Social welfare

Lawmakers' poverty fact-finding trip to Europe is scrapped

26 May 2013

Lawmakers have scrapped plans for a week-long poverty fact-finding trip to Sweden and Finland, which could cost taxpayers HK$565,000. They decided the money would be better spent visiting Taiwan...

6:40AM

9 comments

Priced out of life: the patients who chose to die

13 May 2013

At least five patients who needed breathing equipment at home to keep them alive have opted to die in the past year to spare their families the financial burden of renting or buying the apparatus...

5:24AM

Patient counts the cost of just staying alive

13 May 2013

Samuel Lo Siu-fung, who has a muscle-degenerative disease, is already using a machine to help him breathe, and tries not to think about what might happen were his condition to worsen.

8:42AM

Pan-dems get a taste of their own medicine over costly poverty trip

13 May 2013

When you spend too much time fighting an enemy, you become like him. That may be why a group of lawmakers led by prominent pan-democrats have decided to spend up to HK$560,000 of taxpayers' money...

1:52AM

19 comments

Lawmakers plan trip costing up to HK$560,000 to study poverty

12 May 2013

Lawmakers are considering spending up to HK$560,000 of public money on a week-long trip to find ways to deal with one of Hong Kong's most pressing problems - poverty.

6:05AM

20 comments

Letters to the Editor, May 12, 2013

12 May 2013

I wrote an article for Chartered Quality Institute's Quality World magazine to discuss how to prevent scandals such as horsemeat illegally used in food products, and the contamination of milk...

4:00AM

3 comments

Opinion

Jake Van Der Kamp

EU fails to adapt to borderless world

5 comments

4:35AM

Howard Winn

Ferry companies shouldn't be subsidised while they burn dirty fuel

2:53AM

Minimum wage rise won't help city's poorest, figures show

The figures also show that the number of vacancies in sectors such as cleaning and catering has gone up dramatically since the law came into effect in May 2011, as workers in those fields quit to...

5:47AM

Just whose rainy day is it, Mr Tsang?

When you read about cases like that of 87-year-old Lee Lan and her middle-aged son who suffers from Down's Syndrome, it makes your blood boil. He has been on a government waiting list for almost a...

3:03AM

5 comments

Letters to the Editor, April 21

The danger of a conflict between China and Japan over islands in disputed waters, such as the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, is always possible, given the rise of militarism in both...

4:56AM

Increasing childcare subsidies could help future generations excel

Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah warned in his budget speech about the challenges Hong Kong faces because of a shrinking labour force and an ageing population. Officials say this pattern...

3:00AM

2 comments

BUDGET

No magic solution to an ageing city's financial problems, John Tsang warns

Tsang, who defended his budget on RTHK's Letter to Hong Kong, warned that giving out sweeteners as relief measures should not be a permanent feature of the budget.

5:18AM

LEADER

S Korea's economy must top Park Geun-hye's agenda

South Korea's recently-inaugurated president, Park Geun-hye, has perhaps the most unenviable job of all Northeast Asia's new leaders. A host of challenges await her attention, the biggest being an...

3:32AM