Supine government response to anarchy at Ho Chung

We have commented before on the supine attitude of government departments when it comes to dealing with villagers in the New Territories.

The nonsense at Ho Chung New Village in Sai Kung just beggars belief. The village has been cut off because concrete was dumped across the road, effectively blocking access to the village. When this first appeared, the South China Morning Post asked the Lands Department what it intended to do about it since it blocked access to emergency vehicles. It took eight days to respond and did so in cautious, narrow legalistic terms. "According to the EVA [Emergency Vehicle Access] conditions, the licensees or the owners of the Small Houses subject to the EVA conditions (the Responsible Parties) are responsible for maintaining the EVAs, built on private lands of others who are not subject to EVA conditions, and keeping the same free from obstruction." It concludes that the concrete blocks have "not at this stage amounted to obstruction".

This will come as a surprise to the owners of the 270 vehicles that have been forced to park outside the village. This is just anarchy and it is completely irresponsible of the government departments to be so spineless in taking on the more thuggish elements of the New Territories.

If the government doesn't impose itself on this situation, incidents like this will multiply. The root cause of this is the poor planning that arises out of the way the small house policy is administered. The government is terrified of doing anything about this since it involves taking on the Heung Yee Kuk.

We are generally happy to see the emergence of new publications. However, LifestyleAsia appears to be yet another new luxury magazine/website in Hong Kong. As they all say, this one claims to be written for Asia's uber-rich. It's looking for freelance writers and there is an intriguing account on its website of its appeal: