Another report in the SCMP today about a woman conned into having sex with a man, this time under the pretext of exorcising ghosts in her flat. This time it’s a 63 year old unemployed man and a 47 year old housewife. Once again, the man is charged with “procuring unlawful sexual acts by false pretences.” (I guess that’s the British spelling of pretenses?) Jeez, if that’s really against the law, is there any man in Hong Kong not guilty of that? What guy, at some point in his life, at least one time, hasn’t said shit he didn’t mean in order to get a woman naked? “I love you.” “I promise not to come inside you.” “I won’t tell anyone.”

Once again, the “victim” was introduced to the “criminal” by a mutual female friend, but apparently unlike last time, this time the mutual friend is being charged with aiding and abetting. No word on if any money changed hands but the article seems to imply it.

I suppose they don’t make stupidity a crime, otherwise Donald Tsang would end up in jail, too.

Stephen Vines writes:

Now that Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen finds himself unfavourably compared to his hapless predecessor, Tung Chee-hwa, he appears to be trapped in the vortex which forces flaying politicians further and further down a hole from which they are unlikely to emerge.

This impression was confirmed this week by Tsang’s response to accusations of nepotism. He unwittingly fuelled his descent by ignoring every lesson of political behaviour. The great minds in Government House think they know better and launched him on a disastrous course of counter-attack.

However, the Tsang regime has only itself to blame. Its arrogant behaviour encourages the idea of cronyism and indifference to the needs of ordinary people. A slew of government appointments to official posts and bodies that the chief executive controls suggest that what matters to this administration is who you know, not what you know.

Moreover, while the door remains largely closed to meetings between the government and its critics, it is flung wide open to the rich and well connected. By unfortunate coincidence, on the day that the chief executive chose to rebuff criticism of nepotism, his financial secretary was greeting tycoons from the property sector; such is the state of insularity in this government that this coincidence was unlikely to have been noticed.

All this would be overlooked if there was a feeling that the government was not being run largely for the benefit of those who have most. As house prices soar, the government self righteously announces that it will not assist less-well-off potential homeowners but will listen to property developers anxious to secure cheaper land for development.

As low-income parents battle to find places for children in overcrowded schools with limited resources, the government outlines plans for more schools and universities for the better off – and so it goes on.

I mean, how bad do you have to be to make Tung Chee-Hwa look good? Well now we know the answer. You have to be Donald Tsang bad.

This is the overwhelming argument in favor of democracy in my opinion. When you have a government that is appointed, not elected, this is the result – a government that is clearly in the pocket of big business and that ignores the general public, because they don’t have to even pretend to give a shit about public opinion and don’t need to worry about re-election.

I can think of two reasons off the bat that Tsang is worse than Tung. Tung at least meant well and at least gave the impression of caring, even if he was an abject failure at almost everything he tried. And Tung wasn’t working overtime to put more money into the hands of the rich at the expense of the poor.

But Tsang doesn’t even bother with that. If the guy is not actually corrupt, if he is not taking pay-offs (and there’s no allegations that he is), he is certainly morally corrupt for the way that he has abandoned the people of Hong Kong and worked so hard to further enrich the wealthy and increase the gap between the rich and poor.

This ridiculous government project at Tamar would never have been allowed to go forward in a democratic society. And this HK$60-but-we-know-it-will-be-HK$100 billion rail project – a project that is arguably useful but that would save up to 50% if they just made some slight alterations to the route but they won’t do it because then the billionaires won’t make as much on the project?

Meanwhile, the SCMP gets cluttered up with articles like the one about the silly drug bust on Lamma. “The biggest operation in anyone’s memory” had 60 police going into 4 bars and detaining 10 people and collecting all of HK$71,000 worth of drugs. See, the cops go after this rather than the dealers selling drugs to school kids because those dealers are triads and the cops don’t really go after the triads. (There’s also a report of police seizing a significant amount of drugs kept in a mini storage place in Kowloon – in this case HK$8 million worth. The article mentions that the two men arrested are “suspected members of an organised crime syndicate.”)

And another “top story” informs us that taxi drivers like old mobile phones and don’t use them for contacting mistresses in Shenzhen but for taking calls from customers looking for rides. This story runs for 18 paragraphs!

Actually, my favorite letter in today’s letter section comes from one Wan Ka-Yan in Shatin.

It is not a good idea for a culture-oriented secondary school to offer students professional Cantonese opera training.

It is an old-fashioned extra-curricular activity. Therefore, there will not be sufficient interest to justify opening a training course.

Instead of wasting money on this kind of activity, schools should conduct a poll on which activities the students would like.

I suspect that Mr. or Ms. Wan is a student him or herself. Conduct a poll of which activities students would like? And what would they choose? Smoking dope? Drinking? Sex? Karaoke? Going to the beach? Anything that allows people to study something for the sake of culture and enriching their lives as opposed to studying things that can lead to lining their pockets while leaving their souls empty is seen as a “waste of money.” The best and the brightest, indeed.