The tobacco vote - Legco's dumbest hour?
Our legislators have done a lot of stupid things, but what they now want to do must be the stupidest. They have already vetoed the energy-saving lightbulb plan and watered down the idling engine ban and the smoking-in-public-places ban. Now they want to derail just about the only sensible thing in Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah's disastrous budget. They want to trim his 41 per cent increase in cigarette tax. Don't they know that means putting cheap cancer sticks in the mouths of young and old? Or are they too stupid to grasp that simple fact? They have this ludicrous logic that a 41 per cent rise is too steep for smokers from the grass roots. Let Public Eye explain to them how ludicrous this logic is. If we must make cancer sticks affordable for the grass roots, then surely logic dictates we must also have cheap charcoal for poor people contemplating suicide by breathing its fumes. How about half-price transport fares for the grass roots who want to leap off The Peak? Legislator Gary Chan Hak-kan wants to 'strike a balance between public health and the financial impact on smokers'. We suggest he re-visits his words. What you're saying, Mr Chan, is that you want a balance between smokers getting cancer and saving a few dollars. Legislator Vincent Fang Kang will vote against the tax increase because it would cause hardship for newspaper hawkers. They're selling cigarettes, Mr Fang, and cigarettes kill. They cause lung cancer. It says so on every cigarette pack. Or didn't you know?
Music to our ears
Finally, Public Eye has won an ally in our beef against barking dogs. High Court judge Louis Tong Po-sun's ruling that people can bitch if dogs bark beyond 30 minutes is music to our ears. Public Eye agrees with Tong that 10 minutes of barking is tolerable. We think the line between tolerable and intolerable is crossed at 17 minutes, not 30, but we won't haggle. The 13 minutes are well spent cursing the dog owner before calling the cops. Tong, however, was not asked to rule on another, equally annoying, issue - stepping on dog poop. We think it would help if the courts ruled on how deep you must sink your foot into a pile before it constitutes a nuisance. Should it be just the sole, up to the heel, or the entire shoe? What do you think, Judge Tong?
Here's to a fair land grab ... for everyone
Hong Kong is a fair society, right? Isn't that what our government always tells us? So how come, if you are a native male New Territories villager, you can get free land to build a three-storey house of 2,100 sq ft, which you can rent out for big bucks? How is that fair to the native male Mong Kok or Mid-Levels city-dweller? And how come the native NT villager can get away with adding illegal structures to his free house unless he is caught in the actual process of breaking the law? How is that fair to the Mong Kok city-dweller, who can be penalised for running a brothel even if not caught red-handed? Public Eye knows the government dares not confront the Heung Yee Kuk, which dictates rules in the NT. So the only other choice is to level the playing field. Males who are Hong Kong and Kowloon natives - regardless of which district - should be given free land to build flats, too. And they should be free to run brothels unless caught in the act.
