EVER anxious to get its propaganda across to a wider audience, the Government has started putting its press conferences on the Internet.
Anyone who feels they've been missing out on the weekly pearls of wisdom from $181,050-a-month Information Co-ordinator Stephen Lam Sui-lung - whose White House-style stand-up press briefings was one of the initial justifications for such a high salary - can now catch up with them at www. info.gov.hk/webbroadcast .
Apparently anxious to force listeners to sit through every single word, his subordinates in the Government Information Service even disabled the fast-forward button when they first began uploading them into an Internet archive last month.
Officials insisted this was just a technical hiccup, as the new service is still in its early days. But no sooner had they been questioned about it than the fast-forward button mysteriously reappeared, to accompany Mr Lam's latest utterings.
Not that this was needed last week. Despite much shuffling of papers by the spin-doctor, Thursday's briefing lasted barely eight minutes. And the handful of bored hacks present managed to ask only seven questions between them.
Judging from this lack of enthusiasm, Mr Lam will have to come up with a new reason to justify his D8 salary.
