It is customary to start the New Year with splendid resolutions and high hopes for the future, but I have learned the hard way that disappointment is best avoided by tempering expectations.
Therefore, with modesty in mind, let's examine some ways in which the government could increase the sum of happiness not by bold action, careful planning or anything of that kind. All that's needed is for the people in charge to stop doing some of the things they do now - the price of these negatives is entirely affordable.
First up - and this is a modest money-saver - the government could abandon its generally farcical programme of so-called Announcements of Public Interest, or APIs, that appear on radio, television and in some of the least skilfully composed posters I have ever seen. The low point of these announcements last year was a radio spot informing the public not to share contact lenses. You can't make up this nonsense, but someone in government either has a refined sense of irony or is just plain ...
Then, and on a related theme, additional savings could be achieved by ceasing to produce notice boards of a kind that give caution a bad name. Walking recently in one of Hong Kong's splendid country parks, I came across a shallow pool of water; next to it was a notice informing an unsuspecting walker that it was indeed a shallow pool of water and therefore dangerous for swimming. Elsewhere are notices warning of the dangers of walking without maps, climbing and goodness knows what other perils await Hong Kong's intrepid hikers.
Even if countryside lovers ignore carefully placed pieces of idiocy, they cannot escape the horrendous clatter of low-flying government helicopters with massive sound systems blasting out a bilingual message about preserving the environment while in country parks. I had foolishly believed that the sky was part of the environment and heavy consumption of fossil fuels was to be avoided, but the intrepid officials from the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department think otherwise.
Once we get onto the subject of government waste, a floodgate opens and it is hard to imagine that there is a single reader of this newspaper who could not contribute to this outpouring. But, in general, it can safely be said that a couple of million trees could be saved by a reduction in the number and complexity of government forms.
Additional savings could easily be secured by cutting down or eliminating the small forest of government literature that lies gathering dust in every department and when on public display fills small mounds inside the offices of these departments. The mounds remain largely untouched.