Number of the Day: HK$640 Million

The 10th handover anniversary is nine times cheaper than this year's bash

Can you believe it's almost 20 years ago when the British formally handed Hong Kong to China?

A decade ago we spent HK$69 million, so how come another 10 years later it has ballooned to HK$640 million?

Perhaps just as infuriating is that the money is going to events and activities that hardly have anything to do with the handover anniversary with the theme "Together, Progress, Opportunity".

We'll see more steps beautified like this with taxpayer money

The Leisure and Cultural Services Department will have a whopping HK$194 million budget and it will splash out on a "City Dress Up" project, where stairs in different districts will be painted. Shouldn't that just go under maintenance?

The Development Bureau gets to spend HK$14.67 million and part of it will be splurged on a Backstreet Art and Run project. Sounds like a gentrified graffiti project.

Meanwhile the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department has HK$9 million and is spending the money on tree planting, hiking and camping facilities that it would normally budget for in its costs. So why does it need this extra money?

Similarly, how are International Fire Instructors Workshop; Fire, Ambulance Services Academy Open Day: Hong Kong Cup Diplomatic Knowledge Contest and Inter-school Cross-curricular Project Competition on Climate Change have anything to do with the 20th anniversary of the handover?

Lau Kong-wah says the events "spread care and joy". Huh?

Some critics are already questioning the use of the money, adding that government officials don't seem to have any imagination for better ideas.

However, Secretary for Home Affairs Lau Kong-wah said the events were meant to engage the public and "spread care and joy".

If Lau wants the government to spread "care and joy", how about revamping the education system to get rid of the rote system, making more financial resources available for the poor, developing more social housing, setting a decent minimum wage, stop kowtowing to tycoons, giving young entrepreneurs a break and so on.

Does an exhibition about Egyptian mummies and art pieces from the Louvre have anything to do with Hong Kong?

Works for Paris' Louvre Museum have no HK connection

There is already an uproar about spending HK$190,000 on making the song, "Hong Kong Our Home" that has been mocked by anti-establishment musicians.

It's an outright mess, but it's too late to voice our concerns.

It seems the Hong Kong government is keen to spend an outrageous amount of our hard-earned taxpayer dollars to please Beijing. But does it care really? And it does seem ripe for corruption opportunities.

Oh wait -- opportunity is one of the themes of the 20th anniversary of the handover this year.

It all makes sense now...

Overly Sensitive HK Bureaucracy

Lau Kong-wah says Hong Kong welcomes cultural exchanges

The Hong Kong government bureaucracy has become so sensitive about language that it needs a good slap in the face to fall back to reality.

A Hong Kong artist, Suie Lo Shuk-yin, was the executive producer for a play called Three Novels: The Third Lie, that was staged at Tsuen Wan Town Hall last Friday to Sunday by local drama group The Nonsensemakers.

For the program, she had provided a brief biography of herself and she mentioned her alma mater, Taipei National University of the Arts.

Taipei National University of the Arts campus

However the Leisure and Cultural Services Department verbally told Lo that she could not use the word "national" in the program in either English or Chinese.

Excuse me? How can you demand someone to take that word out of their biography, when it's part of the university's name?

In the end Lo cleverly rewrote her bio, taking out the mention of her alma mater and instead added a photograph of her holding a graduation certificate that showed the full name of the university.

As soon as this was reported in the media, a tsunami of outrage flooded the government, and it was forced to explain itself with a very red face.

Yesterday Home Affairs Secretary Lau Kong-wah read a two-minute statement -- in both Chinese and English -- that Hong Kong welcomed good relations with other countries, particularly through cultural exchanges. He did not specifically mention the controversy.

Tsuen Wan Town Hall where the drama was staged

But apparently this is not the first time this kind of incident has happened. In 2014, the word "national" for the same university was taken out of text of a program regarding some 20 dancers who studied there.

Cheung Siu-wing, chairman of the Leisure Services Staff General Union said the department's guideline stated only that cultural events at its venues should not involve politics.

But the guideline did not specify that the word "national" in the context of Taiwan universities was not allowed.

"I believe that our colleagues might have been oversensitive in this case," Cheung said.

You don't say!

He suggested that perhaps the issue only came to the attention of senior officials after it was reported to the media.

A cultural expert at Chinese University, Oscar Ho Hing-kay, described Lau's statement as an "empty response".

"If the government respected the arts group, why did the LCSD prohibit that word in the first place? Those were such rubbish comments coming out of his mouth," he said.

It just shows the staff working at the LCSD are not passionate about the arts, otherwise they would respect other people's backgrounds, wherever they came from.