CY Leung delivers pragmatic yet perfect vision for city

Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying followed that most pragmatic of speech-making rules - tell them what you are going to say, say it, then tell them what you've said.

Indeed, as well as being a key component of the speech's title, pragmatism lay at the core of much of what the embattled leader had to say.

Not that it did not contain a significant sprinkling of expansive flourish. Hong Kong, he said, can be the "loveliest city in the world", with "lush countryside, fresh air and a clean environment", not to mention providing "a unique fusion of Chinese and Western influences".

Quite a vision.

The desire to paint a picture of what the city could be, was clearly front and centre of CY and his spin doctors' thinking.

His predecessors' policy speech documents sported plain covers, albeit in different colours, but Leung's five-year blueprint had six smiling children of different ethnicities skipping across the grass at that most artificial of green places - Cyberport. A good idea, badly executed?