Empurrado por Filipe Tourais - O País do Burro

I've just come back from what should have been an invigorating walk with Piles; a walk training not only the calf muscles and improving my overall well-being and benevolence, but my arm muscles as well seeing I have to drag Piles the whole way. That boy hates heat and should live in Norway, leaving balmy HK to us amphibians.

Anyway, the walk turned out not to be invigorating at all but a kind of nightmare, the reason being CARS.

Pui O on Lantau Island where I have been living for five years; no, not only Pui O, the whole island actually, has turned into some kind of haven for lazy show-offs. Not only can they not walk five meters, when they get their sacred cars (at least two per household) it has to be enormous, fkuc-off SUVs, covered in stickers saying "Save nature!"

Pui O is the countryside and has country roads. These bastards drive as if they're on the Tolo Highway, clearly vexed at having impertinent pedestrians like Piles and me being in their personal space which they and only they own. They glower. They stare. they honk their horns.

Here I am saving the world's resources for their children and I get grief?

Because they can't be arsed to ride a bike to the bus stop 200 meters away or walk, I won't have shampoo in ten years' time. The whole world's everything is based on oil, but they use it like they have their own personal oil-well which will never run out, tucked away somewhere behind Park'n'Shop.

But the worst thing about cars is they're so incredibly ugly. Everywhere I go, they are, marring the scenery, making it impossible to take photos or let the eye get a good nature workout.

Now Pui O is being swamped by pilots who, not happy being away from their planes for any amount of time, need cars the size of a Boeing 747, to feel more comfortable as they drive a bottle of laxative home from the shop.

Meanwhile the entire Pui O is looking more and more like the gigantic parking lot outside a mall for people with particularly bad taste.

And the ever helpful government doesn't have to be asked twice: To ensure that these people and their families will soon lose the use of their legs from atrophy, our civil engineering/transport dept is building more and more roads, widening roads, flattening roads and taking away nasty trees dropping leaves on roads, all for the purpose of letting guys with cars the size of houses feel they're living back in the States or Oz.I've written about this before and no doubt I'll get back to it again and again.

You really want to do something for your children? Don't drive!

Um país deve ser aquilatado pela qualidade do serviço de saúde e jurídico. Apesar de não serem os únicos serviços importantes, longe disso, são os que mais se destacam no dia-a-dia.   

Partindo da premissa anterior faz sentido a forma como os Portugueses afrontam o seu futuro. Num país cheio de “tachos”, “compadrios”e “job’s for the boy’s” a perspectiva não poderia ser melhor, ainda para mais se não se adoptam medidas para resolver nenhum destes problemas.

Porque motivo tribunais e hospitais são geridos por juízes e médicos? Um médico ou um juiz não obtém melhor rendimento dos recursos, sejam eles económicos ou humanos, que um gestor. Para além de que fazem falta no seu ofício. Mais uma vez se usa o caminho mais fácil. Privatização! É o cúmulo do desgoverno. Com que direito pagam os contribuintes obras públicas para mais tarde serem privatizadas? Ainda para mais quando se trata de saúde e justiça, são sistemas sociais que sempre existiram como um direito.

É com homens das sete artes que o país vai sobrevivendo. É também devido a estes homens que temos um dos maiores fossos ao nível de ordenados da Europa. Será que só a politica externa que não dissolve nenhuma dificuldade, por vezes cria, merece ser arraigada no nosso país? Seria de valor estudar alguns sistemas de saúde e de justiça Europeus.

Vitor Oliveira

Chegados ao início de novo milénio, eis que regressa uma nova espécie de nobreza. Não é a linhagem, o sangue que a identifica, ainda que a tendência hereditária se mantenha. Não se pode vangloriar de grandes feitos guerreiros, de avós impulsivos no terçar de lança e espada, nem sequer de bravura por aí além na era da bala e pólvora. Esta tem origem plebeia, os seus antepassados comungaram na doce ilusão de serem detentores de uma intangível soberania que, dizia-se, em todos assentava e de todos emanava. A Nação, essa romântica determinação de igualdade abstracta, capaz de diluir o mais quadrado grunho no refinadíssimo poeta, serviu de embalo a muitos desvarios. Estrangulou a liberdade sempre que pôde - ah, como nisso foi fértil o século XX! - e dela foi necrófaga quando os ventos sopraram de feição.

A nova nobreza, emergente do anonimato da turba que, em tempos, se embriagara noutra ilusão, a da liberdade, à falta de bravura e de linhagem construiu o seu empório na especulação, na finança, na política, nos jogos rasteiros de interesses. Armada de mesquinhez e espírito inquisitorial, foi trepando ao Olimpo do poder. Apropriou-se e ainda se apropria do Estado. Impõe-lhe dieta, mas continua a alimentar-se dos seus recursos com avidez digna de Baco. E decepando a autoridade central, com a mesma tranquilidade com que apregoa a legitimidade conferida pela Nação em votos, vai desfazendo o que ainda resta da res publica, do bem comum, fragmentando-o ao sabor de múltiplos micro-poderes. É o novo feudalismo dos poderosos em marcha.

I've been to Zhuhai, and the first thought that strikes the casual visitor to that affluent, bicycle-less city is: Here is a place exhibiting an astonishing lack of urgency to acquire more air-borne particles.

Some bleeding-heart, tree hugging liberals might say the same about Lantau, but in this as in so many other things our government stands firm: Lantau has been lagging behind in the air-borne particles-stakes for too long.

The dull-brown pall hanging over young family paradise Tung Chung aside, the island just doesn't have enough trucks spewing out emissions from illegal diesel bought in places like, yes, Zhuhai.

So it's HK government to the rescue.

Now all Lantau dwellers will be able to enjoy the kind of air, noise and traffic density that is the birthright of everyone else in Hong Kong. Hooray.

Although the project still hasn't been put out to tender and although the government isn't confident that any one company will take it on (what, Cheung Kong Holdings turning down an opportunity to create jobs for the boys entirely paid for by the HK tax payer?) - when the environmental assessment is all in the box, (no prizes for guessing the result there) the job can go ahead.

So it will cost some $1,300 for a truck driver to pay the bridge toll one way, according to the figures our economists have tentatively put out. So what? As one can see from the Western Tunnel, the more it costs to drive through it, the more people will clamour to do so and the more we will have solved our traffic problems.

But if, like Disneyland, this new white elephant should be a case of "Build it and they will stay away in droves," at least we can count on our government to foot the bill.

For weeks I've been noticing, while "vigorously walking my dog" from Pui O to Mui Wo, that work has been going on to turn the previously dark brown, timber-made pavilion on top of Lam Saan into a tiled concrete monster, Tuen Mun style.

Yes, I know. Wood: (from rainforest) Bad! Concrete and tiles: Good! Surely the powers that be had a reason for turning something reasonably beautiful into something screamingly ugly, as they always do.

Although the old pavilion, made from non-renewable and politically incorrect material though it was, looked pretty good and blended in well with the over-all environment: trees, I was sure that there had to be a good reason behind suddenly changing it into a fright-fest seldom seen outside downtown Kowloon...

Imagine, therefore, my mild surprise when yesterday I decided to walk in the complete opposite direction to that of Mui Wo, namely toward Cheung Sha, to see the exact same work thing being carried out on the identical wooden pavilion near that fabled beach!

Some workmen were milling around carrying things, so I asked them what the purpose of turning a dark wood, blend-in with the environment-looking pavilion into a concrete-tiled monster eyesore worthy of the worst of government inner-city lack of planning, could possibly be.

"Oh, it was old and leaking. Broken, in fact."

Oh really? The last time I saw it (about three weeks before) it was brimming with health, looking every inch the sturdy, rainforest-stolen wooden structure it was, not letting a drop of water in.

"No, broken. And anyway, no good."

So what about the other identical pavilion, the one at Lam Saan?

"Yes, we've been told to replace them all. They all got broken at the same time."

So what did you do with the wood?

"He, he."

A remarkable coincidence? Yes! The government has in their (its) infinite wisdom foreseen that all the wooden pavilions in Hong Kong's country parks, made of the best and hardest wood imaginable, are now leaking and not fit for human usage.

These dubious structures, thank god I never sat under them at the peak of their water-leaking danger, have now been replaced with something looking suspiciously like the key features of Hong Kong's every new town.

Who says that just because you live in the fabled green lung of Hong Kong , otherwise known as Lantau Island, you shouldn't enjoy the aesthetic benefits of living in Mong Kok or Tuen Mun?

Tiles are the new black. All new village houses under construction are covered in them, as well as wrought railings, faux columns and Disney cake-icing style decorations. Yes! We are firmly ensconced in the bosom of the motherland and the mainland is now well and truly established in Hong Kong. Or vice versa.

The media has been filled with callers and voxpops from commuters who say that these costs are totally unjustified. Why? Because there has been no improvement in the actual service.

At the same time, pay rises for managers in many semi-state companies (including CIE) have been announced. These are the CEOs of organizations rife with needless bureaucracy, "jobs for the boys" and virtually no accountability on anyone's part. Since there is no real competition in the market (due to government monopolization and the stranglehold of the unions), there are no standards for service whatsoever. Drivers are often rude and abusive.

The buses are so filthy and the service so bad that when Aircoach (an independent company) began their route from Cork to Dublin / Dublin Airport, they reported that for the first few weeks, many consumers repeatedly asked if these were private VIP buses. Irish commuters were unfamiliar with regular, punctual buses, fair prices, courteous drivers and buses that weren't covered in shit.

The other week, my sister got the train home from Cork to Kerry. She decided to take the train to get home faster, since the bus can take up to 2 hours. Guess how long the train took? 2 and 1/2 hours. That's right, it took a half hour longer than the bus. That's a train versus a bus, folks. That's tantamount to defying the laws of physics (and, needless to say, it cost more).

Why does this situation persist? I think it's a combination of two things. Firstly, it's our government's complete lack of any guts. They refuse to take on the unions, because the unions can a) lose them lots of votes and b) hold the entire public-transport dependent population of Ireland hostage whenever they want. Secondly, it's the Irish public's dislike of standing up for themselves. As bizarre as this may sound, we seem to have a collective inferiority complex. When was the last time you saw someone talking back to a bullying bus driver or rail conductor? It never happens. We grumble and call up Joe Duffy, but what good is that on a practical level?

But the semi-state workers are well able to stand up for themselves, oh yes. One man alone can cause a strike to happen and disrupt the travel arrangements of thousands. Don't believe me? It happened yesterday. That's right, the day before CIE prices went up and CIE pay rises were announced, a CIE employee managed to bring the rail line between the two largest cities in Ireland to a standstill because - and get this - he asked for "a premium shift payment for specific inspection duties -- and he launched unofficial action when that higher payment rate was denied."

What??

Are they employing children? You don't get what you want, so you can disrupt the plans of 2,000 people? If that was any sort of real company, that employee would have been fired on the spot. But no. Instead, this whining maggot is mollycoddled, and to hell with everyone else who is depending on the service to get to work, see their families, get hospital treatment etc.

This is bureaucracy gone mad, and symptomatic of a larger problem - we have start standing up for ourselves.