British Empire in China

I would like to hear something from the FCO on the current problems in Hong Kong. This is from this post of mine yesterday.

In 2017, some of the documents which were part of the secret negotiations between Margaret Thatcher's government and the CCP under Deng Xiaoping were declassified. As you would expect, their main concern was money. From this CNN piece:

By April 1982, the future legality of Hong Kong was starting to come into place. 

In a meeting between former British Prime Minister Edward Heath and Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, Deng said that a new Chinese constitution would "specifically allow for the creation of special administrative zones," where different legal and economic systems could operate. 

"Heath said that Britain received nothing from Hong Kong and suggested that Britain managed Hong Kong for the benefit of China and of mankind,"  [😂😂😂] Cradock wrote in a secret memo to Thatcher. 

... 

Around this time, Deng put forward the principle that now governs Hong Kong, of "one country, two systems," by which the city would retain its "capitalist" economy and limited democratic freedoms, but sovereignty would pass to Beijing. 

On September 23, 1982, Thatcher met with Zhao Ziyang at the Great Hall of the People. "(Zhao) said that there were two principles (at stake) -- sovereignty, and the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong," a record of the meeting said. "If it came to a choice between the two, China would put sovereignty above prosperity and stability." 

The following day, Thatcher met with Deng, during which the old revolutionary warned her "in no more than one or two years time the Chinese government would formally announce their decision to recover Hong Kong." 

Talks continued after Thatcher left Beijing, and would eventually result in the Sino-British Joint Declaration that she and Zhao signed on that day in 1984. 

...  

Throughout the discussions held by Thatcher's cabinet, the chief concerns expressed in the secret memos were retaining market "confidence" in Hong Kong, and avoiding a situation like the Falklands, over which Britain went to war with Argentina in 1982. 

Emily Lau, former chairwoman of the Hong Kong Democratic Party, said Hong Kongers knew that "all (the British) cared about was trade ... and the well being of the Hong Kong people was of secondary importance." 

The involvement of former British Prime Minister Edward Heath is not that well known, it seems. Heath was, from 1951 to 1955, Lord Commissioner of the Treasury in Winston Churchill's government. 

Isn't it odd how these Wikipedia pages for Lords Commissioners of the Treasury and Lord High Treasurer don't mention City of London Corporation? Probably because they have nothing to do with each other. And it's odd that this film on Britain's "second empire" doesn't mention the Isle of Man: 

In 1266, the island became part of Scotland under the Treaty of Perth, after being ruled by Norway. After a period of alternating rule by the kings of Scotland and England, the island came under the feudal lordship of the English Crown in 1399. The lordship revested into the British Crown in 1765, but the island never became part of the 18th-century Kingdom of Great Britain or its successors the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the present-day United Kingdom. It retained its internal self-government. 

Nor does it mention Hong Kong, or the Company of Scotland. Odd, isn't it? Is that just because this would involve falling through a whole new layer of crap on the cesspit of the History of the British Isles?

So, it goes back to 1266? That's nearly 800 years. See UK Justice. From The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll:

Another little stage-friend of Lewis Carroll's was Miss Vera Beringer, the "Little Lord Fauntleroy," whose acting delighted all theatre-goers eight or nine years ago. Once, when she was spending a holiday in the Isle of Man, he sent her the following lines:—

There was a young lady of station, 

"I love man" was her sole exclamation;

But when men cried, "You flatter,"

She replied, "Oh! no matter,

Isle of Man is the true explanation."

I think this is more an explanation of who "Isa Bowman" than who gets flattered. See Sylvie and Bruno - A Handbook for Global Revolution.

See the frontispiece on page three, which contains this poem, which I think could be entitled just MAN:

Apart from the initial letters of each line, the acrostic (ἀκροστιχίς), three other words are capitalised. Life Time's Day. Sounds like an equation, to me.