Zooheekock

You're not allowed to quote things written in Thai....in Thai? RIght. OK. This being a sub-forum devoted to Thai news, that obviously makes a lot of sense.

"Public endorsement of the constitution can, instead, be demonstrated through the absence of public dissent," he pointed out.

You got to be kidding me! Who's going to offer-up public dissent under the threat of martial law and arrest. Sounds like a China or North Korea form of govt.

Yes. I liked this too.

Once the constitution had been drafted, he saw no need for a national referendum, because there weren't any clearly conflicting issues.

"Usually, a referendum is required when opinions are split between alternative options; whether society wants A or B. However in the current situation, those alternative options aren't apparent, therefore, a referendum is not necessary."

"Well, we're not going to give you any choice so what's the point of asking whether you like it or not?" Okey dokey. Nice to know where everyone stands.

They're going after everybody, whether Red or Yellow. Good job

Really? Excellent. When can we expect Anupong's arrest?

^^^ What do you think the overthrow of your own government is, if not treason? Perhaps you are not a native speaker of English but that's just what treason means and unarguably that is what Prayuth (and others) did. Hence, he is guilty of treason. As for its being a capital crime, check article 113 of the legal code - using violence or the threat of violence to overthrow the government or to change the constitution is punishable by death. Perhaps you didn't know this but if so, you would be wise to keep your ignorance a little more in mind whilst you post.

Why does Thailand produce such simple minded pooyais?

Because it's much easier to stand up in public and repeat this nonsensical drivel if you are sufficiently stupid that the obvious absurdity of it all completely escapes you.

'The Nation' and 'credibility' are not words which one often encounters together.

This is just the start of the 'softening up' period to provide reasons to reduce the voting power of the poor in the North and NE.

That's been an on-going project since 1932.

^ You are deeply wrong but given the Thai legal system and the eagerness with which these matters are policed, I obviously can't explain why. All I can suggest is that you follow the advice which you have already been given.

As far as I know, no to your question.

Have you spoken to the neighbours? Done in the correct way, that may have some success but having to endure annoying dogs is, sadly, just one of the features of life in Thailand.

I am not offering an opinion because it would frankly illegal to do so at this point in time. One of the reasons for promoting it is to cast that net. Read history and the results of these type of things and one will be able to know for themself how they feel about it - well as long as those materials are not yet banned that is.

No it is not illegal, actually it is encouraged. See many speeches of the King. It is encouraged to modify/improve/adjust/discuss or drop these projects. As long as I know there wasn't a single case at court for not agreeing with some projects. Lese Majeste covers something complete different than farmer methods.

Given the post-coup spike in charges, your comments are foolish in the extreme.

^ I just tried that. You can completely mis-stress the words and they are still recognized as correct so I'm not sure that it's going to help much with problems such as /ˈti:ʧə/ vs /ti:ˈʧa:/ (besides, if you're a teacher, you should be doing this yourself, not relying on some IT substitution).

The problem (or at least one problem) with speech recognition is that it has a very different goal to accent training. If you're designing a speech recognition program, your goal is to make the recognition broad enough to encompass the differences in pronunciation which occur between speakers (and actually within the output of the same speaker), though not so broad as to mis-recognize words. Accent training has to pick one accent and force you as close as possible to that model. The former is naturally inclusive whereas the latter is naturally exclusive.

Well, who would have guessed. This is actually yet another tediously stupid what-I-hate-about-Thais/Thailand thread. You don't get many of those on this forum, do you?

Kitsune - I don't know whether you are a liar or not but you have certainly shown yourself to be a rude and unpleasant individual. I'd be willing to be bet my house that the problems you have are nothing to do with language and everything to do with your personality. So a suggestion for you: stop worrying about learning Thai because even in the wildly improbable case that you become fluent, taxi drivers are probably still going to hate you. Instead, start learning how to behave in public and how not instantly to rub people up the wrong way. I think you find that a much more productive use of your time.

If I was in your country and I would the host country care about what happened to me?

Yes.

So why should my thai people pay money for stupid tourists.

Because, just on the most selfish of grounds, it pays. Tourism accounts for somewhere between 10% and 15% of GDP (that's including indirect benefits) so the outrageously poor handling of this by the authorities at every level is incredibly stupid and incredibly self-defeating. If, instead of having a useless police force, a sexist General mouthing off in public and one absurdly stupid idea after another trotted out in public, you invest a little in having a vaguely competent police force who prevent young people getting raped and murdered, you get to make lots of money from young people coming to your country. It's not hard to work out.

^ Good point. In any case, the banks all have repo property for sale. I can't speak for their national policies but when I was looking for land a few years ago, the land and houses which the banks were selling were, as far as I could tell, all priced in line with what I saw elsewhere.

The whole world understands what a bicycle is. When you say "push bike"

it sounds like it has no pedals -- only frame, wheels and seat.

From the OED

push-bicycle, -cycle, an ordinary bicycle, propelled by the rider, as distinguished from one driven by a motor; push-bike colloq., a push-bicycle; hence as v. intr., to ride a push-bicycle; also push-biking vbl. n.;

Though even if - for unknown reasons - you are incapable of using a dictionary, it's still entirely obvious from the context what the word means.

In answer to my own question, it seems like there has been a pretty sharp increase in exposure to short-term, international debt which, in light of changes to American policy, now looks highly unwise. Stow the sails and batten the hatches.

Household debt in Thailand, which makes up 84 percent of the country’s GDP

Yikes. That's not good. I wonder how badly banks have exposed themselves to international markets to finance this (a la Northern Rock). Could get a little nasty, there.

...a sense of confidence rather than fear that the dogs are picking up on and they will likely steer clear because of that confidence

Yes. These dogs live on a narrow ledge, stuck between needing to steer clear of humans who are going to give them a whack (or worse) and finding a decent and reliable source of food, so, provided they get clear clues, they seem fairly good at intuiting how to respond to people. If you make it clear to them that you will take absolutely no nonsense, they'll nearly always give you a wide berth (though with a few I-can-'ave-you-any-time-I-want barks thrown in from a safe distance).

The dogs were probably Thai ridgeback (top photo) and Bangkaew (bottom picture judging from it's tail).

Running around in the road? It's possible but a bit unlikely. More probable that they were just everyday, bog standard ma muang.

Generally, I find when dealing with the semi-strays which are everywhere that being as aggressive as possible works wonders. Generally, you can leave them alone but if they're being a pain in the arse (when one is on heat, for example and you get a rolling mass of a dozen dogs <deleted> and fighting outside your front door all night long), pick up a stick and run straight at the biggest one. Shɪts them right up. And, as somebody else said, they learn very quickly who is going to run toward them and who is going to run away.

I enter their cab and gave them my destination, the same I always state (I've been doing that journey every week for 3 years) which most other cabs get straight away.

You claim to have a degree in linguistics but after three years you are unable to give your address without causing confusion? Hmm. Well, perhaps the driver was just in a crappy mood. Or perhaps it was something else.

Generally, and to no great surprise, one can obviously experience frustration in Thailand and in the past, I have certainly had exchanges where my interlocutor seemed to making exactly zero effort to get past my errors but I have never experienced or heard reliable reports of the kind of thing you describe. And if your other complaints are genuine, you just seem to have a bad teacher. In that case, just leave and go to a better school.

I raised a couple of questions for you

You raised a couple of questions which have either already been answered or which are irrelevant to the topic in hand.

Look, Expat Girl, it's very simple. Those two or three short sentences were about what one would expect employees to say to their bosses and how much value ought to be put on reports of that. Now, you might think that your employees are paragons of truth-telling virtue, untouched by any concern other than a burning desire to report to you their honest, careful and considered reflections on the state of Thailand's political arrangements and perhaps you are correct in this but what was a blindingly straightforward point clearly sailed straight past you and you decided instead to respond to a totally different post (and one entirely of your own imagining) and then, for good measure, you added some points about my character which, whether or not they are correct, you could not possibly know from what I have posted here along with some gratuitous nonsense about the last government. But don't worry, I'm sure, despite that, you are a lovely person in possession of an absolutely first-class intellect. Honest.

You seek out people who are like-minded so it ought not to come as a great shock that the people you talk to tend to think in broadly similar ways as you Says everything that needs to be know about your ability and or willingness (or lack of) to form opinions based on evidence and facts. You just make up whatever fits your fancy and run with it.

You've managed in one elegant move to do exactly what it is you accuse me of. Congratulations.

i find it hard to understand what is absurd about giving my comments from the discussions i have had with staff, if they had said the opposite and they were dissatisfied then i would have reported that, simple. You appear to be a narrow minded individual who is unwilling to listen to opinion or comment. What is unbelievable about the poll result, would you prefer to have seen the previous government in power and things continue the way they were, what would you have done to improve the situation, what were the options ?

My initial thought on reading this was that, given how straightforward my post was, you must be being willfully obtuse. But then I remembered that I had posted on Thaivisa.