In principle, a cross-border system for organ donations makes excellent sense. Cathay cabin crew should be disciplined for being snotty towards passengers of particular backgrounds. And we should all behave decently to visitors. But do senior government officials have to get so personally outraged?
The Chief Executive blasts people who cancel their organ-donation registration…
“I severely condemn those who attempt to cause damage to this noble system which saves lives through organ donations,” he said. “This is a shameful act.”
And he ‘expresses deep disappointment and indignation over claims of discrimination against Cathay Pacific passengers who don’t speak English’…
“These disrespectful remarks and actions have hurt the feelings of both Hong Kong and mainland compatriots, and damaged Hong Kong’s reputation for being respectful, courteous and inclusive.
“These vile remarks and actions happened on a Hong Kong flight. I feel deeply indignant and disappointed.”
The tourism minister stresses that ‘every Hongkonger must work to welcome tourists’.
Will such high-level alarm reduce the gap between what some Hongkongers feel about the Mainland/Mainlanders and what the authorities believe they should feel? A People’s Daily WeChat account also wades in…
A little light reading for the long weekend…
A slightly bold Standard editorial on censorship of library books.
Bloomberg on the impact of China’s security clampdown on expert business consulting networks…
At stake is China’s ability to lure the foreign capital needed to finance its economic growth. Foreign direct investment tumbled by the most in more than six years in the first three months of this year, while the nation’s stock and bond markets have seen steady outflows. Underscoring the urgency, China’s ruling Politburo last month called for greater efforts to boost foreign investment. The commerce ministry has dubbed 2023 the “Year of Investing in China.”
Even as China tries to attract investors, “it fears a loss of control over the information about firms that is passed to foreigners,” said George Magnus, an economist and associate at the University of Oxford China Centre. “This type of action will simply add fuel to the decoupling momentum that we can already see.”
You thought they just plodded around Samoa? An anthropologist does an Amazon warehouse.
I’m ABBA myself – Anything But British Airways. Such boorish louts it attracts. As far as Cathay Pathetic goes, their trolley dollies used to be wannabe actresses or models and didn’t they show it! I suppose the three fired are the old intake. The new ones are just ordinary. Dragonair as it was had much more friendly girls. One turned up with her uniform and a pair of fishnet stockings in her handbag for our first date. The stockings were her idea. She looked good in them. I told the Cathay girls I could get them into show business but they never showed me anything much.
I think people who don’t speak English properly should not be allowed onto international flights. This of course would disbar most English people nowadays.
On a sadder note, I suppose we are all mourning the loss of that great hysterical wig wearer, Dame Evadne Mona Hinge, of Hinge and Bracket fame, who has passed away in France.
“…Hong Kong’s reputation for being respectful, courteous and inclusive.”
Huh!?
My headmaster from yonks ago used to specialize in “severely condemn”, “shameful act”, “deeply indignant”. Now, I’ve gone all nostalgic, although not for the cane he wielded with maniacal glee.
#Reactor 4
Like me – he didn’t beat it out of you, he just beat it deeper in?
What is not clear about the Cathay incident is where the remarks were made.
If this took place in the cabin, in the public arena, then the remarks were in bad taste.
However, if the snitch crept up to the galley to surreptitiously record what the stewardesses were discussing there, then this was an invasion of their privacy and the right to freedom of speech.
18 May 2023 – Chief executive John Lee Ka-chiu said the city’s freedom of speech is protected under the Basic Law.
The immediate sacking of the staff did not allow a thorough investigation of the incident. This sends out a chilling message to the service industry that a complaint from a mainland citizen can immediately kill one’s career, regardless of the circumstances.
Re organ donation, transplants are carried out by either HKU or Chinese University. Some citizens have lost faith in these institutions and would hesitate to contribute to the programme based on a lack of trust in their integrity and commitment to the local community.
Moreover many of the recent withdrawals are no doubt due to emigration. Prospective donors would have transferred to a programme operated in their new domicile. But lets not let that get in the way of justification for another witch hunt.
Mary – it’s the thought that damns people now – how and where is unimportant.
Mine’s a Victory gin. Hurrah!
@ NV – You give your age away with that 1970s-style misogyny towards (female) cabin crew. And with the farewell to the Hinge & Bracket dude you make the original Nury seem youthful.
@ Rectum4 – Those spankings explain a lot about your bizarre leanings in later life.
I have had a high regard for Cathay stewardesses since the time my wife and I found ourselves on a flight to London stuck directly behind an elderly couple one (or both?) of whom was releasing a never-ending stream of deadly farts – not the type we all let go occasionally after a curry and a couple of beers, but dense toxic stinkers clearly symptomatic of some severe bowel disease. There was no way we could have tolerated that for 12 hours. Happily, even thogh the plane was about 99% full, the sympathetioc stewardess we approached about it managed to persuade someone else to move so we could get two seats together away from the stench – and all arranged discreetly so as not to embarass the couple responsible. Customer service at its finest. Someone else, seeing our previous seats unoccupied, tried to colonise them, but soon retreated to his assigned seat in the face of the unbearable miasma.
Pissy little mainlander gets stews fired for their alleged “insensitivity” on an airline not (yet) owned outright by CAAC.
Wonder how many mainland airline staff, every day, rip into their “compatriots” about their low education, boorish behaviour (just watch any of thousands of videos available on the interwebs), or propensity to be thieves and scam artists simply due to what province they come from??
Mary, you said it.
In addition, if that ohhh soooo sensitive woman, probably a patriot and an indoctrinated Hong Kong hater, had any balls she would have stood up and told them they hurt her feelings. But she was too cowardly and prefers to let our new Viceroy John Lee handle the matter.
It’s time we stand up against the mainlander Hong Kong haters!
It must be a world first – an administration with a complete set of Dunning-Kruger sufferers.
What I’m curious about is: are the Hon predisposed to be glass-hearted… or is it something learned?
@McKnowNothing
Neither predisposed, nor learned.
Incited to be like that by Peoples and China Daily, the Global Times, and of course the songbook of the CCP.
Time we start pointing out this obsession with picking quarrels and provoking troubles.
Thin-skinned and glass-hearted is a terrible way to go through life, and it is a betrayal of the real suffering endured by previous generations. Don’t encourage the bastards. Fuck ’em all.
HK Police upgrade PR Dept to new Propaganda Wing, and create dedicated ‘Hurt Feelings Office’ to react to unwelcome news with instantaneous whiny, revisionist announcements.
https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1702083-20230525.htm
(From Eggs n Ham’s link)
“The Commissioner of Police said his officers now carefully analyse intelligence and consider whether anyone intends to hijack a gathering – endangering national security or the safety of society – before approving an application.”
Apparently the HKPopo will be deputizing traditional Chinese necromancers and joss stick readers onto the force to preempt crime.