Anyone who has seen the BBC TV series “Yes Minister”, episode called “Party Games” will recognise the process going on in Hong Kong leading up to the “Election” of a new Chief executive.

In Party Games, the Prime Minister resigns and the party has to go through a selection process to find new leader and hence PM. There are two main candidates, who would tear the party apart if either won. But one was OK as Chancellor of the Exchequer (British finance minister), even though he had had some girl friends, including a shady lady from Argentina. The other was Foreign Secretary, but he had some shady financial dealings which would not be good if he was First Lord of the Treasury (Another name for Prime Minister).

This is mirrored in the present situation where one candidate has had make that walk to the cameras and microphone with his wife gripping his hand tightly to explain that the affair that has been exposed in the press is all over and her has explained to his wife, who understands and there is no problem with their marriage.

The other candidate, coming from a business background and ahead in the polls, is dogged by allegations about his finances and conflicts of interest in his previous public life.

In the TV series, Jim Hacker becomes the compromise candidate and Prime Minister after talking to the two front runners and getting them to stand down. But in present day Hong Kong, the third candidate will need something better than the “Euro Sausage”, to propel him into a winning position.

But what would be an equivalent of the Euro Sausage in Hong Kong? Well as anything Euro in the UK is about bashing Europe and if possible the French, the Hong Kong answer would be mainland people, so there are plenty of targets available and growing every day. From the distortion of home prices by mainlander buying homes in Hong Kong, to mainland women coming to Hong Kong to give birth in A&E, and the recent name calling over Local People objecting to a mainland girl eating noodles on the MTR, which is not allowed. The MTR is a clean, nice smelling place, not at all like the smell of urine on the London underground. Local people would like to keep it that way and there are regular announcements that “Eating & Drinking are not allowed in the paid area of stations or on trains”. So when news of the Hong Kong people objection to the girl eating reached Beijing, one academic rounded on Hong Kong’ers calling them “British running dogs” and supporting the mainland people’s right to make a mess anywhere they please. Thereby reinforcing the view that you can take the mainlander out of the village, but you cannot take the village out of the mainlander.

So number three may have a chance, with so many open goals to shoot at, but then he would have to work with the mainland government. Not a problem for a UK Prime Minister, who can veto European decisions, but a big problem for a Hong Kong Chief Executive.

The “Election” process here does not take anything as long as electing an American president, but is still due to drag on a little more as we wait and see who gets to replace Bow Tie looking for Snakes next February 10th.

It used to be that it was only on Friday that a large portion of China (population more than you can count to in your lifetime) descended on Hong Kong (the small dot at the bottom of China, population 7 million) to buy up all the mobile phones and baby milk they can carry, push up hotel prices and generally get up the noses of the locals. But now it seems to be any day of the week, and why aren’t their children in school? Or is this an educational trip?

They can be easily spotted by the way they walk so slowly, spread out across the full width of any walk way they are on, are always pushing suitcases, and as I said, have lots of kids with them.

This has meant that hotels at the weekends are full and more are being built to lodge them. If you have relations coming to Hong Kong for a family event, the cost of accommodation will make you wince. It also has the effect of making other visitors trade up. Some of the mainlanders go into the bottom run of places to stay, displacing the visitors who would have stayed there upward to the next tier up of hotels. That results in overseas visitors get bumped upwards, and making their visit more expensive, discouraging tourist from stopping over on their way from Europe to Australia.

There have been other consequences of this mainland invasion is that property prices are rising. But then Hong Kong people have done the same, with weekend apartments in southern Guangdong province, just across the border. But in Hong Kong the cost of housing was already high, and land is limited.

So there is the age old problem of the prosperity from the RMB the mainland people spend here, versus the inflation they are causing. Their rudeness against the jobs they create managing the queues outside Gucci & LV.

There is also the continuing question of where do they get the money from? A job that in Hong Kong would pay $8,000 or $9,000HKD, in China would only rate 1,000RMB ($1,200HKD), so how can they afford all the mobile phones and the handbags?

Not yet in our LISTEN page is a new test stream

48K AAC+ Stereo

http://174.37.194.139:8188/listen.pls

Please give it a try.

We would welcome your comments on the quality.

Don’t forget you can also keep up to date with Apple-FM via our twitter feed @applefm or our facebook page at facebook.com/applefm.net

We have been working on the Apple-FM distribution servers, the way you hear us. Ever since we started Apple-FM, we have rented servers from other people, but now we have enough listening to run our own servers.

So from now we will be our own masters, and dealing with the data centre directly.

So, hopefully without you noticing, all the settings that send you to a stream have been changed and if you listen to us now you will get the new machines.

However this may take 24 hours or more to get to all corners of the world as local DNS servers update. PCCW here in Hong Kong is all ready connecting to the right machines.

The old servers will work for a few days, until we are sure the world has caught up.