tim's experiment

It is an interesting rule: from time to time we are treated to a rousing speech about the importance of an independent and fearless judiciary, and the good fortune we enjoy because of our possession of such a thing. Uncannily the appearance of such a speech is followed by a judicial decision that has you reaching for the airsick bag.

The  decision of the Court of Final Appeal on domestic helpers rights to apply (not to enjoy, just to apply) for permanent residency is manifestly unfair. Of course judges may argue that the law has nothing to do with fairness, but in that case they can hardly claim, as they often do, to embody and preserve our most cherished values. The decision is also objectionable because it panders both to official paranoia and public racism.

It also appears to have been based on a misunderstanding of the facts. It is simply not true that domestic helpers are required to return home at the end of their contracts. This rule floats around in the contract verbiage somewhere, but it has not been enforced for 30 years. A helper who reaches the end of one contract can simply start another with the same – or another – employer the following day. Her accrued holiday rights can be exercised at a time convenient to both parties. Only those employers who are very picky about their pound of flesh insist on the helper working for two years before she has a chance to go home. Many helpers go home every year. These are perfectly sensible arrangements and it is a bit of a puzzle that the judges were misled about them.

Perhaps the Department of Justice needs to spend less time throwing old ladies into jail and more pondering the finer points of forensic ethics.

Sometimes we could be forgiven for thinking that our government is staffed bu nutcases. Consider recent events on the matter of population and pregnancy.

Our Financial Secretary is concerned about the future size of the government’s income. In fact, though he is sitting on what is probably the largest pile of government reserves in the world, he want to consider “tax reform”, which is not intended to sound like good news for those of us who think we are paying quite enough already. The reason why a fizcal abyss looms in a decade or two (we shall pass over in a charitable silence the folly of a man who cannot predict his financial future a year ahead making predictions decades away) is that Hong Kong women are not having enough babies. This means that the proportion of non-working elderly drones like me in the population will grow and the number of people working to support them will fall. This is a scary prospect, if you can believe any prediction from Mr Tsang.

Meanwhile the Chief Executive says that the government will never allow private hospitals to entertain pregnant mainlanders again, because the resulting offspring might wish to live in Hong Kong, putting an intolerable strain on our education etc. systems. And the question which this raises is, of course, do these two gentlemen every talk to each other?

I mean if we are hurtling towards bankruptcy because we are not having enough kids, might it not actually be rather a good idea to persuade people to have babies here, and indeed to hope that the resulting kids will in fact stay in Hong Kong? What is going through CY Leung’s mind, one wonders. After all the line about strain on education and such systems is a con. A lady who can afford to give birth in a private hospital is probably going to send her sprog to a private school. So what is the problem? I suspect we are dealing here with the visceral unease that people in left-wing circles feel whenever anything comes along which reveals that actually the People’s Paradise is not a paradise, and many people are quite eager to get out of it. The easiest way of suppressing this embarassing revelation is to ban the move involved.

This must then be explained as a step taken in defence of Hong Kong people’s interests.  Is anyone fooled by this, I wonder?

So glad the NPC meeting and associated gabfests are over. The front page of the Post has been thoroughly irritating, featuring a succession of daily leading non-stories from Beijing, evidently selected on the basis that any story from the NPC, however boring and irrelevant, must be accorded its official status. It’s like reading the China Daily.

Mind you it’s not as boring as watching the proceedings on television. I had a strange sense of deja vu when ATV treated us to a glimpse of the hall. Rows of elderly heads bent over some mysterious piece of paper, all with pen in hand. What were they doing? Surely they don’t all follow the printed version of the speech to make notes when the speaker diverges from the script? Yet they were obviously doing something important, because not one of them was reading a newspaper, listening to an MP3 player, texting messages on his mobile phone or playing a video game. Clearly not a university lecture, then. The sense that I was watching something eerily familiar was no help when I tracked it down. The scene reminded me of the time long ago when I worked as a bingo caller. Rows of elderly heads, pen in hand, eyes glued to a piece of paper … But I presume the delegates were not playing bingo, though no doubt they were hearing a lot of meaningless numbers and some of them will get rich. I suppose they must have been voting. This is a surprisingly unanimous affair. So unanimous, in fact, that if the “no” vote gets into double figures it is a major news event, though the total number of votes is in the thousands.

This brings me to the point I was discussing with a local editor the other day. He was worried about some of the usual cliches which appear in the Western media. Was it China’s second peaceful transfer of power, he wondered? Surely there had been more than one before? Feeling dubious about this he had deleted the phrase wherever it occurred. I told him I thoroughly approved of this policy because power was not transferred at all. It had become increasingly clear that Jiang Zhemin was still pulling the strings, and would continue to do so until he popped his clogs, just as Deng Xiaoping had done. Only the puppets were being changed.

My friend had, though, kept – despite some misgivings – the standard phrase “China’s rubber-stamp parliament”. On this we disagreed. The NPC is not a rubber-stamp parliament. It is just a rubber stamp. It has none of the characteristics of a parliament. Not even the name. This is an advance on many other Chinese institutions, whose names are thoroughly confusing. When teaching mainland students about the Hong Kong legal system I have to explain as tactfully as possible that China does not have a legal system in the sense that this label is understood in the rest of the world. The courts are not courts, the law is not law and the judges are not judges. The only part of China’s legal structure which conforms to the label is the prisons.

This is harmless enough as long as everyone knows what the underlying reality is. Unfortunately the flow of propaganda sometimes leads to confusion in the strangest quarters. One of the Post’s non-stories announced that the new Secretary/President had urged Hong Kong people to “unite behind CY Leung”. This betrays a serious misunderstanding of the way things work in places where people are free to form their own opinions. Hong Kong people do not want to be behind CY Leung, or for that matter in front of him or anywhere else in his vicinity. He is widely regarded as a duplicitous weasel who only got the job because Henry dropped the ball. This is unfortunate. It will not be remedied by fatherly advice from the leader of a regime which depends on 100,000 secret policemen to stay in power.

Well I’m glad I was not the only one who thought that the imposition of ten-year jail sentences on small potatoes convicted of participating in money laundering was Draconian and excessive.
In Sunday’s Post a senior criminal lawyer ventured the polite comment that the present law makes it easy to prosecute people and hard to defend them. The problem is that the Organised and Serious Crimes Ordinance makes it an offence to deal in property “knowing or having reasonable grounds to believe” that it is the proceeds of an indictable offence. Prosecutors have been having an easy time persuading courts that money with no known antecedents should have been regarded by the accused (in one case a 61-year-old housewife and in another a 22-year-old middle school drop-out) as providing  reasonable grounds to believe it was the proceeds of a serious crime merely because it was being laundered. The prosecution does not have to prove that a crime has taken place, or that the money was the proceeds of it.
In response we had Mr Kevin Zervos, the Director of Public Prosecutions, whose minions no doubt take a pride in the forensic excellence that allows them to send elderly ladies to prison for 10 years. Mr Zervos illustrated the interesting legal skill of missing the point when it is not helpful to your side of the argument. The law was justified because “we are dealing with proceeds of serious crime”, he said. But that is exactly what the prosecution does not have to prove. Actually there are a number of reasons not involving serious crimes which might lead people to launder money in Hong Kong, perhaps the most obvious possibility being to get round regulations in some other places which forbid people from taking their money out of the country, whether it is the product of serious crime, honest toil or luck.
There are a number of other problems with using this part of the Organised and Serious Crimes Ordinance against nobodies who move money for other people. One is that there have been a number of high-profile cases internationally in which big banks admitted money-laundering on an epic scale. Yet somehow no banker winds up behind bars on these occasions.
Another problem is that while the old lady in the street can get 10 years for money laundering through the use — or abuse — of a law intended for major criminals, the bank or money changer caught providing this service will probably be prosecuted under the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (Financial Institutions) Ordinance. The maximum penalty under this ordinance is jail for seven years.
A further problem, from the point of view of the non-lawyer surveying this scene, is that some very large loopholes remain unplugged. People can still buy flats, no questions asked, with suitcases full of cash. There is some reason for supposing that the willingness of buyers to pay stupid prices for Hong Kong flats is due to the SAR’s willingness to accommodate money which might otherwise be trapped in the mainland. Similarly, cash betting at Jockey Club facilities is subject to no checks and large wagers are welcome.
Or of course you can go to Macau…

Naturally we are all against serious crime. But most people do not regard moving shy money as a serious crime in itself. The prosecutorial authorities might usefully spend more time on the pursuit of serious criminals. Failure to ask where money came from should be regarded as an infringement of procedure, like putting a false address on your company registration form. I notice not one of the well-publicised examples of this offence has been prosecuted yet. Department of Justice too busy beating up old ladies, no doubt.

What would this interesting eyesore be, plonked into the middle of my morning walk? This is a large object. It is taller than I am. It is a monkey trap. Evidently intended for rather large monkeys.

We have always had occasional visits from monkeys becausc we live close to the edge of a country park. Monkey herds which usually prowl well-known visitor spots like the Shing Mun Reservoir or the Old Taipo Road can visit us without crossing any roads. They usually come once a year. I suppose – because monkeys are said to be good at this sort of thing – that some local tree reaches an edible stage and the monkeys stay long enough to strip it. This year for some reason they hung around a bit longer. My suspicion is that they found another source of food … like an insecure dustbin. But I may be doing my neighbours an injustice. Perhaps some shift in monkey territories elsewhere has made our locality more attractive.

Anyway for some reason the monkeys made a few return visits. They certainly on one occasion explored the Clubhouse roof. Rumour in our estate has it that one domestic helper had to shoo a monkey out of the kitchen where she was working. Then the monkeys went again. We have not seen them for weeks.

Meanwhile, however, the bureaucratic wheels were turning. It seems that people who wish to complain about monkeys address themselves to the Agriculture and Fisheries Department. I am not sure why. Monkeys are not agricultural in the usual sense and they are certainly not fish.  Weeks after the last monkey had disappeared the department produced the eyesore, which is clearly labelled as a monkey trap.

This is an imposing piece of machinery, apparently operated hy electricity. It has a sort of double-ended arrangement. There appear to be two gates which close in the middle, so that unwary m0nkeys caught in one end can watch while other simian suckers are caught in the other. But the gates have been fixed open with ziptapes, so I suppose this is now just one big sociable trap with two entrances. I do not think the monkeys actually used this part of the path, but the trap is an awkward monstrosity moved on eight small wheels. More plausible monkey haunts like woods and hillsides are clearly beyond it.

Further doubts about the effectiveness of the machine are raised by the absence of bait. Soon after the trap first appeared it was visited by an AFD team in a van, who threw a load of fruit in it. Over the ensuing week, though, this was gratefully consumed by small animals and insects unthreatened by the trap. So it is now empty. Only a terminally stupid monkey will ever go in it.

Unfortunately this is not the end of the matter. I do not object to the trap because it is ugly, though it is. Nor am I concerned that it will not catch many monkeys, though I shall be surprised if it catches any. I do object that it is dangerous. This is not my view alone: the labels on the machine itself say that it is dangerous. But there it sits, a mere ten yards from the busy footpath which connects the local public car park with the Lions’ Lookout, a small tourist attraction but one which produces a steady stream of visitors. The area is much frequented by unleashed children and dogs. They are more likely to end up in the trap than any monkey. The department has in the past deployed smaller traps which could be put on hill-sides and behind fences. The monstrosity should be removed.

A nasty little accident occurred on the op-ed page of the Post on Thursday morning. The scene of the mishap was a rather long opinion piece called Smart Thinking. It was illustrated with a picture of a thoughtful looking young lady wearing an academic gown and holding out one of those flat hats that people wear at graduation ceremonies. I am not sure if she is supposed to be thinking or begging. If the latter this was an entertaining comment on the article.

The piece was written by one Paul Yip, who is a professor of Social Work and Social Administration (it is difficult to get academics to make choices) at the University of Hong Kong. The burden of the piece was rather unsurprising. Higher Education, like many other industries in Hong Kong, supposes it would be in the public interest if more public money was thrown at it. Since Mr Tsang had unaccountably failed to hose gold in the general direction of local universities when he had the opportunity to do so in the recent budget, he had missed an opportunity.

So here we have a professor at our premier university waving his credentials and starting the article like this: “As an alumni of the University of Melbourne…” As an alumni? Alumni is a Latin word. It is a plural. The singular is “alumnus”. The whole set is carefully documented on the parts of the internet where language pedants gather. Alumnus is the masculine singular, alumna the feminine singular, and alumnae the feminine plural. Whether the masculine plural, alumni, is acceptable for a group of graduates of both sexes is a matter of some squabbling in America.

It would I suppose be grossly unfair these days to berate a professor – especially a professor of social work – for not knowing his Latin. One can though, I think, complain that professors, like other writers, should not use a language if they do not understand it. “Alumni” is unnecessary. “Graduate” or “former student” will do just as well, and reduce the risk of looking pretentious.

I have not been a great fan of John Tsang’s budgets: turgid hymns to prodence whose inability to predict the future even a year ahead have become legendary. Still we must recognise merit where merit appears, and Mr Tsang’s announcement that he was a member of the middle classes caused more hilarity chez Hamlett than any previous FS has managed.

The claim is of course absurd. Mr Tsang, if you count his fringe benefits and pension rights, must be wallowing in something over half a million dollars a month, But his explanation was interesting. He thought he was middle class, apparently, because he had the classic symptoms of middle class status: the willingness to watch French films and a taste for coffee. This is interesting but betrays a fundamental flaw in Mr Tsang’s reasoning. There are, after all, two boundaries to the Middle Class. There is the one you cross when you enter it from the bottom and the one you cross when you exit it upwards. Or, in due course, when your fortunes decline, the one you later cross downwards.

A variety of definitions have been offered based simply on money. For example, you can consider the bottom 25 per cent of income recipients as the grassroots, the top 25 per cent as the toffs, and the middle class as the 50 per cent left between these two extremes. None of these statistical interpretations is any help to Mr Tsang, who is certainly, if income is the sole criteria, firmly in the upper ranks.

If you look at it as a matter of culture and habits, the Continental films and Starbucks coffee criteria are probably a pretty good stab at the bottom boundary. No horny-handed worker is going to waste his scarce leisure on films with subtitles, or his hard-earned cash on luxurious lattes. One could offer other tests: pedigree pets, a German car, a private doctor or an overseas education for the kids. This is an entertaining game. But it does not help Mr Tsang because his problem is not that he is a grassroot, but that he is an expensive orchid.

In traditional Hong Kong, according to C Northcote Parkinson, the point at which a businessman became a blossom was clearly marked. As his business grew he would stay for years in the hovel from which he started it – the squatter hut or the cockloft over the shop – until he passed the Hound Barrier. At this point he would move into a detached house in Kowloon Tong with a high wall and a guard dog.  We can bring this observation up to date by adding to the high wall and guard dog a large illegal basement. This progress can be contrasted with the less clear situation in Western countries, where people generally upgrade their lifestyle gradually as they get richer.

For modern circumstances it is difficult to find as crisp an indicator that a person has passed out of the middle classes and gone on to higher things. But not impossible. Clearly when a person starts owning real property in Hong Kong which he has no intention of living in then the person concerned has moved into what the rest of us must regard as the financial stratosphere. Mr Tsang is apparently the proprietor of enough property to furnish a small village. As this seems to be true of everyone else in the ruling circle we must expect that their efforts to rein in property prices will be … well, prudent.

I owe Hong Kong architects a profound apology. Over the years I have been pretty rude about Hong Kong architecture. Most Hong Kong buildings are carefully dssigned to maximise the owner’s income or profit. The architect is too busy exploring plot ratio loopholes to worry about the eventual appearance of the result. When something more interesting is attempted it is usually either boring or derivative or both. Sites with great potential are squandered: the Convention Centre looks like the Sydney Opera House would have looked if it was designed by a committee; the Art Museum looks like a giant public toilet; the new Government offices … Well you see the point. However, last weekend I went to Macau for the first time since, I think, about 1990. A great deal has happened to Macau since then, most of it bad. The city now offers a chance to recalibrate your assessments of architecture. Architecture does not have to be boring. It can be ostentatiously hideous.

We played at the Venetian (music, not at the tables) which I found quite acceptable as casino resorts go. If you are going to copy an alien and historic style then Venetian republican is not a bad choice. The curious thing was that having been to the Venetian first, walking round the old parts of Macau was disconcerting. The ground floors are occupied by retail outlets from the usual suspects – much the same gang as those found round the Venetian’s fake Grand Canal. The upper floors are in Macau antique and they all look freshly painted. The result is that you could be back in the Venetian, though in Macau proper you do get a real sky.

I noticed that the old Lisboa rotunda had miraculously survived. It used to be a by-word for over-blown ostentation. In its present company it looks a model of dignified restraint. The outstanding eyesore is the new building just behind it, a sort of multi-storey gold eruption. I am not sure what the shape is supposed to be. From the direction of Taipa it looks rather like one of the pawn shop signs of which Macau has so many, gathered in vulture flocks round the casinos. I suppose a reminder that the house always wins in the long run could be considered a public-spirited feature in a town devoted to gambling, but I can’t believe they intended it to be the first thing people would notice.

The other thing which has changed about Macau is that it was full of mainlanders. Well this was quite close to the Golden Week holiday, but still … Outside of the businesses which they staff, Macau people seemed as rare as native Americans on the streets of Detroit. This is what the Tourism Authority is working so hard to bring to  us here in Hong Kong. Oh dear. I have seen the future and it sucks.