Why country parks are so precious I refer to the comments of government adviser Kaizer Lau Ping-cheung (" No country parks? Relax on mainland, adviser says ", February 12). Mr Lau was responding to a question on a radio phone-in show when someone asked where local people could find space if the country parks were developed. He said: "Since the mainland opened up more than 30 years ago, many locals from the middle and lower classes have crossed the border for leisure." According to the Oxford English Dictionary relaxation is defined as "the state of being free from tension and anxiety". I'm not sure what Mr Lau defines as relaxation, but crossing a crowded border into places with noise pollution, poor air quality and questionable food safety standards, in order to enjoy a Sunday afternoon country hike and swim, which is generally what country parks are for, strikes me as something only a masochist would do. Perhaps Mr Lau's quote was taken out of context. Whatever prompted the comment, it is worth remembering that one of the most attractive things about Hong Kong is that you can travel to the beach, walk along beautiful hiking trails with friends, breath in reasonably fresh air, and return to town that same day for dinner or a film. That convenience is one of the precious things that helps Hongkongers relax. Leong Sze-wah, Stanley We need farms and trees, not more malls Franklin Lam Fan-keung and others suggest "developing" Lantau and country parks elsewhere to "improve" the sustainability of Hong Kong's environment. This is pure doublethink. Consistently poor creative urban planning for market-driven commercial development translates as barren 70-storey-block new towns with shopping malls. Recent proposals to draw in 100 million shoppers from the mainland annually suggest more of the same. The number of malls needed to accommodate these shoppers probably has property speculators salivating, but they can no longer call the shots. Globalisation has created retail homogenisation: the same few brands everywhere. What happens when the shoppers, inevitably, stop coming? Hong Kong desperately needs diversified low-environmental impact and high-value employment opportunities. Instead, transnational finance, property and tourist retail- related activities dominate, obscuring alternatives. Here, creative industries mean advertising, public relations and a few movies. High-value science, bio- medical, engineering innovation and development industries, creative arts, crafts, performance, cultural development, sustainable industries, renewable energy initiatives, and high-skill manufacturing, set in small-scale communities in which people thrive, are almost completely absent. Our unskilled workforce means these industries go elsewhere. Sky-high rents, lack of innovation, a short-term attitude, and the worship of money, prohibit the germination of new industries. This locks us into a developmental dead-end and condemns the young to low-paid, low-prospect "Mcjobs" in malls. Cowed, unhealthy consumers crammed through school desperately compete to get that rare job that might, one day, allow them to own their home. The result? Sterile urban deserts, sterile people, sterile imaginations. A cynic might suspect this is the future our visionary leaders want. Many dense urban centres are now recognising that accelerating climate disruption requires urgent change. Green building codes, mandatory insulation, energy-efficiency, localisation, urban ribbon parks, farms, trees and vertical gardens, distributed, diversified work places offering highly valued employment, and smart transport - these are the kinds of development that Hong Kong urgently needs. R. Fielding, centre for public health research, University of Hong Kong Doubts over benefits of organic food With greater awareness globally of health issues and the environment, people are thinking more about what they eat. This has lead to organic food enjoying growing popularity. People are attracted to this kind of food because organic farms do not use pesticides and chemical fertilisers. There should be a form of certification for these products, but this seldom happens. Instead government guidelines are followed, here and elsewhere. But this does not amount to a standardised system of measuring and labelling. It is therefore difficult for consumers to know if the product described as organic really is organic. I am also a little sceptical about some claims made. Consumers buy such products because they think they are healthier and the farming process is better for the environment and for the animals. However, some studies claim to have found no evidence of any additional nutritional benefit from eating organic produce. Although the farmers may not use chemicals, neighbouring farms probably do and this can adversely affect their crops. The government needs to look more closely at this issue and raise public awareness about organic food. Rather than just focusing on purchasing organic produce, people should recognise the need to maintain a balanced diet and also to observe proper hygiene when preparing food. Maggie Mak, Hung Hom Lovely walk ruined by unsightly mess I have been a South Bay resident for the past 25 years and have always enjoyed walking along the Seaview Promenade and the Mills and Chung path two to three times a week. These two beautiful walkways have increasingly become difficult to walk on. They are literally covered with dog excrement. There are huge amounts of it on the walkway itself and also along the grass patch on the side. These paths are cleaned and swept every morning and the cleaners do a wonderful job. Soon afterwards, they become heavily soiled again. Dog owners and their helpers are selfish. They show a complete disregard for the relevant regulations. Maybe stricter rules can be introduced and heavier fines imposed for owners caught allowing their dog to relieve themselves on these paths. There must be some measures the government can take to improve this situation. I look forward to reading a response, through these columns, from the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department. Vanessa Hui, Repulse Bay Questioning claims about maids' rights I refer to the letter from Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, secretary for labour and welfare (" Hotline is available to all workers ", February 11). Mr Cheung says that "foreign domestic workers are accorded equal legal protection as local workers". He knows perfectly well, as do all helpers in Hong Kong and their employers, that the two-week rule, combined with the exorbitant fees charged by many agencies, means that a helper who takes advantage of this "legal protection" will find herself out of work, unable to find a new employer, and will be forced to return to her home country, saddled with debts she can never hope to repay. If Mr Cheung was really concerned about the abuse of helpers, he could start the easy way, by walking around any market or restaurant, and see how many people are flagrantly flouting the law by having their helper work in full public view, outside the home. As this abuse of the rules is so blatant, bad employers are confident, and with reasonable cause, that any private abuse of their helper will go unpunished. The removal of the two-week rule would go a long way to allowing helpers to fully benefit from the legal protection to which Mr Cheung claims they are entitled. A. Cable, Cheung Chau MTR phone announcement is pointless I refer to the letter by Kendrew Wong of the MTR Corporation (" Good response to new MTR announcement ", February 6). The announcement asks passengers not to focus on their mobile phones when on escalators. I need to take six escalators when I go from Sha Tin to Central by MTR. I hear the announcement non-stop in Cantonese, Putonghua and English. At Kowloon Tong station, while waiting at the platform, I also hear it because the escalator is not far from where I stand. Even when I stand further away, I can still hear it. The voice of this announcement mixes with the other announcements on the platform. Also, it sounds like a poor-quality public address system, in contrast to the speakers used for those announcements on the platforms. Like most passengers, I am not in the habit of using my mobile while on an escalator. I find this announcement annoying and consider it to be a form of noise pollution in MTR stations which are often uncomfortably crowded with passengers. I think that the small percentage of passengers who do look at their phones while taking escalators are unlikely to listen to it. If the MTR Corp sees this as a problem, then it has to come up with better ways to solve it. Nancy Wong, Sha Tin
