tim's experiment

The Ocean Park non-kidnapping is a fascinating piece of sociology. Consider: we have an expat lady in a bar who is listening to two friends. She was later quoted as saying she was “in and out of the conversation” which I take it means that when the subject of kidnapping came up she was eavesdropping. She then goes home and, still presumably Brahms and Liszt as we Cockneys used to say, she sits down at the computer to churn out a few emails. She tells friends that her fellow bar-goer nearly had her sprog kidnapped in Ocean Park. The infant disappeared and was later discovered in the company of two Chinese women. The email is widely circulated, as tends to happen with emails, and the story turns out to be entirely fictitious.

Oddly enough something similar happened to me many moons ago. As a small kid I often lost my parents. They had two to keep track of and I had not yet been fitted with glasses, so I was as blind as a bat. According to family legend the worst incident occurred in a department store in Frankfurt. I was missing for about half an hour before being discovered, in some distress, surrounded by German housewives who were anxious to help but of course could not understand a word I was saying. It would have been understandable – this was about 1948  so Anglo-German relations had recently been a bit rocky – if my parents had feared the worst of my rescuers. They did not. In those days it was assumed that any adult talking to a crying child was trying to help it.

I suspect there was an element of what we may politely call cultural prejudice at work in the Ocean Park rumour fest. Expat mums are perhaps more willing to believe ominous things of Chinese ladies than they would be if their brat had been rescued by a gwai por. A more interesting, and less disputable, point is what this incident tells us about parenthood and fear in the West.

Statistically, life is probably safer for children than it ever was. When I was a kid, for example, nobody wore a crash helmet on a push bike. The number of kids who are molested by total strangers is minute; most such incidents take place in the home and are perpetrated by relatives. Actually being seriously harmed by a stranger is somewhat less likely than being struck by lightning. But that is not the way people see it. There is a curious conspiracy: on one side we have militant feminists of the Dworkin persuasion who believe that all men are rapists; the ones who are not in prison just haven’t been caught yet. If you haven’t been molested you are letting the side down. Their odd assistants are tabloid journalists who relish a good child abduction as providing a stiff dose of sex and violence. So incidents or suspected incidents are assiduously reported. The result is a climate of fear. In my day we played in the street; modern kids are not left unsupervised in the back garden. I am told by recent arrivals from the UK that they would not risk trying to help a distressed child in a public place because of the danger of misunderstandings.

New expat arrivals should perhaps be advised that this particular piece of toxic Western culture has not yet arrived in Hong Kong. This is a safe place and people know it. Most adults are kindly disposed towards children – many are incurably sentimental. The Cantonese phrase for a child is actually, translated literally, “small friend”. People who see you smile at their offspring do not think you are a pervert, and children in trouble are much more likely to meet kindness and help than exploitation or danger. So if you see someone talking to your kid, don’t jump to conclusions.

Read Full Post »

Anyone who walks a dog around Hong Kong soon discovers that some people here are genuinely and seriously frightened of dogs. When I did my walkies in Kowloon Tong I was amazed and distressed by the number of people who would rather walk in Waterloo Road than come within a yard of my harmless and leashed pet. I do not know if this fear is a legacy of rabies, or a consequence of the large numbers of people who grow up in places where dogs are banned, so they never have a chance to socialise with one. Anyway it seems a shame.

In our present locality this is not a problem, at least during daylight hours. All the regular users of the footpaths know each other. Even the people who find my young hound a bit boisterous have worked out that he will respond to a vigorous “no”, and in any case I will soon rescue them. We get along fine.

The problem comes at night. Our nearest spot for a short walk with a bit of off-lead action is near the look-out point. And the look-out point is popular with young couples looking for a quiet place where thay can be alone in the dark and discuss the finer points of logical positivism between themselves. Occasionally the dog disppears into the darkness and I hear distant sounds of terror. I pull the dog off whoever he is bothering and apologise profusely, as one does. Lately, though, I have noticed something interesting about this routine.

The two victims do not generally seem actually to be concerned. They assure me an apology is not called for. I do not quite get thanks, but there seems to be a general air of satisfaction. What I think is happening is that the hardest part of these nocturnal trists is getting from the logical positiviem to something more … intimate. One solution to this problem is provided by a great white land shark appearing out of the gloom. She dives into his arms. He adopts a protective stance. The ice is broken. By the time it is established that the dog is not that big and not carnivorous either the evening is on a new footing.

I am not complaining. Once you realise what is happening it is rather sweet actually. Still it just shows you. If our society encouraged more dogs it might raise the birth rate.

Read Full Post »

This is one of the things which makes me feel slightly uneasy about being a journalist. Something about news writing makes people very eager to label generations. At various times we have had the Great Generation, boomers, Aquarians, the Me Generation, Generation X, Generation Y and goodness knows what other letters of the alphabet. Now we have the post-80s lot. And these all seem to be entirely constructed by the news business.

It is true that newspeople are not alone in producing nonsense of this kind. The marketing people come up with all sorts of ingenious categories based on consumer behaviour, like Dinks (Double Income No Kids) or Early Adopters (of new technology). Some of these are probably fictitious, but the basic idea is not inherently stupid. Sociologists are still hypnotised by social class, which probably is stupid, but we expect no better from them. The art critics are always detecting new movements. I seem to remember the mainland cinama going through four “new generations”  in about ten years, but that may be an exaggeration. I wasn’t concentrating.

The basic situation is very simple. Families have generations. My father, his brothers and his sister were one generation, along with my mother and her sister. Their respective parents and their siblings were another generation. My son, my brother’s daughter and my sisters’ kids are another generation, and so on. Since people rarely have kids before they are 20 and these days they do not go on very long the term “generation”  has some meaning. The people in each generation will be on roughly the same ages, and their ages will be nearer to each other’s than they are to most members of the next generation in each direction. In a population, though, there are many families. New generations are appearing all the time. Or to put it another way the notion that all the people born in some arbitrary period constitute a generation is nonsense.

Next point: the decade is an arbitrary period. If our ancestors had been born with six fingers we would count the years in 12s. They would still be the same years. Only historians would notice the difference. Whether a year has a zero on it or not is entirely coincidental. It has no effect on the people born in that year or after it.

That is not to deny that people who have lived through great events together have something in common. People of the same age will tend to have some experiences, and some absence of experiences, in common. But these things do not come in neat packages. I am, for example, categorised as a post-war baby, though only just; the Japanese garrison in Hong Kong surrendered on the day I was born. But I cannot claim to have been formed by the period of post-war privation. I dimly remember some things being rationed and some things being virtually unobtainable. I can definitely recall being around for the Festival of Britain and the death of George VI. But as a kid you assume that things were always the way they are now and national events only impinge if you get a day off kindergarten. I have no recollection at all of the great reforming Labour government, possibly because my parents – both enthusiastic Conservatives – preferred to pretend that it had never happened. And by the time I was taking amy serious interest in politics Harold MacMillan was telling us that we had never had it so good. To overlap the war you needed only to be born the day before I was. To have opinion-forming memories of it you needed to be born in the 30s.

So what might define the “children of the 80s”? Clearly not the fact that they were born in a year with 8 as its third digit. There does seem to be a new generation of young activists about, but it is insulting to ascribe their discontents entirely to a statistical label, and dangerous to ascribe it merely to youth. I suppose the people who are unhappy are the ones who were old enough to take an interest in the run-up to 1997, and young enough to believe the rather implausible story we were all told at the time: that we would now enter a new dawn of prosperity and contentment, cheered by the discovery that when we were clasped to the bosom of the motherland we would find she was not the autocratic and vicious old bat she seemed to be from a distance, but was actually caring, cuddly and child-friendly, not at all like that nasty colonial Mr Patten.

I never bought this story, and consequently am not disappointed. But if we keep telling our young people what a good time they are having we could raise a whole generation of cynics.

Read Full Post »

There has been much talk about the case of the accountant who had, through use of the internet and generous dollops of money, worked his way through 100 sexual encounters with a variety of ladies, all of them much younger than he was.  This estimate has to be treated with some caution because it came from a policeman outside the court. It is funny how the police have a policy that they will not comment on individual cases … except when they want to comment on an individual case. There has been some talk of the accountant being defrocked (or whatever it is they do to accountants) when he emerges from his four years and eight months of correctional servitude.

This would be a mistake. This man has done more for the reputation of accountancy than all those implausible commercials in which a CPA was depicted as a sort of financial SAS man, bringing down evil-doers with his calculator. Nobody bought that stuff. We all continued to think that accountants were wimpy nerds, spending their working lives crouched Cratchit-like over ledgers, and their leisure in conventional congress with their lawfully wedded wives. Clearly this profession has more going for it than meets the eye. I do not remember being so frisky at 61.

Of course there is a serious side to this. Many people in the puritanism and law-enforcement industries are worried about compensated dating. These worries are understandable. Compensated dating leads rather easily by degrees to compensated sex. And like all commerce these days, it is greatly facilitated by the internet. Some of the girls who were discussing the finer points of book-keeping with the defendant were illegally young. No doubt everyone concerned was lying about his or her age, but the law on this point does not admit ignorance as a defence.

However on one point the proceedings seem to have been rather unsatisfactory. The “internet predator” according to the Post, pleaded guilty to three counts of indecency, one of unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl under 16, two counts of buggery and one of attempted buggery. This was a disconcerting piece of court reporting because the offence of buggery was abolished in 1991. I record with some irritation that it took me hours to work out what had heppened. Buggery in general (the Common Law offence) did cease to be a crime in 1991. Sundry statutory restrictions on such activities remained in the Crimes Ordinance. Over the ensuing years these were struck down by the Judiciary as being inconsistent with the SAR’s obligation to treat people equally because in effect they discriminated against gay men. However one item has been left sitting in the Ordinance, sticking up like a nail house in a Beijing property development, because it does not concern gay men.

Section 118D makes it an offence, punishable by life imprisonment, for a man to do it with a woman under 21. This, I presume, was the provision that was wheeled out against our luckless accountant. Apparently only two of the alleged 100 sexual partners were prepared to appear in court as prosecution witnesses. Bringing in the buggery items gave the prosecution more bang for its buck, if you’ll pardon the expression in this context.

This is deplorable. Section 118D may have looked a sensible gloss on the law when buggery anywhere, by anyone, was already illegal anyway. It now looks outstandingly stupid. If a couple, both 19 years old, do it together the woman has no problems but the man commits a serious offence. Even if they are married. No doubt in a year or two it will be enough to get him on a sex offenders’ register for life even if he is let off with a fine. To put it another way the ludicrous situation is that the legality of sex with girls of different ages varies depending on which orifice you use.

Perhaps I had better say at this point that I am personally among the many men who are not attracted by the idea of buggery, whether it is legal or not. I have, however, met ladies who claim to enjoy the subordinate role. One of them told me she achieved a sort of orgasm. So clearly there are couples who genuinely jointly wish to do this and a law which says that if they do it then the man is a criminal is silly.

It is, I suppose, possible that this law will eventually be found to be unconstitutional. I am not sure whether it discriminates against men because if two people do it together only the man is guilty, or whether it discriminates against women because, if you want to try it, you are going to have some trouble recruiting a partner until you reach the age of 21. But the law is obviously unsatisfactory. So in the meantime it would be a good idea if prosecutors did not use it when there are other alternatives available, as there were in this case.

As far as compensated dating is concerned, I fear that the law is not going to be a great help. Faced with a social problem of this kind the reaction of the law and order interest tends to resemble that of the man with a hammer to whom all problems looked like a nail. The law has never had much success in suppressing prostitution of other kinds and there is little hope of it succeeding here, where it only allows you to prosecute the occasional customer who gets his age sums wrong. What is needed is a serious educational effort to persuade young women of the merits of inserting “no” at some point between the compensated lunch in the Mandarin coffee shop, and the compensated roll in the hay at a Kowloon Tong love hotel.

But I am not optimistic. Where there are many poor women and a few exceedingly rich men you will usually find ladies who are prepared to undertake some freelance wealth redistribution. This problem is just another by-product of Hong Kong’s increasing resemblance to a banana republic.

Read Full Post »

Some reader wrote to my newspaper the other week saying that taxi riders who see the driver throw something out of the window should make an immediate report to the authorities. He had done this often, he said proudly, and in every case the driver had been prosecuted for littering. Well nice one son. Of course we don’t want people breaking the law. Still, I wonder if I am the only one who is a bit uneasy about people with European names and expensive tastes in newspapers, who report minor crimes by people who probably earn about a tenth as much as the amateur sleuth does. 

I have been through this before. Many years ago the newspapers reported a case in which a Western gentleman, finding that the doorman at his block of flats was asleep, had called the police. The doorman was then prosecuted and fined. It is a crime for someone with a watchman’s licence to sleep on the job. I wrote a column saying that the nocturnal vigilante should be ashamed of himself. The doorman was in his 70s. What could you reasonably expect at 3 in the morning?  It then turned out that everyone involved in this matter except the dormant doorman was a member of the Hong Kong Press Club, of which at the time I was chairman. The complainant had been whingeing in the bar about how difficult it was for him to get home after a night’s drinking because he had to wake up the doorman. Another member pointed out that for a licensed watchman to sleep at his post was an offence, and recommended an early resort to the constabulary.  A row then ensued between those members who thought that people who drank until the small hours of the morning should be more tolerant, and those who supported the law enthusiasts. For the law it was argued that watchmen should be awake for security reasons. For tolerance it was argued that this was a pointless provision when they had nothing to do and the front door could be locked.

Actually I am a bit dubious about the idea that this particular piece of legislation is really aimed at public safety. It is a relic from the days when Hong Kong had lots of laws shamelessly designed to keep servants up to the mark by threatening them with criminal sanctions. It used to be a criminal offence to resign without giving notice, for example. To modern eyes it looks odd to use the criminal law to enforce what is reallya contractual matter between a worker and his employer.

This does not help us with the more general point, which is when in a city marred by a huge and growing gulf between rich and poor it is proper for the rich to snitch on the poor. Obviously we are going to report serious crimes, fights, assaults, traffic accidents and what have you. But littering?  Presented with a beggar in the street one may give some money, or one may heed the beseechings of the authorities and discourage the pursuit by keeping the cash. But would you call the police and have the beggar arrested for obstruction?  If the answer to this question is “no” then you draw a line somewhere between what should be overlooked and what should be reported. The question is where. I suppose different people will put it in different places. Personally I think those of us who do not have a personal stake in the proposed minimum pay law should try to be tolerant of the peccadilloes of those who do.  And if you think littering is a serious offence, get your head checked.

Read Full Post »

When I was a kid it was customary for people who drove professionally, or wrote in the motoring magazines, to denounce “Sunday drivers” who commuted by public transport during the week and only got their cars out on Sunday. The theory was that these people got less practice, and hence were worse drivers, than those who drove every day.

When you were actually driving, or being driven, the singular characteristic of Sunday drivers was that they were not going fast enough. In retrospect this seems a bit unfair. Some, at least, of the people who aroused my father’s scorn were probably driving slowly to admire the scenery. Still there was probably something in it. When I worked as a taxi driver for a while I did notice an increase, not so much in raw speed but in the ability to get on with it, and in particular to squeeze through gaps which were only jsut big enough for the taxi, with whose size I was of course very familiar.

Anyway in Hong Kong all the Sunday drivers seem to be able to drive at the same speed as everyone else. The thing that shows them up is the parking. On weekdays you generally find that the person parking in front of you can get into a space perpendicular to the road (“L” parking as opposed to the “S” where you finish up parallel to the kerb) at the first attempt, or maybe with one forward movement to adjust his direction. On Sundays the standard plummets. The people you see painfullhy backing and filling in an effort to squeeze a monstrous Merc into a standard parking space are not Sunday drivers in the sense that they use public transport on weekdays. They are Sunday drivers in the sense that they only drive on the chauffeur’s day off.  It seems that nobody in Hong Kong learns to park properly.

I must admit that in this respect I had some underserved luck. Nobody did “L ” parking in the UK when I left. Multi-storey carparks were almost unheard of and you expected to park in the street. When I got my first Hong Kong vehicle, an elderly white van, I worked in Lai Chi Kok and parked on a patch of waste ground which has since become a shopping mall. The ancient gentleman who presided over the waste ground gathered from my early efforts that I was no good at parking and decided very generously to teach me. As we did not have a language in common this was a challenging experience for both of us but I have had no trouble with “L” parking since then.

It seems that people who learn in Hong Kong are not so lucky. I suspect this is because of the universal habit among local driving schools of sticking some extra gadgets on the back of your learner vehicle to help. On vans this usually takes the form of what looks like a set of metal whiskers. On cars they sometimes have a piece of wood. It looks like something Boadicea might have put on her chariot to cut enemies off at the ankle, but of course the purpose of the gadget is to help the student to park and pass. Having passed the test, though, it seems that nobody, but nobody, every bothers to put a set of metal whiskers on the car he rides in every day. So only the professionals learn how to park properly.

Actually, driving is not the only thing Hong Kong people have to do for themselves on Sunday. As I dogwalk three times a day I know most of the local dogs by sight and many by name. I also know their regular walkers, but on Sunday the regular walker is in Central on her day off. Some of the local owners are a bit disturbed by the discovery that a complete stranger is on first-name terms with their dogs. Still, at least they do walk their dogs themselves on Sunday. It would be nice to think that they do a spot of cooking as well, but a bit optimistic. On Sundays our neighbourhood is alive with the sound of motor scooters with boxes on the back. Sunday is for slow parking and fast pizza.

Read Full Post »

Curious little court case the other week in which a man was jailed for persuading a woman that it would be good for her personal fung shui to have sex with him and some of his other followers. This is a little local eccentricity. There have been similar cases before. When I first landed in Hong Kong the whole town was talking about a man who had been dubbed by the Chinese press “the pork sword acupuncturist”.  I recall a later variation on the theme in which the offender claimed to have invented a new way of administering medicine, which involved him swallowing it and then having sex with the patient.

When I was a court reporter we did not encounter this sort of thing. Whether this is because people in North Lancashire are less ingenious or more suspicious I dare not say. There have of course been cases in Western countries where charismatic religious leaders demanded the supreme tribute from their female followers. But these were not like the Hong Kong cases. The ladies concerned had already donated themselves to the guru, handed over their property, abandoned their families and former lives. People in this condition are said to need “deprogramming” to restore their sense of reality. But in Hong Kong there is no suggestion of brainwashing. It seems some ladies need little prompting to accomodate the fung shui man right after they move the fish tank.

One does wonder about the justice of taking these cases to court, actually. It is difficult to believe that the “victims” were really swept away on a wave of quasi-religious enthusiasm. I suppose when the constabulary comes round it does not seem quite respectable to say that you didn’t believe a word of it but a girl needs a bit of nude wrestling from time to time. Or if you do say that there is no prosecution so we don’t here about it. We are dealing with adults here. Is it the law’s function to protect people from their own stupidity?

If it is, then the law seems to go about it in a highly selective way. I notice that the gentleman who may or may not have forged Nina’s will collected a wide variety of favours from the lady while she lived, on the most extravagantly spurious basis, without anyone suggesting that a crime was being commited. Local firms pay large sums to “experts” for advice on their buildings and furniture. Yet the authenticity of the advice or the qualifications of the expert are never questioned. Nor are his fees.

Then there is the whole area of Traditional Chinese Medicine. I do not doubt that somewhere among the numerous traditions there are some which have genuine therapeutic value. They will then become part of Medicine properly so called, which is a scientific activity based on experimental proof rather than tradition. There are people who swear by the traditional stuff, and there is an enthusiastic industry pushing the idea that this is a viable alternative. But this whole area is trappy. The fact is that a lot of people respond to suggestion. Every drug experiment finds some patients who get better though they are being given a placebo. Most of the minor ailments to which humans are prone will clear themselves up in two or three weeks whether you get medical attention or not. So any medical system can look good, in the sense of producing success stories.

I must not give the impression that Western civilization is a paragon in these matters. I continue to be amazed and disgusted by the amount of space which local English-language publications are prepared to devote to astrology, which is widely known to be bunk. The South China Morning Post has a politically correct astrology section, offering bunk in the Chinese style as well. Then we have pages devoted to loopy alternative health things involving candles, chrystals, rocks, odd exercise machines and wierd diets. There are probably some parts of this kaleidoscope which have real value (yoga? meditation? Kreisfeld?) but it is difficult to see which ones they might be, and the newspapers make no attempt to tell you. No theory is too outlandish for the “other medicines” page. I wonder if they do it for the advertising?

Then there are the traditional or conventional religions. I am not a militant (or any other kind of) atheist. But I am offended by the curious selectivity in local Christians’ desire to have the tenets of their religion incorporated in legislation. There are seven deadly sins, only one of which concerns sex. But nobody ever writes to the papers calling for legislation against, say, greed, envy or sloth. It’s always lust they’re on about. Yet surely, in a city of many races and religions, this is a matter which must be left to the individuals concerned. Even if they do it with the fung shui man.

Read Full Post »

The local higher education industry is slowly preparing for four-year degrees in 2012. One of my colleagues attended a talkfest on the topic, and heard an interesting statistic. The impression most people have picked up is that under the new system all the people who would have gone to university for three years will instead go for four. But the official planners do not expect this to happen. They expect about a fifth of our students to go and study in the UK.

This is an unintended consequence of several groups of people doing their best. The new 3-3-4 arrangement requires a new qualification, to replace A Levels. It will be taken at the end of Form 6, instead of at the end of Forms 5 and 7 as the present examinations are. Clearly overseas countries who have their own Form 6 exam already can easily be persuaded to regard ours as equivalent to theirs, and in many cases this has been done.  The UK presents a problem because there is no Form 6 exam there. So basically ours can either be equivalent to the Form 5 one or equivalent to the Form 7 one. To the great satisfaction of the people in charge of this problem the UK has been persuaded to regard Hong Kong’s new diploma as equivalent to British A Levels.

Now we come to the unintended consequence. This means that a Hong Kong student who has completed Form 6 can hie himself off to the UK and complete an internationally recognised degree in three years.  From the parental point of view this is an interesting saving. Of course you have to pay for more travel but a year’s fees and subsistence could add up to a few airfares easily enough. And in the saved year the student might be earning some serious money.  Hence the guess, and in these matters a guess is all we can expect at this early stage, that 20 percent of the potential students will skip Hong Kong higher ed altogether and go to dear old Blighty. Well, I suppose it’s one way of dealing with all those complaints about falling English standards.

Read Full Post »

This is not quite in the same class as the one about the monocle and the Colonel’s wife, but it is of some interest. I went to the Hang Seng branch in Shatin to use their ETC machine. They have two such machines. I took the most promising queue, and for once it was not headed by someone who was trying to rewrite “War and Peace” on the keyboard. I made reasonable progress until I was number two. Looking over the head of the small lady in front of me I happened to see what was happening on the screen. A brief message appeared saying that “this transaction is cancelled”, followed by words to the effect of “do you want to try anything else?” And the lady had, evidently, not been concentrating. She pressed “no” and then held her hand hopefully under the money slot. And of course no money appeared. The machine spat out her card and a piece of paper, then waited expectantly for the next customer.

After a few moments the customer realised that something was adrift. She started making distressed noises. I tried to look sympathetic. Real gentleman do not, I decided, contribute at this point something along the lines of “I was evesdropping – the machine told you to to take a running jump.” I looked at the piece of paper, hoping it would clarify the situation, but it seemed at least at first glance that she was supposed to have received $1,000. The lady departed for the counter where, I hope, she raised Hell, because my situation was now also a problem. The people in the next queue were convinced that my machine was not working. One kind lady actually grabbed my hand to stop me pushing my card in it. So that was out. On the other hand all the people who had been lined up behind me had now switched to the other queue, which was now about ten people long. Nobody was proposing to let me in. So I went to another bank.

So the question is, firstly why is it considered rude to look at the computer screen while someone else is using an ATM? It’s a public place. You are not going to get any personal data because you don’t know who the customer is. Still it seems people don’t like you doing it, and indeed when I find myself doing it without particularly meaning to I feel guilty. Secondly under what circumstances should one admit to having looked and seen something the customer has missed. If life is in danger, obviously (philosphers love these unlikely possiblities) but to save inconvenience? I hope the lady got her money sorted out. I was late for lunch.

Read Full Post »

Everyone seems to be very pleased with the new rules on plastic bags, which require supermarkets to charge you for them. Enthusiasts boast that the number of plastic bags dished out in Hong Kong shops has dropped considerably. A success for the environment lobby?

Not so fast. The number of bags has dropped but the nature of the bags has changed. In the old days a supermarket plastic bag was a whispy little thing. Our week’s shopping often filled 12 of them. If you put too much in they broke. Awkward shaped items made holes. They were certified to be environmentally friendly and bio-degradable. Often they were degrading visibly before you got out of the shop.

Now that supermarkets are forced to charge by the bag, the standard bag has changed. Supermarkets wish, after all, to give you value for money. So nowadays a supermarket bag is the size of a small parachute, and is constructed from some close relative of the stuff they use to make flak jackets. Archaeologists of the year 40,000 will puzzle over the layer of durable deposits which appeared in Hong Kong sometime just after the beginning of the 21st century. Because these bags are going to be here for ever. It is certainly true that we use fewer bags. When I forget to take the old ones, as often happens, our weekly shop now fits into three or four of the new Dreadnought class supermarket bag. But is the planet better off, one wonders. Or did our leaders fall for a trendy catchphrase just when the invention of biodegradable plastics had made it obsolete?

Read Full Post »