Roy K.F. Siu, for the Postmaster General, commented in these columns on July 9, that the Post Office had left the royal cypher on those postboxes which had them moulded in to the iron, because it thought that it was an interesting part of Hong Kong's history.
Why then, if these items are so interesting, did it remove them from all the other boxes where they were removable, and why did the Post Office quickly repaint all the boxes to a ghastly mauve/green colour just before the handover? Perhaps this time last year when the economy was booming and colonial cleansing was the vogue, shunning colonial icons was more important to such bodies than preserving parts of Hong Kong's history that were of interest to locals and tourists alike.
Surely Mr Sui's explanation is a thinly-veiled attempt to make a virtue out of, what was at the time, a political necessity. Yes Minister's Sir Humphrey would be proud of him.
JOHN FOWLER Mid-Levels
