Hong Kong Politician Bejeweled, Unrepentant

Thanks to GamersWithJobs for its story revealing the Hong Kong Education Secretary was recently caught playing a puzzle game on his PDA during a 'lengthy legislative meeting.' According to the original story in the Straits Times, he was spotted playing games by "student representatives, who were seated one row behind the education chief." In addition, GamersWithJobs is delighted to note: "Being the gamer that he is, [Professor Li] even refused to apologize for playing Bejeweled on his PDA, as 'no constructive opinions' were voiced in the debate."

Comments

Hell ya

[meta-monkey]

That's awesome. I wish more politicians would just say "you know, I did it, I meant to do it, and whatcha gonna do about it?" when this sort of thing happens. Professor Li didn't get elected saint, after all. When you can't deny it, and you can't really defend it, just say "screw it."

It's kind of like Clinton's whole "I didn't inhale" fiasco. If he'd just said, "It was the 60's, lots of stuff was going on, I tried it a couple times and didn't like it, and I don't think anybody else should do it either," it would have all blown over, and nobody would have cared. Gore admitted to smoking pot. I think several of the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination for 2k4 have (Dean I know admitted it) and nobody cares. Instead, Clinton told such a ridiculously obvious lie, and became a laughing stock. Live & learn.

Re:Hell ya

[meta-monkey]

That's quite true on both counts. Still, a little more honesty would be nice :)

I suppose you can't have it, though. I don't think anybody should do drugs, but I don't hold it against anybody who does. You own your body, you should be able to smoke, sniff, or shoot up anything you like. Heck, if I had it my way, you'd be able to walk into Eckerd's and buy crack. However, I am in a small, small minority, and the vast majority of Americans don't see it my way. If Bush had come out and said "yeah I snorted coke, and it was a really dumb idea" or Clinton had said "Oh man, pot is awesome!" their chances for election would have been zilch.

However, I think it's also very telling. Both Clinton and Bush are for the war on drugs. At least, neither of them ever did a damn thing to put a stop to it. However, both were obvious drug users. Gore admited smoking pot. The current crop of candidates include many users. Yet, they all support the idea that people who do the same thing they did should be thrown in jail. I really wish that during the last election, somebody had asked Gore and Bush during a debate, "would you have been better off today, or worse off today, if you had spent time in jail as a twenty-something for your 'youthful indescretions' with regards to drug use?"

Something to clarify

[Anonymous Coward]

While the rest of the world thought all politicans are elected by one-person-one-vote basis like the rest of the democratic system, he's not elected. He's been appointed by governer, or Chief Executive Officer Mr. Tung Chee Wah.

Therefore, he can always find his "What can you do to me? BLOW ME!" attitude.

You probably don't know him much. Here is a list of good deeds he's doing:

1) He's planning to merge a major university into Chinese Unversity of whom he was appointed to be the president. Though he declines to give favour to Chinese University in the merge, but his intention is so clear. Say, he proposed to sell the properties of victim university to support the cost of merging.
2) He withdraw all his promises made during a meeting with student representatives of all students unions. Promises include not cutting budget of all sub-degree programs, which he advocated in the first place.
3) He refused to talk to students on the issues of huge budget cut on education for the coming years, until recently, thanks to the political climate changed after 5mil+ people hit the street on 1/7/2003

He's not elected, and he's not accountable.