Chan Sau-mui at Kwai Chung Hospital has been trying to get pregnant for three years, and this week she found out her clinic mixed up embryo samples. Not hers necessarily, could be anyone's, that's the whole problem, the clinic sat on it before telling anyone. Secretary for Health Lo Chung-mau came out and said the government will review whether the reporting rules need to be tighter. Fine. But here's what actually happened: a fertility clinic made a mistake with people's literal future children, and it decided on its own how long you get to wait before you're told. That's not a paperwork problem. That's a clinic marking its own homework, and everybody in Sham Shui Po knows exactly how that story ends.

Meanwhile at LegCo this week the Northern Metropolis bill lands, forty thousand hectares, decades of planning, moved from committee to the floor. Sit those two stories side by side. The government can move a mountain of land through the legislature on schedule, no delay, everyone shows up. A woman finds out weeks late whether the embryo she's carrying is actually hers, and the fix on offer is "we'll review the mechanism." One of those things had a deadline the whole way through. The other one still doesn't, and Lo hasn't given a date for when the new reporting rule actually takes effect.