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I wonder if the army chief will now make a statement a la the fake bomb detectors and urge the public and media to leave this story alone pending a " full investigation " ?

A great inspiration to the world famous Thai documentary film industry ...

If the ICJ finds for Thailand will they produce a film on the great victory and if the court finds in favour of Cambodia will it be a Hollywood style Vietnam war epic that " while we lost we actually won " ?

7. But even so, the fact that nearly 40 per cent of this year's accidents involved neither alcohol or speeding remains unsettling. The next thing we learn, though, may offer some explanation.

8. More than 222,000 motorists were charged with driving without a license during Songkran. Some may have "forgotten" their licenses at home, but there must have been a fair number of amateur drivers or riders out there who didn't need to be drunk or speeding to be involved in accidents.

This just identifies that the driving standards are poor. The fact that 222,000 motorists were charged for driving without a licence tells us that there is a huge number of un-trained drivers / riders on the road. Not just in Songkran, but all year round.

The solutions are simple: The current licensing procedures are comically simple. Improve the quality of training and testing and the accident stats should also reduce automatically.

The idea that these articles (and Police or whomever else comments) tries to blame alcohol, speeding, no helmets etc is all mute point. It is the current driving culture which must be blamed. It is the people involved with permitting the masses to drive untrained and without care of concept of consequence for their thoughtless actions (for the most part).

Attempting to lower next years Songkran stats is simply not realistic, especially when attempting simplistic and publicity grabbing crack downs which do very little other than create a photo opportunity. These 'simplistic' measures show that the authorities really don't care a great deal, there is no long term effort to improve this situation. The response and yearly crack down is typically lazy and lacks thought.

Improvement can start now - but it has to be intelligent improvement. By Intelligent improvement I am talking about a re-vamp of the licensing structure. With improvements in driver education, testing and licensing the next generations will reap the benefits in reduced stats, not just over a headline hungry 6 days, but throughout the year.

In the short term: If Policing was able to make inroads into ensuring more drivers / riders were correctly licensed, that might help reduce accident numbers but until the 'masses' i.e. the majority of drivers / riders themselves change, change won't take place and we won't see any improvement.

I was given a lift home to my village by a neighbour and in front was a very overloaded pick up which was all over the road prompting my neighbour to decry driving standards etc. Then she burst into laughter and said ' I can't really speak, I bought my licence. " Yes dear, you and millions of others.

IMO they have to change the law here

Giving MP's parliamentary immunity is giving them a license to do whatever they please

They should be accountable for their actions just like every other Somchai and Somchita.

Politicians are up to their necks in all sorts of things at the beat of times and this immunity status just makes things worse. I wonder too if his stauts within PTP and the red shirts added to a belief of being " untouchable ". If it wasn't so serious it would be funny when we consider the names he produced to guarantee his god behaviour. Thai politicians really do live in their own little world.

18 cases of death over a 'birdflu' in China with more than 1Bn people and Thailand panics and sends out health warnings?

Why not, there was a bomb in Boston and the Thai Police opened a war room. ! LOL

There are 52 million Hispanics in US and a 3000 km land border with Mexico. Does every American citizen speak at least some Spanish? No, because there is no pressure to learn. The immigrant learns the language of the host country. As long as there will be more Laotians or Burmese coming to Thailand for education or work, they will learn Thai and not the other way around. I doubt we'll see the Isaan people crossing the border to Cambodia in order to find better paid jobs. They'd rather go to Phuket or Pattaya and learn the local version of Thai language.

what if the host country doesn't have any official language?

It is always good to speak more than one language and even better to speak more than 2 language.

China has regional dialects such as Cantonese which have more speakers than many national languages such as Thai. Chairman Mao said a dialect was " a language without an army or navy " but all host countries have a national language even if, Like Singapore, there is more than one

"Yaowapa was elated by the result, saying that she had little time for the election campaign. She attributed the victory to Pheu Thais national policies."

Interesting remark from the candidate for this Constituency MP seat. Mind you, a 'safe seat' tends to make people somewhat careless towards their constituency, especially when members there keep on asking for democratic involvement in selecting their candidate.

An IN Channel report on her victory highlighted her comment that she had been too busy to get involved in electioneering. She will fit in nicley in parliament where session after session is cancelled because of a lack of members

A lot of the commonsense thoughts are negated by what actually happens here irrespective of how good or bad teachers are since parents can buy entry to schools at all levels, buy grades and of course degrees. On good authority I can say Thaksin gave Bangkok University the cash to build a new library so his daughter would be admitted since she didn't have the necessary grades. At Ramkhamheng Uni when his son was caught taking papers into an exam the vice-president made a stupid statement suggesting that cheating was no big deal, of course junior T wasn't trying to cheat as he was only carrying a " letter ". Things like this are commonplace at all levels of Thai " education "

"Although some Thais living along the borders can use their neighbours' languages,..."

Even this is something of an overstatement because almost none of the these Thais can read or write Lao, Khmer, Burmese or Malay. They can just speak the dialect of their village and most are close to illiterate in Thai.

This is so accurate. In parts of rural Isan the medium of instruction in primary school is the local dialect and as a teaching colleague put it to me " Thai is virtually learning a second language ".

Another hollow promise (policy) and another fail. The PTP are suffering from verbal diarrhea and care not about truth, they are only interested in tagging a fictitious (bloated) figure to any project, to allow the clan coffers to be continually filled. They have NO interest in Thai people in general who are being brainwashed purely for their vote. Sad, so very sad.

Why does PTP not come as close as they can to telling the truth for once ans issue a statement that nothing gets done until the amnesty bill is in place, the waters part and Mr. T is home running things from Bkk and not on Skype

Get ready for yellow shirts to come out, just to name a few things to come

Democracy and free speech is alive and well in Thailand as The Post has reported that on the evening of Sat 20 April Red Shirts disrupted a speech being given by Abhisit at a university in Si Sa Ket and forced him out of the building. As usual it's their way and not at all so I doubt there will be any condemnation from the government or anyone involved with PTP

Can Thai newspapers find a new verb instead of "slam". I feel like I'm reading a sixth grade current events essay every week.

Watch the IN Channel morning news show at 07.00 as the female anchors, both Western educated, are in love withe the phrase "...has come out to say " and everything is " basically "

This park chief should NEVER have the fear of doing his job correctly, All the powers that be above his station should support him, this is what they pay him for, Isn't it a shame that a decent man should have to report this,and fear losing his job.

The government do NOT deserve good Rangers, Shame on you Thailand,,and as for you park chief--stick at it with all the luck that goes with it----GOOD MAN

I doubt he will say too much more or name names if he knows any as he's putting his job and possibly his life on the line

If the DSI need to make a case they only need to speak to teachers (Thai and Western) especially at Montford College, Chiang Mai (part of the St Gabriel's Foundation). Fees are exorbitant - extras are blatantly expected (50,000 baht to resit an examination) the teacher gets nothing and is told to pass the kid - dozens of fiddles and corruption - ask them about Montford students who did not have the intelligence to pass one single examination and yet were admitted to Chiang Mai University - ask them about the head of a section who, just before a Ministry of Education visit told all students in his section that "if asked a question (by the Ministry of Education) it is sometimes better to lie!"

During my teaching days in Bangkok this organisation had a foul reputation amongst teachers but has always managed to present the image of high quality education so no shortage of students paying big money

Surely they have to do something soon.

It is not just the expats, just about all nationalities, which are being hit hard but the businesses that trade with overseas companies could find it getting rough with their customers seeking cheaper suppliers.

Inevitably it will hit the tourist areas with people who come here for a holiday and the ex-pat living off his pensions, finding their currency is no longer enough due to a 10 -25% loss in value in the last 6 months. Yes most expatswill stay and touristswill still come to Thailand but less Baht means less goods being bought.

This is made worse by inflation here which has been quite noticeable over the past year.

Will not hold my breath though, the powers that be in the Thai government will continue to do the same as always, talk but no action.

Some great points in this post. PTP are totally distracted by a certain priority issue and I'm sure there is a certain pride in the Bat's strength so intervention, although necessary, is perhaps lose of face and the people who make these decisions don't have to worry where their next baht is coming from.

I live on pensions which are now worth less in baht than 10 years ago and as 1 of them has to go through 2 currency exchanges it really suffers. A friend has just returned home after a holiday here and from the day he arrived the exchange rate fell so by the end of his time he was having to be very careful which isn't exactly what a holiday is about unless you are a backpacker and there's no disrespect intended. My friend always takes a lot of gifts back but this time didn't and that's not good for the tourist industry, local shops and traders

BANGKOK, April 19 Thai Deputy Prime Minister/Finance Minister Kittiratt Na-Ranong admitted today that he has contemplated firing the central bank governor on a daily basis, but has not done so as he is not legally bound to raise the axe.

Does this mean that he can't legally sack the bot governor?

In which case the headline is extremely misleading

This is an oh so Thai way of mishandling an important issue. The question of dismissal should not be aired in public as the governor's position is now compromised as his competence is in doubt. If the Finance Minister has the authority to remove the governor and he's not doing his job he should be interviewed about the matter and told to fall in line with government policy but if the situation is too serious get on with the sacking. If the Finance Minister has no authority he should have kept his mouth shut instead of trying to look big and get cheap publicity

If these two have been at odds no doubt " Face " comes into play and the Finance Minister has managed a very public stab in the back

Yeah...........and like none of you ever went into bars or clubs when you were 17 huh?

Mind you, for some, 17 is more than likely a very distant memory.

None of the nightclubs in my homecountry would have admitted me when I was 17, because I was underage and they would have broken several laws if they did. Touché!

Do you know who I am, who my dad is ? Of course you do he has money in this place

"Seventeen-year-old Tortrakul told police that he returned from an RCA nightclub"

I thought the legal age for visiting such establishments was 21?

As our American friends say " lots of red flags " on this play. Under-age in a nightclub, reporting to the police 3 days after the event and walking home late at night. OK, under age drinking is commonplace and maybe it wasn't suitable to go to police straight away because his speech was slurred and memory blurred. I would have thought a fine upstanding public figure would have wanted this kept quiet and would have written it off to experience for the boy

Thailand's contribution to the new brotherhood of south east Asian nations..... poisoning their neighbours youth with crap tobacco products. Nice.

Yes, anti-smoking campaigns here but let other countries sort their problem out as long as money can be made selling to them