The revolving door spins again
It's spinning so fast Public Eye is getting dizzy just looking at it. We're talking about the government's revolving door. It was built for retiring bureaucrats who exit with fat pensions from their iron rice bowl jobs. But they're never on the outside for long. The government always looks after its own. It makes sure they revolve back in with cushy post-retirement jobs that also carry fat salaries on top of their fat pensions. The latest to revolve back in is retired postmaster general Allan Chiang Yam-wang, who's been made privacy commissioner. Here's a question: would he have dared launch the current investigation into Octopus for privacy violations if he had been commissioner already? We ask because Octopus is majority-owned by the MTR Corporation, which is majority-owned by the government, which opened the revolving door to Chiang.
Have you got the message now?
Public Eye has written often about our property developers giving all of us the finger with impunity. Well, a reader has kindly supplied concrete proof of what we've long been saying. There, do you see it? Surely you must since the developer, has aptly named it the ICC building.
Don't cry in your beer for these bar owners
Let's get this straight. Lan Kwai Fong bar owners are mad at 7-Eleven for selling cheap drinks? Are they saying we should instead all pay their exorbitant prices? Public Eye is no fan of 7-Eleven. The convenience store chain pays slave wages to its staff. But that's another issue. The Lan Kwai Fong bar owners are no better. When the government abolished wine and beer taxes how many bar owners reduced prices correspondingly? None. Yet they're mad at the competition from convenience stores? That's rich. If Public Eye wants to stand in Lan Kwai Fong with a cheap beer from 7-Eleven instead of paying the exorbitant bar prices, that's our right. The bar owners don't own the streets. They point the finger at 7-Eleven for selling alcohol to under-aged kids. But the law allows that if the drinks are unopened. Besides, the Lan Kwai Fong bar owners are no angels themselves. Many rarely check ID, some have illegally blocked pavements with tables and chairs, and all openly flout the noise laws seven days a week with loud music blasting into the early hours of the morning.