Hello, Cheeky

Susan Boyle is making headlines again, with a fantastic new Twitter hashtag.

Well, you wouldn't want to look at the front, would you?

Old Bags

My avid reader has forwarded to me an electronic missive from the venerable Helena May hostel on Garden Road, otherwise known as the Virgins' Retreat.

Apparently, there is something known as the "Season of Goodwill" (must be one of those government-prescribed things for locals, like loving your family even as they suck the blood out of your veins). Somewhat more interestingly, at least at first glance, the Helena May has come up with something called the  “Love Bags Project”, for which they are asking for volunteers. Why is it that when I hear the words "love bags", I immediately think of Joycey?

However, the love bags in question are being prepared by the Welsh Male Voice Choir (some  mistake there, surely), a different matter altogether. I think I'll give it a miss.

My Old Dutch

Jake van der Kamp, writing in the Sunday SCuM Post, has turned his sights on to the way the MPF system works here.

He asks "Why is it that bureacracies set up to serve the general public so often take the side of special interest groups against the public?" Then he goes on to mention two examples, bank and food regulators, in a list he descibes as "exhaustive", before discussing the MPF, which he describes as "prominent on the list".

"Exhaustive - examining, including or considering all elements or aspects, comprehensive." Do you see where I am going on this, Jake?

There Goes The Neighbourhood

The Rich Have More Money

I don't get the deification of Clare Hollingsworth, and now I don't get the vilification of Gloria Chor.

Ms. Chor seems like a decent person whose husband happens to have a lot of money. Yes, she spends it, why TF not?, and the YouTube (or ThouTube as is was called in Ulie's day) video linked above tries to send her up with mocking background music, and editing to make her look as superficial as possible. It is obvious that the producers misled her and ended up doing a hatchet job on her. But, aside from having a lot of spondoolies, she is ordinary and unassuming.

Unlike say a braying Hooray Henry (whether the generic UK variety, or the local Tang Dy-Nasty), born with a silver spoon up his arse, she and her hubby have worked their way up. Everything they have is the result of their own work and, as far as we can see, they are not making money either from a rigged market or from exploiting people's misery in finding a roof to put over their heads. And if you jump to 4.59 on the clip, her daughter is seriously racked. Ooh err, Missus Chor!

So, good luck to her, and good luck to her hubby in getting this underhand video removed from the Tube.

Savile Row

Now then, guys and very young gals, there's nothing like a good old British bandwagon to jump onto, is there. So make room on top for me. Ooh err, Missus!

As a child of the sixties (as opposed to one who is in his sixties), I never liked Savile as a DJ for the simple reason that he got in the way of the music with his laboured attempts at being eccentric, and I never followed him in his later career as a general entertainer. I don't believe I saw a single episode of Jim'll Fix It. His "getting in the way", was of course the self-same thing as his genius for self-publicity and the man's other achievements were undoubtedly remarkable. Not quite as remarkable as he claimed (he didn't invent the twin turntable, for example), but that is partly my point. He was someone who bigged himself up and grasped opportunities. He was also, in a sense that is the source of much of the current kerfuffle, a man of his time.

So, I neither liked nor disliked the guy, even in retrospect; I just didn't "get" him. But those who are taking the opportunity to judge Savile in retrospect include on the one hand Chris Patten, someone for whom I have an enormous respect, and on the other hand Esther Rantzen.

Chris Patten, Chairman of the BBC Trust, has stated that Savile's activities could not be excused as behaviour from a time when "attitudes were different", and gave his backing to inquiries by police and the corporation. Of course, he would be unlikely to say anything else in his position, but is it reasonable? I think it depends exactly what he means. By which I mean, of course, that it doesn't.

There is a range of alleged behavour by Savile, which is getting tarred with a single brush. There is having sex with under-age girls, having sex with young but not under-age girls, having sex with mentally disturbed girls, and having non-consensual sex. (There is also an implied offence of getting more nookie than anyone else. We'd better come up with a law outlawing rich, charismatic, physically impressive people from getting more than their fair share. But not till I've gone, eh?)

Certainly two of the first four activities are unlikely to be regarded differently now than in the 60s, perhaps three depending on whether you think the age of consent is a moral issue or a legal artifice and whether one particularly mature fifteen year-old might be less vulnerable than the next vulnerable eighteen year-old. Does Patten mean that whatever seems wrong now should be regarded as having been wrong then? If so, I disagree. Or is he talking about legalities, in which case I make the same point, though the age of consent law hasn't changed as far as I know. (In which case, Patten is surely suggesting that we impose today's morals on the previous century.)

 I do doubt whether, as a general proposition, if you are talking about morality, you can impose one generation's morals on another. The question must be, was what Savile did wrong when he did it?

(I am pleased by the way to advise my avid reader in this respect that my own taste is for ladies over 40 - hello, Joycey - or even 50. You know who you are.)

Esther Rantzen's judgement (or do I mean her chance to get some publicity out of all this?) is tempered by her embarrassment that she herself heard rumours of Savile's Travels (geddit?) at the time but did nothing. This from the founder of a charity, ChildLine, set up in order to protect children. According to Rantzen, until now it had 'only been one single child's word against the word of a television icon'. Now it was 'five adult women' who had come forward it was easier. They are 'cool, credible, sensible women', who are 'convincing' to Rantzen, and so she has "started" to believe there is some truth to it all. Isn't that exactly what Rantzen has been making career capital out of  campaigning against most of her professional life? Has Rantzen's charity work, mirroring so closely Savile's own charity work, been  just another exercise in self-publicity, and like Savile's is now revealed as a self-serving sham? In my book, that makes her as bad as Savile.

As she now says, 'How I long to turn the clock back'. Yes, and not set up that damn charity.

An Apple A Day

Overheard this morning at Deep Water Bay, a British male in around his 30s, saying to his pal "I was talking on my i-Phone this morning ...". WTF sort of retarded thing is that for a grown man to say? It's a ckufing phone. What brand it is is redundant unless you are a teenager. Just saying you were on the phone is pretty much redundant already.

What next .. "I'm going to walk to my BMW in my Timberlands and go for a Haagen-Dazs"? Twat.

Wear what you want, drive what you want, buy what you want, but don't think any of the rest of us give Ckuf One.

This brand obsession extends to even having lists of which brands are "coolest". People are so stupid they have to have someone else decide for them which products will make them feel best about themselves. So, go ahead and buy your Apple phone and then write to the SCuM Post like the chap last week complaining that Apple had ckufed him royally in the arse with problems upgrading from the previous gadget to the i-Phone 5. How cool is that?

Silence Of The Prams

In the "About Ckufing Time" category, a move so blindingly obvious that its delay could have been choreographed by the Hong Kong government, Air Asia (following a similar move by Malaysia Airlines) is creating child-free zones on its flights.

Yes, please roll out the usual argument about the need for others to be tolerant (err ... why?) rather than the need for oneself to be considerate. Good, that's that dealt with.

Airlines have long been masters at differential pricing, and they already board passengers with yound children first, so there would be nothing new about simply allocating the seats at the back to people travelling with their delightful bundles of joy, just like they used to do with smokers (maybe stick a curtain up in front of the section), so they're all together, and charging a little less to those still willing to sit nearby and a little more to those of us who want to be nowhere near. That would fit in neatly with boarding them first, surely, and it would incidentally test their own tolerance. Or is that different?

Hear! Hear!

Excellent news for gerbils as they rush headlong into a weekend of heavy petting - your hearing problems are a thing of the past. I SAID YOUR HEARING PROBLEMS ... oh, never mind.

The ever-gripping Antrim Times reports that finally there is a cure for deafness in gerbils, but not in any other creatures, as a result of stem cell research. Although, confusingly, Wikipedia advises in respect of gerbils' deafness and inner ear problems that "A problem with the inner ear can be spotted by a gerbil leaning to one side quite obviously. The fluids in the ears affect balance. However, this does not appear to affect the gerbils too much, which have an aptitude of just getting on with things, and getting used to their conditions." In other words, it wasn't really much of a problem to start with, even for the gerbils.

But, if my reader were thinking of getting a gerbil this weekend, for whatever purpose, here is a handy tip (again from Wikipedia): "Gerbils with 'extreme white spotting' colouring are susceptible to deafness; this is thought to be due to the lack of pigmentation in and around the ear." So remember to talk loudly to this kind just as you would to a foreigner. No need to thank me.

A Paucity Of Plods

What's going on with Asia's Finest, the Hong Kong Police? The term has always been a little tongue in cheek, referring to the lack of competition in the region but they seem to be acting less and less like  public servants these days.

Some of it, my highly placed source in the Justice Department tells me, is due to having too few porcine peeps, leading to a marked (but documented by my other sources) unwillingness to even accept a report for theft-related offences.

But then why are they pissing away their resources on non-essential stuff? I'm not talking about the occasional diversion of large numbers of personnel to act as escorts to visiting Mainlanders, or to take photos of demonstrators, or to close a chunk of the road network around Causeway Bay the other weekend so that a coach containing people who can run or swim fast, or point airguns at pieces of cardboard, could drive from A to B without having to slow down for other vehicles.

No, it's other stuff, like the two dummies who stand chatting with each other at Shittibank Plaza opposite the US Consulate on Garden Road all day, every day, never doing anything about vehicles dawdling at the drop-off point and causing a blockage at this known traffic black spot. 

Or Li Ka Shing, spotted today in his car getting a motorbike escort through Central. Hang on a minute - now I get it. It was the 'public' bit I got wrong.