jamesbrock

It's fairly safe to assume that the only reason this guy didn't uphold tradition and do a runner is because he was injured...

Mr Meechai said it was very difficult to make the volunteers understand every detail of the draft constitution during the program of only two days duration

If the CDC are sending volunteers to various provinces to inform the public about issues that they themselves don't quite understand, doesn't that make them one of the groups of people causing misunderstanding and confusion among the public?

One would think that, if they are spending 20 million baht to send these volunteers out, the least they could do is ensure the volunteers fully understand what it is they're supposed to be explaining - even if it meant extending the training program until they did...

Issues such as forced labor and debt bondage are acts that could lead to, or in severe conditions, be classified as human trafficking.

Only in severe conditions??

Oh god that first sentence hurt my brain!

There is no 2015 study, it was based on the data from 2013. It's all 'estimates'.

If you go through the W.H.O. country profiles from around the world then you will also find there are a few countries who do not report at all.

So Thailand is at No2 behind a war zone - amongst the countries that record their figures.

But there are other things as well. Thailand has ten times the number of motorcycles compared to most developed countries. 80% of road fatalities in Thailand are reported to be Motorcyclists. Most could be addressed if people were taught basic on-road interactive skills rather than only off-road vehicle handling skills. But people still prefer to blame accidents on spirits instead.

Thailand does have a higher percentage motorcycles than most developed countries, but it has the lowest percentage of motorcycles of all its regional neighbours bar Malaysia - yet it has the highest percentage of deaths of motorcycle users of all its regional neighbours.

For example, 95% of registered vehicles in Vietnam are motorcycles, as opposed to 59% in Thailand, but only 60% of road deaths in Vietnam are motorcycle users, compared to 73% in Thailand. Obviously, there are a large number of factors involved, but one telling statistic stands out: the helmet wearing rate: Vietnam - 96% Drivers, 83% Passengers; Thailand - 52% Drivers, 20% Passengers.

Research has shown that correctly wearing a helmet can cut the risk of death by 40% and reduce the risk of serious head injuries by almost 70%, and since head injuries account for up to 88% of motorcycle user fatalities, strictly enforcing the wearing of helmets could cut Thailand's road toll by more than 25%.

Again: just enforcing the existing helmet wearing laws could cut Thailand's road toll by more than 25%.

24,237 people die according to the WHO

17,693 (73%) of these are motorcycle users

15,570 (88%) of these motorcycle users died due to head injuries

6,228 (40%) of these deaths could be prevented by wearing helmets

18,009 (25.7% reduction of original toll) possible road toll if wearing of motorcycle helmets is strictly enforced

This one simple strategy could reduce Thailand's death rate from 36.2 to 26.7 deaths per 100,000 - dropping it from 2^nd to 30^th in the list of deadliest countries.

Of course not wearing helmets doesn't cause accidents—speed, drink driving, reckless driving are the highest causes, mainly due to ineffectual driver education and lax enforcement—but the strict enforcement of wearing helmets would clearly cut the road toll.

The foot-dragging by the authorities could run for several years at least. Anyone happening to be writing a thesis on justice systems vigorously pretending to do the exact opposite of what they are actually doing might like to use this as a case study.

I'm not sure one can delay the lodgement for that long!

Half the force double the salary

That's closer to the mark than many people might think!

When Prayuth granted wide ranging powers usually reserved for civilian police to members of the military (under gazetted Order 13/2559 (29 March 2016 [2559], vol.133 Special Section) of Article 44), his spokesperson, Kritsana Pattanacharoen, said he believed the junta empowered the military with police powers to support the police, as he said they don’t have enough officers.

A few days later when a "Massive police force [was] mobilized to ensure public safety during Songkran festival" they could only scrounge up 90,000 officers—less than 40 percent of the total force—to ensure safety for one of the most dangerous periods of the year; leading many to ask how many of the superfluous 140,000+ officers are administrative or inactive?

A proper reform would eliminate a large number of these superfluous officers, thus, as Khun Jomdet pointed out in the paper I linked to earlier, "result in a general increase in police salaries, weakening the oft-mentioned reason for corruption."

I believe corruption will/would continue regardless of the salary. ONLY prison will deter the corrupt or at least give them reason for pause.

Yes, I agree. That's why increasing salaries was last in the very long (not-exhaustive) list of items I posted in post #19 that need to occur before real reform could bear fruit.

Half the force double the salary

That's closer to the mark than many people might think!

When Prayuth granted wide ranging powers usually reserved for civilian police to members of the military (under gazetted Order 13/2559 (29 March 2016 [2559], vol.133 Special Section) of Article 44), his spokesperson, Kritsana Pattanacharoen, said he believed the junta empowered the military with police powers to support the police, as he said they don’t have enough officers.

A few days later when a "Massive police force [was] mobilized to ensure public safety during Songkran festival" they could only scrounge up 90,000 officers—less than 40 percent of the total force—to ensure safety for one of the most dangerous periods of the year; leading many to ask how many of the superfluous 140,000+ officers are administrative or inactive?

A proper reform would eliminate a large number of these superfluous officers, thus, as Khun Jomdet pointed out in the paper I linked to earlier, "result in a general increase in police salaries, weakening the oft-mentioned reason for corruption."

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha has expressed concern about the matter and instructed parties concerned to treat the case as a normal case

So, let it drag on until another story comes along and knocks it off the front page, and then do nothing for years until it's all but forgotten?

So he was fined 200k THB and sent to 2 years and 9 months in prison for a victimless crime. That is not justice.

Yeah, people should be allowed to fry their tiny brains on whatever crap they want, then cause general mayhem and violence on society. We don't need laws to control supply and usage of drugs, only to prosecute the crimes people commit while under their influence. The victims of those crimes will just have to respect your right to kill, maim and destroy other people's lives.

But, people are allowed to fry their tiny brains on whatever alcohol they want, then cause general mayhem and violence on society. We have laws to control supply and usage of alcohol, and to prosecute the crimes people commit while under its influence. The victims of those crimes just have to respect the drunk's right to kill, maim and destroy other people's lives.

What hyperdimension (and I) wrote is that the penalty does not fit the crime. Yes, drugs (including alcohol) are bad; yes, they cause untold damage; but the war on drugs is an utter failure. It's done nothing but enrich the criminal organisations paddling the stuff. Drug use needs to be treated as a mental health issue, with proper treatment available for the users, not a criminal issue where someone like this goes to jail and gets a criminal record simply because the authorities are too stuck in their ways.

Portugal decriminalised drug use, and the results are pretty fantastic.

• Drug Decriminalisation in Portugal: A Health-Centered Approach: http://www.drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/DPA_Fact_Sheet_Portugal_Decriminalization_Feb2015.pdf
• Portugal decriminalised drugs 14 years ago – and now hardly anyone dies from overdosing: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/portugal-decriminalised-drugs-14-years-ago-and-now-hardly-anyone-dies-from-overdosing-10301780.html
• Portugal’s Experiment in Drug Decriminalization Has Been a Success: https://mises.org/library/portugal’s-experiment-drug-decriminalization-has-been-success

"Meanwhile, National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) Chairman Pol Gen Watcharapol Prasarnratchakij said many of the police officers still lack experience in certain fields."

Well, obviously not in the fields that really count, namely... [drumroll]... bribery, corruption, and graft.

The only way this rotten-to-the-bone police force can ever be reformed is by executing what the Romans so aptly called "tabula rasa", i.e. a clean sweep from top to bottom through the dismissal of literally every single police officer in the country, including the top brass, and no chance for them of ever being able to join the force again.

And this I'm afraid is a task that is practically unfeasible as the country would remain without police for an exceedingly long time while a new force is being recruited and trained from scratch under extremely tight criteria.

It might appear unfeasible, but it certainly isn't. Many countries have reformed their police forces, the report 'Anti-corruption and police reform' by the Anti-Corruption Resource Centre and Transparency International cites the case of South Africa:

A key personnel issue to consider when reforming the police institution is whether to retain old staff or recruit new personnel. Lessons learnt from South Africa suggests that a combination of both approaches is needed, including the reselection/vetting of police officers that have been involved in corruption and a systematic approach to new recruitment (Bruce, D., 2003).

As part of the process of recruiting new staff, selection procedures and polices are important elements of police reform. Inadequate screening criteria for candidates can result in police officers lacking the skills or incentives to comply with high standards of integrity. In South Africa, for example, police reform included the introduction of a new selection system to raise the calibre of police recruits, with minimum acceptance standards such as minimum level of education and the absence of a criminal record (Newham G., 2002). [source: www.u4.no/publications/anti-corruption-and-police-reform/downloadasset/436]

As far as eliminating police corruption goes, of course it's not going to be a quick fix - it took decades for Singapore to all but eliminate corruption, but it went from a British Colony tolerant of corruption to the 8th least corrupt country in the world, and consistently ranks in the top 10 of least corrupt nations. (An interesting articles on how they did it: http://www.jonstquah.com/images/Police%20Corruption%20Article%20APJPA.pdf). Of course, the British left Singapore with a working system and sound institutions - English laws, a working civil service, and an efficient and honest judiciary, none of which Thailand possesses.

The main take away from all the studies and reports that I've linked to, is that nothing will occur without strong political will. Does Prayuth posses this? I'm yet to be convinced.

Edit: Of course we shouldn't forget the fact that Prayuth recently gave his soldiers unfettered police powers - thereby eliminating the issue of the nation being without a police force while any reformation, including the necessary mass-sackings, takes place.

This is another very interesting read on the subject, by Jomdet Trimek, a professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice Administration at Rangsit University, and former Captain in the RTP:

http://rjsh.rsu.ac.th/download/RJSH-Vol1-No2_49-53_Jomdet-Trimek.pdf

I have been arguing for as long as I remember that nothing short of a complete top-to-bottom reformation of the RTP will begin to solve some of the many problems facing Thailand.

Unless they're planning to do it properly—i.e. decentralising its command structure, and transferring its reporting to the Ministry of Justice, demilitarising its ranks and uniforms, recruiting overseas advisors/trainers, imposing strict ethical guidelines, sacking every single one of the tens of thousands of criminals currently sitting in "inactive posts," and providing a real living wage to officers—they may as well not bother at all.

Do it properly, end political interference and nepotistic postings, give it time to end the endemic corruption in all facets of Thai society and the billions and trillions of baht flowing freely from the public purse, and just maybe Thailand could then attain status of safe, developed nation.

The following is a very interesting article on the subject by Khemthong Tonsakulrungruang, a constitutional law scholar in Thailand: http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2014/10/06/thai-police-intent-to-reform/

Seems a very disproportionate sentence compared to other crimes, and even other people charged with possession.

One wonders if the authorities thought they'd be in for a large payoff due to his status, but he refused to pay so they threw the book at him?

Good Point, where did the WHO get the figures for Thailand ?

If using figures supplied by Thailand ...

According to the report, Thailand, along with India, Islamic Republic of Iran, and Viet Nam, is categorised as a country with "other sources of information on causes of death" - i.e. not one of the 85 countries with "death registration data meeting the following completeness criteria: completeness for the year estimated at 80% or more, or average completeness for the decade including the country-year was 80% or more."

The most recent acceptable figures for Thailand were from 2002 (even then, the proportion of "ill-defend" causes of death was nearly 50%). In order to improve the usability of the death registration data, the Thai Ministry of Health conducted a re-test survey on a sample of about 33,000 deaths, using verbal autopsy methods, to ascertain the true cause of death. Then:

a regression model was used to estimate total road traffic deaths. As for the previous reports, we used a negative binomial regression model, appropriate for modelling non-negative integer count data (number of road traffic deaths). A likelihood ratio test was used to assess that the negative binomial model provided a better fit to the data than a Poisson model (where the variance of the data is constrained to equal the mean).

lnN =C +β₁ X₁ +β₂X₂ +....+β_nX_n +lnPop+ε (1)

where N is the total road traffic deaths (for a country-year), C is a constant term, X_i are a set of explanatory covariates, Pop is the population for the country-year, and ε is the negative binomial error term. Population was used as exposure, making it possible to interpret the coefficients (β_i) for the independent variables as effects on rates rather than a count. In a previous study, this type of model was used to represent “accident proneness”. Karlaftis and Tarko have also found a negative binomial regression model to be the appropriate for count data such as road traffic fatalities.

The parameters β1, β2, β3 ··· βn (equation 1) were estimated by fitting the negative binomial regression model to estimated total road traffic deaths for all country-years in the range 2000–2013 meeting the completeness criteria by using the number of road of traffic deaths from countries from group 1 described above. We chose three models (Models A, B and C) that had good in-sample- and out-of-sample fit, and for which all the covariates were statistically significant. The final estimates were derived as the average of the predictions from these three models.

That is how they came up with the 24,237 figure (the 2012 figures provided by 'Bureau of Policy and Strategy, Office of Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Public Health' were deemed incomplete, therefore unacceptable for statistical purposes).

Death registration information is submitted to WHO regularly by Ministries of Health from around the world, and most is coded using the International Classification of Diseases 9th or 10th revisions (1, 2, 3). Using this classification all deaths that follow from a road traffic death are counted as such, regardless of the time period in which they occur (unlike many official road traffic surveillance data sources, where road traffic death data are based on a 30-day definition following a road traffic crash). WHO applies certain criteria to ascertain the quality of this death registration data and where the death registration data were considered to be of high quality these data were used for this report.

You did ask!

Anyone actually know the exact location of the accident ?

It looks like it's the west end of Maenam beach?

Looking at the image, the sea is not rough.... despite winds lately the sea around the coast has been quite calm lately....

Currently the tides are very very low, which might have caused the boat to hit rocks that would normally be OK. (?)

For those who assume the contrary ... the major speed boat do follow strict safety regulations ... Not sure about the company involved, never heard of them...

Most of these boats are licenced to carry 32 to 40 depending on the boat and seating .... and never known them to go over these limits, I've used them many times.

I do agree if some companies choose to do the trips, when others cancelled there is some blame to be had there.

Condolences to the families.

»It looks like it's the west end of Maenam beach?«

I was also wondering where – tried to enlarge a couple of the photos, but couldn't figure it out; the larger building and the mast-like tower don't make me recall anything from Maenam. Perhaps it's Thong Sala at Koh Phangan, there's a pretty high communication mast..?

The sea can look extremely calm close to land, but waves can be fairly unpleasant rough coming just a little out on the sea. Both ends of Phangan normalle have pretty high waves – perhaps due to stream..? – someone with local maritime experience can probably explain much better than me...

Another English language Thai newspaper writes:

»

The Aang Thong Discovery 3 left Mu Ko Ang Thong National Park and was heading to Lomphraya pier near Wat Na Phra on Koh Samui when it capsized at an area known as Lam Khai (Cape Khai) at abot 5pm.

«

However, I cannot find Lam Khai or Cape Khai on Google Map...

Could be a mis-spelling of Laem Yai? Or Laem Khai could be the unmarked cape to the north of Laem Yai.

I found a map with locates Ao KaKi (KaKi Bay) on the north side of Laem Yai. An article above says the boat was "near the coast near Kakee island" - so it has to be around that vicinity.

Edit: This rock might be "Kakee Island" https://goo.gl/maps/g4KKN9ZHfMA2

Edit: The 'unmarked' cape just north of Laem Yai is called Laem Na Hin Daeng. https://goo.gl/maps/odWxiDo9PGy

Maybe the news outlets could start giving these stories the same treatment they gave the Red Bull heir story yesterday:

"Transport officials talk tough, again, on clearing up rogue taxi drivers, again"

A government department with its own domain name using a Hotmail email account pretty much says it all.

Relief measures will be taken swiftly for rainstorm victims.

...but nothing will be done proactively to mitigate any flooding in any of the 13 provinces.

Thailand: hub of band-aid fixes.

Thailand's entry in the report:

9789241565066_eng.pdf

The proposal detailed that over 22 billion baht will be left over at the end of fiscal 2016 due to state projects not completing in their timeframe.

So if a project isn't completed within some arbitrary timeframe, the funds for it are clawed back leaving the project to remain incomplete and anything already spent wasted?

Or is it just easier for the money to 'disappear' if it's all in the one location?

Deport? Or extradite?

Assuming the presence of the representative from Interpol HQ indicates the latter, but one can never be too sure...

Didnt they say yesterday it was a neon light.... today its a fluro ?

they really are clueless aint they.

I imagine it's a language thing. Do you know the Thai names for neon lights as compared to fluorescent lights? Do you think it's important? Probably the same with whoever wrote the English language version of the story.

Indeed you are correct.

fluorescent light = หลอดนีออน - หลอด = tube; นีออน = neon

neon light = แสงนีออน - แสง = light; นีออน = neon

store more water before the rainy season

Um, shouldn't more water be stored before the dry season?

Considering the NOAA has revised the probability of La Nina conditions developing to 75%, and we all remember what occurred during the last La Nina, wouldn't it be wise to have as much storage capacity available as possible?

I am confused by the photos in the linked article.

The first photo is a library photo of a snake.

The second photo shows the victim in hospital

The third photo shows the squat loo removed from the toilet floor and the snake still entwined in it.

The fourth photo looks like mass murder has just occurred in the toilet! Blood everywhere.

Assuming the time line is the fourth photo is the latest snap, what caused this bloodbath when the report says that the snake will be 'released back to nature'? (In fairness, the report doesn't say that the snake will be released alive back to nature

It could be the third and fourth photos are in the wrong order; the blood is presumably from the victim, and was mopped up before they decided to remove the toilet.