tim's experiment

It is interesting to see that the SCMPost’s editorial writers now implicitly reject most of their newspaper’s analysis of the District Council elections. After the polls had closed we were treated to a rich variety of verbal sauces poured over the cold statistical figures to make them warm enough for public consumption. The voters, we were told, had punished the democrats for neglecting local issues. They had punished the democrats for lacking that unity found so effortlessly in the pro-government camp where all the strings are held by the same puppet master. The voters had rejected the throwing of bananas and shouting of abuse in the Legislative Council chamber. Or they had punished the Civic Party for having leading members who had appeared in court in cases against the government. The revised explanation for the poll results is simpler: the winners cheated. We will not go into the further ramifications of this story, which are that the government was warned long ago about loopholes in the election regulations but the official in charge of such matters, who happened to be Stephen Lam, was too busy for such things, being heavily engaged in the effort to abolish by-elections.

Let us just accept that there is a problem. If you want to register as an elector there is at present no effective check to stop you pretending that you live at an address where you do not. Even, it seems, if your bogus address does not exist. This means that you can vote in the constituency of your choice, whether it is the one you live in or not. We must I fear believe that there has been a good deal of this going on, the tip of the iceberg being represented by those electors who were stupid enough to claim residence in the same small flat as 14 other people, or in non-existent flats, buildings etc., leading to trouble with the police or the ICAC, depending on whether the elector actually voted or not.

The solution proposed for this problem, unfortunately, is totally ineffective. It is that when a voter registers, he or she should be asked to produce “proof of address”. Now if someone wants you to prove who you are, that is easy. You produce the ID card issued by the Hong Kong Government. This contains data which have been verified and compared with your birth certificate or passport. The ID card has a unique number and a variety of anti-forgery features. It is a durable piece of plastic with the government’s authority behind it and is not issued lightly. Proof of address is a different matter.

Oddly enough I was reminded the other day that the Transport Department now demands “proof of address” when you renew your car’s licence. The department thoughtfully provides on the back of the relevant form a list of possible “proofs” , which goes “e.g. water/electricity/gas/mobile phone bill or bank correspondence.” Note that “e.g.” What it means in practice is that almost any respectable piece of correspondence will do, providing it has your name and address on it. And this is actually no proof of anything at all. Indeed there is a flourishing black market in proofs of useful addresses. When I lived in Kowloon Tong we received regular offers to pay our electricity bills. The generous supporter asked only that he or she should be registered as the consumer of the electricity concerned. This would enable him or her to take advantage of Kowloon Tong’s superior educational infrastructure by “proving” residence. Naturally, people who send out bills do not really care who is receiving them as long as the bill is paid. So there is no “proof of residence” corresponding to the “proof of identity” provided by the ID card. Requiring proof of residence will make cheating a little harder, but not much.

What could be done? Well we could consider the British system, where every householder is required to report annually who lives in his dwelling. Giving false information on this topic is a fairly serious matter and abuses are, it seems, rare. People who move at inconvenient times may find it hard to vote and individuals who happen to be in transit or abroad may be left off the register. But on the whole the system automatically registers most of the population. Our government prefers a non-automatic system in which people have to register themselves. I hope this preference is not connected to the well-known implications for the turn-out. Other things being equal in electoral systems with automatic registration this runs to 60-70 per cent. If registration requires a separate effort on the part of the would-be elector then turn-out struggles to beat 50 per cent.

Anyway, officials had better come up with something. Many of us already have a distinct impression that our leaders are not too keen on elections.

I have never had much time for the Broadcasting Authority – a bunch of Government-appointed twerps who frequently panic in moments of public excitement, real or simulated. The decision to fine ATV $300,000 for an erroneous report that Jiang Zemin had snuffed it (premature is perhaps a better word than erroneous – the old bastard must die some time) means the authority has now earned promotion from the harmless joke category to the leading menace one.

The decision is not going to help ATV. After all the station’s recurring problem over the years has actually been shortage of money. It just doesn’t make as much out of its share of the market as TVB does. If it tries to spend enough to match TVB’s programmes it loses even more money. If it tries to cut its spending to match its income, the viewers desert it. The station is in a bind. A six-figure fine is not what it needs. Still,  if the BA’s decision was just unhelpful to ATV that would be a small matter. The serious aspect is the human rights implications.

It is a platitude invariably trotted out on occasions of this kind that the right to freedom of expression is not absolute. It is not like the right not to be tortured or killed, which governments are supposed to preserve all the time. Freedom of speech may be limited when this is necessary for the preservation of other freedoms. Every constitutional document from the UN Declaration of Human Rights downwards has roughly the same list. Restrictions on freedom of speech must be specified by law and must be necessary for some other purpose, the usual exceptions and typical laws they permit being the right to reputation (libel), to a fair trial (contempt), public morals (obscenity) and public order (sedition). None of the permitted exceptions relates to a right not to be misled by rumours that some aged ex-autocrat has popped his clogs, fallen off his twig or joined the Choir Invisible. This means, I take it, that the Authority’s decision is unconstitutional and the station should appeal.

Whether this happens or not, it is worth dwelling for a moment on what the authority has done. Years ago the colonial government tried to make it a criminal offence to publish “false news”. This occasioned great controversy and in the end was not proceeded with. The BA has now smuggled the offence into existence through the licensing conditions imposed on broadcasters. Newspapers remain free to bump off retired statesmen whenever they like. The problem with legislation against false news is that what is “false” is all too often itself a tricky matter. Generally to commit a criminal offence you have to have a guilty mind. In the context of false news this means that you must either know the news was false or be so careless that you should have known it might be. But the Broadcasting Authority is not a court. It does not have to concern itself with such niceties. Mr Jiang weas reported dead. He is still alive. Wack!

Realistically I have to agree with Michael Chugani. Media organisations make mistakes all the time. We do our best to be accurate but news is produced in a hurry and not all sources are as reliable as they might be. People make honest mistakes, misprints creep in, it happens all the time. Even that most careful of publications, The Economist, runs one or two apologies most weeks. Many newspapers in other places (the idea has not caught on in Hong Kong) have an ombudsman to investigate and respond to reader complaints. We all try to avoid expensive mistakes of the kind which lead to court cases, but if people are going to be fined $300,000 for innocent mistakes which have no consequences then reporting will become impossible.

Perhaps that is what the BA wants. Broadcast news should consist entirely of government press releases.

Actually as far as the local news is concerned it pretty much does already. China is a more difficult target because news is assiduously managed by the government, which means the official line is often a lie. Under these circumstances people are bound to report rumours if they look plausible, whether they are denied by Xinhua or not. This is a universal feature of regimes which do not permit a free press. Under these circumstances it will often be difficult to confirm a story. You are lucky to get one version of it. Executives have to make a judgement. If the BA is waiting in the wings with a massive fine for mistakes then that judgement is going to be a very conservative one. This is known in freedom of expression circles as the “chilling effect”.

The disappointing thing about the fine imposed on ATV is the response from other people who should know better. The BA is attacking the media. The fine is not a punishment of the management for interfering in the news department, unwelcome though such interference may be. Journalists all prefer a proprietor who does not wish to influence content and some proprietors are good in this way. When Roy Thompson owned The Times he used to carry a little card which he showed to people who wanted to discuss his newspapers with him. The card said simply that the content of his newspapers was selected entirely by the editorial staff employed for that purpose. When Conrad Black owned the Telegraph he sometimes wrote to the Letters to the Editor page to complain about things he disapproved of. On the other hand in this matter, as in others, Rupert Murdoch has set a deplorable example and standards generally have as a result fallen. Anyway, if the owner or his representative wishes to take the risk of tampering with the news output there is nothing to stop him. Local journalists need to grow up and accept this, instead of deluding themselves that the Broadcasting Authority is an ally in the defence of editorial autonomy.

There is a principle involved here which is much more fundamental than the imaginary right to repel advice from your managing director. If we are not free to make mistakes we shall soon not be free at all.

Since the handover in 1997 the death rate among local media has been rather higher, not because of official skullduggery by the Chinese government, but because of bumbling interventions by its local supporters.

Businessmen who wish to curry favour are prone to the delusion that they can buy some more or less flourishing media outlet, tone down the content a bit by removing items which will annoy their friends, and nobody will notice.

Most of the early casualties were small magazines. The syndrome would follow a predictable path. The buyer would be someone who had shown no previous interest in media ownership, but was well known for his connections further north. He would announce that the decision to buy the magazine was a purely business matter and there would be no change in editorial policy. This was not believed by the staff or the readers. Those staff who could find other jobs – who tend to be the best ones – departed. Quality sagged, readers deserted, and in a year or so there was another purely business decision: to close the magazine.

Of course if you start with a large and prosperous media organisation the process takes far longer. Five years or so ago most of us regarded the South China Morning Post as a durable landmark, though even then the constant comings and goings of chief editors suggested that the proprietors were not sure what they wanted to do with it. Lately a lot of people seem to think the newspaper is a shadow of its former self, prone to fence-sitting and mistakes, and weakened by misguided economies. These are, we know, hard times for newspapers everywhere, although the sort of upscale advertising in which the Post specialises will probably be the last kind to move to the internet. Anyway I am still buying the thing, though I seem to get less for my money than I used to.

I am not qualified to comment on the other local landmark of “quality”, Ming Pao, though my students’ opinions of it are not flattering. But then there is the case of RTHK, now headed by a civil servant whose media experience is non-existent. Now I realise that some government departments are the scene of a constant tussle over whether their leadership demands experience in the work of the staff, or can be exercised by an Administrative Officer whose main skill is in the drafting of an elegant memo. I remember an awful row when an AO was put in charge of the Marine Department, for example.

Previous Directors of Broadcasting were all people who might be supposed to know something about broadcasting. In the early days of RTHK the Director was seconded from the BBC. Later he (or she) was recruited from within RTHK itself. Clearly the job as it was done in those years required broadcasting experience and knowledge. The new incumbent will have to do a different job, because those items on which his predecessors exercised their knowledge and skill will have to be passed on to other shoulders. The question is whether he will feel, as all those other proprietors did, that the content can be shorn of “sensitive” items without diminishing its quality or appeal to consumers.

I rather suspect he will be encouraged to feel this way, because after all the whole point of putting a civil servant in mid-career into the job is that his independence will be curtailed by the desire to have a further career back among the mandarins. I do not suggest anything so crass as people offering threats or inducements. I am sure also that the new Director will not consciously seek to enhance his career prospects by giving his colleagues a quiet life.

Still, there is a consensus among Administrative Officers that they are wonderful in every way, and consequently the government is a wonderfully well-run organisation. If RTHK is going to propagate this curious illusion then many viewers and listeners will in the long run feel it necessary to view and listen to other stations. RTHK cannot, of course, go bankrupt. But if the audience shrinks, so will the budget. And down the slippery slope we go.

A quick update. My letter to the SCMPost was not printed, nor did it elicit a reply. The case continued, as did the reporting. I did notice though that the ban on names has disappeared, so that we now know the names of the parties. The lady concerned, who was awarded more than $1 billion, was Florence Tsang Chiu-wing. If you know this lady she owes you a drink.

The gentleman concerned was Samathur Li Kin-kan, who is the son of preoperty money pile Samuel Lee Tak-yee (can nobody in this family spell?) aka the Prudential Hotel.

The judge has now retired — nothing untoward: he reached the age of 65 — and received the usual bouquet of farewell compliments. I am sure these were richly deserved, but I wonder if judges approaching the end of the line suffer from the short-time twitches…

I have written to the Department of Justice to see if they can shed any light on the situation. I am not holding my breath.

Found some of my students from the Mainland the other day, wearing those little red scarfs which you see kids wearing in China propaganda posters. It turned out this was a polite protest.

I gather that the City U student union was holding its election of officers when it emerged that three candidates from the Mainland had been Young Pioneers and one had actually been a member of the Communist Party itself. The other candidates then withdrew and the election had to be postponed. Readers who are not familiar with the way these things are done at Hong Kong universities should bear in mind that the students do not run for office as individuals. The people who are interested sort out the jobs between them and then run as a team. The only opposition is from apathy. Finding that some of your team members had undisclosed interesting pasts is under these circumstances, I suppose, a reasonable justification for peremptory withdrawal from the proceedings.

This was not the way my Mainlanders saw it, though. They saw the whole thing as “discrimination against Mainlanders”. It seems that if you are a promising student on the Mainland it is impossible to avoid the Young Pioneers. Comparisons with the Pope’s membership of the Hitler Youth are perhaps relevant here. I suppose it is not advisable to refuse an invitation to the Ciommunist Youth League, if it arrives. And then as you get older the Party membership follows.

I am reminded of the tussle among the occupiers of Iraq over what to do about former members of the Baath party, which uncritically supported the regime of Saddam Hussein. Some of the occupiers pointed out that membership of the party was virtually a prerequisite for many jobs so people joined with no particular commitment to the party’s ideology, such as it was, or to Mr Hussein personally. The view that prevailed, unfortunately, was that Iraq should be treated to a process analogous to the deNazification of Germany after World War 2. This process made a great many unnecessary enemies and also crippled the administration of government, power, public transport and other services.

Behind all this lies Hong Kong’s fundamental ambiguity on the question of the Communist Party and its role here, if it has one. Some leftwing bigewigs are, we must suppose, Party members. If so they do not disclose it. Mr CY Leung’s evasions on this topic are considered something of a blot on his suitability for elected high office. It is often written that membership of the Communist Party is illegal in Hong Kong. I have never come across a law to this effect. If the people who write this merely mean that the local branch has not been registered under the Societies Ordinance then that is true, but easily remedied. Communist Party members presumably feel that it would not enhance their standing in Hong Kong society if their membership were known, and I think they are right to think that.

But to apply that to visiting students seems, if discriminatory is too strong a word, at least unfair. People join many things when they are young, and as no doubt the Pope would point out, they sometimes have little choice. However I suspect the problem of the City U students is not that they had past memberships, but that they had concealed them. When running for office the sooner your embarassing baggage is opened to public view the better. See performance by Henry Tang of recent date.

Our leaders are proceeding inexorably to the next phase of the plastic bag ban, which will extend it to a variety of shops not already covered. This is a good time, then, to consider what has already been achieved, or not, as the case may be.

The original purpose of the ban on free bags was supposed to be to help the environment. The ban would do this by reducing the amount of plastic used to make bags, and by cutting the amount of plastic winding up on Government landfills in the form of bags which have been used and discarded. Has it achieved these objectives? Not at all.

What has happened is that the old flimsy biodegradable bags, which were given away free, have been replaced by the new Dreadnought model which is not biodegradable at all and is considerably bigger. The government has given different figures for the reduction in the number of bags produced by the new system, so let us take the highest one, which is 90 per cent. Now clearly whether the policy has reduced the amount of plastic consumed and later discarded depends on whether the new bags contain ten times more plastic than the old ones. If they contain ten times more plastic then the 90 per cent reduction just leaves us where we were. In fact they contain 30 times more plastic. This means that ten new bags have as much plastic in them as 300 old ones. So despite the reduction in the number of bags the amount of plastic wasted and land-filled has trebled.

This is officially regarded as a success. I wonder what failure would look like. And we have not considered the fact that a lot of the old bags were reused as garbage bags, a purpose for which many of us now buy rolls of plastic bags which are not included in the official figures for the reduction achieved. The other week the official concerned wrote to the SCMPost that the scheme was a success because it had produced a change in “shopping culture”. People now often carried a resusable bag. But that was not what was offered before the scheme started. If legislators had been told that the purpose of the scheme was to change “shopping culture” while trebling the amount of used plastic in landfills then they would not have approved it.

Still, this line of argument offers interesting possiblities for defenders of other government deficiencies. Our air pollution, for example, may be worse but it has caused a change in “breathing culture”. Numbers of vulnerable people have stopped breathing. Ah, the sweet smell of success!

Regular readers have probably had enough of me complaining that European cities manage to have classy low-rise centres full of historic buildings, while Hong Kong has ugly 30-story office blocks sitting on top of three storeys of expensive shops. So here’s a variation: Chinese cities can manage it was well.

Recent gap in posts was because I was away in Xian. The tourist attraction which everyone knows about in Xian is the Terracotta Warriors. Actually they are an hour’s drive out of town, but don’t let that put you off: they’re well worth a visit. Xian itself, though, also has its attractions. The centre of the city is enclosed by a historic wall. Apparently in the 70s this had been used as a source of free bricks for so long that only a wall-shaped mound of earth was left in many places. The city then decided to restore it to its original condition and it is now a magnificent structure, about five storeys high and wide enough at the top for walking and cycling. Inside the wall there are a lot of old, and therefore small, buildings and a serious effort has been made to keep the new ones down to the same altitude. There is also a linear park which runs for miles between the wall and its moat. The park is used for exercise (and for other things, judging by the number of posters advocating safe sex), the moat for boating and fishing. The whole show provides miles of wonderful walks – or if you prefer of cycling. It is a credit to the city council.

Why can’t Hong Kong do these things?

The newly forged extra connection between the District Councils and the Chief Executive election has, or so we are told, produced added interest in the DC elections. Perhaps it has. But there is a cost to this.

Consider the dilemma faced by an old friend of mine, who lives on Hong Kong Island. The sitting councillor for her constituency is a relative of a leader of his party, and appears to have no other claims to fame. He is neither active nor visible. The rival candidate from another party was young, a woman (solidarity!) and so keen that she had already set up an office in the district and started working on local issues. The third candidate, an independent, was a complete mystery. You have probably already guessed the problem. Which party, after all, can afford to set up offices for prospective councillors who do not yet have a seat and the expenses that go with it? My friend has to choose, effectively, between a Democrat deadbeat and a lively lady from the DAB, a party she would not normally support unless the only alternative was Pol Pot. The interests of the locality are pulling one way, the prospects of the winning candidate participating in important central political matters push the other.

In my neck of the woods we have another version of the same problem. Our sitting member is likable, enthusiastic and has had some notable successes in such minor matters as are accessible to a council member, like flower beds and bus routes. His rival was a lady instantly recognised by my wife as the rather unhelpful lady who runs one of our local shops. We also had a mystery candidate, of whom I know only that she cannot spell. There were three English words on her leaflet: “The Indepednet Candidate”. As you have probably guessed our local star is a DAB man. Mrs Grumpy is from the Civic Party. Mystery Miss presumably hopes to represent the Dyslexic Party. I firmly believe that local enthusiasm and service should be rewarded. On the  other hand the DAB has recently confirmed its status as the political pits with a campaign of racist demagogy over the residence rights of domestic helpers. The party doesn’t suck. It stinks.

I was left with the thought that whoever both of us voted for we were going to be ashamed afterwards. In countries were democracy is not an issue the solution to this sort of problem is not to vote at all. This will be interpreted as a sign of despair at the quality of the candidates on offer. In Hong Kong, however, it is interpreted as a vote against having elections at all. So it is important to vote, even if  you use a pin … or hold your nose … when you actually make the choice.

Still, once again constitutional jiggery pokery takes all the fun out of what should be a joyous occasion. It is nice to be able to vote, but the proceedings are so comprehensively fixed that it feels like voting in an Iranian presidential election.

Your applause, please for the winner of this year’s Marie Antoinette Memorial Let Them Eat Cake Medal for Outstanding Ignorance of How the Other Half Lives. We need not wait another two months because it is inconceivable that any other contestant could better the mark set on Wednesday by David Pannick QC.

Mr Pannick was appearing for the government in an appeal against a decision of the Registration of Persons Tribunal. The appellant was a Filipino lady who has been in Hong Kong since 1991 and has a 14-year-old son who was born here and knows no other home. In 2008 she applied for permanent residence and was refused. For the lady, a domestic helper, it was argued that she had taken Hong Kong as her home, was a member of a church here, engaged in charitable activities, and was regarded as a member of her employer’s family. She had given up her right to vote in the Phillipines and no longer had a home there.

Mr Pannick, for the government, said that this was not enough. The lady concerned should have taken “positive steps” to adopt Hong Kong as her residence. An example was to own a flat in Hong Kong, he said.

Now pick yourself up off the floor while we consider a few things it would be nice to say to Mr Pannick. We could say, for example, that a single mother living on a domestic helper’s salary might be pushed to buy a flat in Hong Kong. Indeed many people on much more than a domestic helper’s salary would dearly like to buy a flat in Hong Kong but cannot. Would he accept a dog kennel? Or we could entertain ourselves by thinking of other ways in which a domestic helper might show her Positive Enthusiasm for residence in Hong Kong, like owning a racehorse, joining the Hong Kong Club, sending her son to Yew Chung International School or employing an expensive expat twit to argue her case instead of the local lady provided by Legal Aid.

The law is not an ass, we are often told. But some lawyers…

The death of Muammar Gaddafi, as well as offering relief to hordes of insecure journalists who are not sure how to spell his name, seems on balance a Good Thing. Though difficult to take seriously, the late dictator had a great deal of blood on his hands. So why, one wonders, is so much international angst being expressed at the possibility that the captured dictator was unceremoniously shot, rather than being paraded before a trial of some kind?

Actually his end was of his own choosing. If he had gone while the going was good, while he still controlled most of the country and had something to haggle with, he could have arranged a comfortable retirement in some friendly country with immunity from prosecution and access to at least some of his ill-gotten gains. If he had negotiated a surrender of Sirte formally with the surrounding government forces he could have been sure at least of a safe trip to the Hague and a fair trial. If he held on to the bitter end the chances were always that his eventual capture would be an informal affair.

Traditionally, at least in movies, this would involve someone saying “come out with your hands up” and the defeated combatant being conveyed politely to the rear. Actually this is not very realistic. People who have studied the rather undocumented matter of surrender on the battlefield reckon that about half of attempts to do this are successful. This, at least, held for the Western fronts in the two world wars. It was generally much harder to surrender on the Eastern front and in the Pacific extremely rare. As Winston Churchill pointed out, a man who surrenders in a tactical situation is someone who was trying to kill you and now asks you not to kill him. Sometimes the answer is no, or as they used to put it in the British Army, “Too late, mate”.

This holds true only for the infantry. When naval warfare shifted to long ranges in the 1890s it became difficult to “strike the colours”, or signal an effective surrender in any other way, so enemies were generally bombarded until they sank. Submarines had no practical provision for prisoners or prizes, so the only attempted concession in the early days was the convention that the crew of a ship should be invited to take to the boats before it was sunk. This arrangement did not last long. As for the airmen, of course, it is simply not possible to surrender to an aeroplane, even in the rather unusual event that it is bombing an entirely military target.

Unfoirtunately this has meant that successful surrenders have become increasingly rare, a problem exacerbated by the bloodthirst of some civilians. I still remember Donald Rumsfeld saying on television, a propos of some Afghan city, that “America is not in the business of accepting surrenders”. Indeed it isn’t. It is rather in the business of hi-tech assassination. Whether you approve of this is I suppose a matter of opinion. But as nobody seems to think it worth complaining about drone attacks it seems a bit hypocritical to lament the summary justice administered to the Lybian dictator. Goodness knows he had it coming.