The same was said in 1992 about Tung Chung Road, now under reconstruction. It is quite amazing to read that the government is doing a lot of work when the road - supposed to be completed in 2002, then postponed to 2004 - is not expected to be finished until 2007. Even worse, the signboard says that all sections will be finished in 2008 - two years after the road going to Penny's Bay is completed.

The government is also claiming that, by 2007, the traffic to Tai O will be improved substantially, and therefore a loop between Tai O and Tung Chung is not necessary.

How traffic could improve while Tai O residents are forced to use the same Cheung Sha-Tai O connection in 2007 is a mystery. The same officials - or perhaps different ones - elsewhere declare that the Tai O population will triple within five years. So much for consistency and foresight!

Even a seven-year-old student at our school in Tong Fuk understands that there is going to be a problem, and that a loop works better than a dead-end road, which is what the government considers as the best transport plan for Lantau.

To add insult to injury, we can read in another response that 'the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge (HZMB) is a strategic and regional transport infrastructure. It is intended to serve cross-boundary traffic and is not designed to serve local villages'. In other words, the government doesn't care about employees working at the HZMB who may live in the local villages, that is, most of the Lantau South population.

Who are the civil servants that dare to write such statements? I hope Legco will do better than in 1999, when the then secretary for transport declared with a straight face and many papers that it was impossible to improve Tung Chung Road.

All funding for the HZMB that does not include improvements to the transport links of Lantau South should be rejected.

Serge Berthier, Lantau

Q Do you think Hongkongers' English is satisfactory?

What a self-serving survey by the government's Standing Committee on Language Education and Research!

Of course it is not satisfactory. I am old enough to remember the days any teenager in a school uniform could give simple directions in English. Try sending one of your non-Chinese reporters posing as a tourist, and see how many can even utter 'sorry, I don't understand' today. All they would do nowadays is shake their heads.

David Auyeung, Sha Tin

Unfortunately, I have to say that the standard of English of locally educated Hong Kong people has become quite poor.

The firm I work for, which is a global financial institution, has indicated that the non-expat senior management is largely drawn from the foreign-educated staff pool. This is because a lot of the local staff's English is simply not up to the standards required to work at a multinational.

Stephen Wu, Pokfulam

On other matters...

I refer to the letter dated October 20 from Eric Spain of the Natural Health Association, and I wish to clarify that doctors working in the Hospital Authority are western-trained doctors. As such, patients receiving treatment in these hospitals are given western or conventional treatment.

In situations where patients request alternative treatment, such as Chinese medicine, the authority's doctors - who are not trained in this field - are not in a position to assess the effectiveness of such treatment.

The patients have the right of choice. By presenting themselves at our clinics and hospitals, the patients choose to seek western conventional treatment. However, if a patient chooses to change his or her mind and seek alternative treatment, we will facilitate their transfer to the chosen healthcare provider.

If a patient is too ill to be transferred and the doctor in charge is apprehensive about the potential harm from the alternative treatment, or the interaction of the two modalities, then the patient's guardian or relative can act. He or she has the option of signing a form and taking responsibility for the decision.

This was, indeed, the case during the Sars outbreak in 2003, when patients were given access to Chinese medicine.

Margaret Tay, executive manager (professional services & medical development), Hospital Authority

The habit of 'looking the other way' exhibited by Food and Environmental Hygiene Department officials seems to extend to the police in Hong Kong. The number of times I have seen traffic police ignore examples of downright dangerous driving beggars belief.

If they really wanted to reduce traffic accidents they need only have a short, sharp blitz, perhaps once every two or three months, to give people the message.

I am frequently tailgated or cut off, or see red lights jumped, often with police around. Similarly, the evening gridlock gets ever worse in the Central-Causeway Bay area. Bad driving slows what could be a reasonable flow to a halt.

Constantly changing lanes without signalling, often in an aggressive manner, merely frustrates other drivers and creates lane blockages as people then close the gap to counter the intimidating actions of others.

None of this is new, but it is high time simple actions were implemented to make driving safer in Hong Kong.

Name and address supplied