herfiehandbag

I had to think really hard when I saw this headline. It conjured up some very disturbing images...

It is indeed. But if taught by someone who cannot speak it, and is just stumbling through a textbook, maybe one page ahead of the class, then it is pointless. Which neatly brings me onto the subject of the textbooks. If there is an absolute nadir for academic authorship it must be writing English textbooks for South East Asian children! And then the choice of topics! I remember working with a class of fourteen year olds trying to wrestle with an article on youth hostelling in Belgium and the Netherlands! I cannot imagine anything more likely to destroy any spark of interest in the language amongst teen-agers than that! Frankly they would be better off let loose on U Tube for 2 hours a week.

The whole teaching business here is littered with agencies, programmes and projects, all of which claim to enable the pupils to learn English and in reality are schemes to make money out of the idea of teaching English. Here in Chiang Rai we had an agency appeared a few years ago which offered schools a "ready to go" staff of English teachers, equipped with impeccable qualifications, visas, work permits. All the school had to do was hand over the money every semester, with no doubt appropriate kickbacks, and all was sorted. The teachers, West Africans, who were virtually incomprehensible, but would work for 12,000 Baht a month. Since the "allocated budget", for a foreign teacher, is I understand, somewhere in the region of B35,000 a month that is quite a mark up! They all disappeared a couple of years later - something to do with immigration I believe. The school at which I used to teach (now retired) has got rid of it's foreign teachers, and bought into a similar programme using newly qualified (and therefore cheap) Thai staff. The programme is called " Make a Wit", which isn't really even English! I presume they mean "Make a Wish". They are supposed to pretend to be foreigners! Since all 6 of them arrived on site on day one, crammed onto two Honda Waves, no crash helmets, clutching 7/11 iced coffees and driving the wrong way down the dual carriageway I shouldn't imagine anyone, staff or children, believed that from the start! The results have been quite remarkable, numbers of pupils attending the IP (English) programme have gone from about 1000 to 850 in a year! The UK Minister of State for the Indo-Pacific, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, could be onto a good little earner if she played her cards right; satire - I am not suggesting for a minute she is corrupt. Meanwhile, the local village school next to which I live has English teachers who don't speak English, and the Principal pops by from time to time to try to persuade me to work there as a volunteer! What English the children speak seems to come from U Tube and video games. Those that make the effort I help, but I will not play his "work as a volunteer" game!

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The whole teaching business here is littered with agencies, programmes and projects, all of which claim to enable the pupils to learn English and in reality are schemes to make money out of the idea of teaching English. Here in Chiang Rai we had an agency appeared a few years ago which offered schools a "ready to go" staff of English teachers, equipped with impeccable qualifications, visas, work permits. All the school had to do was hand over the money every semester, with no doubt appropriate kickbacks, and all was sorted. The teachers, West Africans, who were virtually incomprehensible, but would work for 12,000 Baht a month. Since the "allocated budget", for a foreign teacher, is I understand, somewhere in the region of B35,000 a month that is quite a mark up! They all disappeared a couple of years later - something to do with immigration I believe. The school at which used to teach (now retired) has got rid of it's foreign teachers, and bought into a similar programme using newly qualified (and therefore cheap) Thai staff. The programme is called " Make a Wit", which isn't really even English! I presume they mean "Make a Wish". They are supposed to pretend to be foreigners! Since all 6 of them arrived on site on day one, crammed onto two Honda Waves, no crash helmets, clutching 7/11 iced coffees and driving the wrong way down the dual carriageway I shouldn't imagine anyone, staff or children, believed that from the start!

Well if they didn't it would effectively be a "one man thread", and they don't work very well on a discussion forum!

The US Congress can't even decide who it's speaker is to be, let alone anything else!

I made a speculative informed by commonly shared and widespread suspicions, how can I put it that the Thai justice system does not operate to the same levels across society. I am hardly the only member here, or person in this country, expatriate or citizen, who holds that view. You have set yourself up as the arbiter of which opinions, which views, are right and wrong. You state that opinions cannot be expressed "not when those speculative, uninformed opinions are suggested to be fact.". They are opinions, not facts. Just as your points are opinions, not facts. You were not imprisoned with Premchai, you don't know how or where he was held. As for "starting a fight in an empty room, well perhaps you are right in that the room is not empty, but you are, as you invariably do, looking to pick a fight.

All right, we get it, you've been in a Thai Prison so you know all there is to know about how the system works here. It is quite possible to hold and express opinions other than yours you know; oh for crying out loud, what is the point, you're only trying to pick a fight in an empty room!

That is a very convincing presentation. There is one way to find out what happened. A proper independent forensic investigation carried out under the direction of a third party ( the UN), staffed by investigators from third party neutral countries. That would confirm both the source of the strike, the degree of damage and the number of casualties which resulted. Would the Israeli's agree to that - probably. They will want to clear their name with their allies and with neutral countries. Will Hamas agree to it?

Flip flops however...

They have had a submarine training centre, complete with Admiral and staff for many years. It probably even has a golf course, all that training and expertise developed over decades, and now they can't get their paws on one measly little submarine! It would look so good, so awesome, tied up to a jetty at the submarine base - even without an engine!

Yes. But not exactly I'll founded!

Or so the official version would have us believe! If you add up the time before he was smuggled out at the start of his sentence, and the time after smuggled back in for public release I doubt it amounted to 24 hours.

Must have been a clever little bit of subterfuge, smuggling Premchai back into the prison through the back gate before he could walk out the front on "release". I don't suppose he even had to bring a toothbrush with him!

They intend to visit him? They won't get anywhere near him, in fact they won't get past the front gate of the hospital. I suppose the next stage will be a protest camp outside the gates of the hospital, stages, sound systems and no doubt "guards" to "protect" the protesters. Maybe they have raised some money?

I'm sure that the British Government will use their influence, which is, in this case limited. Hamas are realistically unlikely to release these hostages. There is an outside chance for the foreigners, the Israelis are doomed.

On the subject of the explosion at the hospital. There are I suggest three possibilities. 1) Israel bombed the hospital. With far more than one bomb, judging by the damage and casualties. Why? There is no coherent or logical reason, political or military. Militarily it was pointless. Even if the hospital was being used as a firing point for rockets, it would have been far more useful to provide evidence that this was the case. Besides, with the USA and the West almost completely on side there would be little point. Of course one cannot absolutely discount the imbecility of an airman, his mind seeing combat, (especially against an enemy with little effective counter air capacity) as little more than a video game, doing something stupid. The Israelis, although ruthless and angry are unlikely to have done it deliberately, and anyway they will have video of all their strikes. The Americans probably have satellite imagery, and certainly audio, as does the UK from its listening base in Cyprus which will be paying close attention. If it was Israel there will be proof very soon, if not already. 2) Hamas did it as a clumsy attempt to discredit Israel. I think unlikely, although Hamas are probably not troubled by any moral implications of such an act, they would not wish for the consequences if they "were found out". 3) An outgoing rocket crashed and detonated on the roof of the hospital, possibly causing the explosion of other munitions stored there. There will be satellite, maybe video imagery, along with signals intelligence which points at this. We will probably never know the real cause, unless there is a free and open inquiry after the war; however Israel and other countries will be reluctant to disclose just how effective and deep reaching their intelligence gathering capabilities are, and Hamas will be dead. For what it is worth I go for option 3, with option 1 as a distant second.

Probably not. But if there were munitions stored in the hospital as well, especially on the roof/upper floors. Especially home made rockets - probably not the most stable of munition systems...

Well I suppose not, it is after all being played out between establishment politicians and the top echelons of the police!

Incidentally, I see the "confused" emojis are appearing again, and I thought that I had made my points quite clearly, I always try to do so. Perhaps we should have a couple of emojis to indicate disagreement, after all, we have 4 for showing agreement! Spanning the gamut perhaps between "I am not sure I agree" to "you are talking utter rubbish, I shall have to go and lie down in a darkened room!"

1) He is not my criminal hero. 2) The obsession with Thaksin's perceived mendacity is largely absent outside expat circles in my experience. Yes he is disliked and even hated by some, but that is not because of what he is accused of doing (after all they have been doing it for decades) but because he was a threat to their hegemony. Put simply, they had simply ignored the population for years, and had set up a system which had exclusively served them well; his brand of self centered populism posed an existential threat to the system.

Absolutely, seems a fairly simple business of fraud and tax evasion. Mind you, whilst IDC is reputably pretty grim, I should imagine it is better than being on remand - especially if you don't have the cash, and more chance of getting out of the country in the end perhaps.

And the goons with the guns, and the hats from central casting costume department, are still swaggering around. But there are younger generations now, who are under no illusions and want to be heard.

Do you think so? After the remarkable shenanigans of the last decades, coups, rigged elections, military governments, ignored election results? Do you think anyone ( outside a small number of resident expats who can never forget he closed the bars at 2AM perhaps - stopping them from drinking and shagging themselves into an early grave) gives a monkeys? There are a lot of other, far more consequential things going on, nationally, regionally and globally!