The Hong Kong protests are a strange and divisive thing. I feel that it would be really weird not to say anything about them. So here goes - in the knowledge that this is one lay person's perspective. I can see on one hand how they are driven by inequality, and a rudderless, faux administrative take on leadership that people are understandably sick of. I can see how people are not optimistic about their futures - which also seems a strange right to want to exercise? The police, who to my thinking were much more of a get granny's cat out of the tree and arrive in force when someone sees a snake type service have been ineffectual, ambiguous in their loyalties, and not been cut any slack by the public at large. Then suddenly it all seemed to explode on Friday night into an absolute orgy of (in my view) dimwitted-ness and vandalism, targeted at the MTR. It's an interesting target - if you want to mess this city's ability to function up, it's the obvious choice. And I'm left wondering why its a private company (I suppose more lets privatise everything - and further fuel inequality) when it's so strategically central and necessary to the city? Anyway, the MTR corporation seems in one part to have been judged complicit in allowing gangsters to beat up the public, or keeping train doors open so that police can thrash passengers - who knows - the only thing that seems completely clear is that sensible has left the room. And so here is the result - in short the MTR is shut, and has been properly thrashed. I was cycling yesterday morning - and because of it - the queues of normal people trying to get to work on a Saturday (already a bummer) were snaking around the building blocks - at six in the morning. And I just think fuck that, pointless, backward stepping, clueless - not going to change anything - least of all for the less fortunate who live miles from work and rely on it entirely. These were sent to me by a friend of mine - inside Admiralty station - a major interchange. I rode past Hang Hau and Tseung Kwan O - and they looked similar from the outside.
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| Ticket booth |
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| Another ticket booth |
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| Turnstiles smashed... |
Now I understand that there is a human story to all of this - but I just don't get stuffing up the thing that everyone relies on, to go to the doctor, to go to work. And then on top of it, those clad in black, fearing for their futures, also smashed all the traffic lights in the streets around the stations - so the traffic, already bewildering, just won't function. The youth should try fearing the present.
