LONG HAIR

Simon is having a go at Long Hair, saying he is making a mockery of LegCo and himself.

Leaving aside the question of whether it is possible to make a mockery of something as toothless and impotent as LegCo, I couldn't disagree more.

Having Long Hair in LegCo is like when we had real characters in the House in the UK - people like Tony Benn, Arthur Scargill, Ken Livingstone and Dennis Skinner. As their numbers have thinned, so UK politics has become increasingly grey and bland, with little distinction between left and right and the entire place is now dominated by tedious men in suits all looking out for themselves instead of the people they are supposed to represent. The men I mentioned above may have been lunatics but at least they made the place interesting, generated popular debate about government in general and government policies in particular, and stood by their principles instead of constantly shifiting position to suit the prevailing mood.

At least with Long Hair you can be pretty sure he's unlikely to be in it solely to line his own pockets and brown-nose Beijing, unlike all the other slimey little toads in Hong Kongs laughable masquerade of a parliament. And he at least might have the balls to turn round to them and say no to the property developers who run the few parts of Hong Kong life that aren't directly controlled by Beijing.

What LegCo needs is MORE people like Long Hair, not fewer.


UPDATE - Coverage of the swearing in of Long Hair is on the BBC website here and the Standard here.

And does anyone else find it ironic that the fiercest critic of a parliament that is totally beholden to the Chinese Communist Party, and the staunchest supporter of universal suffrage in Hong Kong, is an avowed Marxist?