Sustainable Living Hong Kong

What is the social and economic impact of Hong Kong’s housing policy? Should we build smaller to be more affordable, or are we already too small? Does the Home Ownership Scheme work? In a city where 50% of residents live in public housing, the government is now gathering views on whether or not to subsidise home ownership.

Join a public forum on “Who can afford housing in Hong Kong?”

Date: 7 August 2010 (Sat)
Place: Fringe Club, Central
Time: 10:00 am-12:30 pm
Enquiries: 2521 7251 or boxoffice(at)hkfringeclub.com

Speakers include Duncan Pescod, Permanent Secretary for Housing; SCMP columnist Jake van der Kemp; Civic Party legislator Alan Leong; Pro-Commons vice-chairman Kenneth Leung; and PolyU economist Dr Lam Pun Lee.

The property tycoons want to bite back.

Fed up with negative coverage of their wealth-siphoning activities, one of them – the one who got so much flak over the Hung Hom peninsula saga and the subsequently aborted hiring of a former Buildings Department chief – wants to buy a newspaper so he can get the press to say what he wants them to say.

One shouldn’t be too alarmed perhaps, since the Hong Kong Daily News is already owned by yet another tycoon. But if reports are to be believed and the tycoon plans to turn it into a free tabloid, then civil society had better be prepared for this manipulation of public opinion.

My jaw dropped recently at a presentation about research commissioned by the Climate Change Business Forum, about how buildings can be designed to generate its own electricity and be more energy-efficient. Apparently the research has the support of the Real Estates Developers’ Association, as one of the first slides indicated.

This isn’t surprising if we’re talking about commercial buildings that they build for lease, as they will save operating cost by adopting such technologies. But ordinary residential buildings that they sell at outrageous prices? The only plausible explanation, it seems to me, is that, realising the developers will not implement measures to cut the energy consumption of their buildings when left to self-regulate, the government has finally introduced mandatory building energy codes. And now that they’re forced to spend more money to improve energy efficiency, they’re only too happy to take credit for it.

For more positive news of what the tycoons get up to, wait for the new Hong Kong Daily News.

Octopus made HK$44 million from selling the data of 1.97 million cardholders and there is suggestion that, apart from things like names, ID card numbers, addresses and phone numbers, the shopping habits of cardholders, as recorded on the card when people used it to make purchases, were also sold.

Outrageous, eh? Funny thing is, there’s no complaint about the voluntary surrender of even more personal data that range from photos of private indiscretions to preferences for a whole range of goods and services that feature on Facebook everyday. How much is Facebook making out of all this data? And is anybody in Hong Kong complaining?

I’ve been told to put this blog on Facebook, that personal data is optional in opening an account, etc etc, but once the account and ‘friends’ and information accumulate, it becomes a pool of marketing data that will be used to, at the very least, annoy us. I don’t have a Facebook account, and it scares me that, even though I don’t, Facebook knows me well enough to identify my friends – as well as people I know of but am by no means well-acquainted with – and send me invitations to sign up.

The Octopus brouhaha shows just how much our personal data is worth, and yet we give it away for free, thinking we enjoy a great social networking service, free. When are we going to learn? At the very least, the precious time that would have been spent maintaining a Facebook page – plus the time spent trying to get on top of Facebook’s deliberately nebulous privacy settings – is worth too much. If Mark ‘Suckerberg’ were to pay me the kind of money Octopus has made from the data of its cardholders, it may be worth considering. Otherwise, no thanks.

Pick up any kind of registration form in Hong Kong and you’d find yourself being asked to give away your ID card number, address, birthday and more besides, and we’re not talking about a clinic or a bank. Why does the supermarket need to know this? Or the boutique? For targeted marketing of course – you know, so they can chop down the trees and send you junk mail or help their suppliers foist products on you. Does anybody complain about this ubiquitous personal data-mining?

What has the privacy commissioner done to stop this kind of abuse?

The Commerce and Economic Development Bureau (CEDB) has just started a public consultation on potential legislation to enhance consumer protection.  To enhance consumer protections, the Department proposes that under new legislation (for consideration in 2010-2011), unfair trade practices such as “bait and switch”, misleading omissions, aggressive sales tactics, and phishing (collecting money with no intention to deliver service) be prohibited and punishable by law.

Great ! you say.  With so much supposed pressure on property developers to be honest, one might be forgiven for thinking that the government is finally backing its rhetoric with the force of regulation.

Wrong again. The mooted legislation has already excluded finance, property development, and professional services – three of the most egregious offenders of the above tactics—from consideration, with the supposed excuse that these sectors are otherwise regulated by statutory bodies.

What justifies an exlusion a priori?   If the above tactics are so bad, shouldn’t they be punishable and forbidden across the board regardless of which department is responsible for enforcement?   And if those statutory bodies are doing their jobs, these unfair practices shouldn’t be allowed at all, and so forbidding them in another legislation would not really make a difference or add to anyone’s workload.

Or is this simply another vehicle that can be used to fry the small trader, while much greater offenses are quietly settled and suppressed after months of “investigation”?

Submit your views to the CEDB by October 31 by post (to Level 29, One Pacific Place, 88 Queensway, Hong Kong), fax (2869 4420), or e-mail (cpr@cedb.gov.hk).

It’s not right to pressure people into shopping and most certainly not right to harangue people, but enough villifying of the tour guide Ah Zhen, whose rant against her tourist charges became viral on YouTube.

After all, she’s just a symbol of an industry that’s built on mutual exploitation. Think about it: how much are those outraged guys at the top of the Tourism Commission paid for wasting taxpayers’ money on extravagant overseas promotions, and how much is Ah Zhen paid? In the former case, it’s a nice salary plus bonus; in the latter case, no basic salary and only tips and commissions based on how much shopping her charges rack up. Now, because the former want to haul her over the coals, the latter may lose her job.

Exploitation is rampant at all levels of the tourism industry. The government builds so-called ‘tourist attractions’ so visitors have somewhere to go for the obligatory photos that show they’ve been there, done that. The hotels, mostly foreign chains with head offices elsewhere, make their money and repatriate most of it back to home base. The tour guides make sure their charges shop so they can get a nice commission. The shops and stalls that cater to tourists sell utterly useless trinkets and ’souvenirs’ that they take home to placate friends and relatives or simply to stash somewhere as a record of a trip abroad.

Since time immemorial people have travelled, to learn about foreign cultures at first hand and broaden their horizon, and many still do. But since the days when Henry Ford gave his auto workers days off so they’d have a reason for buying his Model-T, so they could drive around and see the sights or whatever, travel has been systematically packaged into an industry that exploits people’s wish to get away from the toil they suffer through the regular work week.

The arrangement suits employers just fine: they can push their employees to the limit and, instead of complaints about long working hours, office politics and poor health, the latter’s energy is diverted to dreams of a holiday overseas.

So people get themselves even more tired spending hours hunting for a bargain tour, packing and unpacking, sitting around – and shopping, of course – at airports; and being herded around from one ‘tourist attraction’ to the next – starting at 6:00 am sharp! Then, having spent their hard-earned savings tiring themselves out, they’re back at their desks, labouring for the wage packet that will enable them to do it all over again. What fun.

Speaking of the land of the ruling class, hot on the heels of its Island Crest project, which has successfully sterilised a low-rise community on First Street, the Urban Renewal Authority is now inviting tender to do the same further up the hill in Sai Ying Pun.

Expressions of Interest are being invited by the URA for the joint development of a 23,143 square-feet site on Third Street that is expected to yield 177,175 square feet in total gross floor area. The development will provide about 270 homes, of which a large number will be smaller than 500 square feet. So, assuming a generous apportionment of usable space of 79% per flat, each of these flats will have less than 400 square feet. Put in a partition or two, and you’d better be a Lilliputian to be comfortable in it.

And if Island Crest is any indication, expect all community street life to be wiped away in one fell swoop. In place of the old neighbourhood stores are imposing pillars that lift the development above other buildings in the area – for the view of course – and give it an air of gentility without a hint of humanity about it. And for that, buyers must part with HK$14,000-18,000 per square foot – no doubt the kind of return URA looks to reap with the new project, the community be damned.

“Land and Power in Hong Kong” – a public sharing with Alice Poon

Real Estate has long been a controversial topic within the city, and some critics consider the price right now is unbearable to most of the citizens. What are the leading causes for the astonishing land prices?

Community Development Initiative has invited Alice Poon, the author of Land and the Ruling Class in Hong Kong, to have a sharing with us. Alice will start from real estate, and discuss how it affects retail services and public utilities, and consequently how it becomes the root of severe wealth gap and social resentment. She will also share her views on what government should do to safeguard the fairness of the market and stop the property developers monopolizing different industries.

Date: 28th July 2010 (Wed)
Time: 7:00-9:00 pm
Venue: UT, 8/F, United Centre, 95 Queensway, Admiralty, Hong Kong
Language: Cantonese

Prior to her book, Alice worked for Sun Hung Kai Properties as well as the property development industry in Canada

Application: Please email your name, email and contact no to event’at’cdiorg.hk.

Marie Antoinette was supposed to be so out of touch with the plight of ordinary people that, when told they didn’t have enough food, said: “Let them eat cake.”

Historians have disputed the attribution ever since, but the story remains a popular one because it illustrates so well the inability of the privileged to understand the hardship suffered by others. Transpose the situation to modern-day Hong Kong, and we’d have a university don advising harassed Hong Kongers to make their own cereal for breakfast rather than eat the packaged, sugar-laden variety.

Yeah right. Even for those well-off enough to afford domestic helpers who can make it for them, there’s hardly the time. There’s the long and stressful commute, all the way from the farthest reaches of the New Territories (or Shenzhen and beyond in the future if the government has anything to do with it) to Central or Quarry Bay for many; which makes it impossible to sit down to a proper breakfast. Then there are the long hours at work; people get home so late and tired that all they want is crash for as long as they can before they have to get up and step on the treadmill again. Even ten minutes of extra sleep seems preferable to ten minutes for a breakfast at home.

Healthy eating is a good idea, but the way Hong Kong is run simply makes it impossible – something Maxim’s is well-aware of, if not the university don. That’s why they make such a killing selling buns in their MTR shops. Commuters rush in, pick up the already bagged, equally fattening buns, brush their Octopuses over the readers and click-clock their way back to their offices in a uniform march.

Imagine how different things might be if there were legislation for maximum hours as well as a minimum wage? People would actually have time to eat a proper breakfast and, because of that, save tonnes of plastic bags and cereal boxes, and be healthier.  Or a development strategy that made it possible for people to afford homes closer to their workplaces, so they could walk to work at leisure.   No stress, no pollution.

But that’s not going to happen, because the Marie Antoinettes among Hong Kong’s governing class haven’t a clue. That’s why there are people who have never had to work for a paltry hourly wage presiding over the minimum wage bill, as well as people who have never had to take public transport introducing the idling engine bill but refusing to discuss the introduction of a congestion charge, because they themselves only ever get anywhere in chauffeur-driven cars.

Before we get too upset about a private developer destroying a pristine beach in Sai Kung, let’s step back and look at the bigger picture. The world’s seas have been rising between 2 and 6 mm per year, which may not seem like much.  But the combined effects of climate change are currently estimated to cause a rise in sea levels of between 18 to 59 cm from 1990 to 2100, not counting the impacts of melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets.

In realer terms, this means that much of what is called “beach” on the Eastern seaboard of the US will disappear, with seas forecast to take away 100 to 250 meters of land.   The rise in sea levels is more pronounced in Asia for a variety reasons, so we can only surmise that Hong Kong will also be affected.  It might well be nature’s revenge on our “just a little more” harbour reclamation habit.

It’s fine that the public is seeking to defend against private destructinon of a public resource, namely a beautiful beach.  The culprit is clear and everyone can feel righteous and angry.  But unless we act on climate change — which means changing our lifestyles drastically–  we would be saving the beach for ourselves to enjoy, while destroying it for the next generation.

She will probably forever be remembered for telling Hong Kongers “I eat chicken every day” when the bird flu scare broke out in 1997, but former Hong Kong director of health Margaret Chan’s handling of that and the SARS crisis was cited among the reasons behind her appointment as director-general of the World Health Organisation.

At the time of the appointment in 2006, she said she believed she was selected because “I have a strong record of being a straight talker …. I speak the truth to power.”

So while others might be accused of dressing up hypocrisy as politeness in complementing North Korea on its healthcare system, such a charge could not be levelled at her, right? All the more cringe-making that made the remarks she came up with following a visit there two months ago.

And now Amnesty International’s released a report that describes North Korea’s healthcare system as a “shamble”.

Chan’s remarks about North Korea followed WHO’s decision to declare swine flu an epidemic – on the advice of three scientists who had previously been paid by the pharmaceutical firms responsible for making the vaccines used to treat the disease.

Aiya.