You can always rely on the Americans to do the right thing, Winston Churchill was famously quoted as saying, once they have exhausted every other possibility. On this premise, we might well award Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Stephen Lam Sui-lung honorary American citizenship.
In the proposed arrangements for electing the five new functional constituency members of the Legislative Council, the whole of Hong Kong is to be treated as a single constituency. The five district council candidates who gain the most votes from the general public (minus those electors with an existing functional constituency vote, of course) will be elected.
This must surely be right.
The alternative arrangement that some have suggested - of sticking with the five large geographic constituencies and electing one from each - could give all five seats to one political grouping which had only a narrow overall majority. Perfect if you are from that grouping, but not by any proper definition democratic.
Having finally put a foot right after many years of under- or even non-achievement, the Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau should now be pushed to apply their new formulation more widely.
There are many different methods of electing legislatures and each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Our challenge is to find the one most suitable for Hong Kong's circumstances.