago school of economics. The stock market, perhaps. Which explains why it is so easy to get robbed there.

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To Sham Tseng on Saturday to play in the first wedding to be held in the Dragon Garden. If you missed the story this was a reproduction traditional Chinese garden constructed long ago by a local eccentric. It was proposed that this should be replaced by another of those huge blocks of flats of which Castle Peak Road now has so many.  There was a row and eventually the government gratified local tree-huggers by securing the garden’s preservation. It has now been done up a bit and it is, I must say, a very pretty garden. It is a bit awkward to get to but if you can afford to bus your guests in from distant parts of the territory it is an intersting choice for a wedding. Among the interesting features is the absence of anywhere to go if it rains. But Saturday was fine.

Anyway having got so far we decided to sample Sham Tseng’s signature dish, which as serious foodies will know is roast goose. This has become considerably more hygienic since I first tried it many years ago. In those days all the goose restaurants were built on stilts on the edge of a watercourse. Unwanted fluids of all kinds simply went through the floor into the creek. Happily mains drainage has now arrived and the restaurants look reasonably modern and well cared-for. On Saturday nights they are very busy and you need a reservation. Parking is subject to one of those curious New Territories arrangements by which someone gives you a ticket and parks your car for you in what looks suspiciously like a free public spot. But as long as you get your card chopped by the restaurant there is no charge. The goose is still good and they do other dishes as well.
After the bird we strolled along the main road in search of a dessert specialist.

Castle Peak Road presents an interesting spectacle at this point. The road itself is quite wide – two lanes each way with a central reservation. On the north side it is still very traditional Hong Kong village with a strong entrepreneurial tinge. The houses are three-storeys, adorned with numerous dubiously legal additions and the ground floors have all been devoted to commerce – mainly to the sort of restaurant where you sit at a folding table on a plastic stool and careful diners use their first pot of tea to wash the crockery. On the other side of the road (I think this was where the San Mig brewery used to be) there is an equally typical spectacle – one of those estates which features a large podium containing carpark and clubhouse, surmounted by several towers of flats. On the south side of the street there is no sign of life at all. I suppose the residents, who must be numerous and rich, come and go in their cars. On the north side there is, for once, a nice wide pavement, and large groups stroll along chatting and comparing the merits of the various food offerings. The effect is rather like those Spanish towns where everyone sleeps through the afternoon and spends half the night strolling the streets, stopping occasionally for snacks or drinks. It is noisy, sociable and pleasant. It is the past. Across the road it is quiet, not particularly pleasant and rigorously socially segregated. People who cannot afford those flat prices are not welcome. This is, I fear, the future. And this is what we call progress?

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The thing which has always puzzled me about the interenet is why people sitting in front of a computer feel it is OK to be so rude.  It may well be that I am a bit old-fashioned in these matters, or a bit English. People from other ex-colonies (like the USA) occasionally admit to being amused in a nice sort of way by my habit of saying “please” and “thank you” to people who are paid to serve me. I claim no credit for this. It is, or was, an English thing. Millionaires are said to send their sons to English public schools not because they will learn anything useful (what does a millinaoire’s son need, after all?) but because on their return to the life of a playboy they will at least be polite to their speedboat drivers. I say it maybe was an English thing because perhaps times are changing. I used to have in my office a charming book about English habits and mores. One year one of my students spotted this, and said she had read it during an exchange trip to Englsnd. She had also experimented with some of the observations. Noting that if you bumped into a person in the street in England they would say “sorry”, even though it was not their fault, she had tried bumping into a few people. “And did they say sorry?” I inquired. “No,” said my student, a respectable lady and a pillar of the University Christian Choir, “They said ‘fuck'”

Anyway we seem to have digressed. My complaint is not that people do not go in for elaborate courtesies in chat rooms, comment columns, discussion boards and such like. My complaint is that they are unambiguously and spectacularly rude to each other. No abuse is too violent, no accusation too vile, to be thrown at someone you disagree with. I take it, although of course one knows very little about the poeple one meets on-line, that they are not like this at home, or even in face-to-face encounters with strangers. There would be fights all the time. At first I thought it might be the global nature of the internet which wasz the problem. People from all sorts of countries and backgrounds were mixed up together. None of them was likely ever to meet in the flesh. There were no common conventions, so there were no conventions at all. If there are no agreed standards of politeness, then perhaps anything is OK.

I had to abandon this theory when I started reading The Guardian on-line. Guardian readers are not that cosmopolitan, though I understand the on-line edition attracts a lot of Americans. Most of the participants are clearly educated members of the middle classes in an Anglo-Saxon country. Yet they slag each other off quite mercilessly. And this board is moderated – contributors know that extreme speciments will be removed. Yet they still produce a lot of them. The moderator is kept busy.

Well, I thought, perhaps its a sort of strangers on a train thing. Nobody really knows anyone else. They do not identify the other person as a live humen being. It’s a bit like a cruise – you can pretend to be whatever you like because your fellow passengers will know no better. Managers can become presidents, lecturers can become professors, police sergeants can become superintendants and ordinary decent citizens can masquerade as the sort of Glaswegian who smashes a bottle over your head if you smile at his girlfriend.

But this theory also does not stand up. I frequent a Facebook site which caters for the local bagpipe circle. A conversation started the other week which became so vituperative that the proprietor of the site eventually – and very sensibly – deleted the whole thread. This was not a matter of strangers who will never meet. On the contrary everyone involved has met everyone else at least once, and is very likely to meet them again. I suppose we shall all manage to get along but some slights are difficult to forget. One of my friends pointed out that some of the more virulent specimens had been written very late in the evening. Many people do their internetting late in the evening. I often do myself. It is OK if you haven’t spent the previous part of the evening in a pub. If you have, then maybe not such a good idea.

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The news that an airliner landed on half an engine drew some well-merited applause for the guts and skill of the pilots. It also awakened some slumbering anxieties. On the whole while joining in the applause I was rather on the side of the reader who wrote to the Post suggesting that it might have been a good idea to head for the nearest airport when engine trouble first blew up, soon after leaving Jakarta. This incident will no doubt be the subject of a detailed inquiry and we may find that the real story is less controversial.

Speaking in general, though, it is well known in the industry that the days when no self-respecting airline would send up a plane which was not fully functional are well behind us. Nowadays many systems are duplicated for safety reasons. But if there are four gadgets, each capable of doing the job on its own, there are obvious economies to be had from not being too officious in replacing them when they go on the blink. Airliners are expensive and need to be working to earn  their keep. A few months ago I did a long and uncomfortable flight in a section of the aircraft in which the reading lights were not working. This is of course not a safety hazard, but the seat belt lights were not working either. This sort of thing leaves you wondering which of the parts you can’t see have also been “returned to service for evaluation” as the euphemism goes.

Another change over the years concerns the matter of having spare engines. Now of course airliners did not have four engines to provide a spare. They had four because they needed that much puff to get off the ground. But having got off the ground they could fly comfortably on three engines, less comfortably on two — depending on which two it was — and in an emergency they could limp along on one. Because of this safety feature it used to be a requirement that airliners on long distance flights — especially over water — should be four-engined types. This has gradually been corroded and now seems to have disappeared completely. Engines are, I suppose, much more reliable than they were. Still, if you are a long way from home on two engines clearly the failure of one is a very serious matter and most of us, under these circumstances, would wish to be delivered to the nearest railway station rather than participating in an epic further journey.

The mention of railways brings me to an interesting oddity. I am an eager reader of disaster accounts of all kinds. The stories of accidents combine technical and human interest in a compelling way. Simplifying a bit, we can say that in the 19th century the interesting accidents are on the railways, in the 20th they involve aeroplanes.  But there is another difference. In the railway accidents the inspectors were robustly critical of any part of the arrangements which did not seem to them to be conducive to safety. Managements were  vigourously badgered to adopt improvements like air brakes and automatic train control to improve the safety of their operations. The people who investigate air accidents seem to be less inclined to include the management in their area of operations. Accidents are attrributed to obscure technical deficiencies, blamed on the weather or ascribed to error by the pilots, who are often not there to defend themselves. It is a common observation that some airlines have a lot more accidents than others, which seems to suggest that something more systematic than the fickle finger of fate is involved. But this is rarely discussed in public. Instead we get used to it. There was another air crash in Indonesia the other day. Didn’t even make the front pages.

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This is not going to turn into a golf column, but the fuss over Tiger Woods has wider implications than who will lift the next trophy.  Mr Woods is apparently a very proficient golfer. Occasional glimpses of his personality have been less admiring. It seems he rarely smiles, does not engage in friendly informal interactions with the fans or — big mistake — the press, is often visibly irritated when a shot does not go where he wishes it, does not enjoy team versions of the sport and is generally rather obsessed with his own pursuit of perfection.  These accusations of social deficiency are often levelled at outstanding sportsmen and women. I remember similar things being said from time to time about the Williams sisters, Lester Pigott, Geoff Boycott, Jimmy Greaves (long time since I took much interest, you will gather) and no doubt much of this criticism is human nature’s way of coping with the uncomfortable knowledge that someone else is better. In rather the same way you find successful English football teams invariably disparaged as tactically boring, unfairly well-funded, full of foreigners or all three. Professional sportspeople come with a variety of personalities. Some of them are cheerful extroverts, effortlessly recruiting admiring fans, some are shy people who reluctantly accept the need for a certain amount of public schmoozing for the good of the game, and some are introverts who avoid it as much as possible. In individual, as opposed to team, games a certain amount of self-obsession may be indispensable and even desirable.

Mr Woods’s recent problems stem from the discovery, following a minor car accident, that he has on occasion been unfaithful to his wife. I am amazed that people find this surprising. Professional sportsmen on away trips are not hermits. They are fit young men interested in what may be available. If they are rich, successful and engaged in a glamourous – or better still dangerous – sport they will find many opportunities and few refuse what is eagerly offered. No doubt there are respectable married men who go to bed alone every night with a book. But they are heavily outnumbered by the counterparts who, married or not, enjoy being admired and accept the offers that admiration sometimes brings. This is the way it goes. Bull fighters have always been notorious. Professional footballers are expected to sow oats; the reason why wives and girlfriends willingly undertake boring trips to distant tournaments is because if they are not there then the field is free for the locals. Successful sportsmen arouse many of the instincts which produce exciting social lives for pop stars. And we all know what they get up to.

So why such a fuss over Woods? Partly, perhaps, because golf is a game for mature and respectable citizens. If it was alleged that David Beckham had 12 girlfriends on the side the average football fan would feel admiration and envy rather then disapproval. Golfers, on the other hand have reached the age of continence, or at least of hypocrisy. Partly it is because of the puritanical habits of the American press, which likes to write about sex as much as the rest of us but can only do so when provided with a good excuse. Partly it is because the sports writers enjoy having something portentious to write about for a change. And partly, I fear, it is because Mr Woods is black. A black man who sleeps with white women disturbs some prejudices which many Americans prefer to pretend they have not got. See the disproportionate reactions to the O.J.Simpson saga. 

It is all going a bit far. Acres of newsprint were devoted to the analysis of the Tiger’s recent return to action, and the question whether his efforts to masquerade as a cuddly human being were putting him off his normal game. At his press conference, reporters carefully informed us, he gave normal sensible answers but “his eyes were smouldering”. Really?

The person I feel sorry for is Mrs Woods, who is getting a lot of advice, most of it bad. A long time ago there was a much-admired advice columnist called “Dear Pansy” in a Hong Kong newspaper. Her advice to wives of husbands who were mysteriously often called away for business weekends in Bangkok was surprising but practical. It went roughly “All men are pigs. If you want to stay married to your hushand you must learn to accept him as he is.”

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This blog has been quiet for a few days because I was in Henan playing for the opening of a golf tournament.  I was not, I hasten to add, playing golf. As the game was invented in Scotland there is occasionally a demand for Scottish music on golfing occasions.  Actually I have never thought much of golf. I started playing hockey at a very early age so hitting a ball which was sitting still always seemed a bit like shooting a dead duck. Still the game obviously gives some people a great deal of pleasure.

There is occasional controversy about the amount of space consumed, and the amount of water and fertiliser required to maintain a large acreage of exotic foreign landscape in an alien environment.  On the other hand it can be said in defence of the game when played with Chinese characteristics that it is much more labour-intensive than it is in the west. In the suburban golf courses which I occasionally visited in England the members frequently arrived in their golfing attire, which in those less fashion-conscious days just comprised a pair of old trousers and a wind-cheater. They changed into their spiky shoes in the car park.  They carried their own clubs round the course for 18 holes and the only club employee whose services they required was the bar tender in the “19th hole” to which they resorted for a few beers to offset any salubrious effect the exercise might have had on their build. They then, the law in these matters being less enforced in those days, probably drove home.  So a golf club was a large hole in the landscape which employed very few people.

Golf with Chinese characteristics is rather different. The member arrives, usually in a recent-model SUV with heavily tinted glass, under the porte-cochere, where he is greeted by an impressive crowd, even if you disregard the associate professor and a few mates on bagpipes. The driver pulls the remote thing which opens the back door, and the member’s clubs are whisked away while the specialised meeters and greeters are bidding him welcome and conducting him to the dining room. Later the clubs will be found in the back of his electric golf cart, which also has a driver. Along with the clubs will be two members of the corps of caddies, a large formation consisting mainly of young ladies whose selection was clearly  based on more important things than their knowledge of golf. The caddies will carry the bag when play reaches parts of the course inaccessible by road. The player only actually lifts a club when he wants to play a shot. The pursuit of healthy exercise is clearly not a major part of the proceedings.

I do not criticise. Agriculture in Henan does not look much fun. Judging by the size of the plots a lot of work is still done by hand. Probably the golf club is a very welcome addition to the district’s facilities. In the light of the alternatives a career replacing rich people’s divots may be very attractive. 

I am less enthusiastic about golf in Hong Kong. The game does need a lot of space. It seems that in our city there is never any space for poor people’s housing but a hectare or two can always be found for rich people’s sports. People are sleeping under fly-overs to make room for other people to try to whack a pebble into a jam jar from 300 yards. It ought to take some of the fun out of it, but it doesn’t, apparently.

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As I stand at the back of the weekend’s parade, warbling on my pipe at the appropriate moments, there is time to contemplate some of the things that Hong Kong youth groups have in common. One is that they all wear some variation on the beret. Another, which may be connected with the first, is that on sunny days from my perch at the back of the parade I see a steady stream of casualties being fished out to be revived in the shade. Standing still in hot sunshine on what is basically a large piece of baked concrete is hard. On particularly hot days it is not unknown for the band to retire surreptitiously to the shade of a nearby tree, if there is one, during parts of the proceedings which do not require music. This option is not available to the paraders themselves.

This raises the question why so many organisations, all of which teach at least some First Aid, insist on their young members standing out in all weathers in a totally unsuitable piece of headgear. It is not as if the beret had some great tradition going for it. Until the 1920s the standard military hat was a cap with a peak, of the kind still worn by officers. In the trenches this was replaced by some form of steel helmet. Earlier hat models designed to make the wearer look taller survive in band uniforms and the Brigade of Guards.  In the 1920s the Royal Tank Regiment decided that peaked caps were not practical for people climbing in and out of armoured vehicles. The legend has it that they adapted the beret warn by French mountain troops, but the sordid truth is that their version is most like the ones worn at the time by schoolgirls.

Be that as it may the beret then gradually spread to other units which saw themselveds as needing to dive through narrow hatches in a hurry, notably parachute units, marines and special forces.  It reached youth groups in the 50s when I was a Scout, though my group was of such antiquity that we were allowed to keep the traditional Mounted Police type of thing which the Founder always seems to be wearing in photographs.  Compared with our wide-brimmed thing the beret clearly had some practical points going for it, even if you were not going to drive a tank. It could be rolled up, folded, crumpled or sat on with impunity. You could put it in a large pocket or under the shoulder tab on your uniform shirt. It was washable.

These are no doubt still good points. On the other hand as a practical hat the beret has nothing going for it at all. If rained on it turns into a soggy rag. In sunshine it offers no useful protection whatsoever. It sits unhappily on most ladies’ hairstyles. It is really unsuitable for open air use in Hong Kong and one cannot help noticing on many of these occasions that the adults are all wearing something more practical.

It is not as if there were no alternatives. The Australian International School, which clearly did some careful research on this topic, offers its inmates a choice of two. One is a sort of bush hat, distantly related to the ones which Australians hang corks on. The other is a simple version of the kepi, as worn by the French Foreign Legion, with a peak at the front to shade the face and a little curtain at the back to protect the neck. If these are too exotic, many military units now wear a camo version of what used to be known in its rowing model as a floppy. This has a soft shapeless dome and a two-inch brim all the way round. Like the beret it can be stuffed in a pocket. Or if the worst comes to the worst an ordinary peaked cap of the kind worn by baseball players would at least keep the sun off the face. The Yang Jing brewery is giving away a very nice version to its customers at the moment, though that is not perhaps the ideal sponsor for a youth group.

But I write these words with no expectation of seeing anything change. The youth groups copy the Police and the Police copy the SAS. Boys will be boys.

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I have been reading Mike Rowse’s book on his tussle to escape scapegoat status after the Pipefest. This can be recommended as a good read, though it is – like its author – a bit on the short side.  The book is an interesting addition to the rather slender record of people who took on the Hong Kong government over the way they were treated as employees — and won. It gives a pretty good idea why this is unusual.

Firstly it takes a long time. The official instinct when challenged is to waste time. It took Mr Rowse four years to establish that his case had been mishandled and this is not a record. Also the fight is hard on the fighter. He invariably discovers that many people he supposed to be friends were in the fair-weather category, though one does usually find a few surprising new ones. The uncertainty begets unhappiness. Mr Rowse still had his job. Less fortunate claimants have often degenerated into a state of embittered obsession which lasted long after the eventual victory. Another characteristic of this sort of thing is that it is expensive. Mr Rowse reckons that being innocent cost him about $3 million.

Readers who thought the Harbourfest was a daft idea in the first place will find their suspicions confirmed by the interesting story of how the idea came up. Readers who think the sort of people who become political appointees would not be their first choice as a son-in-law will also find their opinions unchallenged by glimpses of our leaders ducking out of a fight.

On one matter Mr Rowse is disappointingly unimaginative, and that is the role of race in all this. The government, he says, is not institutionally racist. I expect this is true, as it is of most Hong Kong institutions. On the other hand it is a feature of many local crises that the solution includes the ejection of some awkward foreigner, and this happens far too often to be a coincidence. It is, I suppose, instinctive. I am reminded of a study of cannibalism among seamen in the age of sail. It was accepted that if the crew were adrift without food or water the custom of the sea sanctioned sacrificing one shipmate to feed the others. The person selected for this honour was supposed to be selected by lot. Yet in every case the unlucky victim who finished up with a short straw in his hand and a knife in his guts was either the cabin boy or the only foreign seaman in the crew. I expect those legendary occasions in Russia when a horse-drawn sleigh was pursued by wolves and a passenger had to be jettisoned to distract them worked the same way.

Mr Rowse’s successful bid to change the script does him credit. But he was not the first foreigner to be invited to lighten the boat and he will not be the last.

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