Blog Archives

Walter's Blog

"But how can you live and have no story to tell?" Fyodor Dostoevsky

Reflections on recent events, plus the occasional fact free rant unfiltered by rational argument.

"If you want to read a blog to get a sense of what is going on in Hong Kong these days or a blog that would tell you what life was like living in colonial Hong Kong, this blog, WALTER'S BLOG, fits the bill." Hong Kong Blog Review

Hong Kong weather

30/4/2021 1 Comment

KISS

"Why or why do officials find it necessary to invent intentionally complex solutions to problems?"

This week saw the death of one of my heroes, Micheal Collins. With a steady hand, the valiant Collins piloted the Command Module as his two colleagues went to the Moon's surface to make history. On the dark side of the Moon, he swung out of human contact in his tin can.

Often cited as having had the loneliest job, he was nonchalant about that assertion, making the critical distinction between alone and lonely.

Collins wrote about his experiences in 'Carrying the Fire'. He feared the most dangerous part of the mission was the take-off from the Moon. That depended on a single-engine functioning flawlessly, whereas a redundancy of options covered possible failures at other critical moments. Around Collins's neck was hung several actions cards detailing steps he had to take in each of 18 eventualities. Simple, step by step instructions meant he had few decisions to make.

Our high-paid civil servants who could do with some NASA logic and remember the acronym KISS. NASA took 'Keep it simple, stupid' or 'Keep it short and simple' from the US Navy. It anchored their thinking; always go for simple, easy to comprehend and implementable solutions.

Why or why do officials find it necessary to invent intentionally complex solutions to problems?

My head hurt attempting to understand the new Covid restrictions. The changes sought to achieve a relaxation of the regime but only brought frustration and bafflement.

To help you comprehend the complexities, the above picture is an extract. There are nine pages of this convoluted mess.

By all accounts most businesses have opted to ignore these provisions, retaining the simple, implementable, four-person rule. Few will go for the hassle of enforcing these tangled protocols. Because, of course, the consequence of an honest mistake or oversight means a fine or worse. And the government wonders why its popularity falters.

Here's a suggestion. Allow dining and drinks venues to open with eight people who can prove they've had a vaccination. Other than that, retain the current rules but extend opening hours.

Remember; keep it short and simple. That's what got us to the Moon and back.

1 Comment

29/4/2021 2 Comments

Fare-De-Well

"Good byes are not forever. They simply mean I will miss you until we meet again." Anon

Reports suggest that some 3,000 Hong Kongers a month apply for the BNO visa, which provides a route to United Kingdom citizenship. How many people will opt to move to the UK remains unknown.

Covid travel restrictions and a 'wait and see' attitude may cause people to hold off on the final move. After all, opting to migrate is a heart-wrenching decision, fraught with emotional and financial challenges, especially for families with children.

As I've before covered, there are pros and cons of moving to the UK. Some of the cons are now coming into focus.

Moreover, it has to be said, mass emigration from Hong Kong is nothing unusual. In the years before 1997, Hong Kong experienced waves of departures as sentiment fluctuated about the future. An estimated half a million emigrated between 1987 and 1996, with 66,200 leaving in 1992 alone. Once they'd secured overseas passports, many returned. Hence Hong Kong's large contingent of 'Canadian' citizens.

Over time, the impact of departures from Hong Kong proved marginal. With a vast pool of talent on the Mainland, sourcing specialists is relatively easy. Besides, the city continues to draw top-notch expatriate talent.

Of course, it makes perfect sense for the UK to attract hard-working Hong Kong folks. As a recent report on UK racism noted, every ethnic group performs better in the education stakes than the white working-class except the black Caribbean boys. And the top-performing group are the Chinese/Asian kids, who come supported by traditional solid family units.

Thus, an influx of Hong Kong Chinese, whilst causing some initial economic costs and dislocation, in the long-term will benefit the country.

Speaking last week to a professional couple, who are contemplating a move to the UK, it was clear they'd crunched the numbers. They could afford to buy a flat in a decent London borough, while their savings are enough to survive a couple of years. Yet, they'd failed to recognise one significant issue; the UK may not exist in ten years.

In a lead article, last week's Economist asserted, "The bonds that hold England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland together are weaker than at any time in living memory." Scotland may be the first to heave away. Never forget that three in five Scots voted against Brexit. Also, a recent poll found that two-thirds of Scots under the age of 45 favour independence.

From a distance, looking at the UK's political scene, I see no eminent person with a clear vision for the future of a 'united kingdom'; there exists no unifying force nor ideology that anchors the times to come. For starters, Prime Minister Boris Johnson lacks the appearance of seriousness, with a propensity for bluff and bluster. He's proven himself incompetent, although he seeks to bask in the reflected glory of the Covid vaccine rollout.

Meanwhile, the opposition Labour Party is wandering the wilderness fighting amongst themselves. Keir Starmer, the Labour bossman is an asymptomatic leader: he's in charge, but show no signs. Likely they won't see power again in decades. As a result, Johnson's Tory Party enjoys an unopposed run in parliament.

Into this gap steps Scotland's First Minister Nichola Sturgeon. Sturgeon presents independence for Scotland as the logical choice that gives a more egalitarian future for Scots. There is no ignoring the fact that her message has traction with all classes within Scotland.

She enjoys renown for her deft handling of the messaging around Covid. That's despite Scotland suffering similar numbers of cases to England. Some suggest she's immune to criticism because the Scots detest the 'English' parliament to a greater degree than any of Sturgeon's failings. Maybe?

Moreover, it's significant that she's emerged from her recent troubles undiminished and resolute. That's despite all the media hype that had her finished.

So, for now, the direction of travel is impossible to ignore. The Scottish question won't go away despite Johnson's attempts to ignore the matter. Barring a major upset, I predict that Scotland will get another chance to vote on independence within a couple of years. We will get a taste of sentiment during the elections on May 6th. If the outcome is a strong mandate for the Scottish National Party, separation looks more likely.

Meanwhile, Brexit is reopening old wounds in Northern Ireland. Recent riots show that the underlying political sentiment remains delicate. As Brexit caused disruptions to trade, the loyalist community have grown fearful of separation from the Mainland. On the back of this, the nationalist community sees an opportunity to push for reunification with Ireland. These vexed questions may undo much of the progress achieved since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

And while the situation in Wales is less volatile, if Scotland gains independence, that may change.

During Covid, the UK as a single entity demonstrated some strengths. The vaccine rollout is a notable high-point. But, other aspects of national standing and infrastructure are looking rickety.

Take defence as an example. There are more tanks in the Bovington Tank Museum than serving with the British Army. Then two aircraft carriers entered service without planes or an adequate number of escorts. The largest ships ever built for the Royal Navy account for more than half the defence budgets existing £13 billion deficit.

To top it all, wearing thin is the pretence of an independent nuclear deterrent. All the missiles come from the USA. Plus, should Scotland gain independence, the atomic subs may need to move to France or the USA because no other suitable bases are available. You have to acknowledge this is a mockery of a deterrent. As one military leader observed, "The British armed forces look increasingly like an echelon of the US military."

With the full fallout from Covid and Brexit yet to play out, the UK's economic outlook is unsettled. Government borrowing is 14.5% of GDP, the highest level since World War II. If the anticipated post-Covid bounce occurs, the country can soon offset this borrowing. If not, the prospects are dicey.

Above all, the question remains will the UK still exist as a single entity, or will it fragment?

Let's recognise that those seeking certainty outside Hong Kong may be entering a domain with equally problematic political issues. How Scotland's independence will work remains unclear. The politicians must address a vast array of matters; trade, borders, the military, diplomatic representation and basic stuff like energy supplies.

That's worth reflecting on because the whispers in the wind are that the 'united kingdom' has run its course. And untangling from 1707 may make 1997 look easy.

2 Comments

20/4/2021 2 Comments

The BBC - Biased, Blinkered And Contorting

"When news broke that thousands of young girls suffered sexual assaults and rapes at the hands of grooming gangs, at first, the BBC dodged the story"

On my first visit to Mainland China in 1987, many things struck me. Top of that list sat the impeccable pukka British accents amongst our minders and translators. I gamely asked one, "Which public school did you attend?" None had travelled outside China, but all had sat at the knee of the BBC to hone their English. The accents, intonation and vocabulary were straight from the Beeb. I was impressed.

The BBC once set the gold standard across many domains of news, kids TV and entertainment. I learned about the broader world through their comprehensive reporting. The nightly newscast, with the likes of Angela Rippon, was compulsory viewing in our house. Later, under the bedsheets, I'd tune into the World Service on a transistor radio (the kids today won't know what that is). Voices from strange places beyond the horizon took me on a world tour.

There was no question that the BBC gave us the 'truth' although on reflection how we could conclude that never entered our minds. It was a simple given — we trusted the BBC because no one would believe that Richard Baker would lie to us. After all, the words' spin' and 'agenda' had yet to enter our lexicon. Moreover, as a soft power tool, as my experience in China demonstrated, we shouldn't discount the BBC's impact on the international stage.

How things have changed; in recent weeks, the BBC registered the most complaints in its history for the coverage of Prince Philip's death. Put off by the wall-to-wall commentary interrupting scheduled shows; the viewers turned away in droves. Over 110,000 individual complaints came in.

When the BBC responded by putting up a form to ease the complaints process, that procedure took the flak for encouraging more protests. One commentator noted, "BBC presenters and editors pray for the eternal life of the royal family – or, at least, to be absent from work when the death of one of its members is announced." The scars are still there from the lacklustre coverage of the death of the Queen Mother in 2002. Poor BBC can't win.

A relative best summed the attitude of the great British public, "I need to know he's gone, which wasn't unexpected. A few words of praise and can I now get back to Gogglebox?".

As the BBC has fallen further from public favour, it's fascinating to watch how the zeitgeist changes. The roots of this demise are deep and multifaceted. It's arbitrary where we start to consider how this plunge from grace came about because it's all interconnected. I'd assert that all history is context — the long prologue.

So let's jump straight in. The BBC's biased coverage of events, which was always there, faced easy exposure in the Internet era. In recent times that the BBC championed a Remainer narrative on Brexit annoyed many people. Then you have the Jimmy Savile saga and the other sex offenders that the corporation sheltered for decades. Former Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten, as the Chairman of the BBC, caught some of the flak as that story emerged. The institutional damage remains unresolved.

My own experience gives a small window to the way the BBC operates. Dealing with an aircraft crash at Kai Tak in 1988, an over-excited BBC reporter rushed up, "Can you tell me the name of the RAF officer coordinating the rescue?". RAF officer? He was less than impressed when I replied no RAF personnel had a role. Later on the radio news, I heard him announce, "British Forces led the rescue effort".

With that, he'd ignored the excellent work done by the Hong Kong Fire Services, the local ambulance crews and the police. The undertone was that these colonial citizens need leadership and guidance. Moreover, the report was deliberate deceit.

Then you have the BBC taking a stance with 'facts' adapted to fit. I could rehash many such tales arising from Occupy Central and the riots of 2019/20 when BBC coverage proved so slanted it fell over. But, in fairness to the BBC, they were not alone in whitewashing often violent events as peaceful.

David Sedgwick's book "The Fake News Factory - Tales from BBC land" presents a broadcaster with a political agenda driven by activist journalists, who care little for balance. He cites many examples, much data and insider interviews to make a convincing case that the BBC is dishonest. And Sedgwick, as an academic, is on solid ground.

He documents the BBC's involvement in 'Project Fear' as it sought to overturn the 2016 Brexit vote. The methods used included outright lies, the citing of anonymous sources to portray exaggerated scenarios and giving Remainers easy passage on discussion panels while ruthlessly questioning Brexiters.

In the 2000s, when news broke that thousands of young girls suffered sexual assaults and rapes at the hands of grooming gangs, at first, the BBC dodged the story. In sharp contrast, false allegations against a footballer attracted headlines. Shamed into covering the Telford and Rotherham sex scandals, the BBC next opted to question the victim's stories.

Other media soon cited over 19,000 recorded cases of grooming — a figure the BBC continued to doubt. It's long known that the culprits came from almost exclusively from one group, something that the BBC appears unwilling to acknowledge.

Even Crufts, an annual dog show, attracted higher billing on BBC News. The industrial-scale rape of young girls and women that had gone on for decades was demoted or mostly ignored in BBC land.

With 44 men arrested for the rapes and assaults of working-class white girls, the BBC didn't mention the story on their main news channel. When the cases came to court, the BBC ran headlines 'woman denies embellishing abuse claims' and 'women denied lying'. Who is on trial here?

That the BBC went on to wage a campaign against Sarah Champion MP, who'd highlighted these awful cases, speaks volumes. Any honest reflection of these events must conclude that certain groups are fair game on the BBC and others protected, even when they rape and murder.

Sedgwick goes on to expose how the BBC protects itself from complaints. A team of primarily ex-BBC employees adjudicate cases in OfCom, the regulator. Rarely do these insiders break ranks to take the complainant's side against the corporation.

These days the Internet is doing a much better job in areas that the BBC previously dominated. For example, Triggernometry, an online chat show hosted by two comedians, digs deeper on current affairs than anything the BBC can produce. Catch this episode that discusses racism in Britain.

With audiences abandoning the BBC in records numbers and a campaign to defund the organisation underway, the corporation's future is in doubt. Surveys reveal that the public is not willing to keep paying for a biased BBC.

Yet, I must say it's essential not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The BBC produces a vast range of content, a fair part of which is excellent. The local radio stations serve their communities well, while nobody matches the BBC on natural history programming. So if the scalpel needs to incise anything, it's the distortions in the news and current affairs departments.

Meanwhile, the evident one-sidedness of the BBC hasn't escaped the attention of the overlords in Beijing. In a forensic putdown, this BBC reporter took a hit. Ouch!

2 Comments

11/4/2021 0 Comments

Jabs Wars

"There appears to be public resistance developing to vaccines, with many factors at play."

The UK has good reason to celebrate. Vaccination rates for the over 70s are approaching 100%. Plus, some 50% of the adult population received a jab. That's a remarkable achievement that goes some way to offset the earlier cack-handed response that let Covid-19 rip through the community. Some experts believe the UK may achieve herd immunity next week. That's after 127,284 deaths (as of 10 April 2021) from 4.4 million cases.

By all accounts, the execution of the vaccine rollout proceeded with flawless precision. The British vaccine success story needs recognition, so we must give kudos to everyone who made this happen. Well done!

Meanwhile, in Europe, their vaccination campaign is stuttering along, marked by blunders, mismanagement and political shenanigans. Less than 15% of the adult population of France, Germany, Italy and Spain have received a jab. In frustration at evident failings, the EU lashed out like a petulant child.

Faced with a shortage of vaccines, they blocked a shipment of a quarter of a million jabs to Australia. And then, in a reckless move, threatened the UK with the same treatment.

The floundering head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, soon rolled back her threats. Why? Because the UK would be fully justified in withholding the raw materials that make vaccine production possible. The lipids required to coat the vaccines come from God's county, Yorkshire. Stand up Croda Chemicals of Snaith and take a bow.

None of this clumsy EU diplomacy or mismanagement should come as a surprise. Frau von der Leyen is well-remembered in her native Germany for her stunning impact on the German army. With millions wasted on procurement, units deployed without secure communication systems. In the most embarrassing incident, soldiers carried broomsticks as stand-ins for rifles that the government could not supply. Having failed in Germany, then dispatched to the EU, her incompetence spread beyond a national boundary. One German leader noted that "Ursula is our least capable minister".

As Europe goes back into lock-down due to the resurgence of Covid-19, the UK is moving to open up. The EU will pay a high political and economic price for its shambolic handling of the vaccine programme. Even remainers, like myself, must now recognise the inherent failures of the EU.

Here in Hong Kong, the Pfizer vaccine is now back online as the government seeks to catch up with delayed vaccinations. As I suspected, the packaging issue that caused the delay was not a safety concern. Nonetheless, given the sentiments here, the wait was a wise precaution, although it may have further dampened vaccine uptake.

Hong Kong has issued about 791,300 vaccine doses, with some 232,500 people getting their second dose. That's for a population of 7.8 million. The pace needs to pick up. To date, we've recorded 11,569 Covid-19 cases that resulted in 207 deaths.

Worryingly, there appears to be public resistance developing to vaccines, with many factors at play. The city continues to function, adapting well to the restrictions, which may suppress vaccine take-up rates. Some of that reluctance comes from our low number of cases. Also, our track and trace system operates with ruthless efficiency. Thus people assume the pandemic is over, so why bother to take the risk of a vaccine.

I should point out that the Hong Kong people are a hypersensitive lot, especially when it comes to health. The collective memory of SARS 2003 is still very much alive. That imprint from the past served us well during the pandemic's initial stages, as everyone rushed to take precautions without prompting from the government. Within a matter of days, people adopted mask-wearing and other safeguards.

And yet, this is a double-edged sword. Any sign that a vaccine may cause a bad reaction or worse is bound to set off a ripple effect of anxiety. Each time this kicks off another round of 'should I get vaccinated and which vaccine?'—anything to delay a decision.

The media fulfils its usual role of exciting matters out of all proportion by failing to give much context or nuance. The headlines scream, "Man died 12 days after jab". That he was 82 years old, had a severe heart problem, high blood pressure, and one lung lay buried (no pun intended) in the coverage detail. Words of wisdom Nos 1: Life is full of risks; take your pick.

Then layered atop this is a hysteria with a political dimension. Anti-China elements are suggesting that the Sinovac shot is a mind-control drug. This lunatic fringe asserts that immunisation is to pacify and control the population. How exactly this works is never explained.

I recently had the good fortune to listen to a panel discussion by a group of leading US doctors. They sought to discuss the merits of the various vaccines available, including Sinovac. Their medical message was clear; take whatever vaccine you can because any jab's impact is significantly less than catching Covid-19. There was agreement that all the currently available vaccines show reliable degrees of efficacy against the virus.

Further, most experts agree that comparisons about effectiveness rates are pointless. The different regimes of testing make these unconvincing. Such details complicate the narrative, so these get left out of the media tail of woe and doom.

Anyone can co-opt the immunisation issue and harness it to their agenda. Sure, it was only a matter of time before Greta Thunberg would get her climate change knickers in a twist over the vaccine rollout. "With the extremely inequitable vaccine distribution, I will not attend the COP26 conference if the development continues as it is now," Thunberg said.

Is she seriously suggesting that nations should hold off vaccinating until we are ready to vaccinate everyone? I've often felt Ms Thunberg's understanding of issues is shallow; she's affirmed that view. Does she want folks to die while vaccines linger in storage until we have enough stock? Words of wisdom Nos 2: Life isn't fair. Get over it, Ms Thunberg.

Nations need to get their own house in order and then move to help their neighbours. That's the proper, humane option. Thankfully we still have some adults in the room. Dr Micheal Ryan, executive director of the WHO, noted, "If you need to be right before you move, you will never win. Perfection is the enemy of the good when it comes to emergency management."

In the meantime, Ms Thunberg should stick to her speciality of dropping classes, while riding around on expensive carbon-fibre boats as the intellectually challenged gobshite preeminence.

This web site provides graphics that illustrate the Covid performance across many dimensions. It's well worth a look. In the meantime, get your jabs.

0 Comments

<<Previous

YOUR CART

Walter's Blog

KISS

Fare-De-Well

The BBC - Biased, Blinkered And Contorting

Jabs Wars

Author

Archives

Home

Introduction

Contact Walter