Ordinary Gweilo

It's not big and it's not clever, it's just a Brit in Hong Kong writiing (mainly) about Hong Kong

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  • Wrong again

    Ten years ago I probably knew nothing about Thailand.  Five years later I felt I knew something. 

    What did I know?  Well, that King Bhumibol Adulyadej was admired and revered by the Thai people, and Thaksin Shinawatra was an effective prime minister – it so happens that my first visit to Thailand was during the election in January 2001 when he became Prime Minister, and there seemed to be a feeling that this was a fresh start for a country that had been plagued with weak and ineffective governments. 

    Well, maybe.  The king is protected by the world’s strictest lèse majesté rules, so criticizing him is a risky thing to do.  Thaksin seems to have been at least as interested in getting richer as he was in running the country,  and his “war on drugs” seemed to be based on a policy of shooting first and asking questions afterwards.  

    In 2006 he was forced out of office by an army coup, at least partially because Thaksin’s unusually strong position as prime minister represented a challenge to the king’s authority.  A new constitution was introduced – one that was designed to produce a weaker government, and the hope was that Thaksin would keep away and life would return to normal.  In fact I was cautiously optimistic that it would be for the best

    Well, I was wrong about that.  Thaksin has stayed away, and now spends at least part of his time in Hong Kong (apparently it’s a good place to get divorced and watch live Premier League games), but his supporters won last year’s election and he seems to have no shortage of relatives who are willing to become prime minister.

    This enrages his opponents, and they have been demonstrating against the government for months, culminating in the occupation of Bangkok’s airports that ended on Tuesday, the same day that the Thai courts ruled that the Prime Minister must stand down.  This enabled the demonstrators to claim that they had achieved what they wanted – though surely the court would not have been influenced by the protest. 

    Which brings us back to the king.  This is the second time that a Thaksin-backed prime minister has been forced to resign by the courts, and it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that they are doing what they believe the king wants.    

    The expectation was that Thaksin’s allies would form another government, but now it seems possible that the opposition Democrat Party might be able to form a coalition. Well, yes, but those pesky peasants are likely to vote for a Thaksin party again once at the next election, and so this is only going to be a temporary solution. 

    If the king and his advisers really want a long-term solution, they will need to persuade the Democrats and their allies to govern for the country and not just the elite in Bangkok.

  • Mix and match

    imageI did a double-take when I saw this combination of photographs on the BBC website.

    Now I’m trying to decide whether it was very clever or very dumb…

  • Now that’s what I call quite old

    I see that Now TV have a new service that offers US dramas "on demand".  For HK$50 a month.  That sounds OK.

    So what do we have on offer?

    Ah, yes, Desperate Housewives.  Series 1.  That must have been on TVB Pearl about 3 years ago.

    Grey's Anatomy.  Series 1.  Also a few years old.

    They have an HD option (for an extra HK$10 per month), but was the first series of Desperate Housewives made in HD?  Actually, I don't care, and anyway Jade HD does broadcast a few American dramas in HD if that's what you really want.

    So, thanks but no thanks, and come back when you have new shows that haven't already been on terrestrial TV three years ago.

  • NTSCMP Print Edition

    At first I thought this was a joke.  Why would someone who claimed to believe that the Internet is the future (on RTHK) publish a printed magazine? 

    However, having finally found copies of the third issue of NTSCMP in a branch of Dymocks (quite a lot of copies, actually), I can confirm that it does really exist, and the layout is every bit as awful as the website.

    Spike was a good magazine written by professional journalists, and that failed, so it's really hard to see how NTSCMP can survive – and that branch of Dymocks still seems to have the same number of copies on the shelf after about a month, so the signs are not good. 

  • English – if you can read Chinese

    Paypal have set up a Hong Kong site.  Hurrah – there’s an English version.  However, you have to wonder about the common sense of the people who set it up, because this is the screen header:

    image

    Well-designed multi-lingual sites have a button saying ‘English’.  This one doesn’t.

    However, if you can recognize any Chinese characters you might try clicking that button on the second row:

    image

    and when you click it it duly expands to give you a menu:

    image

    Easy wasn’t it – if you can read Chinese…

  • Results not included

    Timageoday’s SCMP has a league table that “does not include [the] late game”.  Well, actually, it doesn’t include any of yesterday’s games.

    image

    If it did, Bolton would have been 9th rather than 18th, Arsenal would have been 3rd rather than 4th, Portsmouth 8th rather than 9th, and Fulham 18th rather than 16th.

    Still, at least the results are correct…

  • Letter of the week

    A few days ago, Ken Livingstone made the fairly obvious observation that building new roads is only ever a short-term solution, and said that the proposed Wan Chai-Central would be a “complete waste of time”  

    Today, there is a letter in the SCMP on this subject:

    How inappropriate for a progressive society like Hong Kong to listen to former London mayor Ken Livingstone on matters of city transport.

    London’s so-called transport planning under “Red Ken” created more hot spots and suburban congestion, accidents and commuter frustration as the disastrous consequences of his congestion charges became apparent. It is nothing more than a tax-raising scheme and has no place in a modern city.

    The Central-Wan Chai Bypass is akin to the Lantau airport – stay with the old and stagnate, embrace forward thinking and progress – it is a no brainer.

    J. Neil Young, Glasgow, Scotland

    Who better to give advice on road construction in Hong Kong that someone who lives in Glasgow?  For anyone not familiar with the geography of the UK, it’s a city several hundred miles north of London.  Which doesn’t have the congestion charge.

    This is what Ken Livingstone said:

    “In any city as densely populated as London, New York or Hong Kong, there’s a potential to double the road system and it will fill up,” he said. “Transport planners have known since 1938 that however many roads you build – they will fill up, usually within 18 months or two years … If you take the [vehicle] capacity out, the number of people driving goes down; if you put it up, the number of people driving goes up.

    “When you look at a city like Hong Kong, especially when you’ve 100 per cent of the roads you need, it’s about using them more sensibly.”

    But apparently that’s not a forward-thinking or progressive attitude.  Oh no.  Build more roads, reclaim more of the harbour, and everything will be much better.

  • Five rip some DVDs

    When I first saw the books, I thought that it was simply a bit of clever marketing, but it turns out that they have updated the Famous Five for the new millenium with four new characters (Jo, Max, Allie & Dylan) who are supposed to be the children of George, Julian, Dick & Anne.  That makes no sense, because the first book was published in 1942, at which point Julian was 12, Dick & George were 11, and Anne was 10.  Which would make it rather unlikely that their children would be teenagers in 2008.  Admittedly they were still the same age 21 years later when Enid Blyton published the 21st and final book in the series, but even so, it doesn't seem quite right.

    Even better, we are asked to believe that tomboy George went off to the Himalayas, met an Indian called Raavi, and they had a daughter called Jyoti  (but known as Jo), and that Annie moved to California after University and is now a successful art dealer, with a daughter called Allie.  Which takes care of the whole multicultural thing – clearly they wouldn't have got away with having four white, English, middle-class children.  You'll be relieved to hear that the dog is still called Timmy, and that no-one has bothered to give him a back story.

    OK, actually these are not really new books.  Instead they are novelizations of a new Disney Channel TV series made by the company who now own the rights to Enid Blyton's name and all her characters.  So I guess they can do whatever they want.

  • The new Disney

    High School Musical 3 opened in Hong Kong on Friday.  Sadly, I wasn’t able to get to the cinema myself, but I am told that it’s doing good business.

    Sunday’s SCMP re-printed a Guardian article (Shake your money maker) about the phenomenon that is Disney Channel.  What’s interesting about the channel is that rather than just endlessly re-running classic Disney movies (which they also do), they also have their own roster of artists and a corresponding array of original material, including Hannah Montana, Camp Rock and, of course, High School Musical.  Most of it seems like rubbish to me but your average 11 year old thinks differently:

    While the rest of the industry gave up on the under-14 market to target less challenging, less volatile areas, Disney seized its opportunity. “Clearly, the paradigm has changed. What has really accelerated in the last three or four years is that the Disney Channel has become an incredible content creation machine for the rest of the Walt Disney company. It is a fundamental shift in how business is done and how television is perceived within the company,” says Marsh.

    [..] Television has become the new radio. Our audience, the six- to 12-year-old demographic, is acutely attuned to the music world. By and large, the record companies dismissed them as too poor, too uninterested, too parochial. We figured out a model that feels like music just for them, that somebody thought through and delivered to the place that is most natural for them to consume it.”

    Turn on Disney Channel any time of the day or night and you’re never more than a few minutes away from High School Musical (Sing-along, Dance-along, Hoop-along), Hannah Montana, Camp Rock, or the Jonas Brothers.  And it’s paying-off:

    Months before Camp Rock hit town, Disney began bombarding journalists with figures about High School Musical’s global dominance. To take just one, the High School Musical 2 soundtrack was the biggest-selling album in the world last year, shifting more than 6m copies. And the biggest seller the year before? The first High School Musical soundtrack.

    These guys know exactly what they are doing.

  • Slimming Down

    The long-established electrical chain Tai Lin recently closed down, apparently a victim of the current financial crisis.  I’ve only bought one item there and I had to take it back again and get a refund, so I suppose that doesn’t really count.  Their stores always seemed much less crowded than Fortress and Broadway.  Ah, yes, now it all makes sense.

    Other retail chains seem to be reducing the size of their stores.  Not the number, but the size.  It’s not a new phenomenon – I remember when Marks & Spencer had huge two-level stores in Festival Walk and Plaza Hollywood, both of which were cut back to one floor.  Toys R Us have similarly reduced the size of several of their stores, including the ones in Festival Walk and New Town Plaza. 

    Now it’s happening again – last time I went to the IKEA store in Sha Tin I noticed that there was a lot of renovation going on, but only realized at the end of my five-mile walk that they appear to have closed the upper floor altogether.  Meanwhile, over in New Town Plaza, both the bookshops (Popular and Commercial Press) have been slimmed down by roughly a third.  Presumably there will be no shortage of retailers happy to take over the space they have vacated, and so everyone’s a winner.   Especially shopfitters.