Iron laddie Tung just like Maggie in cajoling the jobless

FOR THE PAST THREE YEARS since Tung Chee-hwa took over, Corridors has tried to remember which famous person the Chief Executive so strongly resembles - not physically, but in attitude and ideology. Then as he delivered his Policy Address, the terrible truth dawned.

Mr Tung is a Margaret Thatcher clone. An 'iron laddie', just like the former British prime minister was known as the 'iron lady'. This ghastly revelation seeped through during his ponderous preamble to the bit we'd all been waiting for. What was he going to do to improve the lot of the poor? In three words: not a lot. But it took time to admit that, because he kept stressing the virtue of self-help to reinforce the ingrained Hong Kong suspicion that joblessness equals shiftlessness. As he droned on about helping the unemployed to help themselves, Corridors suffered a severe attack of deja vu, transported back in thought to Edinburgh of the late 1980s.

Being Buddhist, Mr Tung couldn't quote from the Bible, as Baroness Thatcher did when she managed to offend the entire Scottish nation by preaching to church leaders: 'If a man does not work, neither shall he eat.' That might not have been so offensive if she hadn't shut down the steelworks, mines and shipyards, throwing craftsmen on the scrapheap after a lifetime in skilled and backbreaking trades.

Much like Hong Kong's dispossessed, actually. It's not their fault they lost their jobs. They can't help it if they don't fit the new economy. Of course it's not Mr Tung's fault either. He isn't responsible for the recession or the export of manufacturing to the mainland. But his response to the problem had a distinctly Thatcherian ring to it. He will help the unemployed to become more self-reliant. Another hint that most of them are idle lay-abouts who have to be coaxed back to the labour market, because they like staying at home being sneered at by the neighbours. What's more, he intends to do it by giving subsidies to firms who take on old trainees. Helping the poor by handouts to the rich. Bet Maggie wishes she'd thought of that one.

But even these minor moves avoid the critical issue. Not all the poor are jobless. Thousands are putting in enough hours to make old seven-eleven himself feel under-employed. The problem is, they're badly paid and exploited. So rambling on to them about self-motivation is an insult, even if it does spring from complete incomprehension about life at the bottom of the heap.

Thankfully, Mr Tung seems to be pulling back on one Thatcher trait - a refusal to listen to dissenting views. He knows he has to improve his ability to communicate with people. More crucially, he has to be seen to be doing so. As he said on radio, he constantly confers with one group or another. But less often with official advisers who complain of being frustrated by his obstinacy, exactly as Mrs Thatcher's parliamentary colleagues complained about her.