Lai See | New Territories group to visit waste management systems
Hong Kong's waste and what to do about it has become a contentious topic. The concern and confusion surrounding it has prompted the New Territories Concern Group to take up the issue. The group is chaired by Ronnie Tang who is also a village representative and the founding chairman of the Pat Heung North Environment Attention Group. The group also includes Junius Ho, who in addition to being a former president of the Hong Kong Law Society, also has the distinction of having deposed Heung Yee Kuk chairman, Lau Wong-fat, as chairman of the Tuen Mun Rural Committee.
The group is sending a delegation to Europe primarily to form a bridge between the overseas Chinese and Hong Kong people, but it will take the opportunity to better understand different waste management systems by visiting incinerators, gasification plants and plasma plants. On its return it will write a report. The group says in a statement that it hopes the report "will convince the government to seriously consider other waste management systems such as gas plasma technology instead of 'sweeping it under the carpet' and putting forward unsound arguments such as gas plasma is still in its infancy".
After leading Labor to a crushing defeat over the weekend many of his colleagues think that their leader, the Sinophile, Putonghua speaker and former diplomat, Kevin Rudd, should quit parliament. Rudd resigned as the party's leader after his party's ignominious defeat but his colleagues feel that he is such a disruptive, polarising figure that they believe the Labor Party would be better off with him out of parliament. There has been no shortage of advice as to what he might do.
However, one suggestion could have reverberations in the mainland. Former minister Laurie Ferguson said: "I think he should find a pressing need to do some research on Nauruan politics since the 1990s or Qing dynasty porcelain or something like that, quite frankly." This possibility may well please his critics. But we can't help feeling that the prospect of dealing with Rudd's overpowering intellect and insatiable appetite for power may be viewed with some trepidation by the curators of Qing dynasty porcelain in the musty halls of the Palace Museum in Beijing.