The Big 4 firms of accountants advertised in Hong Kong last week, saying that pro-democracy demonstrations should not rake place.
Their staff place can advert in response saying these firms did not represent their views.
Yesterday up to 500,000 people protested. 511 were arrested.
The democracy movement won.
The Big 4 emphatically lost.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
Promising news, but I’m a little worried that the referee and his two assistants will turn out to be on secondment from Deloittes.
🙂
Facts again.
The Big 4’s advert is opposing the Occupy Central plan to blockage Central, no mention was made of any other protect. The 1 July protest happens every year, along with many others.
The 511 arrests were a student group who wanted to rehearse the Central blockade by blocking a road overnight. Police cleared most before the scheduled 8am ending of that protest.
Sorry that doesn’t fit the narrative you are trying to portray. And before you have your usual snide comment, I was on the march yesterday.
I reported what was said in such snide papers as the FT
I guess that’ll be the first time a paper has got something wrong then!
While generally accepted as self-censoring like most papers in HK, the SCMP will give you more first hand information. http://www.scmp.com (delete cookies or use your browser incognito/private mode to bypass the 3 free article limit).
Did you verify the number of protestors, up to 510K would appear to be a bit on the high side if other estimates are to be taken seriously?
I used press reports
It seems the FT is never wrong, unless they disagree with what you think:
https://twitter.com/RichardJMurphy/status/484600444908748800
What on earth are you on about?
I have already blogged that today
You used press reports?
So you did, the same press reports that reported that the number of protestors varied from less that a 100K , to a university estimate of less than 200K and then the protest organisers estimate of over 500K.
You just forgot to mention the other two estimates.
I used press reports
Matched with the knowledge that officials invariably under-report attendance at events I have been on
That’s called judgement. In a free world knew us allowed it
In yours apparently not
Well it would appear that your judgement was miles out.
Two academics at Hong Kong University put the figure at between 150-175K.
And now research commissioned by the South China Morning Post puts the estimated participation at around 140K.
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1545694/protest-number-july-1-march-put-test
A long way from half a million.
While on the same point, the Big 4 did not try and encourage people not to demonstrate on July1 (which they do every year), they actually expressed concern about the Occupy Central movement – do you actually know what this is?
There are a variety of views on the number that attended
It is very likely hundreds of thousands did
Your arguments simply seek to distract from that fact
As does that on Occupy Central
Comment on Unite coming out in favour of an EU referendum?
Do you oppose or support this as a member?
As an individual I oppose it
You oppose giving people a choice?
Doesn’t sound very democratic.
Surely democracy dictates you allow the choice and then campaign for the result you want?
You want democracy in HK when it suits you but oppose it in the UK when it doesn’t.
The Big 4 sought to deny people that choice
They do by corporate capture elsewhere
That is their process
I am wholly consistent
Few people would call criticising the Big 4 for being against democracy in HK and then opposing a democratic poll in the UK “wholly consistent”.
In fact I can only think of one person.
We have no history of using referenda as part of democracy in the UK
We have a parliamentary democracy
Respectfully, a complete red herring and in no way relevant to the debate on having democracy in Hong Kong
UNITE realise, what E Miliband does not, that going into the next election on a “we’re not going to give the people a choice because we think they are not bright enough to make the “right” choice” ticket; is going to be a vote loser. And they’re right. Looking forward, it may be better for long-term-conservative chances if the conservatives lose the next election, having left a few choice unexploded economic bombs behind (rather like the Major administration did with PFI contracts).
It looks, unfortunately, as if we have a nice-but-dim labour leader, prompted by a slightly-to-the-left-of-average-IQ election team.
The conservatives have, of course, G Osborne as the loss-leader on the shelves. But they have Lynton Crosby, of who we will hear more from quite soon (or see more from, as he tends to start operations quite late in the day).
The odds seem to be still in favour of labour. But given the state of play vis-a-vis the world economy, and things we have yet to see happen, such as the dollar being tossed-out as the “global reserve currency”, it looks like we are going to have not only a one-term labour government next, but also major global problems..
Interesting times!
You are right re global problems, for sure
This was just a public opinion poll. It wasn’t a vote in any real election.
“We have no history of using referenda as part of democracy in the UK”
You are of course completely wrong.
We had a referendum in 1975, the question being
“Do you think the UK should stay in the European Community (Common Market)?”
Do you just ignore facts you don’t like and hope no-one else is aware of them?
We have had tow
That is not a history
Now I have work to do and you are wasting my time
I will be deleti8ng rurther comments from you for breaching moderation guidelines
Two may not be a history (although some might argue), but there have been dozens of referenda in the UK (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_in_the_United_Kingdom)
I rather think that’s enough to count.
I think we can disagree
Fair enough, but out of interest, if 50-off referenda isn’t enough to count as a history, how many would?
I looked at the list
It’s a) a bit contrived b) about devolution
It hardly forms a universal history