$6,000 Update
March 2nd, 2012Oops! Where’s my $6,000 MPF gift from Mr Tsang?
March 4th, 2011
Hmm! seems Mr Tsang is a magician after all! The money promised for my MPF account was on the way on Budget night but suddenly disappeared en route. Mr Tsang pulled the rabbit out of the hat but as a finale, stuffed it back into the hat again and then made the hat disappear instead. Oh well, as they say, ‘Thanks for nothing, Mr Tsang!’ Now it seems there’s a cash gift to *** ID card holders but (weep, weep) being a gwai loh, I am not one of those lucky ones. Sigh! At least I can now apply for a senior’s card having just reached the requisite age. Sigh again!
No Anonymous Subscribers
March 1st, 2011
I have just opened this blog to subscribers. Unfortunately in today’s horrible climate of spammers and hackers, I cannot afford to allow anonymous subscribers. Unless you immediately edit your profile to give your first and last name and some bio detail of where you are from, I will have no choice but to delete you as a subscriber.
Tobacco tax: Smokers paying for false sense of security about clean air!
February 27th, 2011
So, Mr Tsang says he cares about the health of HK people when he casually slips in a 41% increase in tax on cigarettes in his latest budget, adding a massive $10 per pack of 20 cigarettes. My brand went up from $39 to $50 a pack!
Come on, Mr Tsang, isn’t this a sneaky way to get back some of that $20 billion odd you boast about giving to the people on low incomes. Interestingly, no one has announced the additional revenues from smokers in HK buying a packet of smokes. The latest estimates put the number of smokers at 13% of the total population, around 900,000 smokers. Conservatively, that’s an additional $9 million dollars into government coffers every two or three days when smokers finish their pack and buy another one.
These days, no one questions the harmful effect of smoking on health, but it is also a sad fact that the cigarette has become the easily targeted scape goat of public health officials that bleat incessantly about smoking while virtually ignoring the increasing dangers to health from consistently high levels of air pollution in Hong Kong. We hear so much about the number of deaths per year from 1st and 2nd hand smoking, but why has no one publicized the number of deaths per year from air pollution.
Public health expert and honorary professor at the School of Public Health, University of Hong Kong, Anthony Hedley worked in Hong Kong from 1988 until he moved to the Isle of Man because of health problems he states are directly related to air pollution in Hong Kong. The following quotes are taken from the Clear The Air News Tobacco Blog
“Public health expert Anthony Hedley has relocated to cleaner air. Yet that’s not an option for most Hongkongers, he writes, and the government is failing in its duty to protect them from pollution.
[Hong Kong's population health] …is now being seriously eroded by the intense pollution exposures, which damage lungs and blood vessels, and potentially harm everyone.
Since then [1988], average daily visibility has progressively declined to only 12 kilometres, landscapes are filtered through a grey blanket… Each kilometre decline in visibility is a signal of our state of health, and is causally related to daily illness episodes and deaths.” You can read the full post at http://tobacco.cleartheair.org.hk/?p=2638
Strong words indeed! Although no figures are available for Hong Kong, the same blog elsewhere reports the following statistic about Mainland China: “A report published in March by the London-based medical journal The Lancet said air pollution in China was widely to blame for 1.3 million premature deaths a year from respiratory disease.” http://tobacco.cleartheair.org.hk/?p=2779
That is why the following quote from Michelle Chan Yin-ching of To Kwa Wan is typical of many non-smokers and is just so much mis-informed bullshit inspired by the anti-smoking lobby and eagerly seized on by Mr Tsang and his government as an excuse to dump the blame for HK’s poor air quality on smokers and justify what is clearly a discriminatory tax: “Despite a series of government measures aimed at reducing smoking in Hong Kong, our tobacco tax is still very low compared with other places. Most smokers can still afford to buy packets of cigarettes. There is no incentive for them to quit. It is clear that second-hand smoke is harmful, and it is unfair that non-smokers should be exposed to it in areas where people can still light up. I believe the administration has to impose further increases in the tobacco tax. If it does this we will all eventually be able to breathe cleaner air.” Michelle Chan Yin-ching, To Kwa Wan http://tobacco.cleartheair.org.hk/?p=2258. Note especially the last sentence. The sentiment is: the higher the tobacco tax, the cleaner the air!!! Well, Michelle, you got your wish in the last budget, so let’s see if your prediction about cleaner air comes true. Hmm!
As a smoker, I am of course biased about this whole question, yet I have had no objection to the recent smoking bans in public places indoors and out because I am a considerate person who is happy to respect the rights of people who don’t smoke and who don’t wish to be directly affected by my bad habit. But I am sick to death (pun intended) of the cynical opportunism of academics and government officials getting on the bandwagon of making tobacco the main culprit of cancer related deaths. I even suspect that, because of the first two quotes above, general air pollution not only contaminates our health and causes more deaths than smoking but that air pollution has also been contaminating statistics on smoking related deaths for a long time.
A final word to Mr Tsang: You and people like Michelle Chan suggest that by making cigarettes into a luxury that many people cannot afford or will choose not to buy, Hong Kong will be a healthier place. This is simply not the truth. The sad truth is that many of the people that you wanted to help with your handouts are smokers, and many of them won’t be able to quit or won’t want to quit. Smoking is a nicotine addiction or at best a compulsive habit for many smokers who have neither the social network and/or family support to quit even if they wanted to, so you are directly increasing their financial burden and probably affecting their families adversely by taking more money that would have been going to buy food, pay rent and a host of other essentials in the same way that gambling and other drug usage affects families.
Just a thought, perhaps a $10 a litre tax on petrol might clear most of the private cars off the roads and definitely improve the quality of Hong Kong’s air overnight! That would be a fair way to share responsibility for a healthier Hong Kong, wouldn’t it?
Hi-Speed Rail
January 21st, 2010
Oh well, here we go again! Hong Kong government officials are making such ridiculous statements on air and in the press about this project that has all the hallmarks of another ill-conceived and badly planned infrastructure project. The transport secretary avows that Hong Kong will lose $5 million each day if the project is delayed any further. Where does she get her estimates from? Probably from the tea leaves in her cup at yum cha every day. The boss of the MTRC assures us that his organisation will use all their experience and expertise to manage this project. What experience and expertise? To my knowledge the MTRC has never built or operated a high speed rail system. No wonder people are angry and have no confidence in the government!
I certainly don’t agree with protestors who become violent, but what choice other than public protest is left for concerned people who have a government that is totally unanswerable to its people and answerable only to Beijing. Then, adding insult to injury, Donald Tsang and several others of his cronies assure us that the majority of people in Hong Kong support the project. This really borders on the incredible! Did I miss the opinion polls? Was there a referendum while I slept? Or does Mr Tsang and his government assume that all the people in Hong Kong who were not on the streets protesting, automatically agree with his views?
Perhaps the worst thing is that the government is openly showing stubborn determination to push this project into the construction stage in the face of evidence that it will be the most expensive high speed rail in the world! Any democratically elected government in the world that behaved in this way would surely be in danger of being out of office at the next elections.
I certainly don’t agree with protestors who become violent, but what choice other than public protest is left for concerned people who have a government that is totally unanswerable to its people and answerable only to Beijing. Then, adding insult to injury, Donald Tsang and several others of his cronies assure us that the majority of people in Hong Kong support the project. This really borders on the incredible! Did I miss the opinion polls? Was there a referendum while I slept? Or does Mr Tsang and his government assume that all the people in Hong Kong who were not on the streets protesting, automatically agree with his views?
Perhaps the worst thing is that the government is openly showing stubborn determination to push this project into the construction stage in the face of evidence that it will be the most expensive high speed rail in the world! Any democratically elected government in the world that behaved in this way would surely be in danger of being out of office at the next elections.
Democracy in Hong Kong
January 13th, 2010
Recently Hong Kong has been in an uproar again about the vexed question of the government’s timetable for universal suffrage (ie one person one vote). The Central Government in Beijing has announced that the HKSAR Chief Executive and all the members of the Legislative Council may be elected by universal suffrage in 2017. Many Chinese people in Hong Kong have noted the word ‘may’ instead of ‘will’, but as we gwai loh know, the English word ‘may’ is fraught with all sorts of different shades of meaning. The older pro-democracy advocates are more concerned, however, that recent demonstrations have turned into violence as demonstrators tried to break through police lines to enter a building to voice their demands that the government’s timetable be brought forward to 2012.
History reminds them that Beijing is intolerant of such demonstrations, and Chief Executive Donald Tsang was given a public slap on the wrist when he met with China’s leaders on his visit to Beijing. Their point is well made that such violent demonstrations may well endanger and even derail the democratisation process and allow Beijing to contend that Hong Kong will not be ready for universal suffrage even by 2017.
The more aggressive and vocal demonstrators are of course gambling that twenty years on, China will be restrained in her response because of being so much more in the spotlight of world news and opinion and because of China’s concerted efforts to maintain the international good will achieved by such coups as becoming a member of the WTO, using their influence to keep North Korea at the negotiation table and the major success of hosting the 2008 Beijing Olympics. However, the older generation in Hong Kong insist that while the claws may be withdrawn and the teeth not bared, the tiger is still very much a tiger and not to be trifled with, especially by openly challenging its authority. Younger generations of Chinese may have moved away from some traditional Chinese values, but loss of face, particularly internationally, is still a very big deal to the older leaders of one of the most powerful and influential nations in the world.
China’s major political focus is on bringing Taiwan back to Chinese rule, something that the United States is not happy about but probably won’t have the determination to stop if current events in Taipei are anything to go by. Recent American arms sales to Taiwan are about as far as the US will go, with predictable sabre rattling from the Chinese (to use a different metaphor), yet the process seems to continue without too much adverse international publicity. It will be tempting, therefore, to swat the gnat of Hong Kong pro-democracy demonstrators buzzing around their ears (ozblogger loves to mix metaphors
) and bringing into question the smoothness of China’s ‘one country two systems’ takeover of Hong Kong and Macau.
True, the Berlin Wall has come and gone, the USSR is no more since the Russian bear has had its teeth pulled and People Power has seen the demise of dictatorships such as the Marcos regime, but those climactic events occurred in the midst of great economic and political turmoil, something that is certainly not true about China in the present day. To the contrary, China is continuing to emerge as a major economic and political world power. It remains to be seen therefore, which of two opposing forces will have the greater influence on Chinese leadership in dealing with Hong Kong: the intense desire to be seen as a great moderate responsible nation able to take its place as a leader on the world stage, or the inherent fear of loss of face by seeming to be unable to control its own internal affairs in the way it has done over the past 50 years and as recently as the Xinjiang riots where nine people were sentenced to death over their alleged part in the riots, according to The Huffington Post.
Only time will tell.
History reminds them that Beijing is intolerant of such demonstrations, and Chief Executive Donald Tsang was given a public slap on the wrist when he met with China’s leaders on his visit to Beijing. Their point is well made that such violent demonstrations may well endanger and even derail the democratisation process and allow Beijing to contend that Hong Kong will not be ready for universal suffrage even by 2017.
The more aggressive and vocal demonstrators are of course gambling that twenty years on, China will be restrained in her response because of being so much more in the spotlight of world news and opinion and because of China’s concerted efforts to maintain the international good will achieved by such coups as becoming a member of the WTO, using their influence to keep North Korea at the negotiation table and the major success of hosting the 2008 Beijing Olympics. However, the older generation in Hong Kong insist that while the claws may be withdrawn and the teeth not bared, the tiger is still very much a tiger and not to be trifled with, especially by openly challenging its authority. Younger generations of Chinese may have moved away from some traditional Chinese values, but loss of face, particularly internationally, is still a very big deal to the older leaders of one of the most powerful and influential nations in the world.
China’s major political focus is on bringing Taiwan back to Chinese rule, something that the United States is not happy about but probably won’t have the determination to stop if current events in Taipei are anything to go by. Recent American arms sales to Taiwan are about as far as the US will go, with predictable sabre rattling from the Chinese (to use a different metaphor), yet the process seems to continue without too much adverse international publicity. It will be tempting, therefore, to swat the gnat of Hong Kong pro-democracy demonstrators buzzing around their ears (ozblogger loves to mix metaphors
) and bringing into question the smoothness of China’s ‘one country two systems’ takeover of Hong Kong and Macau.True, the Berlin Wall has come and gone, the USSR is no more since the Russian bear has had its teeth pulled and People Power has seen the demise of dictatorships such as the Marcos regime, but those climactic events occurred in the midst of great economic and political turmoil, something that is certainly not true about China in the present day. To the contrary, China is continuing to emerge as a major economic and political world power. It remains to be seen therefore, which of two opposing forces will have the greater influence on Chinese leadership in dealing with Hong Kong: the intense desire to be seen as a great moderate responsible nation able to take its place as a leader on the world stage, or the inherent fear of loss of face by seeming to be unable to control its own internal affairs in the way it has done over the past 50 years and as recently as the Xinjiang riots where nine people were sentenced to death over their alleged part in the riots, according to The Huffington Post.
Only time will tell.
Attitudes to Hong Kong
January 11th, 2010
Really, the only thing non-Hongkongers have in common is that they are not born in Hong Kong. They come from the whole world outside Hong Kong and what we now call Mainland China, from a vast range of cultures, native languages and ethnic backgrounds (including Chinese, by the way).
The Hong Kong Chinese have called non-Chinese caucasian people ‘Gwai Loh’, a term at best neutral but often used in a derogatory sense similar to the epithet ‘Ah Chah’ that they apply to non-Chinese dark skinned people mostly from India and Pakistan.
Gwai Loh attitudes to Hong Kong and it’s people, therefore, are as varied as their personal backgrounds and life experiences, and range from genuine love of Chinese people and their cultures to the open disdain and feeling of racial and intellectual superiority displayed by many from the colonial era.
The Hong Kong Chinese have called non-Chinese caucasian people ‘Gwai Loh’, a term at best neutral but often used in a derogatory sense similar to the epithet ‘Ah Chah’ that they apply to non-Chinese dark skinned people mostly from India and Pakistan.
Gwai Loh attitudes to Hong Kong and it’s people, therefore, are as varied as their personal backgrounds and life experiences, and range from genuine love of Chinese people and their cultures to the open disdain and feeling of racial and intellectual superiority displayed by many from the colonial era.
Spammers
April 23rd, 2010I must admit I was dismayed as I am daily removing one or two such comments into the spam basket and then permanently deleting them. This morning I almost gave up my blog because of this sustained attack, but then decided, what the hell, it only takes a few seconds to delete these bogus comments. Strangely, no one has spammed my other blog. It may be because the tags don’t attract attention like this blog’s tags.
Sigh! Oh well, keep blogging on!
Tags: bogus comments, spammers
Posted in Spam | Comments Off