MEGAPHONES (and a bit of civil disturbance)

Last night there was the Hong Kong equivalent of a riot. This consisted of about 20 students, protesting at Beijings decision to poke their noses into the Basic Law again, who broke through a police barrier and stood below Chief Executive Tung Chee-Hwa's office and demanding to talk to him. They then sat down and linked arms, refusing to move.

In Hong Kong this counts as civil disturbance of the highest order, although at least here it is tolerated unlike some chinese-led countries I can think of.

Anyway before the bulk of them did disperse (no doubt to do their homework - this is HK after all and so is one of the few places in the world where students would break up an anti-government protest to study and get some sleep) they were apparently chanting slogans through their megaphones and generally being a bit of a pain.

Clearly both sides are planning for more of the same today. As I came in this morning I walked past the government building and saw several police vans and policemen, looking as menacing as being 5 foot 4 and wearing flourescent green anoraks will allow, and then just down Battery Path walked past a straggle of students, who, having had a good 8 hours sober sleep after finishing their essays, were making their way up the hill for a brief restart to their protests before they all go to lectures, carrying their megaphones and a good warming bowl of congee each.

This got me thinking.

Megaphones. Where do they get them?

Student protests the world over are invariably led by a pimply youth in ill-fitting clothing armed with a megaphone, and yet in all my life I have never ever seen any shop or warehouse anywhere in the world, offering to sell, hire, lease or even give away megaphones. So where do they all come from? Is there some student owned sweatshop somewhere that is churning these things out in secret and distributing them amongst the worlds spotty adolescents so they can make their tremulous little voices heard? we should be told!