City’s major problems solved

It would be easy to get a bit down about the state of things in Hong Kong. We have water that doesn’t damage kids’ brains so long as they don’t swallow it; Assaulting-Police-With-Breast-Girl getting three months; and even ultra-patriots being treated like dirt. So it’s reassuring to see that a couple of today’s South China Morning Post columns elegantly SCMP-FamilyFortunessolve some of our most pressing problems, at least after a bit of elaboration.

A professor of social work worries about the city’s declining fertility rate. This much-discussed phenomenon affects other Asian societies, like Japan, Korea and Singapore. Each place has at least four of the following five conditions: exhausting, high-pressure rat-race materialist lifestyles; tiny overpriced homes; ultra-competitive education systems; educated women who prefer to have a life rather than marriage; policymakers devoid of imagination.

Is this a looming crisis? The professor invites us to fret about it because we’re doomed if we don’t have enough workers (it’s true for bees, so it must be true for us). And people are ‘interestingly’ keeping puppy dogs when women should be ‘allowed to help solve the problem of our anticipated labour shortfall’…

SCMP-Interestingly

(So logically, what we need is a puppy shortfall!) The professor produces a modest list of very neat solutions…

SCMP-ImproveLiving

In order to accomplish these things, Hong Kong would have to make some changes. Cheaper homes mean that people keep more money in their pockets, so property tycoons and landlords get less. Childcare centres, fiscal incentives and better education all require tax revenues to be diverted away from pointless infrastructure projects, thus away from construction interests – including the same property tycoons. Family-friendly working hours and leave arrangements would imply that our archaic, cartelized, rent-seeking businesses give way to modern, innovative wealth-creators, yet again at the expense of the tycoons who infest our politics via functional constituencies, the Liberal Party, etc – which sort of suggests a more representative system of government.

So that’s solved. Maybe the professor can expand on how we ‘move forward’, as the bureaucrats like to say.

Meanwhile the SCMP’s ‘local cultural critic’ Perry Lam tells us that Hong Kong needs to ‘understand’ what Beijing wants. What does Beijing want? We don’t know. But we have to find out. Even though it’s ‘notoriously difficult’…

SCMP-GettingBeij

SCMP-HongKongMustTragically, the writer lacks the space to enlighten us as to What The Heck It Is That Beijing Actually Wants. Fortunately, I can pick up where he leaves off.

What Beijing wants is: no more independent judiciary, no more free press, no more academic freedom, no more freedom of assembly, no more rule of law and no more elected legislators – all of which are threats to one-party rule, and ultimately incompatible with it. They should be replaced with silence, obedience and loyalty to the Communist Party, and acceptance of a self-selecting corrupt hereditary dictatorship as saviour of the nation.

That’s it. Simple. (Only took one paragraph, by the way.)

With so many problems solved, I declare the weekend open with ‘Rene Magritte does Hong Kong’…

ReneMagritteHK

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14 Responses to City’s major problems solved

  1. PD says:

    I had a dream last night. A large policeman falls down with grey goo pouring out of ears and nose and an angelic expression. The girl who viciously assaulted him is breast-feeding twins (it is well-known that 99.97% of public housing tenants do). The press accuse her of wanton, wilful and deliberate lead poisoning. Prison photos show she has no breasts.

    Is it just me or is that pre-nubile car provocatively thrusting its buttocks in the air?

  2. Red Dragon says:

    Is that oaf Perry Lam’s column really called “On Second Thought”?

    Doesn’t the SCMP employ anyone who can speak and write English any more?

  3. The Wonder Bra. says:

    I know it provides titillation to imagine a cop assaulted by a ladies ample breasts, unfortunately the truth is more prosaic. She was convicted and sentenced for concocting her evidence. The local press appear to have boobed in their coverage.

  4. dimuendo says:

    Wonderbra

    She was charged with assault, not the inspector. If magistrate believed the inspector beyond reasonable doubt then she convicted of assault. She not charged with concoction of evidence. Greatest boob is magistrate at least with his sentence

  5. Gooddog says:

    Preach, Hemmers, Preach….

    “What Beijing wants is: no more independent judiciary, no more free press, no more academic freedom, no more freedom of assembly, no more rule of law and no more elected legislators – all of which are threats to one-party rule, and ultimately incompatible with it. They should be replaced with silence, obedience and loyalty to the Communist Party, and acceptance of a self-selecting corrupt hereditary dictatorship as saviour of the nation.

    That’s it. Simple.”

    A-Men.

  6. reductio says:

    Scene: Perry is dozing in bed. Sunlight peeps through his mid-level windows.

    The phone rings

    SCMP Sub: Perry, Melody from the SCMP. Where’s your “On Second Thought” piece? We’re running it tomorrow and we need it by lunchtime today.

    Perry: Er… er…I sent it two days ago. Didn’t you get it?

    Melody: No, not got it. You wrote it, yes?

    Perry: Sure, of course. Did I write it already? Ha ha. NO problem. I’ll just send you another copy right directly.

    Melody: Well we need it now. I’ll check my mail in 10 minutes.

    Perry: 10 minutes! No problem, ha ha. I’ll send it to you. (Melody rings off)

    Perry: Shit! 10 minutes? What can I write about in 10 minutes? Mmmmm? Ahhh!

    He starts typing “Hong Kong must view China as a partner, not enemy.”

  7. inspired says:

    if a broken record is played in the forest and nobody listens, does it make a sound?

  8. Chinese Netizen says:

    @reductio: The modus operandi of a great many “journalists”. Especially of the lap dog variety.
    @Gooddog: +1

  9. reductio says:

    Scene: Perry is feverishly tapping away on his laptop wearing only underpants and Apple Smartwatch (TM).

    Perry: And last bit: “That’s why we really need to know what Beijing wants.” Quick word count… Damn! Two words short. That’s 20 bucks.

    (He frowns)

    Perry: “That’s why we really, totally need to know what Beijing definitely wants”. And …Send!

  10. Mary Melville says:

    It is noticeable that the cries of alarm about falling birth rates usually come from males.
    Women have a different take on the issue and many believe that it is utterly irresponsible for any administration to encourage its citizens to increase reproduction rates.
    Are we not being bombarded with articles on the coming age of robots and drones and with them fewer job opportunities?
    The world population is predicted to rise to 9 billion by 2050 and this will trigger famine in some areas.
    Moreover large tracts of arable land have been poisoned with toxins, fish stocks are being decimated, species like bees, essential to the food chain, are going awol.
    All the above indicate that declinng fertility rates is Mother Nature’s way of coping with these issues. Fewer people mean less stress on the environment, the opportunity to bring the Earth and its resources back into balance and a better chance that coming generations can be gainfully employed.
    If we really need more workers the government can send Matthew Cheung on a rekkie to Calais.

  11. SCMP Editorial Dept (aka Big Al) says:

    @Red Dragon
    Thank you for pointing out the typo. The title of Perry’s column should, of course, have read “One Second Thought”.

  12. Nimby says:

    @Mary Melville: Heavens, we don’t need to send a

    @SCMP Ed. Big Al
    Want to know what a matter and anti-matter collisions look like? A good model would be “The product of mental activity” and Perry Lam in the same room even for one second? Perish the …

    Keep the old title, we don’t want to go that part of the space-time continuum where no man has gone before. The quantum mechanics that repair taxis in North Point say it would look like the inside of the vagina of the wife of Hong Kong’s one and only vampire-werewolf hybrid, Lufsig.

  13. Nimby says:

    Sorry @Mary Melville: Heavens, we don’t need to send a …Matthew Cheung on a (masturbatory) rekkie to Calais, among vulnerable desperate dark skin women & men. He’s already got Erwiana’s testimony on loop, piped into his private government toilet.

  14. PCC says:

    When advocates of population control sterilise themselves and their existing progeny, then I’ll give credence to their point of view.

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