The incompetence of the current administration in charge of HK just seems to grow daily.

The latest kerfuffle was when the government proudly announced striking a deal with the mother ship land to allow tour groups from Guangdong to visit Disneyland without the requirement of a visa. “Look how China loves us!” “Look how smart we are to negotiate such a splendid arrangement!” “Love us! Please?”

And then from his lofty perch, Allan Zeman delivered his opinion. “Er, uh, what the fuck? Why this preferential treatment for Disneyland? What about Ocean Park? What about Ngong Ping cable cars?”

And our government stepped back, took a deep breath and said, “Oh, er, ah, no, we didn’t make any mistakes and this isn’t preferential treatment. It’s a pilot scheme, you see. And if it works we’ll extend it to other Hong Kong attractions as well.”

One day later they’ve announced they’re extending it to other attractions. Some pilot scheme, eh? Announce its success and expand it before it even starts?

I mean, come on. We pay these government ministers some of the highest salaries in the world. They’re chosen by the wise men that the wise men in China chose to lead us. And they’re completely fucking incapable of figuring out the impact of their actions? They’re so fucking dense and inexperienced that they don’t know that every action has a reaction and their little think tanks can’t figure out what those reactions are likely to be? What happened to those new appointed and highly paid group of numbskulls that Tsang so proudly unveiled a couple of months ago? Are they all off on their summer holidays already?

All this flip flopping on the maid tax is another example. They announced a two year suspension of the maid tax, starting two months in the future. The maids complained that their employers would fire them so that they could reap the HK$400 per month benefit. “Oh no, that will never happen,” said the geniuses in charge. And then it started happening.

And then they said, “Oh, okay, we’ll move up the start date.” And people complained. And now they’ve come up with some scheme that says that you can do an advance renewal of the contract, but you have to pay in advance for things like the helper’s home leave. And it represents a windfall for the agencies that do the maid visa thing. (I do it myself, I don’t use an agency.)

Why not simply abolish the tax altogether? No one in the government has EVER explained what slush fund this money is going towards.

This is what you get when you have an appointed government. People who do what they want, who operate on whims and notions that come to them after their third bottle of expense account Chivas and have a staff of yes-men who tell their boss that every lamebrain scheme is a great idea! and who have no fear of losing their jobs because they don’t have to stand for election or re-election.

Latest BC column is online now. Some times I have a hard time coming up with a topic for the column. This one was easy and the thanks for that go to Fumier.