. 9.
Secondly, people sometimes talk as though the alternative to having an occasional argument with Chinese officials was a quiet life. If I'd agreed, for example, to put in place electoral arrangements which this community believed to be unfair, who would my arguments have been with for four or five years? With the people of Hong Kong. I could have produced, I think if we'd taken the wrong decisions, political turbulence in Hong Kong, we could have produced arguments and rows and people fighting their seats in by-elections and winning by bigger majorities and chaining themselves to railings and burning tyres. I don't think that would have been good for the investment climate in Hong Kong. I don't think it would have been good for confidence in Hong Kong. I don't think it would have been good for building Hong Kong's foundations for a better and brighter future. And there's just one other, rather old fashioned thing that I feel very strongly. I think it would have been downright plain wrong, and I'm sorry if that makes me sound a shade undiplomatic. I've never been a diplomat. Nobody could confuse me with a diplomat but I do know the difference between right and wrong.
Thank you all very much indeed.
End
Promises kept, it's business as usual: Governor
"Business as usual" was the promise when the Governor, the Rt Hon Christopher Patten, delivered his fifth and final Policy Address to the Legislative Council today (Wednesday).
He also reviewed his promises and accomplishments over the past five years.
Noting that he had told the Council last year that his 1995 address was the last he would give in the conventional form and manner, Mr Patten said his departure on July 1 next year dictated a different and "more personal" approach.
The Governor said this "rather different speech" did not mean that government was closing down or going into hibernation for nine months.
"You cannot turn government on and off like a combustion engine," he said.
"It will be business as usual, punctuated admittedly by some unique events. We still have plenty to do. And we intend to do plenty."
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