I am not going to repeat that old joke about the Jockey Club being part of the Hong Kong government - perhaps the most powerful part - but, really, this body is occasionally very tactless, to put it mildly.
When the club announced in September that it was considering allowing horse owners to bring their children onto the racecourse for meetings, I thought this was a non-story. Someone in the club would realise that this was a catastrophe in the making and knock the scheme on the head.
There we were, though, in Saturday's Post, with the scheme up and running, and anti-gambling groups complaining that the officially appointed body that is supposed to monitor gambling matters had not even met since September, much less considered their complaints.
The basic public relations problem here is simple. If it is harmless for children to visit racecourses, then any adult visitors should be able to take their children with them if they wish to do so. If it is harmful for children to visit racecourses, then there is no need to believe that the ownership of a horse bestows some magical property on the proprietor's offspring, so they are immune to the harm suffered by other people of the same age. Accordingly, the offspring of horse collectors should be excluded like everyone else.
Frankly I was not convinced by the spokesman's assurance that of course visiting children would not be allowed in the places where betting took place. That should have read the places where official betting took place. If the club supposes that no betting takes place anywhere else, then they are living in a dream world.
But, then, living in a dream world seems to be what Jockey Club officials are good at. Let us start from square one. The club is not primarily a social club for its members. Nor is it primarily an organisation for raising charitable funds. Nor even is it primarily an organisation for running horse races. It is an organisation that provides facilities for people who wish to gamble.