mfd101

No wonder Thailand is not noted for the English-language skills of its inhabitants.

Politicians are touchy-feely types. Zoom etc is used all the time but nothing beats pressing the flesh with friends & enemies ... if you want a deal.

Big structural change requires big long-term issues (education?) and unmentionables (feudal hierarchy, plutocracy and corruption) to be addressed ... with force if necessary. I don't expect to see it even if I live another 20 years.

Ignorant people in every country criticize their leaders for travelling overseas too much. Yet we live in a one-world conglomeration where everything that's important has international causes & effects - economy & investments, technology & comms, security & defence, population movements, climate change and on & on. If you want your country to be part of the decisions that will affect your country, then you need to accept that your country must be represented at the appropriate levels at the many many international meetings.

Based on those figures, the logic of Thaksin's alleged proposal isn't obvious. That is, it's not obvious that the party-list category is much of a problem for PTP. If MFP had gained 10 more seats than PTP with the constituency seats and equal both with party-list, would he be proposing the opposite?

The notion that Thailand can compete with China either in technical capabilities or on productivity is laughable. A whole world and 50 years of change are needed. Meantime Thailand will continue to slide down the ladder to client-state status, much like Laos and the Myanmar regime.

Every politician in actually-working democracies has to move to the centre to get elected. It's what happens once they're in power that matters and - mostly - what they do is in or round the centre. Starmer will be interesting to watch. But even more interesting will be La Le Pen in France, if she wins the upcoming there.

As in Australia. Welcome to the club.

Yes, I had thought that a large part of Buddhism was about being UNstressed ...

Seen from outside, Usofa looks less and less like a functioning modern democracy. Too many fruitcakes of all varieties, each of them intolerant of all the other varieties.

Thanks for that. I think on that basis we'll sit tight for a while on the vaccines, perhaps follow up as you suggest towards the end of this year. Meantime we'll start wearing masks again whenever in an enclosed space (eg shopping at Lotus), though recognizing that masks are more about 'offence' than 'defence'.

So what's the current availability in Thailand (and Isaan/Surin in particular) of shots for the latest variant(s) of covid? (I'm 75 & had 2 shots in middle of the first round of variants. Have had covid twice - 1st very mild, over in 3 days; 2nd more notable - coughing & tired - over 2 weeks. My b/f age 35 had similar experience both times.)

Mind-boggling. There is no end to opportunity-to-make-money machinations in this country. My b/f was theoretically on his 3rd year of conscription when we met in BKK (he on stage in a gay pickup joint). He made a mint in that task. But couldn't get enough to eat in the barracks so climbed out over the wall every night in search of money, food and adventure. Apart from that, the corporal or sergeant used to organize the boys for profit-making visits to assorted hotels. His main activity in the barracks was looking after the colonel's dog, cutting the platoon's hair and serving canapés to VERY high people in the evenings. I paid a considerable sum to get him permanently out of the barracks, at least until graduation day at the end of the year when he had to dress up again for the collective photo and prize giving.

Lots of ginger in your cooking, every day. Powerful anti-inflammatory.

I haven't filled out a TM30 since we moved to our permanent residence in Surin in March 2017. And that includes trips to & from BKK and to & from other countries ... Strikes me - from others' reports - that the main difficulty arises from using the digital reporting mechanism.

Same as entry to Oz (and I think EC). Thais never look at their own (collective) behaviours to explain their cross-border difficulties.

A casino-led economic recovery! Once again Thailand leads the way!

If Srettha is not removed, MFP is not dissolved and Thaksin does not raise his ugly mug by bringing Yingluk back, then nothing will change and Thailand will still be the laughing stock of Asia. Investment from overseas is already going to other nations.

Precisely. In my family here, ploughing in is the modus operandi but they have to pay a contractor to come and do it. And guess who gets to pay the contractor ...

If you want change, you have to offer practical alternatives ... in this case, alternatives that poor and uneducated people can adopt easily.

Perhaps you - or the Thai guvamint - might be able to offer poor Thai peasants some doable and cost-free alternatives to their traditional agricultural practices?

And the 280,000 'specially-skilled workers' will be specially skilled by whom?

Interesting. Counter to the general image of male homosexuals as wandering sex-obsessed rats and lesbians as fairly stable and stay-at-home. My personal observation - off a small statistical base in Oz & NZ - is in line with the quoted stats.

Complexity produces confusion, out of which the 'correct' results can be squeezed.

Not sure I understand why Malaysian Muslim men have to come to Thailand to have a polygamous marriage. Does this mean that Muslim Malaysia doesn't allow polygamy? If so, a hangover from British colonialism?