thumper101

Not only lengthy prison time... but those found with their hands in the till..... seize ALL their assets including all possessions, investigate all the bank accounts of their entire extended family and staff... find any unexplained money and confiscate the lot of it.

Thais love money, and this to them is worse than prison.

Send them back into the world totally broke.

Any weapons taken off the streets is a good thing, but lets not get too ahead of ourselves here Jamie, in a country with over, what was it you said before ? oh yes, a million weapons at their disposal (UDD militias) What's been found and handed in, is still insignificant in the overall context, if that's indeed the case, then throw in your every day criminal element, and that's probably going to double the amount of illegal weapons.

So yes, the steps and weapons off the streets and out of the hands of the public is a good thing, but bare in mind that even in the UK when there was an amnesty of Rifles (after Hungerford) and handguns ( Dunblane) it didn't stop, nor eradicate the criminal element using weapons in violent crimes.

It is folly to expect that Thailand will rid the country of illegally held weapons, when their borders are as porous as a sponge

It's a long process, but it's slowly achieving some pretty decent results.

The ide is to offer up an amnesty to get the guns out of the hands of people who no longer wish to have them.

That then separates them from those who DO want to have them (for whatever reason).

Then after the amnesty, comes the real crackdown where those caught with such weapons will be thrown in prison for a lot longer than if they were caught before the crackdown.

If those are handed down 20 year terms for simply having them in their possession, I would imagine that a shitload more will be abandoned.

Also you have to consider the amount of people that throw into rivers and klongs or simply buried or thrown in the trash and still are not recovered yet.

It is my guestimate that a huge % will discard and not hand in.

Just offer up an amnesty with fast track registration centres positioned at all employment offices, then let the employment office act as the agent between employer and worker cutting out the need for traffickers.

All Cambodians carry ID cards... that should be used for validation which can be made instant upon registration...

By the time these Cambodians return, I can see that they may find work is harder to find in Thailand..

Also, just before we enter ASEAN 2015 where there could be a huge influx of people from all over the region, the Cambodians may well just realize their error.

She was convicted of smuggling drugs into LOS with the intent to supply... ie. Drug trafficking.

The court dismissed her defence of 'personal use'.. therefore they have sentenced her as a smuggler/dealer.... What for 0.25g???

Crazy... what the hell do they think she was doing with it?... cutting it down to 0.0025g wraps worth 50 Satang each?????

This is purely ridiculous... of course it was for personal use... But the horrendous thing is. She knows that the court will not lose face for its major <deleted>-kup and reduce it down... even with public pressure. A true victim of Thainess.

To achieve the goal, vendors of fertilizers, pesticides, seeds, farming equipment and land owners have agreed to give discounts to rice farmers.

Even though I am a fan of the democracy restoration team I don't really agree with this. So only rice farmers get the discounts? So what is stopping rubber farmers and corn farmers paying a small "token" fee to rice farmers to buy the product of them? The rice farmers could in fact buy all the product from the vendors and sell it on at a profit.

​Why should the vendors suffer profit loss at the behest of the rice farmers. So because the rice farmers have become accustomed to populism and had no drive to improve farming efficiencies is to the detriment of the vendors bottom line?

Give them their 1500 baht a ton subsidy while phasing in the reform that Buddha Issara outlined (I have Thai version if you want it). It is based on His Majesties "New Theory" model (look no further than the 1000 baht note to see a picture of the model) and mirrors other efforts found throughout the world attempting to break the back of the oppression and exploitation that results from dependence of populist policies and globalism. In fact the Junta reform has an uncanny similarity to Buhhda Issara's model and will no doubt be embraced by the populous.

The above short term "solutions" are a token of good will and are to be appreciated, but it is open to corruption and it's counter productive to the current mind set of reform. Buddha Issara's model is not. Self sufficiency never is.

​Why should the vendors suffer profit loss at the behest of the rice farmers.

Because when PTP launched the rice sceme the very same vendors increased the prices of fertilizers, pesticides, seeds, farming equipment and the landowners the lease of land.

That is the EXACT problem.....

NCPO should be doing a study on the fertilizer, pesticide producers/vendors and millers' profit margins increase since the rice scam came into function so they could also line their greedy pockets at the expense of the taxpayer.

Then force the people across the entire supply chain who enriched themselves with the exploitation, to drop their prices back to 'modest' levels.

Basically tell them..... 'the rice scam is over.... you can drop your prices again'.

That organically brings back down the production costs to reality levels.... Then tell the rice farmers to do other things 'out of season'.... they should have about 7 months of free time between crops to get work in all these jobs that have been kindly vacated by silly Cambodians.

Hopefully, his execution won't be botched.

He won't be executed. Germany does not have the death penalty.

At 89, what's the point... He probably won't live to reach the date anyway.

Well done.... We won't be hearing from him any more.

He obviously doesn't have the same sort of money as Chalerm or many other 'rich' socialite families from Bangkok.

I would be freezing the accounts under suspicion first of all.

People who suspect they may be targets will try to drain the accounts fast.

oh lordy lord i'm loving this. I hope the Generals next mission is to drive all the crazy red farangs from Thaivisa

I would certainly chip in towards their air fares.

The Labour Ministry has said it would launch a project to systematically move documented workers to the areas abandoned by the departed Cambodians.

This sounds like they are the property of the Junta and they will just be moved from one paddock to another. Where is their freedom to work for an employer of their choice? You can own a buffalo but you can't own a human and do with them as you please.

Sounds a lot like slavery doesn't it.

But they just finished explaining to the US that they are no longer doing this

Obviously Chooka is not the only one who can't read.

Or is this selective reading by you lot of Shin supporters who have displayed this trait for over 7 months now?

Yes it is.

Or are you openly accusing the military of enforcing slavery and human trafficking??.... because it bloody well reads that way to me, and I am sure a head military guy will read it the same.

Watch your back.

The NBTC appears to be one of the most dysfunctional and incompetent bureaucracies in LOS.

Well seeing as it is a State organisation, I would assume that there have been certain things going on regarding corruption that need to be shoehorned under a very large carpet now that they realise that the NCPO are scrutinizing everything that concerns huge amounts of money moving around.

The coupon scheme is a veritable scammer's banquet if ever I saw one... 25 Billion.... what that money could do for essential services... TV is not an essential service.... Prioritize please.

If a family can not scrape together the one time payment for a cheap set top box (250 baht for a used one)... Then I suggest they go and find work.... Instead of goggling at the box.

It's official.... Muslims really do love to live in the stoneage.

Why not burn all the buildings down and live in caves as well.

What is it with all this technology... leave that for computer science classes.

When I was at school, we never had smart classrooms and tablets. They were still to be invented. We had good, highly qualified teachers, a few books, a blackboard. paper and pens... We all received a very good standard of education.

Hre we go again... No desire to fix the problem, just throw money at it and hope it goes away for another year.

Let's keep the farmers with their hands out, rather than educate them or subsidize materials.

I could pull off an easy con with land subsidies just to het the 1,700 per rai out of the governmeny's 'free money for all' pot.

It is not hard to rent cheap land at say 40 rai parcels and have many of them all over... plant a very conservative crop... don't bother with fertilizers or anything expensive like that... get it harvested and your profit is the subsidy. 68,000 per 40 rai parcel.

I am sure there are plenty of Thais out there that will suss out many different scams to cream out the cash... With subsidized materials, you can't really do that.

Bunch of amateurs.

Ah yes. I guess by now he is very well aware of where the cambodian border lies.

What an arrogant idiot. Maybe Cambodia wi free him in return for papers and stamps for 1mn labourers.

My wife told me that they made a video of themselves as they walked into Cambodia and said that they knew they were on Cambodian soil.

I saw it. He absolutely deservedly got slammed with his charges. I photographed a bridge I China. Camera confiscated.

He marched into Cambodia like an adventure tourist with channel 3 or 5 in tow.

Nationalist idiot.

What about all the illegal Cambodians that cross Thailand's borders without even a passport?... So if Thailand threw them all in the poley, you would of course condone that.

Or do we see double standards?

How many claim to be workers while they are actually spies, or there to create havoc on behalf of Thaksin?

I suppose that is alright then?

Meanwhile, the police are doing daily raids in Chiang Mai for illegals.

Sorry Charlie, but with the history this country has on slavery, abuse and trafficing, in addition to the police and mlitary who have murderd to many migrants in the past and contine to gun down Cambodians who cross the border to log, no one is going to trust them.

"Don't Thai to me" they say in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore. They know Thais are full of it. The Cambodians have been through strict military dictatorships before. That didn't work out too well for them, so I can understand why they don't trust the Thai army. I wouldn't either.

Well you know where the airport is..... goodbye and good luck in your new paradise wherever that may be.

It will take some time for the situation to settle down again. But the Cambodians can't find jobs in their home country so they will return to Thailand.

Until which point. They won't come back on a promise.

180 k employees. 900 factories. That takes a year with a coordinated effort.

Who cares if they don't come back.... others will come instead and fill the void. It is now only about 7% of the migrant workforce that have left, and they are the losers here.

A year to coordinate my ar-se.

If anything, this is just a mass strike... Nothing more than industrial action to get pay rises... well yes... they will be achieved, but that will just trigger a flood from Myanmar and Laos to take the jobs at the better rate.

But personally, I couldn't care less about this any more... this news has become boring now.

The amount of kids being counted out of the country surely are not workers, but they get added to the numbers anyway to make it look more sensational. If they ARE workers, then that is shameful and I am glad they are gone.

Rohingya, Thai shrimp slave labor, sex trafficking, child labor, massive exodus of "illegal" Cambodians, military dictatorship, no arrests, no trials, no prosecutions, pickup truckloads of migrant workers, payoffs and poaching land in the north, no news follow up, over 6,000 killings for ten years in the south. Everything augurs well for Thais. They are "holding their breath," but doing nothing else.

And all that happening on Thaksin's watch... Including the 2 coups, and yes..... Thaksin is responsible for the last government and the latest coup.

Anyway.... Imagine what could have been done with the money wasted on populist policies that could have been used to clamp down on all the injustices and misery in Thailand.

Everything needs money to operate something.... there could have been a very effective ministry set up to thwart attempts to exploit humans in a degrading and ruthless way.... but no..... 25 Billion for set top box vouchers is about the limit of Thai administraters.

Hi all.

I am interested in getting into fertilizer production, or even import and packaging for retail.

I want to try and introduce a more cost effective fertilizer for the rice industry.

I have done a bit of research, but not found much pertaining to Thai rice production or what is best for typical Thai soil compositions. Seems like a lot of mixed and conflicting info out there.

So thought I would float this on here, as it seems that quite a few farang are into crop farming.... what do you or the typical Thai farmer use?

Any info would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

I must have missed something, or?

Coupons for 2.5 million households, with a value of 1000 baht equals 2.5 billion, not 25 billion.

What are the 2.5 million households? A small part of the total population of 66 million people.

Or are they the remaining households, the only ones that have no digital receiver or tv?

There are 25 million households in Thailand. So that would have been a typing error.

On the other hand, this is just going to be corruption abound.

I can see that most people will claim their voucher, even if they already have a set top box, and then selling the voucher for say 500 cash to the shop who will claim the 1000 from the scheme.

This is crazy, and I am waiting for it to happen.

I also wonder how many of these vouchers will be converted to cash from the scheme via people involved directly with the running of the scheme using falsified applications???

They need to scrasp this scheme along with many others. They are far too easy to manipulate to channel money into corrupt bank accounts.

If a household can't afford to scrape together the 1000 baht, then they should be out working on jobs vacated by the Cambodians to get the money together...... not sitting at home watching TV.

25 Bn baht is a lot of money, and should be diverted to things that are necessary.... TV is NOT a necessity in life.

25 Bn baht can go a long way towards building say.... government owned fertiliser production facilities to produce fertilizer at cost for the rice farmers... It could probably build a few of them.

28 projects for 'revision'?

They should not be 'revising' them, they should be 'auditing' them.

Have been there twice, with two decades in between the two visits. There was nothing much so see anyway, the fossilized shell masses looked like slabs of concrete. But I am very sorry for all the people making a living there, selling food/drinks/souvenirs to Thai and foreign tourists.

They may well have been slabs of concrete with shells embedded in them by hand. It won't be the first time I have come across a fake tourist attraction such as so called 4000 year old cave paintings that in contrast to cave paintings I have seen in France, UK etc.... are completely new in appearance.

I am talking what is supposed to be ocra hand prints look more like TOA special offer red vinyl silk emulsion. The cave flood out completely during the monsoons.... no way a cave painting can preserve that long, especiallywithout fading one bit.

But hey... this is Thailand and we are farang with cash on the hip.