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Posts Tagged ‘politics’

Next national security improvement: no studying overseas?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 5, 2026| 1 Comment »

There are worrying signs that the new nationally secure future will include increasing efforts to discourage – and in due course perhaps to forbid – Hong Kong students from studying overseas.

First symptom spotted by people who take an interest in these things was an article in the Hong Kong Standard’s on-line version, headed “Foreign schemes use free travel to recruit elites to disrupt Hong Kong”.

I have a great sentimental affection for the Hong Kong Standard, where I enjoyed some of the happiest working years of my life, but the paper seems to have fallen on hard times, and Standard standards have slipped.

The piece in question is clearly a matter of opinion, and should have a by-line, but does not. The headline is followed by four pictures, which should have captions, but do not. One of them appears to be a welcome seminar for participants in an overseas study programme, one appears to be a police press conference, and two are of unidentified individuals.

The story itself appears to be based heavily on the imagination of the author. There is not a single named source. Factlets are attributed to “some political figures”, “political figures”, “a political figure”, “the outside world”, “the political figure”, “reports”, “informed sources”, “it is estimated”, “a fact known to everyone in those circles”, and “political figures” again.

The piece concludes with a fierce attack on the Hong Kong Journalists Association which appears to have no factual basis and is not attributed to anyone but the anonymous author. Who, I suspect, is also “a political figure”.

In short what we are looking at here is a piece of what is known technically in journalism education circles as crap.

The author cites four exchange programmes as providing opportunities for “external forces” to “instill hostile Anti-China and Hong Kong-disrupting ideologies”. Three of them are explicitly sponsored by the US State Department and no doubt purvey surreptitiously such seditious notions as freedom, democracy and the rule of law. The idea that they are specifically directed at China., much less Hong Kong, is silly. List of some victims of the International Visitor Leadership Program here.

The other is the Chevening Scholarship scheme, parented by the UK Foreign Office. But this does not provide a programme; scholars pursue Master’s courses of their own choice. Ironically, alumni are claimed to strengthen UK-China relationships.

However “political figures” also has it in for Harvard U’s Nieman Fellowship, and the fellowship programme at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, whose sins were to accommodate respectively Bao Choy and Ronson Chan. The objection, I fear, is to foreign travel and overseas study as such.

Consequently it was disturbing to read on Monday that Jardine’s educational trust has decided to end a scheme which provided scholarships for students to attend Oxford and Cambridge Universities. The trust will instead expand opportunities for students to attend “leading universities” in the Asian region. Could that, I wonder, mean China?

I think “political figures” is grossly over-estimating the effect of free study trips. I have some history here. For many years two organisations, one UK and one German, have cooperated to hold the annual Koenigswinter Conference (Koenigswinter is a small town near Bonn, which was the capital of West Germany when the thing started) where movers and shakers from both countries get together to discuss matters of mutual interest.

It also has a youth version for future movers and shakers, the Young Koenigswinter Conference, which is held in Berlin and to which, way back in 1969, I was invited. Clearly the identification of future movers and shakers was a bit awry here.

Anyway we had the usual “sugar-coated traps” as “political figures” would put it: travel and accommodation were free, lectures, tours and seminars thrown in. Clearly the hope was that we would emerge with a higher opinion of Germany and particular good will towards West Berlin, a Cold War flashpoint recently walled off from the eastern part of the city.

Did this happen? I doubt it. The thing which most impressed the English contingent was the slot machine in the entrance hall of our castle, which dispensed cans of beer. As the sale of booze in England was still surrounded by restrictions on places, times and ages this was a pleasant surprise, and the machine did a lot of business. Personally I had some very pleasant international relations with a student from Freiburg called Monika.

Our actual deliberations on the Anglo-German relationship were inconclusive. The basic and insoluble problem was that for most of our elders the major event of their life was World War 2, in which Germany had provided the opposition. Indoctrination wilts in encounters with recent history.

This probably applies to Hong Kong as well. “Political figures” should beware of attributing inconvenient opinions to foreign influence. Events usually trump ideology.

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Freedom of expression? Blessed are the pessimists

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 27, 2026| Leave a Comment »

For a fairly depressing experience, try reading the Court of Final Appeal’s decision on the question whether it is acceptable for the government to make it a crime to encourage people not to vote. Of course it is all right. This does not come as a surprise. As Alexander Pope put it, “Blessed are the pessimists, for they shall never be disappointed.” The judges’ conclusions lived down to expectations.

Well I do not propose a critique of the decision. This would be pointless. The law is, in the end, whatever judges decide it is.

The interesting thing about the judgment written by Chief Justice Andrew Cheung, and unanimously endorsed by his colleagues, was what was said, or implied, about what you might call the surrounding area. Granted that the restriction on advocating election boycotts was an acceptable restriction on freedom of speech, what areas are we left with?

Consider, for example, a generalisation during what you might call the warm-up phase: “Debate and discussion during an election period concerning whether to vote, for whom to vote, and whether the election is being conducted openly, fairly and honestly are plainly matters of importance.”

May we deduce from this that having allowed the government to curtail discussion of whether to vote, judges will in future defend the right to discuss whom to vote for, and whether the election is open, fair and honest?

There are, I think we can infer from the turnout in the last district polls, among us some deluded citizens who think the elections were neither open nor fair, and as that is the case the question of honesty does not really arise. They may think that the electoral system merely pastes a rather ineffective figleaf over an entirely predictable exercise of China’s undisputable and unlimited sovereignty, that a Chief Executive “election” with only one candidate lacks a certain je ne sais quoi in democratic respectability

But if one of these unfortunate people were to express this view in a public forum, what would happen? Our government’s reaction to public criticism of any kind, even from its most dogged supporters, tends to fall in the range between tetchy and outraged.

It also appears that with so many recycled police people in the administration, the reaction to opposition is like that of the man with a hammer to whom every problem looks like a nail. Ungrateful people and organisations should be arrested and charged. If there is no convenient law permitting this we should explore the uses that can be made of inconvenient ones, so independent bookshops get raided, independent news outlets get tax demands, independent restaurants are inspected…

This seems a long way from the world inhabited by Chief Justice Cheung, who observes that the law on boycott calls “is confined to the election period and to acts of public incitement. At other times and on other occasions, the right to freedom of expression remains unaffected.”

Does it indeed? I suppose private incitement enjoys a certain amount of freedom because it is private. As the old Lancashire saying has it, “what the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve over.” As a potential practitioner of public incitement, though, I remain unconvinced by the time limit. Would 1,000 words on the deficiencies of Hong Kong elections under the current system pass unnoticed if published outside the election period? Would it make any difference if they were in Chinese? Would it make any difference if they had been written by some reviled target figure like Ted Hui?

Far be it from me to suggest that the Court of Final Appeal has erred. It is difficult though to acquit the court of the charge of complacency. Freedom of expression is an endangered species and it would be nice to think judges would protect it. Perhaps this was not a suitable case for a demonstration of judicial zeal for the defence of an important human right. Perhaps there will never be a suitable case…

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Small regulation causes big punch-up. Seconds out!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 17, 2026| Leave a Comment »

We do not, thank goodness, have a local equivalent of Multiple Martial Arts on the White House lawn. But sensation seekers in search of a good punch-up can always depend on the relations between the Hong Kong government and its overseas critics.

So to an interesting piece of micro legislation, the Safeguarding National Security (Procedural Matters) Regulation. The main purpose of this, we are told, is to “clarify” what is a case involving national security.

This point is supposed to be covered by the local nat sec ordinance’s Section 7, but that masterful work, after naming three sets of legislation, concludes with “other offences endangering national security under the laws of the HKSAR”. Which offences might those be? According to the regulation this will be decided on a case-by-case basis by the HKSAR Chief Executive, who will issue a binding certificate which the court concerned must follow.

This is not new. The CE has this power under Article 47 of the 2020 nat sec law. The local nat sec law, aiming for patriotic overkill in this as in other matters, also specifically authorises the CE to create new offences, punishable with large fines or seven years in jail.

So does the new regulation change anything? Well in the Blue Corner we have the Washington Post editorial board: “At China’s behest, the city says people can now be charged retroactively for crimes that didn’t exist when they allegedly committed them… Under updates which took effect this week, the city’s chief executive can classify any case as a national security crime under the 2020 law, even when the alleged offense was committed before that law took effect.”

The board also points out that “Being charged with a national security offense carries enormous consequences for defendants. They can be jailed immediately and held for longer pre-trial detention periods. They are denied the ordinary presumption of innocence and denied bail. And they can be denied their choice of lawyer…”

In the Red Corner we have the HKSAR outraged press release department and a full deployment of the usual vocabulary: irrational anti-China stance… double standards … hypocrisy and double standards … ignorance of facts … falsely and maliciously claimed … betrayal of the basic tenets of responsible journalism …shocking, irresponsible and totally unacceptable behaviour … dirty tricks … bold-faced lies to smear the HKSAR.

The spokesperson (who is not, in my view, qualified to comment on what might or might not be responsible journalism) did get in some factual stuff, which went like this: “the Procedural Matters Regulation has no retrospective effect at all. It does not create any new offence or alter the penalties of any offence. It certainly does not turn any lawful conduct into an offence. It is not applicable to legal proceedings that are concluded.”

The spokesperson thought that this would be obvious to anyone who studied the regulation and observed the relevant Legco meetings. Well pardon me for not observing the Legco meetings. What legislators say in meetings is not law and what officials say they will do with upcoming law changes often turns out to be unreliable.

However we can look at the regulation and here we have to award some points to the spokesperson. It does not create new offences, it does not (at least not directly) alter the penalties for offences and it does not turn lawful conduct into an offence, which means the same thing as not creating new offences.

Defenders of the Washington Post, on the other hand, are not helpless. They can point to the regulation’s Section 2(a), which provides that the CE’s certificate is valid “regardless of whether the act was done or the prosecution was brought before, at the time or after the HK National Security Law came into operation.”

I take this to mean that if you are charged with an offence allegedly committed in 2019, before the Nat Sec law’s appearance in 2020, the CE can still by certificate turn this into a national security case, to be conducted under the nat sec case procedure. In many jurisdictions the idea of a seven-year-old offence being wheeled into court would be outlandish but here we still have thousands of people who were arrested in 2019 and have been neither charged nor told that they will not be.

So what can we conclude from all this? The Washington Post clearly did not put its misgivings about the regulation accurately. The regulation does not make something illegal which was not illegal before, and in that sense is not retroactive. On the other hand the Post has a point: changes to procedure may be retroactive and these have important implications for defendants.

The SAR’s spokesperson was too busy throwing abuse to consider this point. Would it be too much to hope for reasoned debate about matters of this kind?

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Keeping ‘Five dumplings not one less’ off local menus

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on April 17, 2026| Leave a Comment »

The Hong Kong government’s attitude to the rule of law is interestingly ambiguous. It wishes to claim credit for being a law-abiding government, but it does not want to sacrifice for this purpose the achievement of other desires.

This implicit conflict is nicely wrapped up in the matter of restaurant licences. In any sensible jurisdiction there are some requirements for restaurant operators, intended to ensure hygiene and other worthy food-related objectives.

However these days all government departments are expected to show their enthusiasm for national security. So last year the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, which licenses restaurants, treated licence-holders to a letter warning that licences would be revoked if holders or their “related persons” engaged in conduct against national security or the public interest.

Now the FEHD has form in the matter of using existing regulations to pester or persecute restaurants which the government, for some basically political reason, does not like. So there were complaints that what was effectively a new licence condition was too vague, and consequently open to abuse.

Not so, the Chief Executive told a news conference. “Offending conduct means any offence that endangers national security, or acts and events that are contrary to national security and public interest in Hong Kong. It is very clear,”

But it is not very clear, because two very different things are being mixed together. An offence that endangers national security is a criminal matter. Conviction takes place in a public court and is a matter of record. A restaurant owner convicted of such an offence may feel that losing his licence is the least of his problems, but he can read the law and look at the way it has been applied.

He will avoid traditional menu items like Five Dumplings, Not One Less, or Three Hamburgers; Revelation of our Thyme. “Related persons” will be urged to behave themselves. But what does the public interest require?

This mystery persists in the latest version of the licence, which has a clause we can consider in full:

“I shall ensure that no act or activity engaged or involved in by me or any of my related persons (include the directors, officers, employees, agents and sub-contractors) may constitute or cause the occurrence of an offence endangering national security under the National Security Law or other laws of the HKSAR, or conduct is otherwise contrary to the interests of national security or the interest of the public (including public morals, public order and/or public safety) of Hong Kong.”

As tends to happen in very long sentences the grammar wilts a bit in the closing stages and seems to require either the insertion of “that” after conduct or the deletion of “is” in the same place. But this does not affect the meaning, which still leaves the question over what might be in the public interest.

There are some legal glosses on the phrase, though unfortunately they are not particularly helpful. Some restrictions on media stories can be waived if publication is “in the public interest”. Judges tend to be quite conservative about this but the general rule seems to be that the public interest is served by stories which expose iniquity (in a broad sense) or stories which alert the public to hazards which they need to know about.

In contract law it is well established that contracts will not be enforced if their effect is not in the public interest. Once again this does not come up very often – judges are even more hostile to unenforced contracts than they are to muckraking journalists – but traditionally contracts have not been enforced if they concern gambling or commercial sex.

The morals/order/safety part seems to have been inspired by the part of the Bill of Rights Ordinance which specifies the purposes for which the government may restrict freedom of expression. This suggests – a worrying thought – that the government intends to use threats to restaurant licences to restrict freedom of expression, and proposes if anyone complains to rely on the permitted restrictions.

This may not fly in court because the Bill of Rights Ordinance also requires that restrictions should be specified by law and necessary in a democratic society. Clearly legal language is being used here, but perhaps as an adornment rather than a substantial signal.

Where does all this leave us? Well one theory is that the government wishes to increase its options in efforts to suppress businesses which supported the wrong people in 2019. Asked if this was the case Mr Ronnie Tong, a government adviser, replied last year that it was “hard to say”.

Another theory is that the unstated purpose is to reinforce the existing routine practice under which food outlets which have accepted bookings from organisations the government does not like tend to cancel them at the last minute.

Maybe it is just that the “public interest” is one of those elusive philosophical concepts like “soft resistance” which puzzle the public but are perfectly clear to recycled policemen and the people who write the front page of Ta Kung Pao.

The other remaining puzzle is why restaurant licences have been singled out. All government departments, we are told, have an obligation to support national security. But the numerous other licences issued for various purposes by different departments have not been amended in the same way.

Yet.

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OK, Donald, your boat is not a toy, but do the toilets work?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 31, 2026| 2 Comments »

Excuse an excursion into territory I do not usually cover here. In my youth I had some qualifications as a naval historian. I even once applied for a job teaching naval history.

Such posts are of course extremely rare and involve teaching future naval officers. The interview was quite pleasant and was conducted inside the actual Admiralty Arch, in case you were not sure what you were getting into.

I fear I blighted my hopes by being rather critical of Admiral Nelson, still a cherished icon in Royal Navy circles. I had encountered him in a detailed study of the years 1798-1801. This brings you the Battle of the Nile, but also an adulterous passion for Lady Hamilton, and a disreputable incident much neglected by biographers, involving the massacre of prisoners who had surrendered “on terms”, on the grounds that an agreement with rebels was void.

So I never became a part of the naval infrastructure, and remained a critical observer of a national institution. It has a wonderful history, but standards wilted a bit when ships were no longer built of wood, and the battle cruiser was a bad idea. The RN’s main claim to fame in the 20th century was the pioneering of naval aviation.

So I bristled when the Orange Tornado, the Liar-in-Chief, the draft dodger whose take on military life is that it’s for “suckers”, ventured the opinion that the Royal Navy’s two aircraft carriers were just “toys”.

This is an illiterate assessment. If there was one thing that all serious navies discovered in the 20th century it was that aircraft carriers are the new capital ships, and all navies need to deploy one or two if they hope to operate away from their home waters and the land-based aircraft which can support them there.

It could be argued that Britain is now a medium-sized nation ill-equipped financially for the burdens of a blue-water navy. But if there is to be one then it has to have some sort of aircraft carrier.

No doubt the British carriers are smaller than their American counterparts. But the American models have other problems. The USS Gerald R Ford, it was reported, was being withdrawn from combat in the Eastern Med after a fire in the laundry. Reports added that this would also allow work on a long-standing problem with the plumbing.

As the BBC politely put it, “In January, the vessel suffered a malfunction in its toilet system, with US media reporting clogged toilets and long lines for restrooms on the ship. The Navy acknowledged that there had been some issues, but ‘clog incidents are addressed promptly by trained damage control and engineering personnel.’”

Well, patriotic Americans may if they wish dismiss British carriers as toys. But at least they are not full of shit.

Can you say the same of your President?

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Are our universities too willing to sacrifice students to the gods of political correctness?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 24, 2026| 1 Comment »

What does a university owe its students? This question attracts a surprising range of answers. Idealists regard the institution as in loco parentis, and infer that it should treat students as it would wish its own children to be treated. The ultra-realists say that the sole obligation of a university to its undergraduates is to teach what is on the syllabus, test the results and certify them for potential employers.

There is much variation in this matter, between teachers and between institutions. Hong Kong universities generally now seem to be abandoning any notion of care for their students.

When I joined the then Baptist College in 1988 it was a post-secondary college. In the ensuing years it turned into a university. In many ways this was an improvement: more money, better pay, housing allowances, nicer titles, less pressure on potential students to go to a “real university”.

But there are no benefits without costs, and one cost in this case was a change in the sort of people who wanted to work at BU. When it was a college doing nothing much besides teaching, the staff were people who enjoyed working with youngsters. As time went by and the institution moved up the academic food chain they were gradually replaced by people who were willing to seek wealth and fame by conforming to the management’s desire to see us all devote most of our attention to research.

I recall a staff training session in which the youngest member present asked the oldest one how much time should be devoted to teaching and how much to research. The answer was that you should spend the least amount of time you could get away with on teaching and the most you could spare on research.

Where this was leading became clear much later, when a discussion of a student with a personal problem led one colleague to opine that such things were none of our business and should be referred to the Student Advice Service when first noticed.

These were extreme positions and in my time BU remained generally a humane and thoughtful environment where young people were not just taught but also cared for. This may have owed something to its religious origins.

Anyway this gradual change of focus pales into insignificance compared with the state of near-open warfare which local universities now wage against some of their students. No university now tolerates a student union. Many student publications have closed. And now we have the case of Chinese U student Miles Kwan.

After the Wang Fuk Court fire Mr Kwan organised an on-line petition calling for an investigation of the fire, accountability for those responsible, resettlement for the residents and a review of construction supervision.

You would think this was harmless enough. All the things Mr Kwan had suggested were promised by the Chief Executive a day or two later. Can it be an offence to agree with the CE too early?

Well apparently yes. Mr Kwan was arrested by the national security police on, we were told, “suspicion of subversive intent.” This does not make a lot of legal sense. “Intent” itself is not an offence; there must be an action with it. So it may be that the matter will not be continued. It may also be that the police proceed to a formal prosecution and Mr Kwan is acquitted.

This does not look much like the majestic machinery of the law rolling on its impervious and impersonal way; it looks more like a deliberate act of intimidation by a regime which cannot tolerate any spontaneous expression of opinion not controlled by itself.

You might also think that all this had nothing to so with the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where Mr Kwan was a student. What students get up to in their off-duty hours is generally nothing to do with their university authorities. While we can all think of scenarios when we might not wish to follow this rule, launching an on-line petition is hardly one of them.

In any case, if a student is arrested, prudent universities stand back to await the result of the proper prosecution. The police case should go first. This sensible policy is in fact enshrined in the CUHK’s published procedures for handling student discipline cases.

Nevertheless Mr Kwan was invited to meet a disciplinary panel on January 7. The panel meeting seems to have been a stormy occasion. Mr Kwan’s inquiry about the offences with which he was charged was rejected with “we ask the questions here”. He did not conceal his misgivings about the procedural fairness of the whole affair.

The panel’s conclusion was odd. It decided to take no action over the arrest, but to expel Mr Kwan from the university for his “impolite and disrespectful attitude” during the hearing and the conclusion that it was “more likely than not” that he had breached confidentiality rules, presumably by telling people about the up-coming hearing.

This is legally dubious and also cruel. Mr Kwan will now not be able to graduate, after six years of study at CUHK. Preventing people from graduating as a disciplinary move is the capital punishment of university discipline. It is and should be the last resort.

When I was a member of a university disciplinary committee we spent a lot of time explaining to people who had incurred fines – usually from the library – that in the last resort they would not be allowed to graduate without clearing up their debts. We were very anxious not to carry out this threat. In cases involving small sums and genuine poverty we sometimes had a quick whip-round and paid the debt ourselves.

We would not have conjured up two new offences during the hearing of another matter and I can see no satisfactory explanation for what happened to Mr Kwan. Another petition has now been raised (daring stuff) asking the university to over-rule the committee’s decision as being unjust and procedurally improper.

But in a sense the damage has already been done. I do not know if the committee went off-piste because it felt pressured to display a becoming level of zeal for national security. But who would willingly attend an institution where students are so eagerly sacrificed to the gods of political correctness?

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How did ‘lady’ become a four-letter word?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 26, 2026| Leave a Comment »

What went wrong with the word “lady”? Until recently it just appeared to be the polite way to refer to females. It appeared on their public toilets without giving offence, and public speeches were routinely addressed to “ladies and gentlemen”.

Esteemed singers like Tina Turner were routinely referred to by their road crews as “the lady”. It would perhaps be going too far to say that the use of the word was a sign of respect. It was just a polite word in routine use.

I first realised that something was going on here when I despaired of the managerial merry-go-round that was Chelsea FC and started following the club’s female team instead. Female football teams at that time were generally called Personchester Ladies, or whatever. This had been the way since the pioneering days in the 1890s when a mysterious person using the name Nettie Honeyball started the British Ladies Football Club.

The greatest club name of those early years was the Dick, Kerr Ladies (Dick, Kerr was the name of the factory where they started) who drew crowds in excess of 60,000 before the infamous day in 1921 when the Football Association banned women from playing.

Back in the modern era ladies remained the term of choice until one day quite soon after I started taking an interest, when the clubs – or at least those which attracted news coverage – changed direction with the unanimity of a shoal of herring threatened by a shark, and “ladies” was replaced by “women”.

I then noticed that something similar was happening to my copy on its way into the Hong Kong Free Press. The words “lady” or “ladies” were routinely replaced with “woman” or “women” as appropriate. I did not complain, firstly because I do not complain about editing as a matter of principle; it is a thankless task and for every editing error (we are fallible) the writer is saved from ten faux pas of his own. I also thought I was perhaps being rescued from trampling on some new taboo, introduced after I left the UK.

It remains a puzzle. No such odium appears to have descended on “gentleman”, which is usually the other half, as it were. I have occasionally been accused of being a “gentleman”. I always accepted this is a kindness, even if it was preceded, as it usually was, by one or both of “old-fashioned” and “English”.

There was a time when “gentleman” was a class marker. When Henry V promised that “He that sheds his blood with me … this day shall gentle his condition” he was clearly offering social promotion as a reward for military performance. Ladies similarly used to be a rank. In 19th century India the military rule was that “officers have ladies; sergeants have wives; Other Ranks have women.”

But this had long gone by the time I was a kid. Being a lady or a gentleman was something to which anyone could aspire. As Vin Diesel (of all people) has put it “Being male is a matter of birth; being a man is a matter of age; being a gentleman is a matter of choice.”

For males this involved stoicism, self-control, politeness and (outside of law enforcement or warfare) non-violence. Honesty was important, as was respect for ladies, a status which was the default for females.

We were also taught some rituals which have long gone. A male, on meeting a female in the street, would raise, or at least touch, his hat. Men no longer wear hats. If a woman joined your table you were expected to stand up briefly – a habit to which I occasionally still succumb on formal occasions. If you were walking along the pavement side by side the man was expected to take the side next to the road, a meaningless rule after horse traffic disappeared.

I do not know what was inflicted on girls in those numerous books of “advice” with Grace Darling on the cover, but a bit of internet ferreting suggests that much of it was quite similar: intelligence, kindness, honesty and reading are praised, gossip, rudeness and swearing are condemned. There are probably serious objections on the grounds of foot health to “keep your heels, head and standards high” and age has I fear withered the suggestion that ladies should “not kiss before the third date.”

Still I am not sure that there is anything there which parents would not wish for their daughter.

Well it seems that these days no oppressed minority can hold up its head in public unless it has insisted on being referred to by its preferred term. Cautious publications now shy away from “disabled”, “eskimo”, “negro” “Chinaman” and many others. The curious thing about preferring “women” over “ladies” is that “ladies” was always intended to be flattering and respectful. But if women want “women” that is their choice.

I also note with concern that what is being discarded here is not just a word, but an ethic.

Let us digress for a moment. Steven Pinker has achieved much fame by propounding the view that mankind has become notably less violent in the last 300 years or so, and there is indeed much evidence for this. There is less evidence for his inferred cause, which is that people became more sensitive to and conscious of other people’s feelings.

An older theory is that the reduction in violence was due to a change, not in sensibility but in manners. Polite society was set about with rules. These rules condemned violence and encouraged polite modes of intercourse. Some of them were meaningless – it really doesn’t matter how you eat your peas – but they formed a rules-based society in which most people obeyed the rules because they were the rules. In a sense it did not matter whether there were good reasons for them.

Those of us who were young in the 1960s will remember the glee with which many old rules which no longer made sense were swept away. But eventually the idea that there were rules which we should all follow went the same way.

Nobody goes to church any more. Teachers dare not condemn misbehaviour. It seems that politeness, honesty, sincerity and respect are no longer requirements. So we are free to enjoy … Donald Trump.

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Sadly, Olympic gold may not lead to a political podium finish

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 18, 2025| Leave a Comment »

​The only part of the recent Legco election which cheered me up was the success of Ms Vivian Kong.

This is not because I warmly support her political views. I know nothing of what she thinks, but my rule in these matters is that the vetting and selection of candidates is now so effective that anyone allowed to run can be considered someone I would not wish to vote for.

On the other hand Ms Kong’s gold-winning Olympic efforts tickled the memory because I, too, was once an épéeist.

My career was much shorter and less glorious than hers. I was recruited at short notice by the Lancaster University fencing team because the league in which they played (North Lancashire had a fencing league? I was surprised too) required every team to include one épée person.

I had no relevant experience. Perhaps they thought someone who was used to waving an oar about would be able to handle the épée, which is heavier than the other two sport fencing swords, and has much simpler rules.

I expected to be massacred every week, but in practice it appeared that many of the other teams had a similar shortage of épée specialists, so I did reasonably well apart from the rare occasions when I came across a real épée person who knew what he was doing.

The following year such a person appeared at Lancaster U so I retired to do other things. But fencing can be recommended. I enjoyed the ritual side of it, and for a military historian it is a treat to practise a skill which was cherished by soldiers for centuries.

Ms Kong says she has learnt a great deal from her career as a professional sportsperson. She is a bright spark, has two real degrees and is working on a third. But the track record (if you’ll pardon the phrase in this context) of sporting superstars in politics is not impressive. Huge if rather patchy survey here.

Clearly winning an Olympic medal requires an impressive amount of dedication and toil, typically spread over years. Putting the legendary 10,000 hours in to acquiring one highly specialised skill must teach something. But how much of that is transferable?

It appears that a lot of former sportspeople have reached, and no doubt loyally served their respective communities in, what you might call the foothills of politics. In small countries they may hope for ministerial posts connected with youth or sports. But getting on the podium is much rarer.

There are examples of political gold medal winners, though none of them actually managed an Olympic gold as well. There is Lester Bird, a distinguished cricketer who became prime minister of Antigua and Barbados, or George Weah, who after playing for many of the best football clubs in Europe became president of Liberia.

Combat sports have a mixed record. Khalimaagiin Battulga, a star of Sambo (nor did I; here it is) later became president of Mongolia. The boxing champ who went on to become president of Uganda was the appalling Idi Amin.

Hong Kong citizens hoping for a livelier Legco will note with approval that Ms Kong has at least excelled at something outside of politics, and hope that she does not drop her current day job.

An ominous trend in Hong Kong politics is the rise of the full-time politician who does nothing else, and indeed in some cases has never done anything else.

Looking at the list of Legco candidates, for example, of the 161 hopefuls 28 described themselves only as “district councillor” and 16 offered only “lawmaker”. Some of the jobs offered were also political (NPC member, trade union official) and some of them did not look as if they would take much of the candidate’s time (company director).

More than a third of those actually elected did not have a “day job”: ten district councillors and 23 “lawmakers”. We must suppose that some of the others will decide to give up, or become part-timers, in the professional activities they have declared, once the rather generous remuneration provided for Legco members hits their bank balances. Other pursuits may be difficult to combine with regular meetings. Lam Ming-fung, for example, is a “vessel captain”.

So I suppose that in the end quite a lot of our representatives will be spared any contact with life as it is lived by the average voter. This is perhaps a pity when it seems the average voter was not terribly impressed by them.

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On Mr Trump’s aspirations to nobility, or Nobelity

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 13, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Quite the mind-boggling headline of the week announced (wording varied in different places of course) that the government of Norway was bracing itself for some retaliation from the USA if American President Donald Trump was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Well no doubt it would be good if all international statesmen were eager to qualify for the Peace Prize. On the other hand there is a widespread suspicion that Mr Trump’s ambition owes little to a passion for peace and much to resentment of the fact that Barack Obama got one.

Students of the history of international relations will no doubt have noticed already that standards drooped when the professional diplomats were elbowed aside by national leaders, whether elected or hereditary. But this is surely a new low.

I may be biassed. It is true that English culture traditionally sets a high value on modesty and self-deprecation. One may hope for honours but one does not ask. There is a character in one of CP Snow’s novels who is a senior civil servant and thinks he is due for a knighthood. So instead of signing with an initial he starts signing with his full Christian name (John Smith instead of J. Smith) in the hope that his seniors will see fit to put a “Sir” in front of it.

This is regarded as a serious, if amusing, character defect and the knighthood does not materialise.

The press pioneer Alfred Harmsworth had better luck. To the suggestion that he should agitate politely for a peerage he famously replied “When I want a peerage I shall buy one like an honest man.” He did later (without paying) become Lord Northcliffe. When I worked for the Derby Evening Telegraph we still had a rather poor portrait of him in the hall.

The presentation of honours in Hong Kong has never caused much controversy. The colonial ones were not taken very seriously because they were … well … colonial. Their post-handover replacements have not established themselves as a big deal.

I once did a rough study of the arrival of honours in the Legislative Council. It appeared that if you were a loyal supporter of the regime there was a fairly predictable time-line along which, as long as you survived re-election, you would travel from Justice of the Peace through bauhinias of various colours. One DAB member seemed to be stuck on the launch pad, as it were. I suspect he had refused to participate.

I am not aware of any similar study of how life treats those who go “seeking the bubble reputation” through the consultative apparatus.

There were some misgivings a few years ago when some people with qualifications in engineering adopted the pretitle “Ir”, which works like “Dr”. The “I” is because the title originated in French. Lawyers suggested that they should perhaps put in a bid for “Lr” before the librarians grabbed it.

Some people disapprove of this sort of thing. One of the idols of my youth was Charles Carter, who was the first Vice Chancellor of Lancaster University. Mr Carter was a devout Quaker and spurned titles of any kind. He always signed, and described himself, as plain Charles Carter and I only discovered that he was entitled to both Dr and Prof when I got a look at correspondence from polite outsiders.

He did tell me – a point lost on holders of honorary degrees in Hong Kong – that such honours should only be worn in the premises of the university awarding them. So if you have an Hon Doc, whether or not you earned it or “bought one like an honest man”, it should not be on your business card.

Anyway all this suggests that there may be an easy way to propitiate the unpredictable Trump. Countries which wish to bow before the president should look into the possibilities of honorary degrees, orders, knighthoods, perhaps (lucky old England) even a Lordship.

Alternatively, at the risk of punishment, they could refer him to the work of Thomas Gray:

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r,

         And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,

Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour.

         The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

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Same-sex marriages law: Legco veto is not the last word

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 17, 2025| 1 Comment »

The continuing controversy about the recognition of same-sex marriages conducted overseas is depressing.

After all, underneath all the political and legal skirmishing what we have here is a government with few limits on its power, which is exerting itself vigorously to curtail the rights of a tiny minority. Do you know any same-sex married couples? Quite. Neither do I.

Interpretations of the saga vary widely. Pretty much everyone agrees that the original judgement of the Court of Final Appeal – that the government was at at fault for not recognising in some way the status of same-sex couples – came as an unpleasant surprise.

The government has had considerable success in persuading our supposedly independent judiciary to lend a receptive ear to its legal efforts, however questionable. We are regularly reassured about judicial independence. Indeed this happens so often that the standard reactions tend to run from Hamlet’s mother (“The lady doth protest too much”) to Mandy Rice Davis (“He would say that, wouldn’t he?).

Anyway, a rare moment of judicial innovation, cushioned by the provision of a two-year deadline.

Needless to say, most of the two years passed with no sign of thought or action. As a journalist I am in no position to criticise this: in our business waiting until the deadline looms is common if not compulsory. Bernard Levin actually wrote an amusing piece about his work as a theatre critic, in which the review had to be delivered the same evening of the performance, but the deadline varied depending on the amount of advertising in the newspaper.

Mr Levin noted that if advertising was abundant and the deadline early, he got down to work as soon as he returned to the office. If advertising was short and the deadline late, on the other hand, he wandered round the office cadging biscuits and distracting colleagues until time and adrenaline prompted the writing of the necessary piece.

So no complaints from me about the delay. Actually there seem to be very few things the Department of Justice can do in less than two years, no doubt a tribute to the care devoted to its work.

And this brings us to the resulting proposed piece of legislation, which would have given same-sex spouses the right to authorise medical procedures and decide on the disposition of the remains of deceased partners.

This did not sit well with the government’s usual supporters (nobody else is allowed in Legco) who vetoed it last week.

At this point views diverge considerably. Some take the cynical view that the bill was never intended to pass and the Legco proceedings were a charade intended to put the judges in their place, while demonstrating that the council was “not a rubber stamp”.

A more idealistic view has it that the decision was a fine example of the legislature performing its allocated function under the “separation of powers”, a constitutional theory routinely denounced as inapplicable to Hong Kong by Beijing officials in the past.

Personally I find both views unconvincing. Clearly the officials responsible for getting the bill through Legco wanted it to pass. Whatever positive spin could be put on failure afterwards it would still be a failure. I believe also that the government wanted it to pass.

The trouble is that “want” in the English language covers a lot of territory, from “Do you want sugar in your tea?” to “Do you want your cancerous foot amputated?” There was desire, but not too much desire.

Consequently legislators knew what they could get away with. They know that if a recalcitrant group is large enough there will be no consequences. Difficult individuals will not be reelected but a mass clear-out would reveal too many of the strings behind the puppet show.

In fact it seems that the fun involved in a display of independence may have been the main motivation. None of the other reasons given stand up to scrutiny. The idea that the electorate in general has strong views on the topic is obvious nonsense, and in any case legislators do not depend on the electorate any more.

It may be that same-sex marriage is a cause of horror and revulsion among DAB voters, but they are hardly typical; the average age of those busloads turning up at polling booths is somewhere between 80 and dead.

I can find no support for the claim that traditional marriage is the only kind allowed by the Basic Law, whose thoughts on marriage are contained in Article 37: “The freedom of marriage of Hong Kong residents and their right to raise a family freely shall be protected by law.”

However all is not lost. Generally courts will not require people to do what they cannot do. If Legco will not pass a bill that is not the government’s fault. That does not, though, mean the government can sit back and claim that it has fully complied with the court’s order on this topic.

Legco president Andrew Leung commented after the fatal vote that “making laws” was “not the only solution”. Chief Executive John Lee said that the government would explore “administrative means” of complying with the court’s ruling.

Could there, one wonders, be any objection to the government saying that as a matter of administrative practice, marriages lawfully registered overseas would be recognised in Hong Kong regardless of the sex of the parties concerned, a line already followed in housing and visa matters?

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