I had not been to Hong Kong for over four years. Last time I left in 2019 it was, literally, with the smell of CS gas in the air. I extricated myself, with difficulty, from my hotel in Wan Chai next to the occupied Legislative Council (LegCo) and felt lucky to make it to the airport. It too was occupied soon after. I covered this and the student uprising for the European Conservative in my review of Revolution of Our Times, the banned documentary of the uprising. My absence from Hong Kong was enforced by the COVID-19 travel restrictions, which were applied more forcefully and for longer in Hong Kong than almost any other country, with the exception of mainland China. The restrictions hit the Hong Kong airline badly with three years’ losses of HK$33.7 billion (approximately HK$10 to the pound) and redundancies of 6,000 employees. It is beginning to make a modest profit and reported HK$4.26 billion for the first half of the year, is employing a few thousand new staff and expanding its routes again.
Superficially, Hong Kong looks exactly the same and, to an outsider, any changes taking place are intangible. But conversations with colleagues and friends reveal that things are, indeed, changing. As a part-time academic here I was most interested in what was happening in the universities, and that can be most usefully summarised by saying that the four major universities now have mainland Chinese Presidents. Previously the Presidents have been either local or expat. But the last expat university President here was Sir Peter Mathieson, now Vice-Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh. Having started in 2013, his reign was cut short in 2017 after supporting the students’ right to protest about democracy in the special administrative region (SAR). It is unthinkable that another expat President will be employed in a Hong Kong university.
Local elections to district councils are taking place which means that at rush hours the colourful and noisy candidates and their supporters are out distributing leaflets. As these are written in Chinese they do not give them to gweilos like me so I have no idea what the burning issues are. Asking local colleagues about the elections, they mainly scoffed. The candidates are all Beijing approved, exactly like candidates are now for the LegCo. Previously only the Chief Executive of the LegCo had to be approved. The result is that there is dwindling interest among Hong Kongers for these elections. Once they could expect 80% to 90% turnouts. Now they are heading towards single figures.
China continues to make reassuring noises about the ‘one country two systems’ approach to Hong Kong. But when I ask people here if even the pale excuse for a democracy that currently exists will persist beyond full assimilation into China, they shrug their shoulders. Likewise if I ask whether the Chinese border will be extended to include Hong Kong. Beijing assured Hong Kong of 50 years of relative autonomy but that is being severely eroded and nobody realistically expects it to wait for the full 50 years before taking over completely.
The result of the rapid political change and loss of freedom of expression means that half a million Hong Kong people have left the SAR since the start of 2021. I had dinner with one leading local academic in my field who is emigrating to Australia. His wife, also a senior academic, is leaving with him as are their very well-educated children. Hong Kong’s loss is certainly Australia’s gain over this, and they have no intention of returning. This brain drain is benefiting many countries, mainly the U.K. but also the U.S. and Canada.
The local newspaper of record is the South China Morning Post (SCMP), now in its 120th year. Published in English, it used to take an independent and even critical position over China.
It would be unfair to say that it has capitulated completely but, apart from the changing political situation in Hong Kong, its ownership since 2016 by Jack Ma, also known as Hangzhou-based Alibaba, is surely influential. One contributor Stephen Vines was clear that the SCMP had become an instrument for Chinese propaganda and stopped writing for it. From an outsider’s perspective, it has certainly changed. There is no longer a pullout section on local news and the main broadsheet contains three pages dedicated to news from China. This seems unnecessary as the remainder of the SCMP is largely already dedicated to news from the mainland. Nevertheless, it remains a readable and informative newspaper, but a local expat colleague said that is not stocked by many outlets now.
The above said, Hong Kong remains an incredible place. The MTR (Mass Transit Railway) is one of the first of its kind in the world. Of course, mass transit rail started in London and has spread across the world, but in Hong Kong, starting in 1979, they have perfected the art and science of the MTR system. It is far superior to the much more recently developed system in its regional counterpart Taipei. The systems in Beijing and Shanghai are much harder to negotiate. Trains run every three minutes and move rapidly through the system which operates at 99.9% service reliability. On slow news days, delays within the system of several minutes have been reported in the local newspapers. The system of interchange stations where you step out of a train on one line and walk across to one on another line is unique.
I visited LOHAS park which was near my accommodation. Construction began in 2008 and, when completed in 2024, will accommodate 58,000 people. LOHAS is a concept, it means ‘Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability’, which probably tells you all you need to know. What I found was a complete cultural desert. Imagine a cross between SIM City and the Stepford Wives. I did not stay long.
The well-heeled locals and expats I saw in LOHAS Park are an entirely different class of people from the 338,000 immigrant domestic workers, almost exclusively female and mainly from the Philippines and Indonesia, who work in Hong Kong. Conditions improve for these workers but traditionally they are very poorly paid, live in cramped rooms without air-conditioning and are all but invisible most of the time. If they are seen it is taking their employers’ children to school or washing the family car very early in the morning. That is, until Sunday, their one day off, when they gather by the hundred under bridges and other shaded areas to chat, sing and share food. A temporary and very neat tent city of Indonesian workers appeared overnight on Saturday across from my hotel. The smell of food and the sound of animated conversation drifted over the road. By late Sunday evening they were gone, and silence reigned. All part of the magic and fascination of this unique place.
Dr. Roger Watson is Academic Dean of Nursing at Southwest Medical University, China. He has a PhD in biochemistry. He writes in a personal capacity.
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When Milliband was last Energy Minister he oversaw the introduction of a scheme whereby you got paid a FIT, a ‘feed in tariff’ if you had solar panels installed. The payments were inflation linked & guaranteed for 25 years. Those of us with a south facing roof & the wherewithal to splash out on the panels have done very well. What’s more, not only do we get paid for every kWh we generate (about £0.65/kWh, adding up to about £3000/year currently), we also get to use the kWs so we don’t have to buy kWh from the grid.
For most users of the scheme they’re now making about a 25% return on their initial investment. It’s all paid for by other utility bill payers who either didn’t have a south facing roof or didn’t have a spare £12k to install the panels to start with.
All told it’s a kind of reverse Robin Hood scheme, money is collected from the poor & given to the rich.
This is the kind of inevitable outcome when you skew markets.
I have a friend who got in on this scheme and he admits to be doing very nicely, thank you, from it. His returns will be even greater because he fitted the panels himself.
My neighbour took advantage of the scheme when it started and now has a healthy supplement to her pension which sould see her through until she is in her 90s.
I self-installed panels so don’t qualify for FIT so donate my surplus power to the grid. I didn’t even get a thank you.
Maybe if they abolished Agenda 2030 and funding Ukraine they could give out free solar panels for those who would benefit.
So glad you are profiting from the money taken out of my pocket and the pockets of other consumers – doesn’t that make you in receipt of stolen property?
Labour governments are very good at using OPM to bribe consumers to see things their way.
See also PFI.
I can feel it coming in the air tonight
(If anyone has a proper video clip of this I’d appreciate a link.)
Just a reminder for people who never saw or have forgotten the advert based on the track.
Many thanks for the reminder. A brilliant advert.
A reminder too of when we had an advertising industry. Now all they can put out is multi-racial, woke drivel, memorable only for the fact that it is ALL totally forgettable.
I’m sure this Cadbury advert could offend someone if they tried hard enough.
RSPCA
Greenpeace
WWF
LGBTQ, plus and thingy
When did you last see an advert on TV with 5 white people in it? —tick tock tic tock tick tock.
2017.
I cheated and used the Interwebs – I’m not actually sure I saw it.
One thing you can say about wind turbines- I think you can still farm underneath them. We need a hell of a storage system which does not exist. There is Dinorwig in North Wales where they hollowed out a mountain, but how many places are suitable for this. Also (along with solar panels) they are not net zero. But we all know this. The thing I want to know though, why are so few new houses being built with solar panels on them? Seems a reasonable solution to me!
Great we (UK? Wales?) can use a hollowed out mountain to store energy in stored hydro power. ‘We’ can lead the world in this brilliant approach. An approach which won’t be followed in the Netherlands (for an example).
Anyway, isn’t the archetypal Bond villain supposed to hollow out a volcano?
It depends what you mean by “few”, but I’ve seen new houses being built with some of the traditional roof tiles replaced by some PV panels. Part of the problem may be that the house layouts are not optimal re. orientation to get the best out of it.
Dinorwig is quite small, but rapid in response to cope with unexpected increases in demand. I guess when it was built, there was an old nuclear station quite close by (Trawsfynydd), so it could soak up the surplus from it from time to time.
why are so few new houses being built with solar panels on them? Seems a reasonable solution to me!
In this area the grid infra-structure seems to have problems coping with bits and pieces of inputs from solar panels. They are looking for big solar farms that will then justify big new connection cables.
“One thing you can say about wind turbines- I think you can still farm underneath them.”
The only sort of farming I have seen beneath windmills is a few sheep and cattle.
“A reasonable solution” to what?
But why plaster a country in thousands upon thousands of huge Industrial Turbines that might only last 25 years, leave yourself with massive blades you cannot recycle and which are not really green at all, and only provide part time energy with no possibility of having base load, when a Nuclear plant tucked away in a corner in various places would provide all the electricity we need 24 hours a day, every day and will last 60 years? —–The reason is IDEOLOGY. We are governed by UN and WEF lackeys and there is no bigger lackey than the cretinous goon Miliband.
We’re not supposed to farm either, so that “plus point” is irrelevant.
Solar power is only useful when combined with a battery to store the power for at least 24 hrs.
I must say that was a very sage talk on Global Mafia Wins Election – UK.
https://windowsontheworld.net/live-shows/
Good article — I am also hearing on the News that ‘Cancers caused by smoking at all time high’…..How do we know the increased rates are from smoking?
That’s because the anti-smoker lobby hopes for more aggressive smoker bans, obviously. After all, a Labour government could pressured into introducing the ones so far and there’s now again a Labour government. I’ve been waiting for that already.
Good point.
Hmm… Wasn’t there a bill going through the UK parliament to ban sale of tobacco to people born after 31 Dec 2008? Which Party was in government then? Yeah, it might as well have been Labour.
The idiot Sunak proposed such a policy, but he got defenestrated before the nonsense could be drafted as a Bill and presented to Parliament.
This has meanwhile collapsed in NZ (or Austrialia, whereever it was introduced) because – not very surprisingly – it turned out to be impossible to implement in practice. But there are a lot of things which could be implemented, especially, yet more drastic tax rises.
Surely you’re not suggesting some other cause?
What a thought:-)
Because they might have to admit it has something to do with a particular ‘vaccine’ and denying people diagnosis and treatment during something we should all forget… move on… called ‘lockdown’.
That’s strange, when the proportion of people in the UK who smoke has gone steadily down since the ’60s and in particular since Blair’s premiership.
But it supports the proposed age-linked ban so facts/evidence are irrelevant.
As they say, you get what you vote for. My conscience is clean. It voted Reform or nothing because a sizable bunch of sceptics didn’t vote at all because voting is giving consent after all.
So the wholesale cost of ‘clean’ energy will go up and up, but since this is Climate Clown World of economics this means retail electricity prices will be halve as promised by Sir Kneel.
There’s a bit missing in the middle there…
Ah, silly me. The money will come from ‘the rich’. Sorted.
I am old enough to remember ‘taxing the rich’ by Labour – 83% top rate, plus 15% supertax on unearned income… only 99%… in the 1960s/70s but the rich had other ideas and exited to friendlier tax regimes.
I struggle to think what would lead to “undoing” other than voters get bored and fancy a change. You’d think Covid would have led to the undoing of all the mainstream parties but it apparently never happened. Anyway, after their 5 or 10 years in power they will be replaced by equally nut zero Tories so it makes no difference.
Let’s hope Farage can shake things up. In Parliament listening to the groans when he told home home truths about that EU stooge Bercow shows what contempt they have for patriotic people. I have said before that he’s not in Mark Steyn’s league or Neil Oliver, Fox etc, but he is better than nothing and I have followed him from around 2008 watching him in those interviews where he’s wiped the floor with these technocrats.
I think the voters missed their chance but hope I’m wrong
Only one Party promised to get rid of Net Zero, the majority voted for the Parties that insisted it had to be done.
Tragic
One of the few things we can look forward to from this Labour/Fabian government, the abject failure of some of their more deluded policies and ministers.
A policy doesn’t just work because you want it to work, even if you really really want it to work!
At least he twied
The PPE graduate [yawn..] who can’t tell the difference between a bacon sarnie and a kilowatt-hour. What qualifications does he have for performing this latest role? Roll on the next CfD auction…
Strange that PPE no longer teaches anything but economics from the perspective of bankruptcy. How to get there fast!
This appointment almost makes Claire Coutinho seem competent. From Order Order.
https://order-order.com/2024/07/10/new-energy-ministers-calls-for-mass-nationalisations-and-free-energy/
This is just nonsense predicated on a world that will never be. Just carry on arguing about the green agenda or the trans agenda. When it hits you it will be like a punch to an unconditioned stomach. Surely you can see that they are just pssing you about.
So Milliband wants further decimation of our wildlife by installing yet more bird/bat chompers. This is supposed to be ‘green’ and environmentally friendly?
When all the chemicals used in the production of the turbines are beyond their use-by-date and are buried in landfill these chemicals will leach into the ground and poison our earth even further.
Turbines and solar panels are more destructive to our plant than coal/gas/oil have ever been.
How infuriating. ————-I saw this article yesterday and could not wait to tear strips of this imbecile Miliband and the phony planet saving Labour Party but alas I could not login. I kept getting this message saying “could not connect to reCAPTCHa” and I spent the entire day “temporarily locked out of Daily Sceptic”———If any moderators are reading this can you please advise what to do when this happens.
Why tell the truth when a lie will do. The Labour gov’t has just spewed their first lie in their first 72 hrs. In office. Excellent start Kier. You have to wonder how many, many more lies we will be faced with. And now we have a secretary of energy and net zero. They just create titles as they see fit, because you sucker will pay their wages. The beginning of a very dangerous regime.
This is the most dangerous cretin in this country. This is the Eco fundamentalist that gave us the Climate Change Act (2008) that has seen electricity bills skyrocket as wind is the most expensive way to produce electricity. You will hear rabid climate change activists tell you that “Wind is now cheaper than Fossil Fuels”. If that is the case how is it that the countries with the most wind turbines in Europe (Germany, Denmark, and the UK) all have the highest prices? ——-The eco socialists and their bought and paid for media are the biggest bare faced liars on the planet.
This Edstone will be Labours Tombstone
‘It is almost offensive in its stupidity,’
There!
For some time I’ve been struggling for a sum-up phrase to describe a plan to commute – spot the analogy coming up – using a car you know will not start on 2 random days a week, requiring you to keep a taxi, meter running, on permanent stand-by,
The plan to rely on wind power is almost offensive in its stupidity.
The Ponzi scheme has to fail quite soon, and it will. The first day there are power cuts due to shortages, Millipede will be gone and the Labour Government will be finished. Today wind and solar are providing about 22% of our needs (a modest 30GW) and gas and nuclear most of the rest. Today we need 5 times as many turbines and solar panels, for a fraction of the maximum demand of the UK, about 55GW. Clearly this cannot work, ever as every acre of Britain will have to have wind turbines and solar panels, and on low wind days this is nothing like enough! Where is the plan of how this will work? I know, there isn’t one, it is all based on “averages” which are meaningless in the context of electricity supply. I wonder if anyone in the Government even knows this? If they do they are covering it up with plain ordinary deceit! Nothing new there then!
All of these green policies are predicated on the fact that burning fossil fuels generates CO2 which causes global warming and results in changing earth’s long term climate for the worse. Money & propaganda has been pushing this narrative for over 40 years. There are now thousands of the world’s top scientists that dispute these claims. Man Made Climate Change is a contested theory. Surely for something like net30, that will transform our world into ways unimaginable, that it would be advisable and prudent to really have an honest scientific based investigation and debate on these contested theories?
Does he have the power to do this Scotland as well? Or are we going to be impoverished by having to end N Sea oil and have our wonderful country further despoiled with wind turbines?