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SCMP Reporter

So the Beijing-based brain specialist Ling Feng  has been specially flown to Hong Kong to see Constable Jacky Chu Chun-kwok, the police officer who has been in a near-vegetative state since he was stabbed in the neck nine months ago ('Beijing surgeon arrives at officer's bedside', April 11).

Other paralysed patients in Hong Kong, many of whom are poor, are not so lucky.

No Beijing specialists have been flown in by the government to see them.   Instead, it has turned a blind eye to their plight.

Would the government please send some local surgeons to Beijing to learn  new neurosurgical skills from Dr Ling  so that other patients might have hope along with Constable Chu?

K.M. NASIR, Mid-Levels

Crack down on idlers

Wood Lane, Wan Chai, 3pm, Saturday, April 15. Eight cars are parked in a drop-off zone, six of them with engines idling.

In one vehicle, the driver and his companion have lowered the front seats and are taking a nap. The driver of another indicates that someone is asleep in the curtained interior. Another driver has left his young son alone in the car. Luckily, Hong Kong children are generally well-behaved and the boy is unlikely to play around with the keys and controls.

So 75 per cent of the drivers  are ignoring the current campaign to switch off when they park, not to mention taking advantage of the slack enforcement of parking regulations.

It is  obvious that only legislation and stiff fines will convince them to play their part in reducing air- pollution levels.  What are we waiting for?

CANDY TAM, Wan Chai

As Churchill put it...

On April 13, the South China Morning Post published three letters from readers opposed to universal suffrage ('Democracy founders on illogic of voting systems').

Joseph Ko takes the philosophical route, claiming that Condorcet's Paradox and Arrow's impossibility theorem scientifically demonstrate that democracy is faulty.

Charlie Law Chuen-lee takes the 'common-sense' route, arguing that stability and benign government are  better than anything else.

Walter Tseng takes the historical route: quoting the oft-quoted words of an otherwise unknown Scottish historian, Walter Tytler,  on how loose fiscal policies lead to dictatorship (By the way, it is unlikely he ever uttered those words as it seems they were first attributed to him by former US president Ronald Reagan).

Winston Churchill said that no one pretends democracy is a perfect system,  save that nobody ever came up with a better one. This is the focal point: a paternalistic form of  government is all very well,  but if matters take a turn for the bad, there will be no checks and balances in place to stop the ruin.

Contrary to Mr Law's claim, the fact that countries like the Philippines and Indonesia are having a bad time is not due to democracy, but to the blossoming of the evil seeds planted during their dictatorship years.

ANGELO PARATICO, Sheung Wan

Dad's government

Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen's determination to build his headquarters at Tamar  raises questions about  his leadership.

Mr Tsang is the product of the  forces that have influenced him. Chinese by birth and traditionally Chinese by nature, he clings to values and beliefs that have been pummelled into him from an early age. His  stance on Tamar reflects his belief that, as a leader, his role is to stand firm; to show that he is 'dad' and the children cannot overturn the status quo.

Like the pharaohs and the first emperor of the Qin dynasty, he seems to believe greatness lies in building monuments for  future generations to marvel over. Perhaps he also  hearkens after the landmarks that litter the cities of Europe,  although he seems to pay little heed to the fact that great cities like  London and Paris do not  fill every nook and cranny with concrete.

The saddest thing, in my view, is that the thinking behind Tamar shows a lack of understanding of the world of technology and creativity we now live in. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft inhabit our homes in ways we could not have imagined 10 years ago. Who cares where they are or what their headquarters look like?

To think that our civil service requires physical closeness  to be effective is to run counter to the raison d'etre of Hong Kong. We are experts at conducting business at a distance, and serving clients in remote locations. It's a pity that this flexibility of thought does not extend to the government.

Winston Churchill,  Mahatma Gandhi, and, dare one say it, Mao Zedong  did not leave monuments by which to be remembered, they left something far more lasting - they changed lives. Can our leader do the same?

JEREMY KUO, Happy Valley

Politics over faith

With reference to the opinion piece 'Cardinal Zen's thorny road' (April 14),  many Catholics, both practising and non-practising, are appalled by the idea that the Vatican intends to sever ties with Taiwan  to gain a foothold on the mainland. This makes the church no better than a money-grabbing corporation that places market figures above  ethical  principles. That it is pandering to political posturing and turning its back on the faithful in Taiwan  demonstrates that it places worldly issues well ahead of the spiritual.

The church should hold all its members in equal regard and ignore all forms of political pressure if it wishes to retain the moral high ground and the loyalty of its members. Severing ties with Taiwan would certainly further alienate the many Catholics who are already sceptical following the sex scandals and cover-ups that have surfaced in recent years.

MARY MELVILLE, Tsim Sha Tsui

Airline puts profits first

Dragonair's decision to demote the pilots who   refused to work on their day off to fly passengers from Japan to Hong Kong is a sad reflection of the airline's poor safety culture ('Pilots demoted for refusing to fly', March 26). The pilots made the right decision to take their rest day and leave the flying to a fresh crew, even if it inconvenienced the airline. The pilots put safety and the lives of their passengers first. Dragonair did not.

Would you want your loved ones flown by pilots who hadn't had enough rest? Not likely. Sadly, as with most things in Hong Kong, money came first and safety last.

ANTHONY STEVEN, Taipa, Macau

Cost of cheap cigarettes

I am shocked at how the price of cigarettes  has fallen over the past few months, thanks to price wars among the tobacco companies. How can the government allow such cuts to go unchallenged when it will end up the loser, footing the bill for health problems caused by cigarettes?

In Britain between 1994 and 1998, cigarette prices  rose 80 per cent, to the country's credit. At the same time, cigarette advertising has been banned and warning information takes up a quarter of each carton.

In Hong Kong, prices have come down  and the size of the warnings on cartons is insignificant. The government should be slapping a huge levy on cigarettes.

What a sad excuse for a government, and what a tragedy for Hong Kong as  a new generation  takes advantage of the lower prices to try these addictive, cancer-causing sticks.

AMIT SINGH, Central

Vietnam deserves praise

Hanoi correspondent David Marsh should have undertaken some  basic journalistic research before criticising the Vietnamese education system ('Vietnam's universities battle to keep pace', April 12).

Had he typed 'international university Vietnam' into Google, he would have discovered at the first hit that one of the world's top 100 universities, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, has campuses both in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

RMIT was invited by the Vietnamese government to open in Vietnam to bring international tertiary-level education to the country. Vietnam can only be complimented on this initiative, as only one other Asian country allows 100 per cent foreign ownership of universities.

RMIT in Vietnam will have 3,000  full-time undergraduate and postgraduate students by the end of the year. More than  100 foreign academics are already teaching at  the university. All students  can automatically transfer to Melbourne in any semester. All tuition is in English, and courses and levels are the same as in Australia.

During RMIT's four years  in Vietnam, it has received the strongest support from all levels of government.

MICHAEL MANN, president, RMIT International University Vietnam



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The patients who are not as lucky as Constable Chu