Last Friday morning, RTHK devoted about half an hour to a discussion on the state of satire in Hong Kong, and the three guests spent most of the time attacking each other! Steve Vines was promoting Spike, George Adams was promoting his NTSCMP website, and Nury Vittachi was promoting, well mainly Nury Vittachi (though I think he does have a new book out). There is a long history of bad feeling between Nury and George Adams, so it was no surprise to find them arguing, but Adams seemed to have it in for Spike as well, and was basically arguing that the print media is always constrained by libel laws and timid proprietors, whereas he can say anything he likes on the Internet. Nury said that the three of them all hated each other, though I’m not sure whether that is completely true!
Hilariously, Nury is still pushing the line that he has been sacked three times because his satire is too edgy. It may be the case that he lost his ‘Lai See’ column in the SCMP because he made too many disrepectful jokes about Chinese leaders, but the alternative view is that they didn’t need to employ someone on such a high salary to write that column, and were simply cutting costs. Interestingly, he also carried on working for the SCMP for a year or so after he stopped writing the ‘Lai See’ column. I suppose the second time was when the Hong Kong iMail changed hands and the new owners laid off a high proportion of the journalists including all the big names. Sad, but undoubtedly this was a cost-cutting exercise. Maybe someone can enlighten me about the third time Nury was sacked because I can’t recall it.
These days Nury is a successful novelist, and he still has his column in the Far Eastern Economic Review, so I don’t think these sackings have done him too much harm!
‘Dr’ George Adams has re-launched his Not the South China Morning Post website, and seems to be indiscriminately attacking virtually everyone, including several innocent bloggers. Even before you read this stuff you get a visual hint that this may not be most calm and well-reasoned view of life in Hong Kong. Certainly the impression he created on RTHK was of someone who was most upset about something (though it was never clear exactly what).
Steve Vines got very upset when George Adams said that Spike was bankrolled by Jimmy Lai, stressing that he was the publisher of the magazine. I didn’t quite understand why this proved that Jimmy Lai wasn’t putting money into the venture, or even why this idea upset him, but there was no discussion on either of these points, just some shouting. Apart from that he came across as fairly sane. I didn’t realize he used to be the editor of the Eastern Express.
I’d have liked to know more about Spike and its plans for the future, but it didn’t turn out to be that type of programme. In fact the presenters seemed to be struggling to keep control of the discussion for most of the time!
Interesting, but not as interesting as it could have been!
Ordinary Gweilo 
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