Hong Kong should introduce universal suffrage as soon as possible, amid a danger that the improving economy will 'make everyone forget about politics'. That is the view of Lord Malloch-Brown, the British minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations.
Isn't it great that Hong Kong gets an update every so often from its former colonial masters about how it can become more democratic and civilised like, well, Britain? Having returned to Hong Kong after a year in Britain, I could give a little report card about Lord Malloch-Brown's own country - and there would be no gold stars.
Forget for a minute why a middle-ranking European power needs a minister for Africa and Asia, and concentrate on exactly what sort of democracy Lord Malloch-Brown would want for Hong Kong.
I would hate to think it would be the sort currently dispensed from Whitehall. That system has created an overtaxed and overworked middle class, a welfare-dependent and embittered lower class and a ruling class that still creates titles like 'minister for Africa and Asia'.
Let's get one thing straight: Hong Kong is streets ahead of London on so many points that 'forgetting about politics' because the economy is going well is a luxury this city can afford. Hong Kong's hard-working middle class is a marvel, its infrastructure is world class and the government - while occasionally pig-headed and unresponsive - is generally comprised of talented and well-educated technocrats.
Britain, and London in particular, is a different story. While the super-rich are cosseted in beautiful, tree-lined royal boroughs close to the city, the average Briton has to live in increasingly violent suburbs that are served by crumbling public services and ignored by politicians. They are taxed to within an inch of their life and pay through the nose to live in one of most expensive cities in the world. I paid more than GBP1,000 (HK$15,710) a year in 'council tax', in west London. But, apparently, the service didn't extend to collecting rubbish, which festered around my front steps for weeks on end.
While Lord Malloch-Brown was on his whistle-stop tour of downtrodden, undemocratic Hong Kong last week, one wonders if he took a trip on the MTR. If he did, he would probably have been amazed that the clean, efficient train taking him from one station to another did not stop in the middle of the tunnel for long periods at a time.
