Leung, Chun Ying 梁振英

The defamation suit by Mr Leung, former Chief Executive, will now be heard without a jury because nobody paid the required deposit in time.

The "suspension" of the Extradition Bill, which will likely lapse in July 2020, is not the end of an increasing erosion of HK's autonomy. With a rubber-stamp legislature, the only thing that now prevents draconian legislation is massive public pressure. Mrs Lam has irrevocably lost the public trust. Beijing will hold her accountable for the loss of control last week, after a suitable interval to disconnect the issues, but this will not prevent the increasing erosion of HK's autonomy.

Appeal unanimously dismissed.

Apparently the ICAC Operations Review Committee was able to receive a report from the ICAC and legal advice from the DoJ and endorse it all within one day.

Mr Lew is granted leave to appeal to the Court of Final Appeal on a point of "great and general public importance". The angle appears to be: does the Commissioner of the ICAC have discretion, or is he duty-bound to investigate alleged or suspected offences? Does the CE of HK have the ability to direct or override him? If neither is true, then the argument would be that Mr Lew, by writing to then CE C Y Leung, could not have had any impact on his case, and therefore was not attempting to pervert the course of justice. Lots of ifs. The CFA will now decide.

Leave to appeal is refused.

The summary and judgment in full.

"there would be significant prejudice caused to the public if Ms Yau and Mr Leung are to be deprived of, in this interim period, to represent their respective electorate in the LegCo" - Justice Thomas Au.

...and the current ICAC Commissioner Simon Peh "reiterated that ceasing the acting arrangement of an individual officer [Rebecca Li] had absolutely nothing to do with any investigations [of C Y Leung's payments from UGL]". This is getting UGLy.

Dream Bear's nightmare.

The leader of HK has agreed to meet members of the public for 6 hours per week: a historic idea which remains valid.

On the day the competition law takes effect, we take a long hard look at the anti-competitive legislation and policies which support a HK$116bn taxi cartel, a $22bn minibus cartel and a $13bn non-franchised bus cartel as well as restricting the hire car market. The Government should scrap all restrictions and franchises, introduce congestion pricing, and allow competition to serve the public interest.

In the past few days, it has become clear how Beijing plans to rig the 2020 LegCo elections to claim "universal suffrage" without losing control. This gives even less reason for legislators to approve Beijing's proposal for the 2017 Chief Executive election.

Now, what about C Y Leung failing to declare or disclose to the Executive Council his GBP4m (HK$50m) payments from UGL?

The slides from a presentation by Webb-site founder David Webb to the Asian Competition Forum at Polytechnic University this morning. When you get to slide 30, click the box to launch the online video.

The protesters have overstayed their welcome in Admiralty. They should withdraw and set a new deadline for C Y Leung to do the right thing: send a new report to the NPCSC, recommending restoring the nomination threshold to 12.5% from 50%. That would achieve free and fair elections without civic nomination. After all, only 305 members of the 1200-member committee nominated him in 2012. A New Year's Day march should celebrate or protest his choice. Sign the petition!

2607 people have signed the petition so far, and this is all they get in response.

They say he is visiting "Korea" which we assume means the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and not the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (Norh Korea), which of course, like most countries that name themselves Democratic, isn't.

It's not too late to add your voice - sign the petition now!

Webb-site has today delivered to the CE's Office the petition with the first 2,114 signatures. The realistic and pragmatic petition remains open for signature, so it is not too late to add your voice. The CE has an opportunity to resolve the impasse over constitutional development, move HK forward, and land on the right side of history.

...thereby contradicting the claims of Beijing and C Y Leung that the democracy protests are a foreign plot to undermine the one-party state.

He didn't say "those earning HK$14k a month are not entitled to the rights to make nomination for the election of the Chief Executive", but he did say that if the NC was numerically representative then "you would be talking to half of the people in Hong Kong who earn less than $14k a month. Then you would end up with that kind of politics and policies". So the paraphrase is "broadly representative" of his remarks. PR lesson: when you are in a hole, stop digging.

C Y Leung tells 3 media from democratic countries that the Nominating Committee should be "broadly representative" of wealthy people, not the general public, who would otherwise wreck the economy, and explains how he has to pander to vested interests in the committee to get elected. Yet the lack of a popular electoral mandate has resulted in populist handouts anyway, as well as wasteful infrastructure spending to favour vested interests. Could a democratically nominated and elected CE really be any worse? We also look ahead to what the students should realistically be asking for tonight.

In last night's TV interview, he claimed that he had never stated an intention to run for re-election in 2017. We prove that his claim is false. Has Beijing told him not to run again?

Conversely, there is no doubt that C Y Leung was funded by foreign interests while in office - £4m from Australia's UGL Limited.

Comment: he is insulting the intelligence and feelings of the protesters by implying that they don't actually want democracy themselves. He should stop parroting the mainland Government and start representing the people of HK.

Unfortunately the interviewer does not ask about the obvious step of returning the nomination threshold to 1/8 from 1/2, within the Basic Law, and allows the CE to suggest that the protesters insist on civic nomination, which the BL does not allow. A fair nomination threshold would resolve the issue.

It just keeps getting worse, doesn't it?

Displaying the Government's economic illiteracy, in a prepared speech he says: "if you divide 7 million into 20 billion, even I can come up with a figure of at least three to four thousand dollars for every man, woman and child in Hong Kong". Um no C Y, that's at least $2857, not $4000. Still a waste though. He says they "did consider using the site instead for housing units". But why do that when you can buy election committee votes from the sports sector as well as the construction sector? It's a win-win proposition.

Has this man never heard of video-conferencing? He could do it via Skype from his fallout shelter/ Führerbunker. Government business should continue.

Apparently the document was leaked to the Australian journalists last Sunday (5-Oct-2014).

Mr Lew's application to stop proceedings is dismissed.

...or how to avoid a void.

Note: CY Leung's attempted reorganisation was eventually aborted after failing to obtain LegCo approval.

Either Henry Tang was lying about What C Y Leung said in ExCo, or Henry Tang has breached the Oath of Fidelity taken by Executive Councillors not to reveal the proceedings of ExCo meetings.

Note: this article is inaccurate. There were 55 CPPCC candidates for 55 seats, so they were all certain of election. The only reason there was a vote is that in October 2012, the 4 with the fewest votes will leave the Election Committee to make way for the 10 new legislators who will each be ex-officio members of the committee. This only matters if the CE has to be replaced after that date.