THERE was no coherent theme running through the first two hours of Governor Patten's 21/2-hour policy speech. He failed to sketch a social and economic landscape that extended beyond a few years.
Apparently having heaps of bank notes stashed away somewhere in the Government coffers, he offered generous programmes to satisfy demands from political groups for improvements in various areas, taking particular care to fill in the criticised gaps in his speech last year.
However, these programmes were mostly aimed at pacifying pressure groups with instant gratification rather than meeting tomorrow's challenges, as the title of his speech claimed.
Not enough places available for the elderly at nursing homes? OK, here you go . . . $800 million to provide more. Some public hospitals look rather run-down? OK, another $800 million to renovate the interior and beautify the facade.
Money is no solution to the social and economic issues if the Government does not attempt to get to the heart of those problems that have been gripping Hong Kong over the past few years.
For example, is the Government aware of the fundamentals behind the soaring property prices? Rushing to tuck money into the pockets of the ''sandwich class'' to enable them to buy flats on the open market is merely a tangential solution for want of any long-range strategy to deal with the imbalance between land supply and demand.