Flying Sand | Empty gestures won’t do – government and transport executives need to put safety before bottom line
Niall Fraser says cash compensation and flags flown at half mast for the victims of Saturday’s fatal bus crash are a sickeningly inadequate response to the problems posed by an oversubscribed and profit-driven transport system
The time for grand – and empty – official gestures is over.
Our government can cancel as many fireworks displays as it likes, fly as many flags at half staff as it can muster, dole out as much cash – hush money, more like – as it thinks will do the job, then add insult to the injury and death by setting up a costly “independent” inquiry which is nothing of the sort.
It simply will not do any more. Enough is enough.
In the days since 19 innocent Hong Kong civilians left home for the Sha Tin racecourse thinking they were gambling on the horses, not their lives, when they paid their money and took a double-decker bus to their death, what we have witnessed from those who profess to care and in whose gift is the ability to prevent such horrors from happening, is nothing short of sickeningly grotesque.
Even worse, as the mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, cousins and extended families and friends of the dead try to come to terms with their loss, official insensitivity and crassness plumbs new depths as our government declares the real problem our city faces is that it has too much money.
