HAIL to another hilarious report from the Provisional Working Committee, whose legal sub-group has solemnly decided that the Colony Armorial Bearings (Protection) Ordinance 1964 is in violation of the Basic Law and will have to be repealed.
The odd thing about this story is that it is clear from several reports that everyone involved thought that the item protected by the ordinance from unauthorised copying and exploitation was the Union Jack.
Sub-group leader Shao Tianren observed that 'it is impossible to use a particular ordinance to protect the British emblem', adding that if the ordinance was kept then the emblems of all other countries would have to be protected as well.
Several newspapers (though not this one) gleefully reported that the Union Jack would be bereft of protection after 1997, thereby puzzling numerous British readers who know perfectly well that the Union Jack has never been protected here - or for that matter in the United Kingdom.
It is, in fact, routinely used by an American shoe company as a trade mark. It has been printed on carrier bags, running shorts and even underwear. It is not the official British national emblem, Royal or otherwise. This role is of course performed by the Princess of Wales.
The problem is that nobody had understood the ordinance. This is a pity because the ordinance concerned is one of the shortest in the book. It occupies less than a page. It protects from commercial abuse the 'armorial ensign and supporters assigned to the colony under Royal Warrant on January 21, 1959'.
This does not mean that the items concerned are themselves royal. Nor are they symbolic of Britain. They are symbolic of the colony of Hong Kong and will presumably lapse in 1997.
