This weekend’s spam emails:

Bush to Reporters: Fuck the Constitution
Tiger Woods Will Call Next Son Monkey
Blair: I’m Not Gay, Thats Just My Accent
Sarah Jessica Parker Arrested for Gross Negligee
Bush ‘Troubled’ By Gay Marriages, Declares San Francisco Part of ‘Axis of Evil’
Astronauts Pose With the U.S. Snoopy
I Liked the Part When the French Got Their Asses Busted – G.W. Bush

Guaranteed – all of the above actual headers on spam emails. Who needs The Onion when you got this stuff?

======================

I’ve been scooped. In connection with the Disneyland visa mess, was going to link to this article on Variety Asia Online about the theme park’s refinancing woes.

Walt Disney and the Hong Kong government are fighting over the ongoing finance of the Hong Kong Disneyland theme park.

The park, which is 57% owned by Hong Kong and has been open nearly three years, is due to repay HK$2.5billion ($325 million) of loans in September. But the two sides cannot agree on how it should be refinanced.

He who hesitates is lunch and Stephen Vines, writing for Asia Sentinel, has done a much better job than I could have.

No where else in the world is there an immigration regulation that permits entry to a territory exclusively for the purpose of visiting a single commercial tourist attraction.

It is becoming increasingly clear why such an extreme measure was introduced. The park has never met its attendance or revenue targets and is now embroiled in negotiations to reschedule the massive debt incurred by the park’s operating company. The bulk of this debt comes from a HK$5.6 billion ($718 million) loan granted by the Hong Kong government prior to the park’s opening. The US-based Walt Disney Company is meanwhile seeking to renegotiate commercial loans totaling HK$2.6 billion, which were acquired in addition to the government grant.

Although the Hong Kong government holds 57 percent of the theme park’s equity, with options to increase this holding through debt-for-equity swaps, the government refuses to disclose details about the financial status of what is effectively a state-controlled company. The only available information arises from its partner, the US Disney company, which needs to file periodic reports to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Its latest filing to the SEC, made last month, reveals that Disney has failed to make progress in debt refinancing talks with the government and that the park is continuing to operate at a loss and is failing to meet its attendance targets although details of these figures have not been disclosed.

…

At the time of the park’s launch the government ridiculed suggestions that the venture’s Achilles’ heel was its small size – the smallest Disney theme park in the world – which could discourage visitors and kill off the kind of repeat business that has been the key to success for Disney elsewhere. It is now widely recognized that size does matter and that Hong Kong is suffering as a result.

Moreover, whereas Disney signed non-competition agreements with its joint venture theme park partners in both Paris and Tokyo, it appears that the Hong Kong government negotiators either forgot or were unsuccessful in obtaining such a pledge for the SAR version. As a result talks are well underway with the Shanghai municipal government for the establishment of a park that is likely to draw visitors from the Hong Kong park’s principal catchment area – mainland China.

It is not too soon to say that this venture has entered the realms of debacle and it still begs the question of why a government that prides itself on leaving businesspeople to get on with business should have thought it was smart enough to step in where real business feared to tread.