Squandering our assets on insiders

The evidence continues to fall, thick and fast, of blurred lines between the government and private sector - which are totally inappropriate for a modern, educated, prosperous society.

The Hong Kong Jockey Club is setting up a branch in Beijing to attract new members. Bully for them. However, one has to wonder where the money is coming from: this organisation was given a betting monopoly by the government, but it is run as a private club by a tiny, self-selecting group.

It has club houses and other, splendid, fixed assets for the non-racing enjoyment of its members - which are valued on its books, under 'members' services', at a mere HK$284 million.

I am all in favour of horse racing, whether as a sport for lovers of horses or a device for lovers of gambling. But the millions who use the monopoly gambling facilities in effect subsidise leisure facilities for a club which has only about 20,000 active members.

Enabling football betting is certainly a service to the public. But the fact that it was given to the Jockey Club, further extending its monopoly, raises many questions about propriety - given that its stewards and voting members make up just 1 per cent of the total.

Let us hear no more nonsense about how much good the Jockey Club does via the charities it supports. The whole system reeks of the worst aspects of colonial paternalism in which do-gooding is closely linked to elite clubbery and social climbing, and payments are made on the basis of opaque judgments by people who select themselves.

In 2004-2005, almost 40 per cent of the club's HK$1 billion donations went to a scheme called Positive Adolescent Training through Holistic Social Programmes - whatever that means - to be administered by the government bureaucracy.