It’s a tune that just about covers every aspect of Hong Kong’s government by consensus approach, or shall we say government by committees of vested interests. This incompetent approach to government is evident all around us, but is perfectly  illustrated  by the “rail link to nowhere.”

It’s budgeted to cost 70 billion for 26 kilometers though of course all major infrastructure projects in this town go over budget…way over budget…

and it ends 45 minutes away from where you would actually like to be…

you’d think for all that money they could buy a fucking compass!

The advert is from Clean Air Network (CAN) and is asking us to get up off our arses, discard our complacency, shrug off our apathy… and sign a petition! Oh that will get ‘che che che’ Tsang’s attention, he’ll mouth a few more pitiful, pathetic platitudes which will be the usual lies and sophistry, and like the sniveling quisling he is, he’ll bend right over, yet again, for his vested interests, after all, he has his future bank balance to think of, or perhaps his seat on some inconsequential Politburo think tank.

We’re talking about a man so out of his depth he’d drown in a gob of phlegm; or in one of the puddles created by ‘operation team clean’ (lets hose down the pavements, that’ll get rid of SARS)

At least in this town petitioners don’t get locked up, or beaten up, but ‘che che che’ Tsang can, and will piss down our collective legs, blame it on the Northern Monsoon, or El Nido/Nino or the Mt. St Helen’s eruption and all the while he’ll smile that so very smug and aggravating smile, knowing that we, all of us, are  inconsequential in his grand scheme of aggrandisement.

If it makes the ‘CAN’ folks think better about themselves, then go ahead, but engaging these turds carries the risk that you legitimise their untenable positions and they’ll use any means possible to claim they’re “listening to the people.”

There is another option and it’s coming yet!

A drama in three parts seen on Saturday evening at the HSBC on the corner of Hennessay and Luard.

A negotiation is taking place, the actors are a young pretty Filipina and an old geezer, beer belly, double chins and a drinkers nose.

The geezer sounds like an London Boy and is being a bit agressive:  ”Listen love, I run a company and when I bid for business, I need to negotiate and  drop my price.” She says: “It’s only HK1000, this is not too much for you but a lot to me, why do you have to treat me badly.”

At this point another actor enters the frame, asking the girl if she’s OK, at which point our geezer says: “What’s your problem mate?”

Our new arrival turns abruptly, there’s one quick jab and our geezer sinks to his knees wondering what hit him. Sir Galahad  asks the girl how much ‘geezer’ was bartering for, hears her reply, holds out his hand to her and hails a cab.

Not quite riding off into the sunset and living happily ever after, but one obnoxious old peasant might think twice before further exploiting an already over exploited group.

Ricks in Soho .

Tubby Tales for today.  I think it’s a bit devious for a restaurant to operate a discriminatory policy without having the balls to actually define it.  This one doesn’t say: “This toilet is not for fat people so waddle off.”  In the U.S. the vultures would be circulating with their class action lawsuits, but hey, it’s his restaurant, he can do what he likes, just not sure how he got it passed by the Fire Services Department though

Airlines however, continue to allow situations like the one pictured below; of course it’s an American Airlines flight. Without getting into the inconvenience caused to the wee skinny fella next to him, where would you want to be if you had to evacuate.

And don’t get me started on my excess baggage allowance argument.

But change is in the air,  Kevin Smith, the film director, who doesn’t even look fat,  got thrown off a Southwest Airlines flight for not being able to buckle his belt.  Meanwhile, Ryanair; you gotta love Michael O’Leary Quotes,  is considering a ‘fat tax’ and Air France are introducing a “buy two seats if you can’t get your arse in one” policy.

Bat fastard

Is it time for wee Asterix to take back our public space from big Obelisk, will our erstwhile wobbling weebles finally accept  the truth of a simple equation: If  X is calorific intake, and Y is energy expended and X=Y, we have equilibrium, however, if you sit on the couch gorging junk food all day and do sweet fuck all exercise, your lardiness is down to your tardiness,  it’s your freedom of choice and no-one else should have to suffer with your pathetic low esteem crap, not to mention the risk to us of a horrible death in a crash landing ‘cos some wannabe Mr Creosote got stuck in the aisle!

]]> http://www.thecannyman.com/mcphersons-rant/2010/02/19/a-larger-debate/feed/ 1 http://www.thecannyman.com/mcphersons-rant/2010/02/18/the-benefits-of-swearing/ http://www.thecannyman.com/mcphersons-rant/2010/02/18/the-benefits-of-swearing/#comments Thu, 18 Feb 2010 08:15:37 +0000 McPherson http://www.thecannyman.com/mcphersons-rant/?p=177 Ye’ know, when I started doing this I had a lengthy internal dispute with myself over the narrative voice.  Not about whether it should be first or third person, or even omniscient, (how good would that be), but as to whether the narrative voice should be modified from my own rather angry invective. And I have tried, I really have tried to censor the more powerful aspects of my language, but it’s hard.

And then I found out that swearing is actually an evolutionary trait that can help reduce pain, I admit the article refers to physical pain, but I’m sure my daily mental anguish, wrought by Bowtie Tsang and his cohorts, qualifies:

Swearing

People used to say to me when I was younger that swearing indicated nothing more than a lack of adequate vocabulary, but that’s bullshit.  I have an expansive ideolect, but subscribe to the “Billy Connelly” school with regards to expletives:

“Show me  a non swearing phrase as equally powerful as ‘fuck off’, and I’ll gladly use it.”

If my swearing offends you, please don’t stop reading, that’s like blinkering yourself to the wonderful variety of the english language; just put it down to my fucking tourettes, after all, in this world today there’s a reason or excuse for everyones behaviour.

But while sitting staring at the screen I was scrolling through one of my daily quote programmes and found something much more apt, and eloquent than I could ever manage:

Thomas Jefferson on government in the 18th century:

“It is the group within society that claims for itself the exclusive right to rule everyone under a special set of laws that permit it to do to others what everyone else is rightly prohibited from doing, namely aggressing against person and property.”

Ring any bells?

Nerida Ayloot writes from the peak in today’s SCMP Letters page:

“At a ParknShop store in Mid-Levels recently I tried in vain to find any toilet paper that did not proudly proclaim to be made from 100 per cent virgin pulp.

What forests does this virgin pulp come from? Is it that important to the average Hong Kong consumer to only use toilet paper made from newly-felled rainforest trees?

The worst offender seems to be the dominant brand Virjoy whose branding is wrapped up in this farce.

However, even the cheapest home brand at ParknShop also promised to be made from 100 per cent virgin pulp.

It turns out that in ParknShop, if I care about such things, I have to fork out for the luxury of recycled loo rolls from Waitrose at HK$100 for a pack of four which, cost aside, has any benefit negated by the long trip the rolls have taken to get here.

I refuse to use Virjoy and there’s no other brand at ParknShop I want to buy. So what should my family use?

It seems she really wants to use recycled paper, I can just see her conversation at a dinner party; “I’m more green than you, I use only recycled paper to wipe my arse.”  It’s unfair to judge but l will anyway: living on the peak, with a large square air-conditioned footage and a couple of cars.  Does using recycled bog roll really makes a big difference.

Tokenism is the worst form of green activism, it allows individuals to claim the moral high ground at no real cost to themselves.

If she really wants to be green I’d suggest her family recycles the SCMP itself, along with her letter, at least then the letter will arrive at a more apt destination.

I’m going to try and be diplomatic here… she’s a fucking evil cow! Sorry, but I feel the need to emphasise my point with an expletive.

This woman sees herself as some sort of moral luminary and here’s what my good friend Bertrand Russell had to say about moral luminaries:“People who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasure of others.”

O’Connell, hereinafter referred to as ‘that bitch,’ is concerned with everything you do.

She’s the one who, over the last few years, objected to every liquor licence application if the applicant intended to allow smoking, thereby penalising hardworking business people who had to get lawyers and faced delays in getting licenced, even though smoking was not against the law in licenced premises at that time.

She was at the forefront of the battle for the smoking ban to have no exemptions and created a smoke screen of disinformation to get her way. She’s the bitch that staff all over Hong Kong can blame for losing their jobs, notwithstanding she claimed she was working on behalf of their health.

Now, she’s going after bartenders.  Her reasoning in her latest SCMP diatribe is that people who serve alcohol to people who are later caught drunk driving are morally culpable for the drink driving offence, therefore she would like to see them prosecuted.

“There is no corporate responsibility behind the warnings to be put in bars and on beer glasses.The random drink-driving testing has focused the spotlight directly on the people responsible – bartenders and the liquor licence holders who do their very best to get their customers drunk to make more money.

With the new random testing there is now a legal paper trail from a drink-driver to the responsible bartender who got the driver drunk, through the credit card purchases in the bar. I look forward to the first prosecution of these irresponsible bar-keepers.  Annelise Connell, Stanley

What a simplistic cow! But why do I call her evil?

Her constant pontificating betrays an underlying morality which seems to say: ” I know what is good for you and I’ll be damned if you can be trusted to make your own decisions.”

She has no concept of individual freedoms and personal responsibility, preferring to straight jacket individuals to a strict level of conformity while she dictates what is to be conformed too.

Does any one out there have any dirt on this bitch?  I know she was a squatter in Tai Tam a few years back.  She was on the board of “Clear the Air” but I think was bumped, she also once had something to do with St. john’s Cathedral fund-raising but that information disappeared off the net.

Imagine for a moment a world where these people, with their narrow agendas, dictate policy, it’s called Fascist, and her attitudes are not dissimilar.

I’ll let another friend, Adam Smith, wrap up this rant.

“Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.”

]]> http://www.thecannyman.com/mcphersons-rant/2010/02/13/evil-bitch/feed/ 2 http://www.thecannyman.com/mcphersons-rant/2010/02/07/sunday-morning-post-3/ http://www.thecannyman.com/mcphersons-rant/2010/02/07/sunday-morning-post-3/#comments Sun, 07 Feb 2010 11:11:15 +0000 McPherson http://www.thecannyman.com/mcphersons-rant/?p=148 Two separate items got our attention in today’s Sunday Morning Post. In the letters page, Mark Peaker extols the “superior service” of Cathay Pacific when compared with other airlines his aquaintances had the misfortune to fly with over the Christmas period. Mr Peaker, from his lofty abode on the peak, very often offers his unsolicited support for Cathay Pacific, and in the past for HSBC. I wonder what his motivation is? And what the SCMP letters policy is on individuals whose letters are motivated by self-interest. No doubt Mr Peaker is a substantial shareholder in both companies and seeks to indulge in some personal PR for them in the hope he can deflect some of the more critical reports in the media, surely he cannot be a satisfied customer. They never write letters!

The second item was a quote from Ronnie Chan Chi-chung, arguing that trade seats in the legislature should stay even after the introduction of universal suffrage as they are in line with what Aristotle has to say about democracy, i.e. it should combine public opinion with participation by the elite. Ronnie obviously considers himself one of the elite. Would it be impertinent to point out that perhaps Aristotle, as a great thinker, might have had intellectuals in mind when he referred to an elite, rather than our self-centred, idiotic, but rich imbeciles like Ronny.  I’d call him a half-wit but I fear it would be a compliment.

Why does the SCMP keep publishing these letters from reactionary idiots?