A word of advice for policy secretaries: do not, in your laudable efforts to communicate with the general public over social media, tell us all how tough your job is.
This thought was first prompted by an end-of-the-year Facebook contribution from Chris Tang, the Secretary for Security, in which he recalled a year full of challenges, loss of sleep and “inflammation in my eyes and shoulders, and my gout came back.”
Mr Tang is in a sense in a class of his own. As the Secretary for Security he is in charge of the prison-filling machinery. Numerous people who have friends enjoying the unwanted hospitality of the correctional industry will have been tempted to rather uncharitable responses to reports of his medical problems. Like “Gout? Pity it wasn’t ebola.”
Let us, though, avoid personal specifics and concentrate on the situation of policy secretaries generally. There are plenty of things which they all have in common, which make them rather unlikely recipients for public sympathy.
We know from the budget that you all enjoy salaries exceeding those enjoyed in other countries by prime ministers, presidents and even in some modest cases kings. We know from the reported details of the Political Appointments scheme that you have the services of a secretary, a deputy, a personal assistant and a driver.
Where there is a driver we must also suppose there is a free car.
We know from a little glitch in the sewage system of the freshly-opened Central Government complex that your office also has a private toilet, a dream for many Hong Kong people living in subdivided flats or bedspaces.
We know from the difficulties Ms Carrie Lam experienced when thrust out into the real world that these generous provisions lead to helplessness when forced to use public transport, and complete lack of familiarity with the concept of buying your own toilet paper.
Your work may feel challenging and strenuous but it is also clean, safe and prestigeous. Hong Kong’s working population is (latest census figure) 3.83 million. At least 3.8 million of those people would happily swap jobs with you. Many of them are completely unqualified for the work, but would tell themselves that even if they were fired after a month they would still have earned more than they usually get in a year.
But being unable to do anything useful has not historically been a bar to a lengthy period in office as a policy secretary. The rice bowl is not iron but it is not exactly fragile either.
Under the circumstances complaining about your work makes you look like, to coin a phrase, a bit of a wuss. Getting landmark legislation through Legco may be a source of pride. But how hard can it be to get a law passed in a legislature containing 89 government supporters and one independent?
I would also recommend not going on about possibly work-related medical problems. You are all about 60 years old, give or take a few years. You are reaching a stage in life when the biological machinery which you have taken for granted for half a century starts to throw up the odd problem and needs some care and maintenance.
Sooner or later all of you will encounter one or more of arthritis, tinnitis, varicose veins, deteriorating eyesight, cataracts, mysterious muscular twinges, and occasional inability to remember where you put something down five minutes ago. Your doctor will develop a desire to push cameras into places where you do not normally welcome foreign bodies – happily this is done while you are asleep – and subject you to mysterious but expensive scans.
After a few years of this you will find that conversations with other people in your age group often involve comparisons of medical histories. This is all part of life’s rich pageant and nothing to worry about. But people who are already enjoying it will not be impressed by complaints about the first small symptoms.
A final word for fellow gout victims. This problem is not caused by hard work; it is caused by high uric acid levels in your blood. The solution is a cheap pill called allopurinol. I have been taking it for 40 years.
Looking on the bright side, this used to be known as “the disease of kings” because it was erroneously associated with rich food. Famous victims have included Isaac Newton, Christopher Columbus, Benjamin Franklin, Beethoven and George W. Bush’s vice president Dick Cheney. Doesn’t that feel better?
tim's experiment 