''FORM'', said Thomas Mann's older brother Heinrich, clicking his heels and bowing stiffly as etiquette demanded, ''is no mere formality''.
The old boy's duelling scars would have been weeping at Chris Patten's abandonment of the gubernatorial ostrich feathers two years ago.
But the breach of the proprieties that greeted us in the Legco Chamber yesterday would have had the German novelist rotating in his grave at almost as many revolutions per minute as Liberal Party policy on constitutional development.
Compared with the Mother of All Parliaments back in Westminster, our own toytown version is lamentably short on custom and symbolism.
There is no mace for the more extravagant to wield in moments of high passion.
Members are not obliged to don a collapsible opera hat when making points of order during a vote; and there is no Black Rod to bar entry to members of the House of Lords.
