Ordinary Gweilo

The tunnel story refuses to go away.  Today’s SCMP reports that activists have a plan – to sue the government so that the private company that operates the Eastern Harbour Tunnel has to reduce the toll.

Announcing their application for a judicial review yesterday, Wong Tai Sin District Councillor Andrew To Kwan-hang and taxi driver Chan Yu-nam said they would apply for an order "to compel the government to take reasonable steps to vary the toll".

Mr Chan hoped the application would help ease taxi drivers’ immediate financial burden and has applied for legal aid to fund his case.

"The economy is not really doing well. I’m trying to use a legal means to reduce the toll, in a hope that business will be better for taxi drivers," Mr Chan said.

The economy is not doing well.  Really?  Everywhere I go I see evidence that owners of commercial and retail property are upgrading, renovating and increasing rents (and we’ve recently had stories about M&S, HMV, and now Chris Patten’s favourite egg tart shop being forced out).  Property prices are also on the up, and we know how that drives the Hong Kong economy. 

In support of the pair, two finance experts – Francis Lui Ting-ming of the University of Science and Technology and Lam Pun-lee of Polytechnic University – have agreed to serve as witnesses if the High Court accepts the case.

This is the same "finance expert" who seems to have no idea how much it costs to run a car.

Independent legislator Albert Chan Wai-yip, who is assisting the pair, admitted a judicial review over the toll would be complicated.

"It would be extremely difficult because there is no precedent that we can find in Hong Kong – a judicial review on arbitration is very rare.

"Most people think the toll increase and the profits the tunnel operator generated are unreasonable. If there is paramount public interest at stake, I hope the court will take that into consideration and accept the application.

Well, I’m not a lawyer, but courts are not really about "public interest", they are about upholding the law, and in this case it seems clear that the tunnel company are entitled to increase the tolls.

Politicians and lawyers – that’s just what we need to solve the problem.

In Hong Kong the official standard is to use the UK style for dates (e.g. Christmas Day is 25/12/05), but American dates (e.g. 12/25/05) are widely used, and of course dates in Chinese are written in year/month/date format (Y 2005 M 12 D 25), so the short form of this (05/12/25) is also used sometimes. 

It goes without saying that this can cause confusion, all the more so since the Y2K problem came and went without anyone getting stuck in a lift or finding all the traffic lights set to red. 

For example, the sell-by dates on food products might employ any of the above formats, and often the manufacturers can’t be bothered to offer any explanation.  I guess that in the UK it would be illegal not to use the dd/mm/yy format, but we don’t have of those silly regulations here, thanks very much.  Fortunately it is often obvious which one is being used, but not always – in a Hong Kong supermarket it is entirely possible that a product will still be on the shelves weeks after the sell-by date, so common sense doesn’t always help as much as it should.

UK Supermarkets mark-down the price of products on their "sell-by" date, though very often the item will be fine to eat for the next couple of days (or longer) – and they usually have a later "use by" date just to highlight this point.  In Hong Kong, the miserable supermarkets will carry on selling products up to the "use by" date (if one is specified).  Equally, many products don’t have a "sell by" date at all (or at least not one that the consumer can understand), in which case their rule seems to be to leave them on the shelves until they rot away.

I am being a little unfair, because the supermarkets do sometimes notice that products have reached their expiry date and reduce the price.  And amazingly, the confusion about dates sometimes works in the customer’s favour (a rarity in HK supermarkets) and they reduce the price because they confuse the 6th of May with 5th of June (or whatever).  Only seen it once, but it made me smile!   

Incidentally, I recently discovered that cranberries have a shelf-life of two years, so that rather tatty bag that has been sitting on the shelf in my local Park’n’Shop for the last six months is apparently just fine to eat.  The Economist has more, er, useful information:

The cranberry is one of only three fruits native to North America, growing wild from Maine to North Carolina.

If you want to know the identity of the other two, you’ll have to read the article. 

The big non-event of today was the lack of problems at the Cross-Harbour Tunnel.  There were widespread predictions of congestion as drivers responded to Sunday’s increase in tolls at the Eastern Harbour Crossing by changing their journeys.   In fact, they seem to have responded by leaving their cars at home, so there were no major problems. This is quite a common phenomenon – the more fuss and advance warning there is, the less likely it is that there will be the severe problem that we are warned about.  I remember this happening with some roadworks on the M1 motorway in the UK a while back – there were weeks of warnings about serious problems and then when the work started there were hardly any delays.   

The question now is whether the lack of problems today will tempt more drivers back on to the roads tomorrow. 

I have been amazed by the amount of publicity there has been about this problem.  Today I was midly amused by a large banner advising motorists to "Watch out for radio traffic announcements".  My advice is to watch out for minibuses and lorries and not stare at the radio for too long, but what do I know?

The biggest mystery is why this fairly small increase should cause private motorists so much concern.  Running a car in Hong Kong is not cheap – not so much in the purchase price as in the running costs (insurance, annual car tax, petrol and parking) – so paying an extra HK$20 a day is hardly significant.  If I had a car and needed to cross the harbour I thinkI’d be happy to pay extra to save some time spent in a traffic jam.

Fumier read the same newspaper article that I noticed over the weekend, with a quote from Professor Lui Ting-ming at the University of Science & Technology in Clear Water Bay saying that he will now be using a taxi and the MTR if he has to go to Central.  Fumier makes fun of him for forgetting the cost of depreciation and not taking account of the extra five minutes the journey takes by public transport.  The latter point was actually addressed by the good professor, who explained that he could make notes whilst in a taxi or on the MTR, but not whilst driving, but Fumier seems to have rather naughtily overlooked that. 

However, I have to agree that if the professor was being logical he would have stopped driving his car to Central a long time ago, since public transport was already much cheaper even before this latest increase in tunnel tolls.  On the other hand, if this increase has prompted a few people to think about whether to use their cars then it could have a very positive effect (though not, perhaps, for the operators of the tunnel).

Actually, it’s a point that I always make if people ask me whether I own a car.  Using a combination of taxis and public transport is much cheaper and only slightly less convenient than driving (the big gain being that you don’t spend time parking your car and queuing up to pay).  If you’re in a rush or are very tired, take a taxi; otherwise use public transport.