tim's experiment

I was reading a history book the other day, which I often do for fun, when I noticed that something was missing. This is not a serious omission and the book – “Why the West Rules – for now” by Ian Morris, can be recommended as a stimulating read. Still, when I was a fulltime student of these matters the numbering of years followed a simple system. The year you were talking about had a number. Before the number were two letters. If we were in the last 2000 years or so the two letters were AD, which stood for Anno Domini. So we are now in AD 2011. Anno Domini means “in the year of Our Lord”. The Lord referred to was made clear in the abbreviation used for earlier years, which was BC, meaning Before Christ. Now I am not a huge fan of this system because it means that with the older dates you have to count backwards. I often have to remind myself that 2000 BC comes before 1000 BC, and not the other way round, as you might think. But this system has been around for a long time and most of us are used to it.

Mr Morris, though was using something different. Instead of AD he had CE, and instead of BC he had BCE. The numbers were the same. You still had to count backwards in BCE. I had to look this up. CE stands for the Common Era and BCE stands for Before the Common Era. The “Common Era” is a translation of a Latin phrase Aera Vulgaris, which probably did not originally mean common in the modern sense. Alternatively you can ignore the history and say that the use of the Common Era removes a potential source of embarassment to non-Christians. The system is “common” because it is used all round the world by people of many religions or of none. For this reason some publishers recommend it. Humph. The counter-argument is that the AD/BC system was after all invented hy Christians and refusing to use the traditioonal labels is a concession to atheism or political correctness or both.

There are as usual some odd things about all this. The first is that the monk who initiated the system is generally thought to have made a mistake in estimating the year of Christ’s birth. So this event (for those who believe it happened at all – there is an interesting theory that the oldest Gospel was writtan as a fictional allegory and no real person is behind it at all) is usually given as happening between 2 and 4 AD. Or 2 and 4 CE if you prefer. So the year of Our Lord is not exactly the year of Our Lord at all. The system is a convenience. The second oddity is that people who boycott the AD/BC version because of  its religious significance are quite happy to continue with the usual days of the week, which are actually all named after gods of one persuasion or another except Sunday and Monday. The months are also polluted by religion – as well as two rather objectionable Roman emperors.

The Society of Friends (Quakers) seems to be the only religion which has noticed this point, and for many years refused to use the conventional names for days and months, instead managing simply with numbers – as Cantonese still does. Apparently most Quakers now regard the insistence on numbers as a bit unnecessary but they still often refer to Sunday as First Day.  For the rest of us, I don’t know. Apparently the reference to Christ is a problem for some people. The use of the Common Era arrangement was started in the 19th century by Jewish historians who presumably thought (the Lord thy God is a jealous God) that something terrible would happen to them if they mentioned Jesus, even in a date. On the other hand common sense suggests that a label is just a label, and as long as we all use the same one it doesn’t matter too much where it came from. Many physical units are named after scientific celebrities. If we discovered that the Mr Ohm after whom the ohm is named had stolen his results from someone else, and moreover was a nasty piece of work who abused his dog, deceived his wife and robbed his servants, would it matter?

I suppose it is all part of the march of euphemism, which requires us to refer to the blind, the halt and the maimed as “differently abled”, prostitutes as sex workers, and robber barons as the Real Estate Developers’  Association. I must declare an interest here. Having wasted so much of my youth mastering the intricacies of Latin I am often irritated to see this accomplishment becoming even more useless than it was in the 60s. Sic transit gloria, as we used to say.

Ahoy there, South China Morning Post! Time for a few brief words about some basic pieces of nautical terminology. On Page 2 today, in that silly column called “talking points” (our editors will be looiking ahead at these developing stories…) we are told that “All eyes will be on the northern port of Dalian, with wide speculation that China’s first aircraft carrier will be launched to mark the anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army.”  Well some of those eyes are going to be sorely disappointed. On the opposite page fans are rushing to Dalian to see the aircraft carrier, the Varyag, which is already “at anchor” about a kilometre from the shore. To launch a boat means to put it in the water. If the Varyag is at anchor it is already in the water.

Is there another aircraft carrier on the slipway, or is the SCMP just bad at boat stories? Well there was another clue on the same page as the story, a picture of the aircraft carrier concerned. This was captioned “The Varyag lies anchored yesterday at the shipyard in Dalian ….” But the Varyag was not anchored in the picture. Both anchors could be clearly seen stowed in the usual place, one each side of the bow. And indeed you would not, after all, drop anchor in a shipyard, supposing you were in one. You would simply tie up. By a delicious coincidence, the story and picture on page 3 are right under a story headlined “Press council to look into newspaper errors”.

I am trying not to be too hard on the Post, but clearly some people have stopped relying on it for information. One of them is apparently its own columnist, Michael Chugani, who thinks that democratic countries should abandon democracy so that they can become prosperous and efficient … like China. ROFL.

It is not often I feel moved to write, or even read, about competitive swimming, but a story the other day was provocative. Readers will recall that a year or two ago swimmers started appearing in a new suit, which covered everything, and was constructed from some high tech material which made them a bit faster. Records tumbled, people who could not afford the new duds complained, and the speed suits were eventually banned.

Now everyone is back in the old gear, records are no longer tumbling. In fact they are not being broken at all. This is apparently disappointing for spectators, who like to see records broken. I can’t think why, as you can’t tell until the announcement afterwards whether a record has been set or not, but there it is. We may note in passing that spectators are in for a disappointment sooner or later because speeds will hit limits set by biology. Racehorses, which have been racing a lot longer than human swimmers, have reached this stage. They go as fast as a horse can go without turning into a Pegasus and speed records are rarely broken.

Anyway, in the meantime, according to the story, the swimming authorities are wrestling with some way to keep crowds interested in a record-free meeting, and also struggling with the sponsors. It seems that the cover-everything Superman suit provided plenty of space for advertising. Now the male swimmers have gone back to something more like traditional briefs there is nowhere to put a logo on the upper half of the body, which is the only part likely to appear on television.

Now in the first place it seems clear that the suit problem is not going to go away. Hundredths of a second make a difference at this level so people are always going to be looking for an edge. The answer, it seems to me, is that the swimmers should wear no clothes at all. This would also solve the problem of attracting an audience, though no doubt it will not be exactly the same as the audience they get now. I suppose in the interests of hygiene they could keep those funny hats. They won’t be wearing much less than the beach volleyball people do.

This will considerably reduce the demand for competitive swimwear. But I suppose other sponsors will be interested. Of course there will be nothing to stick a logo on but where there’s a profit to be had people find a way. Some sort of removable tatoo?

Many years ago in the UK there was a lady called Mary Whitehouse. Mrs Whitehouse was frequently quoted in newspapers and invited to appear on television to comment on media matters. This was because she was the spokesperson of a thing called the National Viewers and Listeners Association. Whenever a reporter was looking for someone to give a view which could be presented as that of the consumers of radio or television, Mrs W was the person to call.

Actually it was widely known in media circles that this was a con. The National Viewers and Listeners Association was not national. Mrs Whitehouse was a member of a nutty religious group and the NVLA drew most of its members, who only numbered a few hundred anyway, from the same Godsquad. Its claims to speak for anyone but a few Puritans were minimal. But it had no competition, so the phone calls kept coming.

Mrs Whitehouse’s counterpart in Hong Kong is Joseph Law, who rejoices in the title of Chairman of the Hong Kong Employers of Overseas Domestic Helpers Association. With this on his business card he is routinely wheeled out to pronounce on matters like the minimum wage for helpers or the requirement that they leave town in two weeks if dismissed. Mr Law’s opinions on these matters are entirely predictable. Whether they are typical is another matter. I have been an employer of an overseas domestic helper for many years. I have never been invited to join Mr Law’s association. I have never met anyone who has, though many of my friends also employ domestic helpers. The association has, it seems, no function other than allowing Mr Law to parade his greed and insensitivity in public and foist it on the rest of us. If the association has meetings they are not reported. If it has other useful and constructive activities they also remain below the public radar. If it has a website the Google machinery has so far failed to find it. Next time a reporter is tempted to ask Mr Law for a quote it might be a good idea to insert a request for his membership figures.

Mr Law’s latest public outburst showed that he is moving on from offering mean quotes about matters concerning domestic helpers to things which have nothing to do with his members, if any, at all. Wednesday’s papers were full of the DAB’s latest campaign, which is a disgraceful attempt to influence the court which will shortly be considering a request for judicial review of the rule that overseas domestic helpers do not qualify for the right of abode after being here for seven years. As this is in marked  contrast to the treatment of overseas bankers – and for that matter butchers, bakers, candlestick makers etc – there is some reason to suppose that the plea will succeed. That is no excuse for campaigning for a particular result. Does the DAB beieve in the rule of law? Of course not. Stupid question.

The party’s spokespoodle, one Starry Lee, explained that the DAB was publicising its spectacular predictions of social doom if helpers were allowed the right of abode because it was “only putting forward an estimate of the possible consequences and remind the government to be prepared for all possible outcomes.” Cobblers. The DAB is putting forward its lurid lies in an attempt to broaden its electoral prospects by appealing to racism and snobbery in the middle classes.

I am a little puzzled as to why Mr Law felt called upon as an employer’s spokesperson to join in this particular row. After all from the employer’s point of view it makes little difference whether maids qualify for the right of abode or not. Some may leave the business when they qualify for the ID card.  But if Hong Kong offers the additional attraction of the right of abode then no doubt replacements will be easier to come by. So as employers we may be attracted or appalled, but this is nothing to do with us.

Nevertheless Mr Law sailed in with the promise (threat?) that “If they rule in favour of the maids, I will ask the Hong Kong Government to seek an interpretation of the Basic Law from China. We cannot accommodate such a large influx into the population.” This suggests two possiblilities. One is that Mr Law erroneously supposes that any domestic helper who is awarded the right of abode will be able to claim a permanent home with her current employer. The other is that Mr Law is not really interested in labour issues at all, he is just another left-wing loony who thinks the world will end if the Basic Law is criticised in any way.

Or perhaps he’s just thick.

To Lam Sang Wai this weekend, to see it before it disappears. Lam Sang Wai is an area of wetland near Yuen Long. It was certainly wet when I saw it because we had constant rain, but some of it is wet all the time. It is a rare piece of landscape for Hong Kong, being completely flat throughout. Neglected fishponds and paddy fields abound. Some of it looks like the Norfolk Broads, or like the Norfolk Broads before they were tidied up for tourism. Some of it looks a bit like the famous West Lake, with causeways dotted with trees running along the horizon. Few of the traditional residents are still there. The place is very quiet, though parts are within distant earshot of the Yuen Long Industrial Area. Birds chirp, butterflies flutter by.

The place boasts Hong Kong’s only remaining manpowered ferry. You stand on a sampan and a gentleman rows standing up and facing forward, with two rather short oars fitted with handles  on the end to make them easier to feather. I have never seen this arrangement in Hong Kong before – the fishing boatpeople scull over the stern with a single oar. No doubt it’s a good arrangement for a river boat.

There is a long road round the outside of the area, which seems to have been built to provide the Drainage people with access to the river bank. This has been extensively remodelled. We tried to cut through the middle of the peninsula, which was very quiet and spooky, but the path petered out. There are very basic public toilets. Three or four restaurants are run by surviving obstinate inhabitants. The place is a bit awkward to find but well worth a visit and quite out of the ordinary.

I fondly supposed that it was waiting to be engulfed by the Yuen Long New Town, at which point the government would shower money on the local landowners, half of whom would turn out to be Lau Wong Fat. But this is not the case at all. The whole place, apparently, has already been bought up years ago by Henderson Land (owned by the Lee clan which buys its babies in bulk) and there was actually an application to turn most of the wetland into a housing estate, golf club, commercial complex – the usual catastrophe. The application was approved, but for some reason Henderson did not go ahead with the work and a court case last year decided that the permission had now lapsed. The next move from the vandals – I beg your pardon the developers – is now awaited. Knowing the way Hong Kong works one cannot be optimistic about Lam Sang Wai long escaping transition into a golf course, etc, with no doubt a corner reserved for nature somewhere. So enjoy it while it lasts. Map and instructions here: http://www.wetlandpark.com/en/tour/nsw.asp

I can’t believe the News of the World is actually going to close. It was a landmark. It should have been declared a piece of Unesco cultural heritage. When I was still at school it was already notorious. The News of the World’s basic idea — often imitated but never surpassed — was that court stories are an endless source of the magic ingredients: sex and violence. In those days the treatment was far from graphic. There would be a good deal on what you might call the foreplay but when you were expecting what is now, I believe, known as “the money shot” you would be fobbed off with something like “he then committed the offence.” Still, this was a good deal more than you got anywhere else — including at school, where sex education had not yet been invented. So the newspaper was compulsive reading for boys of a certain age.

When I was a court reporter it was well known that certain stories would get a warm and lucrative reception from the News of the Screws, as we called it. As our newspaper printed on a Wednesday it had no objection to your selling the same tale to the News of the World for use the following Sunday. Sadly stories of the necessary kind rarely seemed to come my way. I did once send them a story about a man who, arriving home drunk on a Saturday night, accused his wife of infidelity and shaved her eyebrows off to make her less attractive. As usually happened in such cases the wife turned up in court — still without eyebrows — to say that her husband was a good man when sober and deserved mercy. The News of the World’s copytaker greeted the story with enthusiasm but they did not use it. This was rather a relief; on reflection it seemed rather unfair that this particular couple should become nationally famous because he had chosen an original method of wife abuse. They did send me some money though. This was before the paper fell into the hands of Rupert Murdoch, for whom I am happy to say I have never worked.

One cannot of course escape the ogre’s influence completely and I have at various times met and even occasionally worked with people who had been employed in senior posts in the Empire of Darkness. I have to say that I cannot recall any from whom I would willingly have bought a used car and one or two of them were clearly crooks. It seems Mr Murdoch, though undoubtably talented in giving the people what they want, was prone to recruiting the ethically challenged.

However it is difficult to believe that the News of the World was the only British newspaper with ethical and legal deficiencies. I have no idea how widespread phone hacking may be — I left the country before mobile phones arrived so in my day we were not tempted. In the matter of bribing policemen and other people, however, I fear there is plenty of scandal to emerge at other places. All the popular papers do it, and have done it for years. If you talk to them or tip them off they will pay you. You expect it; they expect it. The reporters come equipped with large sums in unaccountable cash for the purpose. Occasionally someone gets into trouble for bribing a policeman or a prison officer, but usually everyone winks. Sometimes it leaks out: during the Falklands War several of the more patriotic popular  paper reporters endeared themselves to the troops by “sponsoring” bombs. This was meaningless and produced no news more interesting than a picture of a bomb with a message painted on it. I think the reporters concerned just did it from habit.  During the handover period, when almost everyone in Hong Kong was interviewed at one time or another, you could tell the British pop press. They were the ones who offered to pay you.

The moral of all this from Hong Kong’s point of view is that people should be more grateful than they are for the press we have got.  Even the popular papers do cover serious topics, don’t pay for stories and don’t make stuff up. Not everyone can say this.

We get a flight every two minutes or so round my way. We are under what I think is known as the final approach, but the planes are still about 3,000 feet up. As it is quiet in the area and we are on a hill which occupies some of the 3,000 feet they are noisy enough not to be ignored completely. When the airport first moved some of our neighbours tried to get up a petition against the flight path going over us. I had to tell them that though I sympathised we have just moved from Kowloon Tong, where aeroplane noise was really noise. So I didn’t sign it.

After all there is still something wonderful about watching planes flying, at least for me. My only complaint is that it is a lot less wonderful than it used to be, because nowadays all the planes are the same. There are, after all, only two manufacturers. If you are looking at an airliner the only question is whether it is an Airbus or a Boeing. You can then consider the individual model, but this is not very satisfying, because the model is only identified by a string of numbers anyway.

This was not always the case. I still remember the first aeroplane I ever rode in. It was called a Lockheed Constellation and had a strikingly elegant shape. The Lockheed company apparently thought that if the fuselage was shaped in wing-like curves it would contribute some lift. Nobody else copied this innovation so I suppose it was a mistake. But it did produce a strikingly handsome aeroplane. Pix here http://www.google.com.hk/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1128&bih=695&q=lockheed+constellation+aircraft&gbv=2&oq=lockheed+const&aq=6&aqi=g8g-m1&aql=undefined&gs_sm=c&gs_upl=3085l7103l0l16l12l0l1l1l0l253l1657l1.8.2l11

And like other airliners it had a name. One took this for granted and the Douglas company (which still make airliners in those days) was considered very eccentric for sticking to numbers. Travellers by air were supposed to partake, in a high-speed way, in the romance of sea travel. And ships had of course always had names.

This convetion has now been abandoned. I notice Boeing is calling its latest invention a Dreamliner but their heart did not seem to be in it and the new machine already has the usual boring three digits. As well as the terminology it seems the aeroplanes are increasingly undistinguishable from each other. I suppose American windtunnels and European windtunnels produce much the same result so the best shape for the usual speed emerges from everyone’s research as the same thing. Engines are now invariably worn in pods under the wing. Consequently there is no need for the eccentric tails which used to distinguish some models. The number of engines seems to be standardising rapidly on two, more or less regardless of the size of the plane – or for that matter the length of the journey; the convention that long trips over oceans required four engines seems to have been dropped.

I suppose this is all a result of air travel becoming routine, at least in the technical sense. There are no longer any great surprises in store and accidents on respectable airlines are gratifyingly rare. Still it seems a shame. I remember much the same thing happening on the railways. When steam locomotives, which usually had names, were replaced by diesels there was an attempt to give at least the larger diesels names. They did not catch on. As all the intricate practical arts involved in steam locomotion were replaced by the sort of controls you get in a car, the whole business became routine, efficient … and dull.

I suppose it is a bit ungrateful to be picky about a system which can whisk you to London in 12 hours but I obstinately hope that we will eventually see a return of airships, which will sail serenely and rather slowly through the sky at heights where you can still see the ground. And they will have names.

Hope: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/06/aeros_pentagon_deal/

Quite the most infuriating headline of the past week was the one that said Hong Kong “needed” 500 professional athletes. Even allowing for the fact that it was quoting a lady who worked for the Hong Kong Sports Institute this seemed a bit rich. It may well be that the HKSI needs 500 professional athletes to keep its employees in the state of secure employment to which they would like to be accustomed. But the rest of us?

The word “need”usually implies something more serious than just desirable from the point of view of the speaker. Hong Kong needs a police force and a public housing programme. Arguably it needs a high speed rail connecton and a third runway. But it does not in any useful sense of the word need full-time professional athletes at all.  Leave aside the football and rugby people who are payed for by customers who are prepared to cough up for tickets or patrons who wish to see higher standards of play. The rest of the athletic population is supported by the taxpayer, who is rarely consulted about this item of expenditure. Their only purpose, as far as the rest of us are concerned, is to make the Olympic coverage more palatable by giving us someone to root for. Since most of the population is quite happy to use the China team for this purpose we really do not need these people at all.

To be fair, I think the 500 figure was supposed to have an “if” attached to it. This was the figure which would, at least in coaching theory, allow Hong Kong to field competitive teams or competitors in all disciplines. Why Hong Kong should wish to do that was not mentioned. Clearly though this is a proposal which will be considered seriously because the sporting Functional Constituency is a useful tame vote for the government. At least the athletes, unlike the Heung Yee Kuk, do not aspire to be above the law.

They do, though, have some odd notions about education. It was suggested by the lady for whom 300 Spartans was not enough that the professional athletes should be given more time to complete their education  so that they would not suffer from taking time off school work. She thought 10 years for high school and 10 years for university would be about right.

There are some obvious problems with this suggestion. One is that few athletes will really wish to be Hong Kong’s only 21-year-old high school student. Another is that if this suggestion was implemented it would reinforce the already widespread suspicion that a lot of sportspeople are dumb. The university end of it presents less obvious difficulties. A course which is designed to take three or four years may not work over ten. Indeed the sportsperson may get to the nineth year and discover that some items he needs to graduate are no longer offered. Universities may feel that there is more to the education they offer than a gradual accumulation of credit units, and students need some experience of scholarship as a lifestyle, rather than just a mealticket.  Actually local universities are already quite willing to be flexible with sports stars, most of whom by an interesting coincidence turn out to be studying some form of sport.

I understand the frustration of professional coaches who find that promising youngsters are not prepared (or not allowed by their parents) to drop educational activity and devote themselves full-time to a sport for a while. But proposing special slow-motion degrees for this group seems to be an attempt to exempt them from one of the facts of life, which is that sometimes you have to choose from two things which are mutually exclusive. Time spent studying cannot be spent training and vice versa. This is not an absolute ban on serious sport. When I was an undergraduate I trained six days a week all the time (we were not allowed to row on Sundays) and this was allowed even though I was not studying “sports science”. Students are not condemned to sporting inactivity just because they are students. Six month training camps in the Kenyan highlands are out, though. That’s life.

There is also a question of fairness here. Professional sport is not the only pursuit which peaks early enough to clash with long-term education. Models, actors, pop singers, Miss Hong Kong contestants and even proponents of some of the more fiddly factory work need to make an early start on their careers if thay are to have one at all. Are all these people to go on the ten-year slow train to graduation? And having accepted them, can we refuse sex workers?

While we are on sporting matters, a couple of other things we do not need. Some excitement over the brief appearance of a Formula One car on a (closed to traffic) Hong Kong street led to suggestions that it would be nice if Hong Kong had its own Grand Prix. No it wouldn’t. Quite apart from the noise and the need to close roads for days (they have to practice) there is the question whether Formula One is really the sort of enterprise we ought to be encouraging. After all football is a great worldwide game with a blob of sleeze on top of it. Formula One is a small travelling circus with a blob of sleeze on top of it. It has increasingly appeared in recent years as a way of making one man very rich. There are other car sports if we want one.

Also on my “No thanks” list is the America’s Cup. I remember the days when this was a compulsive watch, in matched yachts built according to widely understood rules. Lately it has become a legal slug fest and the “boats” used are now grossly impractical contraptions which change with every iteration of the race, according to decisions made by New York judges. It seems the cup is now preparing to spin off a sort of global challenger series which will travel the world. An application to the largely unused “mega events” fund is no doubt already being drafted. Not in my harbour, thank you.

It seems that a lot of mainland bigwigs have been caught flourishing bogus degrees. And we are not here dealing with minor matters like the local hero who attended a prestigious and expensive American university but kept rather quiet about the fact that he never actually graduated. You want a top job on the mainland now then you had better have a PhD. This has led to a variety of sad stories.

Some people bought one, not realising that the University of West Hartlepool PhD in Life Experience is not actually accepted by many people as the Real Thing. Some of them were ripped off by people who promised that the University of White Pigeon would do the right thing if its palm was crossed by a large piece of silver, then made off with the fees. And some of them, it seems, deliberately set out to get a doctoral degree from the University of Oxford, Minnesota, in the hope that it would be mistaken for something else.

The curious thing about all these cases is that in none of them were suspicions aroused because the person flaunting a newly minted doctorate did not seem to have any doctoral qualities. Indeed it seems that there aren’t really any doctoral qualities. It helps if you are smart and it is almost indispensable to be hard-working (nobody will dispute that it’s a long slog – never mind the quality feel the length) but basically as long as you pay the money and put in the hours you emerge with the degree and only two discernible new skills: the ability to write badly and to please senior academics. As these have no conceivable usefulness in careers outside university teaching the enthusiasm for PhDs is a bit of a puzzle. Surely all these embarassed people weren’t seeking careers as industrial chemists?

Anyway there are two morals to this story. For employers, look at the applicant’s employment history. It takes an average of seven years to get a PhD and many people take ten. If there isn’t a large hole in your applicant’s work history he hasn’t done it. Part-time PhDs take forever. Potential employees who really want a PhD without doing the seven-year stretch need to wait until they are seriously rich. Perfectly respectable universities who receive lavish donations will generously bestow an honorary degree on you sooner or later, even though they know many of the less scrupulous recipients will then flourish them on their business cards. Strictly speaking this is a serious breach of ettiquette – honorary degrees should be worn only in the precincts of the university awarding them – but nobody can stop you.

Of course if you can become seriously rich without a PhD this suggests that it may not be as essential as all that. It is supposed, after all, to be a degree for researchers. If that is not what your potential employer is looking for then his interest in your educational attainments is probably irrelevant. A doctorate looks good in company reports, perhaps?

It is a commonplace enunciated by sundry authorities from Voltaire to Noam Chomski via several distinguished judges, that freedom of speech entails freedom to express opinions with which most of us violently disagree.  It is essential to the pursuit of truth that all people may enunciate their version of it, within very broad limits. So on being told that large numbers of people think it is OK if the police torture suspects to get them to confess, one is disappointed, even angry, but one does not expect or advocate action. The answer to erroneous opinions is the expression of correct opinions. Hong Kong and China are both signatories in different ways to international conventions which outlaw torture in all circumstances.
The situation is perhaps muddied by the Motherland’s habit of joining clubs whose rules it has no intention of following, but still. The right not to be tortured is one of the most fundamental human rights. Anyone who thinks differently is a menace and a moron. That would normally be the end of the matter.

But this time it isn’t, because the survey which uncovered this large group of dimwits was not of people in general, it was of teachers. Specifically it was of teachers who are supposed to be teaching the new Liberal Studies subject. And more than one third of them were OK with police torture. Readers who hope this was a freak result from a misunderstood question will be disappointed to hear that it was quite consistent with the other views of the surveyees: 55 per cent of them approved of parental corporal punishment and no less than 57 per cent thought youngsters had no right to choose their own religion.

Now of course as citizens these people have a perfect right to their own opinions. They may if they wish deem it desirable that police should pull suspects’ fingernails out, and all we can do is lament their ignorance and lack of understanding or sympathy. But is such an attitude acceptable in a teacher? Personally I grew up with the idea that teachers were entitled to their own opinions and that was that. In my youth we all knew that teachers in Germany were required to support the constitution, and regarded this as an odd continental quirk due to the recent history of that country. It was supposed that Germans had fallen for Hitler in large quantities because so many teachers had told them that he was basically a good egg with some funny views about Jews.

In the 60s, as I recall, the libertarian view of these matters came under stress, because some teachers pushed the envelope in the matter of discussing, and even enjoying, sex with students. There was also a vociferous puritanical lobby, and I think still is, against the idea that students should be allowed to consider the possibility that homosexuality is part of humankind’s rich pageant of sexual variations, rather than a mortal sin or a disease.

This is, plainly, a delicate area. On the one hand we wish young people to be questioning and open-minded. It is right and healthy that they should skeptically consider the merits of their parents’ prejudices. On the other hand one of the jobs of an education system is to transmit and preserve the existing culture. Before students start questioning the rules they should know what they are, and have some experience of obeying them. Most of this transmission can be left to the unconscious effect of interactions in corridor, class and playing field. But we all expect students to learn that some things are right and some things wrong. Indeed parents who are not themselves particularly godly often try to send their kids to religious schools because they suppose that religious establishments will excel in this area.

So, in effect, there are limits. A teacher who advocated sex between 10-year-olds, or killing your grandparents to solve your financial problems, would not long remain a teacher. Or so we all hope. On the other hand teachers are allowed to advance the interesting historical myth that is creationism, as long as they do it in Religious Studies classes, and to pursue the worship, according to the choice of the school’s sponsors, of God (Christian), God (Catholic), Buddha, Mohammed, the late Chairman Mao or the Hong Kong Jockey Club.

So the question which arises is whether torture and its unacceptable status as a police procedure is so fundamental and important a matter that teachers should be required to have, or at least to express, a particular view on the subject or leave the profession. We must note that this is a bad time to be asking this question, because the convention that nice countries did not condone torture, like the convention that nice countries did not engage in aggressive war, has been much battered by Mr GWBush and his cronies. Hong Kong television routinely broadcasts episodes of “24”, an exciting programme which is the most toxic American export since the abolition of slavery. I try to avoid watching this prolonged celebration of the political uses of torture, but occasionally the only alternative is horseracing. So I stumbled on another grim landmark, when for what I hope was the first time the Jack Bauer character shot dead an unarmed prisoner who had clearly surrendered, was no threat to anyone and was, to boot, a woman.  I realise that there was a certain lack of realism in the days when a surrounded miscreant was always offered a fair trial if he gave himself up, but the convention embodied a useful aspiration, that the rule of law should govern relations even with society’s enemies.

So I think we should require that Liberal Studies teachers have an acceptable view of police torture. I advance this opinion with no hope of it being implemented. After all once we start students looking at international human rights law we are getting close to a “sensitive” matter, this being the euphemism in educational circles for the fact that human rights are ill observed by Mother. And indeed they are increasingly ill-observed by our own government. I wonder how many people would have endorsed torture if the survey had been administered to policemen?