Stuart Wolfendale

When I was little boy, I lived in a terrace of houses next door to an equally little girl called Christine. One of the games we would play was to each make a castle out of the triangular space between the outside lavatory and the wall in our backyards. We would visit each other’s fitted out fortress, drink lemonade, and then return to our own and fuss around for five minutes feeling really powerful.

 

It is pleasing to see that Alan Leong, the pan democratic, pan fried opponent to Donald Tsang, is building his own fantasy castle in his own backyard. He has announced that, when he has lost to Donald, he is going to appoint a ’shadow cabinet’. Actually this takes the game up a notch or two. This is ‘Palace of Westminster’ played out in the Legislative Council carpark. I fear that the government will not be as indulgent as Christine and play along. I suspect the chances of Alan’s shadow cabinet being described as the ‘Loyal Opposition’ wiil be slim.

 

Nevertheless, the game brings back fond memories for me and I am happy to suggest some possible shadow cabinet members for Alan. When I played with Christine, we had to equip our castles with any items of household tat that were to hand so my selection is purely from names plucked out of this morning’s newspaper.

 

Secretary for the Environment should be Carrie Yau, presently Permenant Secretary for Health, who has been all the way to Japan, presumably at my expense, to study the use of cardboard ‘eco-coffins’ in cremations. This is clearly a woman who thinks outside the box.

 

Secretary for Tourism could be Paul Leung who heads up the Travel Association and said bluntly that the Queen Mary 2 wasn’t luxurious enough. ‘Everything is just so-so to me’ was his view after a tour . A housing developement on a hull would be my contributon to that argument but I am not running for office.

 

Somebody from the Hong Kong Institute of Education will have to take the democratic education portfolio and even if its only the janitor and Alan Zeman is a shoe-in for spokesman on Leisure and Culture. I presume he is somewhere in the paper today. He seems to be the present and permenant government’s master of ceremonies and he would put a zap into those streetside, monoxide ’sitting out’ areas.

 

I know this is fearfully predictable but Mike Rowse, the fiesty spender of the Harbour Fest, is crying out to be shadow  Financial Secretary. In a territory with a HK$57,000 surplus for every man, woman and child, Rowse’s philosphies of ‘its not how much you spend but how you spend it’ and ’size does matter’ make him the man for the hour.

 

Turning to the letters page, I see Elsie Tu, a woman who began as  a missionary and came to hate it, who became an expatriate schoolteacher and hated the expatriate establishment and turned into a political agitator and was listened to precisely because she was white and British. Rejecting Patten’s political liberalism because it was white and British, she became an ardent supporter of the central government and a fellow traveller- which is what the police had always said she was in the first place. For her toughness, sense of purpose and refusal to tak prisoners, she should have the Security portfolio.

 

I am bashful about my recommendation for shadow Chief Secretary because I believe it should be me, even though I am not in the paper today. I am accustomed to growing superfluity, to having no particulalr portfolio in life, to making butterfly flits from topic to topic and being conciliatory amongst feuding interests. I have always considered Victoria House as a gem and my natural home. If he agrees with me on this , Alan can find me on my crenellated balcony outside my Wanchai apartment , playing castles.

 

 

Posted in All, Peculiars