Saladin

This week I went to CAT in Chiang Mai's Maya shopping centre to top up my monthly wi-fi package. It took them more than 30 minutes. It should have taken less than 5 minutes. At 520 baht for the month they are sure not going to make much profit. Their systems are way behind the times.

The pickup is on the correct side of the road which would seem to indicate that the motorcycle was not

20 years or so ago tests were done on water in the US which found that US bottled water was purer than European bottled water but that the purest of all was New York tap water.

Where do the new rules now leave musicians? I didn't see them on the list of prohibited occupations. Thailand has many first class guitarists, singers, and vocalists but pianos, saxophones, trumpets, and trombones are as rare as hens' teeth. Banning Farang  residents and visiting musicians from overseas from playing was supposed to preserve jobs for Thais but all it does is to stop Thais from learning, growing, and cross pollinating. It is to be hoped that Thailand is now emerging from the Dark Ages and we will see a vibrant music scene develop. It should be noted that Thailand's much loved late King was an accomplished jazz musician and composer.

This is all Alice In Wonderland stuff. It should be abundantly clear to anybody with half a brain that no measures can work if the traffic police aren't forced to get off their collective asses and vigorously  enforce the existing rules. Everything else is academic.

I would suggest that they are underpaid, under-supervised, and overstaffed, and one step in the right direction would be cull their numbers, retrain the remainder, and increase their salaries.

On 9/1/2018 at 4:33 PM, possum1931 said:

3 Nothing wrong with motorbikes in the hands of responsible people.

 

7 Nothing wrong with parked motorbikes and vendors as long as they are not obstructing the footpath.

The point is that even in the hands of responsible people they still pollute the air, are an assault upon the ears, and are dangerous to everybody. In major cities in China they are electric and silent.

And parked motorbikes and vendors DO obstruct the footpaths in Nimmanhaemin Road, making them impassable and necessitating risking life and limb walking on the road.

You've had 4 years. Why can't you name a specific date?

I am no economist but it seems to me to be inefficient and unnecessarily costly for Donald Duck to deal with so many countries at once on a piecemeal basis. The obvious solution to keeping jobs in America would be to impose a blanket tariff of 100% or more on any imports into the US from anywhere. Problem solved. 

Another solution might be to make US products more cheaply and threaten American producers to become internationally competitive, or go to jail.

I applaud his efforts but might I suggest that if cops are sacked for these reasons then they should never be eligible to work in any government job again.

"Court judges, not police officers, will determine the punishment for people caught driving without required licences". I would have thought that the government determines the penalties, not the court judges. Their job is to enforce them. Drivers and riders either have a valid licence or they don't. Judges using their discretion is just another opportunity for corruption.

While cracking down on licences is laudable it will do very little to improve road safety, for possession of a driver's or rider's licence is no guarantee of competence as is quite apparent in Thailand.

The root cause of the dangerous roads situation is that the police do not enforce the existing traffic rules. Presumably the cops are just carrying out the instructions of their superiors and the roads will never be any safer until such time as there is a purge of the lazy, incompetent, and often corrupt senior cops who are supposed to be directing and controlling their foot soldiers.

Nearly every day in Chiang Mai the police set up a roadside net opposite Maya Shopping Centre to apprehend motor bike riders who are not wearing a helmet and/or having a rider's licence. This  involves no less than eight policemen, plus two officers who sit at a desk writing tickets and collecting the loot. Meanwhile, in Nimmanhaemin Road, Chiang Mai's most popular area for Chinese tourists and only 50 metres away, there is never a police presence. Around 11.15PM every night a convoy of up to 50 motorbikes roars down Nimmanhaemin Road. Many of them are speeding, few riders wear helmets, many don't have lights, some bikes are carrying 3 or even 4 riders, and riders straddle the double lines, with total impunity as there is never a cop to be seen. I count at least 100 infringements in the space of fifteen minutes. Even at modest fines of 200 baht each that's 20,000 baht that could be going into state coffers - not bad for an hour's work. But of more importance, a proactive traffic police force would have a huge impact on improving road safety.

The Thai government has finally done something right. With their unfathomable maze of confusing visa requirements and restrictive work permits they have been working diligently at discouraging foreigners from living here, and it seems that they have been very successful.

It seems to me that retirees are a 'Golden Goose' source of foreign currency for Thailand. Every baht of the incoming pensions gets spent in Thailand and the country doesn't even need to lift a finger to get it, unlike from tourism or exports.

Logically, the Thai government should scrap the 800,000 baht p.a. requirement for a Retirement Visa and embark on a pro-active campaign to encourage foreigners to retire here, with the conditions that their pensions are paid directly into a Thai bank account by their social security departments, and that they take out mandatory health cover. Thailand could quickly double or triple the expat numbers. This is a win-win proposal with no downside that I can see.

I recall a woman being decapitated a few  months back. It's not hard to resolve the problem. Just decree that the electricity authorities and other wire hangers take their surplus wiring away with them or have a government agency do it for them, removing the installed attached wiring at the same time.

Thais take tolerance to stupid lengths.

Oh NOooo - you mean it doesn't work???

31 minutes ago, hotchilli said:

The main issue is safety costs money... and there lays the problem

No one is prepared to cut into profits to make sure any type of transport be it road or sea is fully equipped with personnel trained & competent in it's daily function or in an emergency!! 

Here profits are top of the list with minimal outlay on anything else...

Safety doesn't need to cost more money. It's simply a matter of getting rid of the overpaid dead wood who are heading government departments and replacing them with competent professionals. And Thailand has far too many underpaid policemen who don't do much that is effective. I would suggest sacking half of them and paying the balance a higher salary, improve their training, give them proper direction, and dismiss those who are corrupt and banning them from ever again working in any government job - and that includes the top brass.

3 hours ago, mikebell said:

Meanwhile on the roads over sixty people are killed DAILY (some of them tourists) because there is no policing.  Any comment on that Mr Weerasak?

Nearly every day in Chiang Mai the police set up a roadside block opposite Maya Shipping Centre to check motor bike riders for not wearing a helmet and/or having a rider's licence. And while the former is laudable, the latter has very little relevance to a rider's competence and therefore does nothing for road safety. This police presence involves no less than eight policemen plus two officers who sit at a desk writing tickets and collecting the loot. Meanwhile, in Nimmanhaemin Road which is Chiang Mai's most popular streets for Chinese tourists, and is only 50 metres away, there is no police presence whatsoever. Shortly after 11PM every night a convoy of up to 50 motorbikes roars down Nimmanhaemin Road at excessive speed. Few riders wear helmets, many don't have lights, some bikes are carrying 3 or even 4 riders, and riders straddle the double lines, with impunity.

The root cause of the dangerous roads situation is not the fault of the riders and drivers but rather the police not enforcing the existing traffic rules. And let us not blame the foot soldiers for they are just doing what they are instructed to do by their superiors. A Government purge of the lazy, incompetent, and often corrupt top cops is essential in making the roads safe for Thais and foreign tourists alike.

Apologists can wrap it up in cotton wool and silk but nothing can excuse what the Burmese army and its gangster generals did to these people. In my earlier lifetime, 'Beacons of Democracy' like the US and Australia would have been at the forefront in condemning the disgraceful behaviour  of countries like Myanmar, Saudi, UAE, Israel, and Egypt but now they are complicit in their support of it. It seems that compassion, decency, and democracy are rapidly dying and the average citizen doesn't give a damn.  

Probably GRAB that took over UBER