Sunday, September 28, 2008

City Speak IV

I went to the forum City Speak IV the other day and gave a bit of spiel about Freedom Ball which seemed to go OK. The forum was organised by Paul Zimmerman at Designing Hong Kong and was particularly interesting as they managed to get a diverse range of speakers discussing issues around the regulation of public space, including representatives from the government, hawkers, market traders, academics, activists and street performers. Part of the reason for the forum was the upcoming review of hawker licensing by the government.

One of the things that struck me about the debate was the number of times that the discussion started to revolve around whether we should support or discourage different 'kinds of people' (hawkers, street performers, etc) rather than direct discussion of the issues and problems that might or might not need regulating. This was particularly true of the government discussion paper which talks about the types of problems that hawkers (and particular types of hawker) tend to cause, with the resulting recommendation that licenses be granted/phased out for this type of hawker.

Personally I feel that when we do need to regulate then the regulation should be as minimal as necessary to get the job done and should directly address the issue rather than dealing with generalised groups. For example, the government feels that hawkers tend to create hygiene problems and uses this as a reason not to issue hawker licenses in general. If hygiene is an issue then it would, in my opinion, be better to draft legislation that directly addresses hygiene and apply this to everybody equally whether hawkers, restaurants or five-star hotels.

Another issue, which I've posted about before, was the contradictory way the Hong Kong government expects people to take responsibility for themselves rather than relying on government handouts and a welfare state in the economic sphere and yet regulates them to death in other areas.

Room Full of Mirrors

I've been reading Charles R Cross's biography of Jimi Hendrix; Room Full Of Mirrors. As a biography it's OK, it's pretty detailed and does what it needs to do. As you read it you realise just how short Hendrix's career was. Hendrix released his first album (Are You Experienced) in 1967, two more studio albums (Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland) in 1967 and 1968 respectively and it was all over on 18th September 1970.

Are You Experienced? was no.2 in the UK charts that year (the year I was born). It was only topped by Sergeant Pepper, regarded by many as the greatest pop album ever, so I picked up a copy of it. Quite frankly, it's a bit cack really. I mean, there are some nice jingly-jangly little compositions and all, but nothing of the power and emotional impact of other great pop artists recording during that era like Hendrix, Marvin Gaye etc. Then again I've never really understood what the appeal of The Beatles was, all their stuff is pleasant enough and there's a lot of it but there's nothing that really grabs you by the balls.