Sustainable Living Hong Kong

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the BBC comedy series “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and there can be no more fitting tribute to this wonderful creation of Douglas Adams’s than the fact that the satires remain relevant today – and (alas!) not just for those with a British sense of humour.

Residents of Sai Kung, for example, may be excused for thinking they’re dealing with Alpha Centauri planners rather than the Hong Kong government in the matter of the proposal to build a four-lane highway in the rural district. The latter may appear to be rethinking Stage 2 of the plan in light of opposition but the chance is that the district will end up like Arthur Dent’s house: bulldozed.

And of course in many cases the government’s justification, whether it’s new roads or approval for mega towers, would be the same as that of the Alpha Centauri planners. As the captain of the Vogon Constructor Fleet told earthlings before zapping Earth itself out of existence: “All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s too late to start making a fuss about it now.”

And of course all this endless infrastructure construction will have exactly the same effect on Earth, for real. We certainly have plenty of Vogons around to make it happen!

Adams also appeared to have predicted exactly what’s happening today. In the Guide the inhabitants of a planet called Magrathea made lots of money custom-designing planets for those who have accumulated unspeakable wealth at the expense of the poor (in the real Earth of course they are only building customised aircraft, yachts, submarines and Rolls Royces) until the galactic stock market underwent a mighty crash.

Revisit the Guide if you get a chance – but don’t be too upset at the suggestion that we are descendants of Golgafrincham middlemen – especially since we are being overrun by management consultants and marketing types.

Oh, and be nice to dolphins…. they may be our saviour.