The battle between two Beijing-loyal forces over the Legislative Council's district council sector seat saw another unexpected twist yesterday with Heung Yee Kuk chairman Lau Wong-fat on the verge of a U-turn not to seek re-election in the functional constituency.

After angry outbursts at a members' general meeting - during which the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong was accused of 'excreting over New Territories people's heads' - Mr Lau said he would rethink the decision.

Post, July 23

Just what is going on here? That was the question my wife asked at breakfast on Wednesday after reading the second excerpt above and I have to confess we both remained mystified.

It wasn't so much the fact that there was some scatological language. One expects that kind of thing occasionally from kuk representatives. They are sometimes, how shall I put it ... expressive people.

What interested both of us more, however, was just why the kuk, solid patriots every man of them (women don't count for much in the kuk), should be working itself up to scream at the Beijing Lapdog Party. How fascinating, a furious live squabble between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Tell me more. This has to be good.

But, unfortunately, I couldn't find out more and so I can't pass it on to you. All I can do is make a few conjectures about how everyone in the New Territories is equal but some are more equal than others. Tough luck for you if you're not a big wheel in the kuk.

It has been said before. Although our Donald didn't phrase it quite that way in his 2005-06 policy address, quoted above, his advice to the kuk that it 'must be sensitive to the concerns of the broader population' certainly suggests that he thought it had not been.

He thought the better of telling it so again in his next policy address, however. That speech contained only praise for the kuk.

But there are some population statistics here that need continual emphasis. The 2006 by-census showed the population of the New Territories at 3.57 million, more than half of the SAR's total and it has grown by 23 per cent over the past 10 years. The population of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon has actually declined slightly over that period.

It is all very well for the kuk to have taken the view 50 years ago that the New Territories was special because it was only leased from China whereas the rest of Hong Kong was ceded to Britain in perpetuity. Need I tell anyone why that is not the world we inhabit today?

I could not find a figure for the population of the New Territories 50 years ago but I will accept that back then it was inhabited almost exclusively by indigenous villagers.

Can we really take the view today, however, that three million or so people are only second-class citizens in their homes because the men among them cannot trace their male ancestry back to a New Territories village for the requisite number of generations?

The illusion of special merit shows itself most obviously in the Small House Policy whereby any man who can meet this requirement is entitled once in his lifetime to build a 2,100 square foot home within his (generously defined) village boundaries.

The policy, which is not law, although the kuk likes to make it out as one of the Ten Commandments, has already made an ugly mess of much of the New Territories and could make it much uglier yet if the kuk gets its way on amendments to permitted developments. This could also cost the rest of us a great deal of money in providing the necessary services and infrastructure.

There are other ways in which the rest of Hong Kong pays a heavy price for kuk notions of special privilege and it is time that they were all brought to an end, however much the kuk may rage at the prospect of equality.

So whatever it was that caused the particular fracas we reported on between the Beijing Lapdog Party and the kuk, such disputes are inevitable in modern Hong Kong. Elected politicians in the New Territories need votes from the millions of people now living in the New Territories who are not indigenous villagers and they won't get those votes if they act as lapdogs to both Beijing and the kuk.

They have to stand up to the kuk's pretences now and I am glad to see them doing it. In fact, if they keep on doing it, pretty soon I shall have to stop calling them the lapdogs.