The stone bleeds!

At long last, after concerted and repeated efforts by huge numbers of their electors, and after a couple of brazen attempts to fudge the issue, the UK Government has finally done the decent thing and fixed the outrageous rules which denied thousands of people the right to live in the country for which they had fought and risked their lives.

Hubert van Es – RIP

Another page has turned in the history of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club (where I am but a lowly “associate”) with the death of Hu van Es, one of its best known members.

Extending the farce

Hemlock sums up the situation with today’s release of the detainees. Not content to quietly let a bad mistake fade gradually in the memory, the government has decided to make a big song and dance about their release. You couldn’t make this stuff up!

The Hong Kong Government Face-Saving Department swings into action today, led by its famous Molehill-Mountain Conversion Team and the highly capable Laborious Over-Dramatization Unit…

Brilliant!

Protesting the incompetence of the HK Government

I’ve decided that someone has to start standing up and making a noise about how absurdly incompetent the HK Government is in its response to one person testing positive for a mild form of the flu.

Here we go again!

I hope to address the current institutionalised panic in more detail when I have time later. But I just have to say that the government’s imprisoning of 300 people against their will in the Metro Park Hotel for no rational reason whatsoever is a gross violation of their human rights, and I hope that they were take appropriate legal action for false imprisonment when they are released. I hope that a good number of them are foreign citizens who will be fully supported by their governments in this.

It is a crying shame that Hong Kong has been made the laughing stock of rational people worldwide by the actions of the administrative class in Hong Kong. These people were very well trained to administer the city under other people’s leadership, but they are totally and utterly out of their depth intellectually when it comes to providing the leadership which this city has been so sadly lacking for the last 12 years.

Obama on faith & values

It is so refreshing to have a US President who isn’t under the cosh of Christian fundamentalists, or indeed of religion in general. The Heresiarch has written an excellent piece analysing and contrasting the speeches of Messrs Obama and Blair at a recent event; it is long but well worth the effort. It is great to see that not only does Obama make a point of reaching out to all faiths, he explicitly and repeatedly includes humanists in his comments and explicitly acknowledges that a decent moral code does not require a religion.

Clearly it is still very early in the process, but could Obama’s election possibly mark the being of the end of the period (short in the history of mankind) during which religious delusionists have been the major force in the world? We can only hope so.

Summers will never be the same again, again

For those of us of a certain age who spent our school summer holidays listening to Test Match Special one of the last links with those days has been broken with the quite sudden death of the Bearded Wonder. The commentary might have been from John Arlott or Brian Johnston, and the “expert analysis” from Fred Trueman or Trevor Bailey, but the person who kept them all on the straight and narrow for more than 40 years when it came to facts and statistics was Bill Frindall.

Ignorance is no defence

Evidence that the UK is going “tit’s up”, part 73…

Digital Enhancement

I was intrigued yesterday (yes, I’m behind with my reading) by this article from last week’s Economist. Apparently, for men at least, the relative length of your first and third fingers (known in scientific circles I now discover as 2D:4D or digit ratio) is a good indicator of your potential prowess at competitive sport or financial trading.

Genital Mutilation

It is good to see from the Beeb that Denmark (my paternal ancestral home) is taking a lead and finally prosecuting people for genital mutilation of their children.

It is unfortunate, however, that, so far at least, they have a sexist application of this law. I look forward to the day when god delusionists of various types are up in court for mutilating their sons.

A bizarre old Chestnut

After recommendations from various friends, Mrs smog and I decided to try out Le Marron last night. We had been told that it had good French food in a quaint environment, and the menus on the website looked promising; we were also tempted by the $40 corkage charge.

Blog stats

Just as an aside, I do find it quite surprising that this post has got more than twice the number of hits of any other page on this blog. I guess that I need more, in the words of the incomparable LT, “lesbian sex with cantopop tartlets”. But in the absence of that I’d just like to mention that Vivian Chow is utterly mad to want to marry Joe Nieh

A Canny wee place in Wanchai

A common complaint heard about Wanchai is that there are few bars where one can have a drink or two, and maybe a bite to eat, and yet be able to have a conversation at a normal volume, free from the attentions of working girls hoping that you might be up for another type of intercourse later.

So I’ve recently been going more to The Cannyman and it really does live up to its marketing slogan of “An Oasis in Wanchai”.

Food & Drink labelling in Hong Kong

My rant for the week is about both the poor requirements of food labelling in Hong Kong and the lax enforcement of such standards as do exist.

Firstly ingredients: the Government in its wisdom recently introduced new food labelling regulations for Hong Kong. Not content with accepting that if, say, the food was labelled adequately in English for the US, EU or Australian markets then that would be sufficient, they insisted on imposing their own rules and hence requiring almost all imported foodstuffs to be relabelled specifically for Hong Kong, thereby imposing a significant cost increase on the suppliers or distributors and thence price increases on the consumers.

Feeling Old

I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise, but news from my old school recently has had me reminiscing and beginning to feel old. Firstly the last teacher who taught me (and was still at the school) retired this summer, and today I heard that the founder of the Adventure Training that constituted my annual holiday for two or three years died last week.

There are bits of my youth that I wish I had captured on film to assist my fading memory, and Adventure Training is one of them.

Billy Joel

When Elton John came to Hong Kong a while ago I looked at the price (HK$1580 if I remember correctly) and decided not to go on that basis alone. I then spent ages regretting the decision. So when Billy Joel (frankly not so high on my “must see” list as Elton John) came up at $1280 for decent-ish seats Mrs smog and I decided to go. And overall we’re glad we did.

This scares me

Thanks to Mat B for the videos at his site. This Palin women associates with some real fruitcakes (who, for example, see Alaska as a refuge when The Rapture comes). It really worries me that the only thing stopping this woman from being a heartbeat away from the big nuclear button that destroys the world is the good sense of the American people.

This throwaway society

Last week we had a power spike chez smog (in fact the power was out at our apartment for nearly 3 hours, which is a first for me). The only consequence was that my monitor just played dead.

So I bundled it up and took it down to Wanchai Computer Centre to get someone to fix it. Much to my amazement I couldn’t find anyone in any of the so called “repair & service” shops who had the slightest interest in having a look at it. They all simply said “throw it away and get a new one – they are only seven or eight hundred dollars”. I offered them $500 if they could fix it. They refused.

Lawrence Dallaglio

This evening I have just had the pleasure of watching Lawrence Dallaglio leading Wasps to the Premiership title in his last game as a professional. If ever there was a man that you would want as your leader in pretty much any field then Lawrence Dallaglio is surely right at the top of the list. He was a huge contributor to the English national side for 12 years from 1995 up until the 2007 World Cup, being a key figure both in the win in 2003 and the amazing renaissance that brought them so close to the 2007 title as well. Let’s hope Martin Johnson can find a role for him in the new England coaching set up where I’m sure he would be a great asset. In the meantime let’s just give thanks for a wonderfully entertaining career.

The Quarterdeck Club

I’d been meaning for ages to try out The Quarterdeck Club at Fenwick Pier, Wanchai, and yesterday Mrs smog and I had a very enjoyable dinner there.