Author: wanleung

In the old time, while the mainland Chinese can’t access the Internet, the world was different. There were no one cared about the list of “Countries”. Hong Kong was a British colony, Macau was a Portuguese colony, Taiwan is actually an independent country called the Republic of China. No one was care about the “Countries” list that include Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan until the mainland Chinese could finally access the Internet.

After the mainland Chinese accessed the Internet, they complained everywhere, said Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan should be removed from the “Country List” and made so many website follow “their” rules. Then the problem came, as Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan are really different from China. We have our own legal system, our own border, our own currency, our own education system, our own International post code, our own International phone code, our own cultures, etc, etc, by definition, we are actually countries, while we were trying to fill in the postal address, we actually could’t find our places. As you know if we just fill in “China”, the postal would never send to the right place as the International postal code really have different places. These had been happened for several years even there are still some sites have this problem nowadays, the credit card address was wrong, the banking address was wrong, the services support region was wrong…

Then we finally found a solution to shut the mainland Chinese mouths, we change the name of “Countries List” to “Countries / Regions List”. But if we forget to “Add” the term “Regions” on the list, they will complain and said Hong Kong and Taiwan are not countries, please add the “Regions” back.

In fact, add the “Regions” or not, it doesn’t change the function of the system, it just for the mainland Chinese feeling good but no one would care about it except the mainland Chinese…

1998年，我還只係一個中四學生時，政府要廢除市政局，我係極力反對的。市政局和區域市政局的合併方案，保留一個市政局，我當時係支持的（但經過多年想深一層，英國人設立2個市政局係有原因的，係資源問題，2個市政局更能把資源用在新界上，此乃後話；另，市政局的職能，係同英國的地區議會同等的，反而香港的區議會，係個奇怪產物。當然我相信當年港督成立區議會，係抄英國倫敦的做法。香港區議會為英國的地區議會，市政局為大倫敦議會，而立法局為英國國會）。

當年反對政府廢市政局的原因，係因為市政局始終係民選的，可有效地監督市政總署（今食環及康文署）的運作，包括有無亂用權力，亂用錢等。而且市政局財政獨立，並有能力修訂及訂立與市政有關的法例，分擔了立法局的工作量。

要知道，議會開會時間有限的，立法局可專注有關香港長遠的發展的事，而市政局可專心理民生相關的事，市政局能讓政府和議會的運作更有效率。而區議會本身的職能係咨詢性質，無什麼權，如要取消，反而我覺得最應廢除係區議會。

這是我當年所想的，到十幾年後的今日，已證明我當年所想的正確。今日區議會和當年一樣無權，而立法會只變成一個只關心民生議題的議會，對香港長遠發展的事，立法會近乎無力。

延伸閱讀：
還原市政局　廢除問責制 （時事評論員　林忌）