Bruce1

University students are adults, not children. If they're old enough to be conscripted into military service, they're old enough to decide how to dress.

In my experience, what happens is the girls just go on holiday for a few months to have the baby, which is then cared for by the mother while the girls resume school. Intelligent principals and teachers just adopt a 'don't tell me officially or I'll have to enforce the rules' attitude.

I can't see what purpose banning them from school achieves.

Education is the answer here, not pretending the problem doesn't exist.

The law requiring banning should be abolished and the authorities should stop interfering in peoples' lives in such an authoritatian way and instead educate them to act like adults.

I think the problem may be the imposition of a uniform rule on Thai uni students. The uniform is incredibly boring, so its natural they would want to spice it up a bit as part of a general d esire to look attractive. Since they can't change the colour or design and are banned from wearing much jewellery, all they can do is shorten the skirt and tighten the blouse.

I teach a number of Thai university age students at a college in Australia and they all dress quite modestly, certainly much more modestly than the Thai uni uniform.

If they allowed freedom of dress they might find most students would actually dress more modestly than the current uniform.

Reminds me of the boy in Speed Racer.

This problem does not seem to occur in Australia. Most Australians speak in the same accent from shore to shore. Of course, I am not talking about slang or 'yobbos'.

Actually, that's not true. We used to joke when we lived in Sydney that we could tell if people came from the eastern or western suburbs by their accent.

It is true that TV has imposed a kind of standard English, but there are many regional variations. For instance, the joke about Queenslanders ending every sentence with, "..., eh" as in a tag question eg "What a looker, eh" meaning 'don't you agree?"

I have had Thai students tell me something must be right because their esteemed Thai teacher said it was, and I've just pointed out the facts from a grammar book, and the poor students became very upset and confused. When you say Americans and British say it differently they also get confused. but they do like it when you mimic various accents - I can do a mean Scot!

Sadly, research seems to show our accents are set by about 7-8 and no amount of practice will ever totally eliminate our first accent.

When it comes to dialects of English, such as British, American and Australian, don't forget Singlish, Indish, Canish, Kiwish, Chinish and so on. Some of the best English speakers I know are Singaporean, because all their education is in English. There's no particular reason why Thais should be bad at English, its just the way the country and education system operate. My current class of international language students has 17 students from 10 countries with 8 first languages; the two Thais are among the better students. If you put most students in a sustained English environment, they can certainly do well, once their listening skills improve through continual exposure. Three hours a week in a class is just not enough.

If Thai TV was less protected and more open to foreign programs it would have a major effect on improving listening skills.

How can you expect teachers who are themselves often poor at listening and speaking in particular to successfully teach listening and speaking?

One of my former colleague (an Aussie teaching in Thaland) once failed his entire class of uni students, which caused some reactions. They were made to take extra classes and sit the test again.

I would certainly like to know more about the tests before condemning the teachers. I used to sit on an exam review committee and some of the tests we were presented with to review were disasters. They certainly failed the basic rule that you can't test what hasn't been taught, and that tasks have to be achieveable using the material taught.We used to reject some papers outright and require them to be rewritten to test what was actually taught. I suspect some people write tests to impress their bosses with how hard they are, and when most of their students fail they then grade them up to get a majority pass.

I wonder if Macs was attacked because its a foreign firm? It was inevitable the attacks would eventually go foreign in an attempt to find a common enemy.

The government has a budget to get through and an Army reshuffle to complete.

Elections under the present rules would see the pro-Thaksin group grab a large number of seats, although maybe not a majority since their reputation has been dented by their current behaviour. So there could be a chaotic parliament and real compromises would be necessary to form a government.

It would be much better to set up an independent constitutional commission and give it 12 months to consult and form a new constitution, hopefully one more democratic than the current one. But the Reds don't want that because they're afraid the government would manipulate the process to exclude them, I assume.

No country can remain stable if any any mob (Yellow, Red, whatever) thinks it can make trouble and succeed in ousting the government and taking over.

It obviously has the potential to allow a massive over-reaction. Lets hope they have nothing to over-react to, and it stays peaceful.

BANGKOK: -- Up to 20,000 Buddhist monks are reported to be preparing to join the mass red-shirt rally in Bangkok on March 12, threatening to mirror the “Saffron Revolution” in Burma in 2007.

Surely the monks aren't that stupid? Do they really want to support Thaksin? Really?

There was a four page spread on tourism in Thailand in The Australian last weekend and the airlines are doing deals, so that should keep the tourists coming. They don't go to the southern provinces anyway.

The bombings which could scare the tourists are the ones in Bangkok. If they continue, that's a problem.

Lets hope Mr T never decides to fund the southern insurgency.

As for shirt colours, I notice HM wore pink when he went out for the day, so I'd say pink is in for the moment.

Usually when an area is declared a disaster zone it means it qualifies to draw on special assistance from the central government rather than having to rely on local resources.

Lets hope for a full and speedy recovery for HM.

It wasn't an Elite card, just a real job.

I had the opposite experience. I arranged a job in LOS BEFORE I left Australia, the employer sent over some paperwork to confirm the job was waiting, I went to the Thai Embassy in Brissie, they made a telephone call to confirm and I walked out the door 20 mins later with a Non-imm B. So it can be done.

What's so hard about coming in on a tourist visa, finding a job and changing to a non immigrant B? Its only the scammers who need worry.

This is nothing unusual. Try getting a job on a tourist visa in Australia and see what happens to you.

I Understood it was possible for a foreigner to legally become a Thai citizen, but you had to pay a lot of money (non-refundable if not granted), pass a language test, submit an application and wait, and only a small number of people from each country (was it 50 a year?) were approved. So why would you bother unless you were really determined, and lucky enough for your number to come up?

Chinese are known worldwide as tough, determined business people. "Better to be a lender than a borrower" is an old Chinese saying. Lazy people resent that. Much easier to rent out your land, use the money to get drunk, buy women, boast about being 'real Thai' and not worry about the future.

So the land is owned by Thai women who have farang husbands. What's the problem there?

The land is rented to other Thais who farm it. Whats the problem there?

The land owner is actually making a profit. What's the problem there?

Obviously just anti-foreigner nonsense from uncompetitive farmers who want the taxpayers to give them even more support so they can continue to be unsuccessful farmers.

I feel sorry for foreigners who have married Thais and come under the pressure to fund the purchase of a nice residence, possibly with land, which is quite a normal aspiration, of course. Unfortunately, Thai law simply doesn't protect the rights of foreigners, no matter how personally committed they may be to the country and its people. So I guess foreigners with Thai partners just have to choose between love and wise investment practices, a tough choice, unless the Thai partner is prepared to move overseas.

Of course, it could be worse, judging by what I've read recently about Dubai, where the relations between the locals and the foreigners appear to be pretty toxic, and foreigners have absolutely no rights whatsoever. The grass isn't always greener ...

Other countries allow foreigners to invest in land and businesses because they know that investment generates jobs and spreads the wealth around. It means more money is circulating in the local economy than was generated in the local economy by the poor locals. Where would America be without foreign money - still fighting the Indians. This notion of foreigners buying up the country is just stupid. What are they going to do - pick it up and ship it overseas? Please...! Protectionist blocking of foreign investment just makes the locals poorer. If Thailand wants to stay poor it should continue to shun foreign investors.

All over the world farmers are serfs who work their guts out for a pittance to enrich the middle men and supermarket chains. Why should Thailand be any different? After all, isn't it rich Thais who control most Thai farms, either directly or indirectly through monopoly purchasing, so this is just another form of protecting the rich by using the law to protect them from foreign competition so they can continue their cosy little monopoly exploitation racket.

No country which has 55% of its workforce in agriculture can claim to be developed. In developed countries agriculture employs less than 5% of the people.

Besides, I thought farming was Thailand's equivalent of the unenployment dole in other countries.