HONG KONG CHRONICLES — Friday, 27th October 2023
MY WEEK THAT WAS.
𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟯 𝗣𝗢𝗟𝗜𝗖𝗬 𝗔𝗗𝗗𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗦
The big news of the week was the Chief Executive’s Policy Address on Wednesday. The main focus this year was on the increased need for governance which includes the patriotic District Council elections due to take place shortly.
However, the CE did give time into how Hong Kong can re-attract overseas talent through what if called the ‘Trawl for Talents”. (I had to leave in the superfluous ‘s’ in the section title, though it pained me to do so).
There was also the promise of more than one hundred digital government initiatives to promote digital government and the smart city
Am also glad to see what I think will be a real effort to reduce the housing shortage and address the misery of people living in sub-divided flats. Although the CE did say later that the problems with subdivided housing can’t be solved overnight, it added that officials will take a gradual approach.
𝗪𝗛𝗬 𝗗𝗢𝗘𝗦 𝗧𝗦𝗜𝗡𝗚𝗧𝗔𝗢 𝗧𝗔𝗦𝗧𝗘 𝗢𝗙 𝗣𝗘𝗘?
OK, this is not strictly a Hong Kong story, but given it’s worldwide reach, I hope you’ll forgive me for including a Mainland story in this MWTW!
If you haven’t seen the video yet, it’s worth a look and can be found easily by just using the word ‘Tsingtao’ and ‘urinate’ in any search engine. It features a worker stepping into a malt container at Tsingtao Brewery №3 in Pingdu, a city in Shandong province, and relieving himself.
How the internal footage was leaked to the internet is unknown, but it has been reported far and wide around the world. Even the media intelligence firm CARMA has conducted research on the incident and, surprise, it found that 76.7%, expressed a negative sentiment. This does lead me to wonder why the other 23.3% did not find this of concern. Perhaps they all work in breweries?
Naturally, Tsingtao has announced it’s investigating the matter. Perhaps installing more toilets may be an initial step.
𝗣𝗢𝗪𝗘𝗥 𝗕𝗜𝗟𝗟𝗦 𝗧𝗢 𝗗𝗥𝗢𝗣
Residents of Hong Kong Island and Lamma Island will pay less for electricity amid a continuous drop in global oil prices. Hongkong Electric said its fuel clause charge in October will decrease by 10.8% — to 48.9 HK cents from 54.8 HK cents per unit of electricity, marking the sixth consecutive month for the charge to drop.
A spokesman said the average net electricity tariff for November will be reduced to 163.4 HK cents per unit, down 17.1% from January’s 197 cents per unit.
To be honest, I doubt if the average person will see much difference given that our bills were double over the last six months due to the extreme temperatures experienced due to global warming. Yes, we all wanted to be sustainable, but trying to sleep in near 30C temperatures had most of us turn on our aircons overnight.
Until next week …
