what was it that he was called in the waning days of British colonial rule in HK: a serpent, a thief and a whore?

Yes, the state-run Chinese press called him a number of things. He kept referring to himself as the "colonial oppressor" in his speech last night.

I think they called him a whore and "guilty for a thousand years" as well as a few other colorful things.

chris patten - the perfect example of the FILTH phenomenon (Failed in London, Try Hong Kong). never saw him as too much of a bad guy though, despite his Poll tax asscoiations.

Where does he say about the 'snake oil salesmen'? There's no other link to find that quote.

I agree, where did that quote come from?

@Paul and MSG: He said the snakeoil quote during remarks earlier at the Foreign Correspondents' Club.

you can remove me from the comment of british imperialism but i i seen imperialism in this man.
what ca you say. An evil man with an evil agenda.
One has to think why he is the head of oxford.
Evil beget evil.

Thanks. Also, he was quite wrong to point to Singapore coming out the best and 'decoupling' being a joke - North Korea trumps both of these.

The propensity of the Chinese media to whine like bitches when things don't go exactly how the central govt wants is well documented. Browse Xinhua on any given day for countless examples.

Serpents, thieves, whores: why they sounds like perfectly apt descriptions of Xinhua "journalists"! Imagine that.

As for Patten being "evil", even if I agree I gotta ask: compared to what?!

He's right and wrong with the Obama/trade thing. Protectionism is an extremely inefficient way to fix what ails ya in the outsourcing era. But there's lots of people on capital hill who understand that very well.

Spend the money you instinctively feel like blowing on protectionism on retraining scholarships for workers who've "lost their jobs overseas" and you'd actually being doing your economy good twice over.

Money spent in (for example) tariffs simply compounds your problem for the next generation, meaning you pay twice, and then a third time when the factories themselves becomes redundant.