daiwill60

Helium not hydrogen is the way forward.

Good point!! The balloons had to have been filled with helium, which is an inert gas. Guards totally in the wrong for stopping him. Wonder if anyone tried explaining this to the guards, or if they have even thought about it?

Perhaps they could relax the rules about balloons by taking a sample of the gas before transitting through the gates?

They would however have to form another queue beside the people being strip searched for lighters. Extra training would also be required for the security, mainly in the form of self defence for when they search the passengers, and more to the point when they can defend themselves.

"Why not just confiscate people's lighters (and matches) ?? Or at a minimum, follow the rules completely, Nothing quite as flammable as a cigarette lighter! Makes it tough to set other flammable materials on fire with out a fire source.

How about patting everyone down before entrance to check for flammables?? Strip searches??"

I had my lighter taken away from me when i was on a stopover at an indian airport last year, then went into the smoking area where the staff were more than willing to give you a light form a lighter in the bar .????????????????

Why are people allowed to fill baloons with acetylene , when Helium is the norm , because helium is hellish expensive , thats why. though they should certainly ban the use of acetylene.

7-11, oh that ok mr Foreigner, I saw you had been standing there waiting for a till to come vacant before i got here , so why don't you go before me?

or 7-11 staff - Looking at you before someone else has pushed in , gesturing, yes sir can i help you, i think you 're next.

I was just surfing the net and looking at the Thailand National News Website and came across this page. Oddly, this page is updated with news items on a daily basis, so you would have imagined it would have been noticed that there might be an item on the page that needs updating as well, wouldn't you???

http://thainews.prd.go.th/newsenglish/StratigicThailand/confidence.php

It is the National News of Thailand site after all.

I was just surfing the net and looking at the Thailand National News Website and came across this page. Oddly, this page is updated with news items on a daily basis, so you would have imagined it would have been noticed that there might be an item on the page that needs updating as well, wouldn't you???

http://thainews.prd.go.th/newsenglish/StratigicThailand/confidence.php

It is the National News of Thailand site after all.

I was just surfing the net and looking at the Thailand National News Website and came across this page. Oddly, this page is updated with news items on a daily basis, so you would have imagined it would have been noticed that there might be an item on the page that needs updating as well, wouldn't you???

http://thainews.prd.go.th/newsenglish/StratigicThailand/confidence.php

It is the National News of Thailand site after all.

When will Thailand do anything about the propensity of people riding scooters in a manner that is totally unsafe? 3+ people at a time or by kids barely old enough to wipe their own <deleted>?

When will Thailand do anything about the propensity of poorly lit, poorly maintained roads?

When will Thailand do anything about the propensity of unsafe cars and drivers, kids on the roads?

When will Thailand do anything about the propensity of signages that often obscure warning signs that are intended to improve safety on the roads?

When will Thailand do anything about the propensity of doing nothing about the problems that occur on a daily basis instead of reacting in a state of shock or horror, when these things do happen???????

When will, when will?????????????

So the minister plucks some figure out of the air to put the fear and importance of impending doom into the media highlights 6 months in advance, and then next rainy season when it will inevitably flood again, due to a lack of preparedness, he is in the clear because he can respond by saying, 'I Told You So', nah nah nah nanha.

yes just got quote, got base price 19,060 +taxes, surcharges etc =38,000, what a con !!!!!

old addage , if it sounds to good to be true , then it usually is.

These guys should be awarded the next Darwin Awards.

Live by the sword , die by the sword.

Isn t this the guy who proposed using boats to push water downstream.? Whatever.

Anyway, these projections should allow him to be known by another new name, Noah or Evan Almighty, and while he is out there telling everyone in Bangkok to build boats, similar to the one he no doubt will be paying his ill gotten gains towards building, he can tell everyone to fit massive big engines in them, and get them all down to the river to help move the deluge downstream .

How the hell has this guy managed to get these figures, when it has recently been admitted, that the Met office in Thailand hasn t much more computer power than a home PC. Obviously, everyone will be quivering on their Lilos as a result of such predictions from such a twerp as this guy.

Persnally dont have a problem with what he has done at all.

On the other hand , people are doing this sort of stuff all the time all over the world, so why is he being so glorified for his actions of taking a few pics and posting them, it was no big deal really.

He hadn't intended to burn the note , it was accidental then OK. New scenario , farang man burns one million of money given to thai wife after he finds she has been stashing it away and seeing other men, farang burns money in front of her and dumps her. Would that not be intended either ????

Guys you' re all being really anally retentive about all of this.

How is it that in the Thai movie 'Tsunami', one can clearly see breasts on girls supposedly on a beach down South Thailand, and yet this film is on general release, although I would add that the girls are portrayed as hedonistic farang sluts rolling around on a beach.

Of course the theme of the film is such, that the TSunami will engulf these wanton partygoers who bring such shame, and sure enough it does, along with the corrupt Thai business people, whilst the patriotic non corrupt whiter than white prime minister, who puts the lives of his people first, is saved by a buddha statue, because he risked his life to save a bus full of school children. Yeah it is as bad as it sounds !!!!

This would (or could) dovetail nicely with the supposed drive to learn english, if they were to provide a range of english-speaking channels for kids, news, natural history etc.

Unfortunately I can't really see that happening....

If they really do want to push the English for the purpose of ASEAN membership, then you are absolutely correct in the fact that better, easier access to programs in English is a must and would be of great benefit. I have a student in school whose parents had the vision to encourage him to watch many english spoken tv programs when he was a little kid , and he now wins english speaking competitions regularly.

From a personal point of view, I am surprised that nobody in Thailand has had the vision to launch an TV cannel tat carries spoken english programs such as news, docummentaries,drama series and advertising. Surely there must be enough foreigners in Thailand to make this commercially appealing to advertisers and tv companies.

Seems to me that successive Governments just set up committees to just deflect blame away from the Government in power at the time.

At the end of the day in the case of the flood committee, they are all running around like headless chickens as the next rainy season approaches and they have nothing much in place to deal with it, apart from a committee in which nobody is anywhere near qualified enough to understand flood mitigation procedures and the preventative restructuring required to avert the next disaster.

The money invested in the flooding plans will be water channeled down the drain, of bureaucracy and corruption, and certainly not have made much difference to averting another disaster before the next rainy season.

Foreign investment companies can see all this, and that is why they are not attending economic meetings given by the PM, as she blows the wind out of her Ar5e without having a clue about what she is talking about.

I am always amazed at the efficiency of the BigC cashiers when separating the goods into different bags at the checkouts , they never do this in the UK, we did it ourselves. The result in many cases was bags of widely varying assortments of goods but the bags were filled to capacity as much as possible, Whereas, in the likes of BigC a few well sorted items are popped into a bag and then a new bag is used for other items, result = 6 bags where 2 bags would have been more than enough.

Charge 10 bht per bag and then see a difference, people will be going out everywhere looking for bags to sell back to others for 5 bht each, a bit like we did as kids, going out looking for pop bottles when we could get a 6pence back for each one returned to the shop.

Ah the good old days when we really did know how how to recycle.

For all those who knock this incentive to do some good, get a life. It is a a long overdue start and something that needs to be done urgently IMHO.

There is much talk about Thailand trying to attract more tourists, and personally I very often wonder what makes tourists want to come here more than once, when you see the amount of plastic bags/ cartons/ bottles etc that are disgarded everywhere. It just makes what could be a beautiful country, look very untidy and the sooner it gets dealt with across the whole country the better, I think.

There is a lot of fuss about having to pay a surcharge on every plastic bag used in a supermarket in the UK now, I think if many in the UK could see in Thailand, what happens if you don't educate or penalise peolple who cause litter then they would be in for a shock to see the mess and ugliness it really causes if it is allowed to carry on unchecked.

In places like the UK, the fuel carries a huge amount of duty/tax/Vat.. whatever the vendors are told to collect from the motorist that increases the price you pay for a tankful to, say £150, which is an £120 increase from the actual fuel cost of £30 (guesstimate)

In Thailand if you want to drive a car and pay the real price of the actual cost of the tankful of fuel, say £30, you can do that . If however you would like to spend some of your money and drive an imported "Luxury Goods" car and still pay the real cost of fuel you can, but the government still need the tax revenue and unlike the UK they don't collect the £120 tax from you at the gas station. Therefore those that can afford the "Luxury" can also pay the Luxury tax up front when they purchase the car. This way those that can't afford the luxury goods aren't having to pay the £120 at the gas station every time they fill their low cost (non luxury) vehicle.

IMHO, It's a very fair system.

Fair enough , and that is one way of looking at it.

What i do not get though, is how this tax seems to follow all the cars through the second hand market , making depreciation of a vehicle in Tailand almost zero if you buy a new car and on the other hand making second hand purchases very expensive.

In this world we live in today of limited resources , would it not be more prudent to stop every idiot under the sun driving because they think they have a god given right to, though they have rarely the driving skills to drive a toy car even, and mostly come from poor backgrounds where, they have had to borrow to the hilt to get a car that gives them false esteem,

By making new cars cheap in comparison to second hand cars without the tax carried on them , just increases the number of cars on the roads and uses more global resources to build new stock, rather than making it more attractive to buy second hand. Maintaining low price fuel also increases faster use of dwindling resources and increases pollution levels.

Education is the weak point in all Thai regimes thus far.

One of the main problems is that the people who should be demanding the changes to the system have very little knowlwdge of any other different systems. Ask a Thai teacher what they know about 2nd WW and Japanese involvement, and the war in somewhere as close as Vietnam, and they havent a clue. Apparently Thai history taught in schools goes back 100years and does not include conflicts ( except with Myanmar), apparently the big American bases in places like Udon and Korat were there because the USA was here as the friends of Thailand, not that they were bombing the shit out of Vietnam. Beyond 100 years doesn't exist in theory.

Well at least this Government is not afraid to lose face on this matter, by admitting there is a problem and since they have been in power, have started to do something about it.

However, the claim to do something about the 400,000 addicts may be a stretch of the Goverments imagination, they cannot educate the kids in Thailand properly or organise the teaching requirements of farang teachers, to cope with their new over simplistic ideas that everyone in Thailand will speak English for one day a week for one year prior to 2015 Asean membership, and all of a sudden they they can come up with an enormous network of trained counsellors and support staff to deal with drug addicts, just like that!!!!

Yes, the Burmese have a very good understanding of English, as do many of the countries that were once British colonies.

However, yes, Thailand does have an extremely long way to catch up with many ASEAN countries.

If Thailand does pull up its socks very quickly and get over the face thing, it will be open to a great sense of self realisation, when it understands that its citizens, that are needed to support the entry into ASEAN, have to maybe spend less time sleeping when they have nothing to do, begin to watch educational TV programs instead of the endless drivel that seems to be poured out to them most of the time, be a bit more determined to learn in the class room, be generally more adventurous, and less lazy about improving their lives and doing things differently to their predecessors.

It therefore I guess comes down to, providing an education that is not so driven by a need to give the kids so much Sanuuk and copy everything and awarding failure with pass marks to save the face / image of the school and maintain its profitability, as encouraging the kids to think for themselves and work harder, to find answers in more logical ways. Thailand has to also let the kids develop what they are good at rather than allowing classes of greatly mixed abilities to be together, this prevents 1. the bright kids developing, 2. Kids who need nurturing in their abilities from getting useful help, and finally 3. disinterested, disruptive kids distracting the kids in points 1 and 2.

YES THAILAND, YOU HAVE A VERY LONG WAY TO GO, and then some I am afraid.

He also expects the new educational strategy to highlight the prominent features of each area of Thailand.

"Local higher-education institutes must play a role here.

"It's time to stop giving the same content to all students in the country. We had better let children focus on their areas, local geography and local environment. Area-based education will deliver many benefits," Woravat said.

MMM well thats novel, so in the country the kids will be taught about their local traditions of farming and fishing etc, so in other words, the country folk can stay as country folk