‘Dynamic Zero-Brains’ Covid precautions leave hospitals overwhelmed by asymptomatic patients. New measures here and here. The good news is stronger incentives for hold-outs to get vaccinated. Otherwise it’s a mess. Outdoor gatherings of more than two thirds of one person are banned. This will not be proactively enforced except sometimes. No hamsters allowed in hair salons where all staff are vaccinated. You will need the LeaveHomeSafe app to enter supermarkets unless there are no vegetables for sale. And you must have the app to go through malls except when you don’t have to…
“If there are certain individuals who have to go past a certain premises like a shopping mall to get to where they live or where they work, they can be taken as a reasonable excuse of not observing the vaccine pass…”
Letting the sloppy English pass, this last point is startling as it suggests someone senior in the government realizes that, for many of the 90% who do not use private cars, malls in Hong Kong offer de facto essential public rights-of-way between housing/offices and transport nodes. At the same time, officials decide to give handouts to front-line workers and the unemployed, and to tighten statutory employment protection.
This uncharacteristic sensitivity to the masses may seem refreshing. Or, to the paranoid, it could be more sinister. In what other policy field have the Hong Kong authorities been painstakingly thorough and no-expense-spared in the last couple of years?
It is getting hard to distinguish NatSec Gestapo from Corvid Gestapo – as if the two are merging into the same thing. The LeaveHomeSafe app is becoming a general-purpose surveillance and tracking device, as if we are all being tagged like a suspect on bail (remember bail?). The state finds a way to shut down churches and temples. Government can intrude into your home to make sure too many families aren’t there, but enforcement can be selective (hello pan-dems).
Which brings us to the latest in the courts. Samuel Bickett is sent back to jail. A statement from him. And after nearly a year in custody for most of them, the 47 pan-dems arrested for taking part in a primary election see their case dragged out yet again.
Bickett will sadly be deported before they allow him to go to court of final appeal
Stone the crows – it’s the Corvid Gestapo.
“Exponential”: The most over-used and incorrectly used word in Hong Kong in the past couple of weeks. Better off to use “fucking huge” in lieu of “exponential”. More accurate.
@Casira, I don’t think the government has much to fear from Bickett in the CFA. No matter his protestations, he does not have a strong case in terms of the law and the facts. This would have been the case even before the protests.
I thought “Corvid Gestapo” was the label used for Nazi-themed porn films.
“‘Exponential’: The most over-used and incorrectly used word in Hong Kong in the past couple of weeks. Better off to use “fucking huge” in lieu of “exponential”. More accurate.”
Excuse my pedantry, but… The exponent in this case could be a fraction, resulting in a rise that looks arithmetic but would still, technically, be classified as geometric.
/Given the difficulty of calculating fractional exponents, one would assume that Hong Kong is filled with Cantonese “Rain Men”.
//IANAM – I am not a Mathematician.
I agree with @zatluhcas
When I read through the facts of the case as they were presented in argument, it didn’t seem to me that Bickett really had any legs to stand on, which made me think perhaps that is why he is using every opportunity he can to be so strident in drawing attention to the infringement on his liberties.
I’m afraid that even if you fall on the side of those who are against the government it’s impossible if you use logic to get behind people like Bickett, no matter how vocal they are and how right you want them to be.
It’s a sad reality for protest movements. Some people use slogans and their own defense to disguise the fact they messed up.
“@Casira, I don’t think the government has much to fear from Bickett in the CFA. No matter his protestations, he does not have a strong case in terms of the law and the facts. This would have been the case even before the protests.”
Care to elaborate further considering the video evidence contradicts what you and the stooge judge say?
@donkey
Tell us how he messed up and not the plainclothes cop who was beating up a kid he falsely accused and then pretended he wasn’t a cop?
Care to elaborate further considering the video evidence contradicts what you and the stooge judge say?
The result was a foregone conclusion with that particular judge (or any others of her ilk). Despite what the Chief Justice said very few of the judiciary can now be trusted to be apolitical and faithful to their judicial oath.
@Casira & @donkey:
Yeah, in what version of the quantum universe is Samuel Bickett guilty of anything besides being a good citizen? Granting that this sort of thing is a crime in the eyes of The Party and its local Vichyists….
Does anyone know how the “vaccine passes” deal with the problem of the supposedly vaccinated no longer having antibodies (and therefore no immunity) after about 5-6 months in the case of double vaccination or a matter of weeks after a booster shot?
As an aside, I have a sneaking suspicion that Carrie and her minions, unless they have been boosted several times with letting on, no longer have any immunity.
The facts of the case are that an off duty cop
a) suspected a teenage boy of jumping a turnstile
b) falsely accused the teen of sexual assault, which he admitted was false on the stand
c) Beat the kid with a baton, while
d) Insisting that he wasn’t a cop
Yet Bickett is guilty because
a) he should have known the cop was lying about not being a cop since
b) cops should reasonably be expected to deny being cops when being yelled at by cop-hating crowd, and
c) there is never any excuse for laying hands on a cop, or anyone who might be a cop, even if
d) they are using excessive force against a civilian because police guidelines did not apply in 2019 due to the social unrest.
So what a good citizen should do if they witness a grown man beating a child is assume that he is a policeman and go about your business.
@everyone re Bickett
Take it for what it’s worth, but pro-dem barristers I know have become less supportive of Bickett. Some of them agree with @donkey and @zutluhcas that the facts wouldn’t have been favorable to him even pre-protest and think the CCTV footage and audio work against him. We’ll see what happens if this goes to the CFA. Usually pending court cases prevent immediate deportation.
Overlooked in the conversation is that the “po po” that Bickett allegedly assaulted probably wasn’t a po po at the time. Almost all po po in HK retire at around 50 (only recently hired ones can work until 60) so that they can move into a public housing apartment. The guy in the video seems to be much older than that. Also, according to Bickett, it took months for the guy to produce evidence that he was a po po.
@Toph @Blood Well Right
Another detail is that the cop in question not even once presented his police id, and the cops went out of their way to deleted the CCTV and other related evidence.
@Blood Well Right: I just want to see a British judge signing off on the verdict so we can stop they’re anything more than a judicial Eileen Gu in terms of moral compass.
The Bickett case has nothing to do with the law.
It is entirely about the public humiliation of an armed policeman being subdued by an unarmed foreigner and captured on video.
“Contempt of cop” in all of its various forms is universally recognised as a crime for which there is a 100% conviction rate everywhere.
I wouldn’t give up so easily on Bickett’s appeal. Some of J Toh’s statements are pure BS and difficult to uphold by a higher court. In her view police regulations were irrelevant in this case. Shouting “indecent assault” chasing a teenager who jumped over the turnstiles is extreme gross and dangerous. Nobody harmed the boy because nobody seemed to believe -retired?- officer Yu. Last not least: The available video evidence clearly supports Bickett’s version not Yu’s
I have watched the video evidence (that is available publicly). Whether or not the cop was doing the “right thing” (of course, he was not in a moral sense), it would have been obvious to anyone that he was a cop. It was widely reported and known by the public at the time that the police had been given batons and authorised to go after any dissidents they saw while plain-clothed and off-duty. That he didn’t objectively know this at the time is a weak argument.
And yes, as the law stands in most common law jurisdictions, there IS basically never any excuse for laying hands on a cop. Of course, in any other sensible jurisdiction, he would not have been charged for going after an obviously bad actor. But this is Hong Kong, of course. Even before the protests, the police always protected their own. I have personal experience of this. As much as I sympathise with Sam, he was an idiot to get involved.
The strange case of the appellant Mr Bickett – looks I may have lost a few quid subscribing to his newsletter, or the legal establishment simply dislikes social justice warriors. Well, at least he’s highlighted the petty persecution going on in our jails.
Mr Bickett forgot the two cardinal rules in approaching an officer of the law:
1. Always do it at night, from behind, and where there are no witnesses.
2. Make sure no one finds the body.
@Zatluhcas
A person showing ‘moral courage’ is NOT an idiot. We definitely need more of this kind!