Krataiboy

5 hours ago, DoctorG said:

Poland is the biggest net recipient of EU aid - Bloomberg

 

Of course they would vote to stay in.

Now we know why the EU mafia is keen to keep their hands in our pockets. This year the UK is due to cough up 15.5 billion euros to boost the EU's battered budget. 

Without our contribution, the other big fish like Germany and France would face having to pay more to bail out the Poles and the federation's other tiddler economies.

A load of cobblers, as one would expect from an outfit with a vested interest in forcing us to swap good old reliable cash for plastic and inevitable debt.

It's hard to imagine even Thais, most of whom benefit from living in the world's seventh-biggest shadow economy, being daft enough to shoot themselves in the wallet.

The much-vaunted benefits of going totally cashless need to be compared with the dire consequences of handing banks and governments total control over our money.

What price freedom when you have nothing with which to buy it?

8 hours ago, Samui Bodoh said:

The EC simply does not have the credibility to conduct the election anymore; proof is an announcement on how they will count votes/allocate seats occurring many days after the election itself.

 

The election, on the surface, was designed to restore some legitimacy to the Thai government following the latest coup; this thin veneer has already been wiped away. Unfortunately, Thailand does not have many strong institutions upon which to fall back on in times of dispute, and thus doesn't have an agreed upon dispute-resolution mechanism. And, when there isn't an agreed upon dispute-resolution mechanism, bad things happen.

 

Batten down the hatches everyone; things are going to get... interesting.

 

 

 

What the Thai people have been grudgingly granted in their "free" vote is democracy in a straitjacket. This has been o the cards ever since the junta pushed through a new constitution which entrenches military control at the expense of political parties.

Under its terms, it was virtually impossible for a single party to win a majority in the 500-member lower house. This gives the 250 junta-selected senators a critical role in parliament - including choosing a prime minister (guess who) who will no longer be required to be an elected member of parliament.

The NCPO is empowered to reserve Senate seats for its key members, including the permanent secretary of defense; the supreme commander-in-chief; the commanders-in-chief of the army, navy, and air force; and the police commissioner-general. 

The icing on the cake for the junta is that the constition binds both the new government and parliament to implementing their “20-year reform plan.” Effectively, the generals have highjacked Thailand's democratic and economic future.

5 hours ago, lannarebirth said:

 

I would submit the best way to protect yourself from the pollution is to drive out leaders who find large segments of the population expendable.

Reckon you've just come up with great new meme. . . political pollution! 

Who said we weren't prepared for a No Deal Brexit!

12 minutes ago, Brigante7 said:

I think it's sad that instead of helping these poor people with their problems society panders to them. Surely getting them help is better for them?

 

 

 

Brigante7.

Clearly, Tannia doesn't need much help, having achieved celebrity status as a film maker and now as Thailand's first transgender MP. 

It will be interesting to see what this trail-blazer comes up with in terms of spreading enlightenment and a rational way of accommodating the "trans revolution".

1 hour ago, bowerboy said:

 

Given the gravity of the situation and the 6M votes I am pretty certain he is saying that the Thai’s are a spineless bunch of apathetic drones with no moral compass and no drive and ambition and no ability to think for themselves.

 

How many students are there in Bangkok? Where were they? All they had to do was go and stand there...there would of been no risk.

Easier for them to stay home and watch events unfold on their smartphones. Just more virtual reality, except for the guy facing nine years jail.

If their was a Prat of the Year award, the architect of this latest act of official lunacy would be in the running.

an air of frustration

Kind of sums it all up.

Traditional Thai food is pretty healthy, apart from too much use of the frying pan and unhealthy palm oil. The problem for Thais is their growing love affair with fashionable Western-style fast food.

It pains me to see already obese Thai youngsters waddling into shopping mall cinemas clutching buckets of popcorn and outsize styrene containers of cola. In the end, it all comes down to parental influence - and we know how how that tends to play out here.

Probably waiting for a better offer from somebody wearing khaki.

No wonder the Thai banking supremo in the picture is grinning. When Thailand becomes a cashless society, all your money will be his.

The irony of all this agonizing over education is that in a few decades most of the trades and professions for whcih the current generation of youngsters are being trained will have disappeared.

A technological revolution like the one now scarily replacing millions of human workers with robots and AI is predicted to occur every ten years.

Nobody has any idea what the needs of the labour market will be in a decade or so, let alone how to equip future generations with the skills needed to earn a living in an ever-changing world..

One thing is for sure: the current global educational model, created to serve the needs of the first Industrial Revolution and little changed in essence since, is doomed.

Do we really need schools, colleges and universities when digital technology has put self-education at everyone's fingertips?

I feel for Thai guys, having to grow a pair upstairs as well as down to qualify as "ladyboys" and dodge the draft.

In the progressive UK any guy who wishes will soon able to do legally self-identify as a woman without having to undergo surgery or even medical treatment. The same right extends to women under proposed new trans-friendly "equality" laws.

"Adults will be able to change their birth certificates at will without a doctor’s diagnosis, while non-binary gender people will be able to record their gender as 'X'”, according to the Independent newspaper. 

If only this legislation had been on the books in the Fifties when I was called up for my National Service.  Avoiding the line of duty in those days involved the indignity of pleading flat feet or piles!

. . . mother nature was to blame

Blatant discrimination from a pillar of the patriarchy.

There is, of course, absolutely no connection between official inertia over the rampant

pollution of our food, water and air and the United Nations Agenda 21/30 programme, predicated on a massive reduction in the human population.

Anybody who believes otherwise is obviously just another of those nutty conspiracy theorists. 

7 hours ago, Bang Bang said:

Bullets will fly

blood will flow

men will die

but their women and children will not mourn

the sacrifice of the brave for the land to which they were born

birds will grow quiet and the wind will slow

but after interminable darkness will dawn the day

that sets Thailand free

and once the sun breaks on that fine morning

it will not set in a thousand years

 

 

 

Stirring stuff. Congrats, assuming you wrote it!

The reporter said there looked to be not many tourists - though he put that down to the economy and the time of the year. 

Or maybe they took one look at the state of the water lapping the new beach and did a runner.

No effort or money was spared to ensure the Prime Minister and conference delegates who visited in Chiang Mai recently were protected from the dangers of the air pollution blanketing the city.

As the parent of a daughter studying in the city, I am frankly less concerned for the the welfare of a handful of itinerant VIP's than for the fate of one million permanent residents and an entire generation of local children most at risk.

She tells me she and her fellow students are suffering respiratory problems and nosebleeds because of sky-high pollution levels their campus. Queues of coughing youngsters at local hospitals are clear evidence that the problem is equally serious at state schools and other educational establishments across the city.

They can't all cram into the so-called "safe zone" at the Convention Centre (which turned out not to be safe after all!),

Public appeals for donations of face-masks to make up the official shortfall are a pathetic sticking plaster which cannot cover up disgraceful official inertia at both local and national level extending over decades. 

Enough is enough. 

The government must make emergency funding available to enable all schools in Chiang Mai -and other pollution "hot spots" in the North - to be fitted with air purifiers and pollution level monitors.  If strapped for cash, cut back on those lavish junkets to foreign climes - or sell those redundant Chinese submarines.