YOU CAN ALWAYS depend on our legislators to make grandiose claims of injustice in commercial and economic matters without supplying a shred of hard data to back it all up.
They were at it again on Wednesday, urging the Government to cut water and sewage charges and lean on the private utilities to make concessions in pricing of electricity and gas.
'We are begging them,' said independent unionist Leung Yiu-chung about the utilities. 'The truth is they have earned so much from the public in the past but now they just wouldn't care about us. It's so unfair.'
Tell us precisely what is so unfair, Mr Leung. Do you expect China Light and Hongkong Electric to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in new plant and equipment but supply electricity to us only at cost? Would you do it for no return? What do you think would be a fair rate of return and what would you base it on? Let's have some cold figures from you rather than hot air.
Similarly, we have Liberal Party chairman James Tien Pei-chun saying reductions are needed because people and businesses will continue facing financial difficulties next year.
Perhaps they will, Mr Tien, although nowhere near as many difficulties as in some of our neighbouring economies, but if you want a prescription for making their difficulties truly enormous nothing would better fit the bill than discouraging investment in electricity production. Go ask your counterparts in the Philippines what happened when they took that route.
And if we do not pay the true cost of our water through usage charges we will just have to pay it through taxes. Could you explain to us, please, how taking the money out of one pocket instead of another makes us any better off.
