Keys To Success

A reader writes:

Dear Uncle Fumier

Despite the fact that I spend 90% of my waking life on the internet, women have somehow drifted into the habit of not flinging themselves at me. Recently they have also been continuing not to beg for slavery at my astonishing keyboard-facile hands. This has surprised and hurt me deeply for the past twenty-seven years, and I am beginning to wonder if it may somehow be my fault.

Regards

Chaste in Chiswick

fumie replies:

Dear Chas,

I think you must be doing something wrong; the Internet cannot be bettered as a source of totty. On many of the sites I visit, I find that pictures of highly desirable bints, a large proportion of whom, despite my being in Asia, are not Asian yet appear to live just minutes away from me, appear in pop-up boxes together with text begging for me to service them that very evening. Sadly, being strictly bamboo, I am unable to oblige.

Fumie

Straw Man

Jack "Blow with the Wind" Straw has refused parole for Great Train Robber, Ronnie Biggs, although he relaxed the terms of reality TV star Jade Goody's fiance Jack Tweed, despite the offences of the two being comparable but with Tweed due to appear for a second violent offence. If only Biggs had been on Big Brother ...

Straw tough on crumblie,
Soft on young thugs. Big Brother
Outranks common sense.

Spare Parts

There was a bit of an anxious moment in the Fumie household yesterday as HH thought she had found Michael Jackson's nose in the bathroom. Luckily, it turned out to be just an old piece of soap.

Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks

My reader writes!

Dear Uncle Fumie,

For over 10 years I have been dogging this bird once every few months. When we started, she was in her 30s and quite cute, with a decent figure for hereabouts, but she has declined over the years and is now skinnier and skankier than Michael Jackson. She has become the proverbial any port in a storm as long as the storm is about annual and doesn't last too long. The last couple of times I have either got it over as quickly as possible or not risen to the occasion at all. On the other hand, to make up for losing her looks, she is willing to try anything. Anything.

She tells me that I should give her up and find a younger one who is still attractive, but it seems mean to tell her she is right. Plus, there is that once a year need and the "try anything" bit.

Should I drop her completely or keep her in reserve for a bit of variety?

Poker in Pokfulam

fumie replies:

Dear Poker,

Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. Make a list of all the things you want to do but have not yet tried (the more disgusting the better) and work through them systematically and as soon as possible. When you have ticked everything off the list, drop her like a stone. Both you and she will have had a few months of fun and will have new skills to take away with you.

fumie

Keep them coming (ooh-err), reader!

The Agony And The Ecstasy

Always at the cutting edge, this organ will be the first in Hong Kong to provide online advice to my reader with personal problems. As I cannot work out how to get my e-mail address to appear on the site, here it is: fumiegator@gmail.com. Please jot it down.

Entries will be edited and rephrased as necessary to bring the level of English up to the required standard and, of course, to minimise smuttiness.

And Then There Were Four

Farewell Mike Jackson.
Whacker-off of little boys
Or just plain whacko?

New Maths

The Telegraph reports on a burglar who stole a mobile phone from a taxi driver's house and was caught when he used it to order a cab from his victim's company.

One Jake Ormerod, 19,

broke into Don Smith's home as he worked a night shift and took the phone, a laptop and car keys before driving off in a Vauxhall Zafira which was parked outside on the driveway.

However, the Telecrap does not tell us whether the car keys were for the Zafira, whether the car was Mr. Ormerod's or whether it belonged to a third party. We may never know.

The next day Ormerod used the phone to call Mr Smith's firm Price First Taxis and ordered a cab to pick him up from home. Staff who knew about the robbery recognised the phone number and told him a taxi would be round shortly. But instead they called police who sent officers to his home and Ormerod was arrested.

Smart work, indeed. But the Turdigraph confuses things somewhat:

Ormerod pleaded guilty to burglary and a charge of being a passenger of a vehicle taken without consent at Torquay Magistrates' Court, Devon.

Was this the same Zafira that he stole from outside Don Smith's house? Presumably not, since this new vehicle was stolen from Torquay Magistrate's Court, and he was a passenger, not the driver. Why was he not charged with stealing the Zafira? We may never know.

Don Smith's girlfriend, Val Thomson, who was in the house when Ormerod burgled it, said it was a million to one chance that Ormerod was caught because there are dozens of taxi firms in the resort. This girl could have a great future in banking.

Ormerod will be sentenced on July 20. He was warned he could face at least 18 months in prison or, if Ms. Thomson is involved in the sentencing, upwards of half a million years.

Necrophilia

Given that Islam thrives on martyrdom, there is a certain irony in the fact that the opposition to Iran's rabidly Muslim government has acquired its own martyr, and not just any martyr, but an attractive piece of ex-totty. That knocks any number of bearded ragheads into a cocked hat.

Sadly, however, it just gives CNN another excuse to blather on and on about Iran, trying to recapture CNN's own youth when it made its name, so long ago, reporting the first Gulf War. Every possible talking head has been dragged in, even as CNN, mindful of previous criticism it received over Tibet coverage, qualifies every picture or video from a mobile phone as being impossible to confirm as to its authenticity.

And their weather girl is even fatter than the Beeb's. If she had been shot instead, she would have been a most unsuitable poster child for the opposition.

Roly Poly

I received reports at the weekend of one of the most egregious examples I have heard of the Little Emperor syndrome, in which the young offspring of Hong Kong families are treated like gods (until they are adults, when they are treated like children). A friend went for a foot massage and saw a boy-child - fat and blubbery, of course - of between 10 and 12 also receiving a massage. This is wrong on so many levels, only the least of which is the question of how you massage jelly.

Fishy Business

Air France found black box?
No, just Venus Williams,
Going for a swim.

Full Of It

It's good to see Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Mr Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, giving his usual clear message following the latest unemployment (and employment) figures.

Picking up on this organ's emphasis on numbers in employment rather than the derivative and hence less meaningful unemployment percentages, Mattie commented that “the unemployment rate has remained unchanged for the first time since the upward trend started eight months ago, while total employment has gone up by 12 800 after falling for four consecutive periods. These are both encouraging developments."

What would be a more encouraging development would be if the Cheungster could emphasise that employment had continued to increase month on month for all but a few months, i.e. that the economy is generally healthy and that those those few months of slippage were the exceptions and thus could be discounted.

And here comes the gloom again: "Nevertheless, given that the economy has yet to recover from recession and fresh graduates and school-leavers are expected to enter the labour market in the summer, the unemployment rate may still face upward pressure in the coming months.”

"Given that the economy has yet to recover from recession!" That would be the recession that never arrived, Matt. The one that even your fellow excuses for ministers stopped describing as a financial tsunami some time ago. The one that you can see the signs of every day in the shops and restaurants - not.

But there is more: "We are facing the worst global recession in 60 years. While the external economy has yet to recover, the uncertainty brought about by the human swine influenza has also exerted extra pressure on the labour market."

Yes, he's still going on about swine flu: you remember, that problem which has so far killed one person outside the US and Mexico or, to put it another way, fewer than die either on Hong Kong's roads, or from numerous other causes, every day. Does Mattie talk about the uncertaintly caused by road deaths? Or regular flu deaths? No, because despite their higher numbers, they are too insignificant to merit employers' consideration. Yet Matt thinks that employers are dithering like rabbits in headlights because of the huge uncertainty from the non-event of pig flu. What nonsense! Unless perhaps Matt is thinking about business visitors to Hong Kong being uncertain whether they will be locked up in their hotels by the police.

But fear not - "We shall continue to be on the alert ... "

Matt's on the alert, albeit slightly contradicting himself as he both promises to "implement the host of relief measures announced as soon as possible" and states that “the Government’s several rounds of relief measures are actually beginning to take effect." Yes, the relief measures are both yet to be implemented and are already implemented and working.

And having first tried to whip up panic by emphasising the negative, conjuring up the chimera of a flu plague, and mislabelling the current economic situation, Matto tries in the next breath to have it both ways by saying that "The next step now is to restore confidence." The gall of the man!

Recession? What Recession?

Is there a level below sub-standard? If so, the Hong Kong Sub-Standard has surely reached it. The self-proclaimed "China's Business Newspaper" today reports on, i.e. rehashes, with the emphasis on hash, the latets unemployment (and employment) figures from the Census and Statistics Department.

According to the CSD, the unemployment rate stayed the same, at 5.3%. My avid reader may recall that my view is that there is no cause for concern in the figures, as the underlying economy, i.e. employment rather than unemployment, is doing fine. The latest figures bear this out, despite the Sub-Standard's attempts, in its role as a business newspaper, to totally confuse things.

The CSD reports that "total employment increased by around 12,800". By an astonishing coincidence, the Sub-Standard reports the exact same figure, with the slight twist that "the number of unemployed people rose by around 12,800". Can you spot the difference?

Although this organ has been banging on since January about the Hong Kong recession that never was, it will resist the temptation to say "I told you so", even as other headlines from the last week (not from the Sub-Standard) include "China recovery under way" and "UK recession bottoming [ooh-err!] out".

CEPAge

I remember when Mike Rowse, former head of InvestHK, under fire for his HarbourFest debacle, wrote to the SCuM Post to defend himself. His defence consisted of saying that he had a spreadsheet right in front of him that proved that HarbourFest was money well spent. Curiously, neither the spreadsheet nor any of the US TV deals which were going to be the vehicle for Hong Kong's "bounceback" (remember those stickers) ever materialised and in fact Hong Kong bounced back very nicely without, or despite, any help from politicians or Mr. Rowse. (Having said that, I am not knocking InvestHK, who I think do a good job of helping draw business to Hong Kong.)

However, I am reminded of Mr. Rowse's non-appearing spreadsheet when I see page 18 of this month's Bulletin, the sticky organ of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce. Here the signing of CEPA "supplement VI" is reported, with a photo of the event and a toadying comment advising where in the photo the reader can spot our Chief Execrable. In a shockingly unquestioning little article, all the usual government figures are accepted, such as the value of exports benefitting from tariff concessions, though at least the caveat "government figures estimate" is provided.

No such caveat is given for the number of jobs created, which is put at 43,200. Quite a precise number - perhaps someone has been smart enough to realise that round thousands are inherently suspicious. In addition, the Individual Visit Scheme "brought in an additonal HK$58 billion in receipts for Hong Kong businesess". Yes, those Mainland visitors were tracked one by one and that is how much they spent on LV, Burberry and their own hookers while they were here.

But back to the jobs figure: this is the one which always irritates me. I read the CEPA rules when they first came out, and every now and then I glance through the updates, this being slightly more entertaining than a Dan Brown novel. Try as I might, I cannot see that the various sets of tightly limited so-called concessions in tiny, discrete business sectors could have added this number of jobs. Or that those sectors could have expanded by that number during the same period from all causes. In fact, I think total employment in those would be about the 43,200 figure claimed. Hang on a minute ...

Soda So Good

Why is it that every supermarket in town, by which I mean Hong Kong island, has NO bottled soda water, and has had none for several weeks? Every other soft drink, yes. Canned soda water yes. Abalone-shaped biscuits, yes. (And what does abalone remind you of, by the way?) But no ckufing bottled soda water. Are they waiting for a ckufing tanker to come in?

Asia's world bottled soda waterless ckufing city.

Fattened Calves

Where does the BBC get its female reporters from? Is there a special farm somewhere devoted to breeding moon-faced cows with butts as broad as two axe-handles? And its weather girls are even worse.