I think the government should offer a break down for that HK$ 136 billion before we should even consider this option further.

I had already completed, signed and faxed back my application to become an eligible voter which I found on Google to be http://www.reo.gov.hk/pdf/reo1_form.pdf around a week ago. A day or so before 16 May, 2010 - I received a letter which mentioned that I had become an eligible voter for a particular disctrict. However when I turned up at the polling station yesterday the local officials told me that I was not eligible and said that because this is a re-election only registered voters from 2009 could vote. I told them this is now 2010 and I am officially an eligible voter.

I tried to vote but couldn’t - I wonder whether there are many others like me.

Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥) mentioned on the radio the day before Legco voted on the notion saying that this new law was in the interest of the Hong Kong public and revitalisation of Hong Kong but in reality the law lowers the leverage and bargaining power of small flat owners agains developers.

A seven-storey tenement block on Kimberley Road, Tsim Sha Tsui (55 years old) along with three neighbouring blocks, has been an acquisition target. Richfield Realty which is helping Henderson Land to acquire this block stopped negotiating with one of the owners since January because they suspected that the law to lower the threshold would be passed and said the owner that they will talk contact him again in April.  Now the owner is worried that the developer will offer him an even lower offer than the one he had rejected before.

The original offer made by Richfield was ~HK$ 4 million or HK$ 5,700 /sq.ft. for the owner’s 700 sq. ft. flat which measures 1,200 sq. ft. if his share of common areas is included. A new flat developed in same spot would sell for ~3 times that; so effectively once the owner is compelled to sell he would need to move elsewhere.

A similar incident happened to an owner (Victor Sin Ho-yuen) who had a shop on Haven Street (希雲街) , in causeway bay who had to sell his shop on ground floor for ~HK$ 2 million. The court case cost him HK$ 4 million in legal fees. He laments that he would probably lose his second shop too in a similar way. Sin said that the supplementary measures and the mediation system were useless, because the developed showed no intention to mediate last time.

It is appalling that this is happening in Hong Kong. Individual rights are being eroded and it is sad to see Hong Kong heading down this route.

Until today 29 March, 2010 - only 1 of the 24 transactions have completed, the remainder are yet to be completed. The Development Bureau’s 25 March press release is as follows:-

With regard to the transactions of 24 units of “39 Conduit Road”, a
Government spokesman said today (March 25) that the Lands Department had
received the reply to its inquiries from companies of the Henderson Land
Development Co Ltd (the Companies) yesterday (March 24). “The Companies
replied that they had entered into a verbal agreement with the 24
purchasers to extend the completion of the sale and purchase for a period
of between two to four months, therefore no assignment had been executed or
delivered to the Land Registry for registration. Also, the Companies said
that the completion of the sales might be further extended,” the spokesman
said. “Given that the Companies had entered into new agreements with
the purchasers verbally and could not be definite about whether the
transactions could eventually be completed, the Lands Department issued
another letter to the Companies today (March 25) requesting further
information. “We will continue to closely monitor whether the
transactions will eventually be completed and whether there is any
anomaly.”

In normal sales and purchase of properties, the buyer and seller enter into agreement in writing and the buyer usually pays a deposit to guarantee the purchase and if the buyer fails to complete then he/she will forfeit the deposit paid and if the seller fails to complete then the seller has to return the deposit to the buyer and pay a compensation fee equivalent to the deposit. It is peculiar that no deposits have been forfeited for these transactions and furthermore the standard completion period is 2 months and it seems peculiar that Henderson should only negotiate the extension for completion when pressured by the government to provide answers 5 months after the buyers and Henderson Land entered into contract.

Moreover, it seems peculiar that all 24 buyers bought using British Virgin Island companies or other vehicles whose buyers cannot be looked up, so the identity of the buyers are to-date unknown.

Lastly, according to information from the Companies Registry, different shell companies were used to buy the 24 units. All of them used the same law firm, Lo & Lo Solicitors, also registered in the British Virgin Islands.

The URA works on joint projects with developers in Hong Kong and the latest one that sickens even the most devout of free market believers is the Tsim Sha Tsui project called the “Masterpiece” jointly developed by New World and the URA; New World has sold 39 units to business associates at the beginning of the private sales followed by sales of units to top management and their relatives to generate an artificial image of high demand and also to give buyers an opportunity to evade the payment of stamp duty.  This controversial sales tactic was adopted at the “Merton” in Kennedy Town - the last joint project between New World and the URA 5 years ago which generated an outcry from the public and others in the industry and yet 5 years later the same unscrupulous tactic has been allowed to recur.

Lawmakers need to step up the regulation of the URA and enact new rules to make the URA more accountable to the public, reduce its collusion with private developer through legal means and ensure that the URA’s powers are checked.

To those who have been following the case, the proposed station will open in a place called Shibi (石壁); for those who have heard of this place and have even tried going there, will know that it is a long and arduous journey from the city centre of Guangzhou. It is a 30- minute bus ride from Shibi to Dashi (大石) which is the closest tube stop and from Dashi to city centre of Guangzhou it is another 30 minutes by tube. I personally made this trip and timed it - it took 65 minutes from the Matyr’s Park Station (烈士陵园站) to get to Shibi and is associated with the inconvenience of going up and down escalators, waiting on the platform and waiting for the bus.

The express link will be a 48-minute journey from West Kowloon to Shibi and then another 65 minutes to Guangzhou’s city centre - the total time is just under 2 hours which incidentally is the same journey time that is currently achieved by the Hung Hom Station to Guangzhou’s East Station which offers the added convenience to the traveller of a direct train ride into city centre with no transfers.

This house believes that the station where the train will arrive at in Guangzhou should moved to the city centre or at least somewhere very close to the city centre otherwise its value add will be marginal and the project should be scrapped.

Our youth take drugs for a number of reasons; some cannot see a future in their lives, some have family issues and their family unit is disrupted and some just don’t experience the love that they should enjoy whilst growing up. The government should try to address these issues rather than take the easy route of conducting drug tests.

Initiatives the government could consider include giving aid to single parents, allocate land and other resources for the development of sports centres for young people, develop environments to give kids a platform to be creative and develop an arts and cultural hub that doesn’t contain yet another monstrous shopping mall designed to line the pockets of property developers with more money.

The youth today are our tomorrow and if the government does not invest in and nurture them then our future is doomed.

The government loan guarantees guarantee 80% of the loan; however all banks still require the owners of SME’s to personally guarantee 100% the loans and the government guarantee only applies when the owner is unable to repay the loan and is forced into bankruptcy. The interest charged on the SME loans by the banks are the same as what they were charging without the SME Loan guarantee. So in effect the SME owner; with or without the government loan guarantee is receiving exactly the same deal with the banks except they have to fill in more forms.

The banks on the other hand benefit in everyway; guaranteed return, guaranteed profitability, guaranteed no loan default and guaranteed retention of the same interest rates and bank charges.

The most obvious argument is that the government has helped give confidence to the banks to lend money to SMEs that they may not have had otherwise. However this is inherently flawed, because the banks’ primary business is lending money and if they chose not to do that they will go under; therefore it is as much in the bank’s interest to lend money as it is in the SME’s interest to borrow money with or without government aid.

If the government genuinely wants to help SME’s; they should lend money directly to the SME’s without the banks’ involvement This would reqiure a separate department be setup for handling these affairs and this department would actually serve a useful purpose.

So instead of the an SME Loan Guarantee Scheme it should be called a Banks’ Profitability Guarantee Scheme.

The mortality rate of the Swine Flu, although is difficult to prove, is strongly suspected to be lower than that of Seasonal Flu.
Governments around the world should not waste money on these vaccines because they are just a money making scam and have a detrimental effect on those who take them. It is simply a pharmaceuticals + WHO + FDA collaboration to turn a handsome profit in their scaremongering.

It’s about time SFC actually did something useful with itself; the debacle with the Lehman Brothers Minibonds was essentially to do with SFC not having carried out proper risk assessment of financial products and this house sincerely hopes that a plausible explanation will become of the PCCW vote-rigging investigation.