Ordinary Gweilo

I hope I don’t regret this, but I have changed my mind about NTSCMP. Perhaps it was George’s holiday in Switzerland that did the trick, because he seems to have got over the compulsion to be rude to everyone and slimmed down the site somewhat. Even Blogwatch is a shadow of its former self, reduced to criticizing BWG for his tirade against coriander and Ron for publishing girlie pics. Yawn, yawn.

There’s a new contributor creating photo montages, and both the technical quality and the humour content have improved as a result. The opinions I have read seem less vitriolic than in the early days, and George isn’t making an idiot of himself on IceRed.

There’s a certain irony in the fact that the NTSCMP seems to have changed its mind about Spike, recognizing that it is really a serious magazine that is dabbling in satire, not a clone of Private Eye, and that it puts The Standard and the SCMP to shame. This is, of course, what I said several weeks ago.

So if we go back to the RTHK radio show in November featuring Messrs Vines, Vittachi and Adams, what conclusion can we draw? At the time they were all trying to prove that they were more outspoken and “satirical” than each other, but actually this was about as meaningful as Hong Kong soccer teams arguing about who is the strongest. It hardly matters, because by international standards they are third division (at best). Nury is a nice guy who can write quite amusing stuff, Steve Vines understands how Hong Kong works and can write well about it, and, er, I’m sure if thought really hard I could find something nice to say about George.

I think my real point is that there’s room for all of us (and I include bloggers as well), and even if we don’t agree on everything we probably do share a love for Hong Kong and a healthy level of cynicism about the ‘establishment’ in this city. So, from now on, rather than ignoring NTSCMP I will be rude about it (and link to it) as appropriate. And I think I will subscribe to Spike.