The first thing the China Mail’s journalists did after deciding to stage their sit-in over the closure of the newspaper was to get the news out. The job fell to Linda Siddall and Debra Jopson […]
On Saturday 17 August 1974 a newspaper died but she did not go quietly. The China Mail was in her 130th year and was Hong Kong’s oldest English-language newspaper. The Mail was not a great […]
Why shouldn’t Hong Kong people decide what happens to Hong Kong? It’s a simple question with a straightforward and, I fear, unchanging answer – China won’t tolerate it. The received wisdom was that Hong Kong people […]
Reports of the death of democracy, friends, have been greatly exaggerated. An 11th hour boost to its flagging heart has demonstrated, just in time, that there’s life in the old girl yet. It turns out […]
It’s 1973 at the start of another long, hot summer in Hong Kong and already it stinks. The jokes about Hong Kong and its Fragrant Harbour have long been stale but visitors still crack them. […]
Welcome to Radio Baxter, a tribute to the FM tradition of the classic album hour. The only difference is you bring your own music. The following was originally live-tweeted on Saturday 9 August 2014 at #RadioBaxter. […]
It’s Abbott Hour, when I settle down to the ironing and think about how much more it would cost to get it done commercially because something something carbon tax. Australia’s Minister for Women would, I’m […]
My youngest daughter the Little Chef has just left home. I’m coping with the grief by colonising her room and filling it with all my mouldering old newspapers, notebooks and boxes of letters – the […]
Trade unions get a bad press but at their heart they’re about decent pay and working conditions. When I asked my father Jack Spackman why he started the Hong Kong Journalists Association his answer was […]
There’s a moment in an exceptional 1998 documentary on Hugh van Es when he tells photojournalist Kadir van Lohuizen that he never joined a union. It’s a great exchange between two generations of war photographers […]
Copyright: Maria Spackman
