The Beijing Doctor

London is that place where you have to pay almost everywhere for a wireless internet connection, but you don't. Well what I mean is, you arrive in a Starbucks just off of Covent Garden and they have a t-mobile hotspot that you have to pay for but when you right click on view available wireless connection you discover that there are are lots and lots of unsecured connections available and you pick the best one and abracadabra .......
My thoughts today drifted to China's "hundred names", or China's long suffering peasantry, and how those hundred names have been squeezed dry throughout history. One problem is that when they get up on the barricades and appear to have any sort of success that success is always short lived as invariably are any improvements that come with it. A very real reason for this is that their criticism is always reserved for local officials and never extends to the central government in Beijing. Therefore, if Beijing does believe that things are getting out of hand it can quite easily dismiss the corrupt local officials and have them replaced. In such instances the government in far away Beijing is seen to be caring for and sympathetic to the opressed masses and we will have Mr Zhou and Mr Wang, Mr Zheng, Mr Zhao and Mr Tang and all the others singing the praises of the government. Of course, the whole procedure is like that of a doctor who removes a spot on a woman's breast without diagnosing what actually might be behind the spot. The patient then praises the doctor for removing the spot but dies of cancer six months later. It is interesting that in a culture that spawned holistic medicine there is not a more holistic view of society and its problems.