CL The CLP fuel rebate notice landed in letterboxes this week, a printed slip most people folded away unread, because the bill it came with was still the highest in three years. The Hang Seng closed Friday at a one-year low. The subsidy and the market slide arrived together, two systems responding to the same pressure from opposite directions, neither cancelling the other out., CL-- CL

MB The Strait of Hormuz closed and opened and closed again in the time it takes a freight forwarder in Kwun Tong to reprice a container, and the Supreme Court ruled on Haitians and Syrians the same week a boy died of heatstroke at a Hong Kong sports ground and nineteen people were arrested for fixing football results. Every institution involved will later describe its decision as unavoidable. Elite civil servants are leaving at a rising rate. What holds order together is a spreadsheet no one publishes.-- MB