allan michaud

Do you mean the children who don't get educated properly, who learn it's ok to cheat and if they fail an exam / get a low grade their parents will buy what's necessary for them.

Moving higher up the social scale there are the children who are told their family name will see them ok, will get them into higher education and a good job even if they are as thick as pig s..t and don't worry about ever getting into trouble with the law as it will all be taken care of. Yes, let's start with the children

You raise some good points in your dialogue.

some facts that are hard to swallow. But

I for one disagree with your idea of not starting with the children. They are the future. Have you any idea of how to change the situation now. I don't short of assassination of an unelected foreign multi citizenship holder.

To this end My wife receives money every month for her personal use including taking care of her mother and she has been instructed that when it comes to education I will give more. The children of today are Thailand future. It will be a slow process but eventually if we start with a seed it will bear fruit. The present system will never change with the mind set you put forward. It is there but not in all cases. There is hope for Thailand.

I hope your right but for me I will be telling my son to get the hell out of this country as soon as he can. In the short term this country is only getting worse.

This last sentence is just bizarre

"As nuclear power can be used in several areas, including agriculture,
industry, medication, and electricity generation, the ministry has to
make sure that it poses no harms or threats to the country and its
people, the minister said."

Do these people even understand what a nuclear power plant does?

He said this years exports should also expand by 7.5 per cent.

But i thought the baht was destroying exports.

Probably foreigners have finally realised and understood that Thai rice is indeed worth it's price, and are now almost begging to be allowed to buy some of it

I don't think rice makes up 7% of all exports in Thailand.

But you see, despite the baht exports are still growing on the whole.

It doesn't say that at all. Anyway, year on year rises depend on how <deleted> the previous year was. The end of 2011 and early 2012 was terrible for exports so a 7% rise on that figure is not very good at all. It would be interesting to know how it compared to the previous year.

<deleted> is "rotational energy"? do they mean hydro-power?

Amazing how many people have made comments about this girl marrying Hun Sen's son.

READ THE <deleted> POST! He is the son of one of HS's right hand men.

That is horrible....even for a Frenchman! I hope he makes the right decision and buggers off somewhere else with his money!

I would suggest recruiting some large Russian tourists into the tourist police and allow them to beat the sh*t out of people causing trouble..

but glad to see none have TV finest have hi-jacked this thread and started bleating on how it must be the frenchmans fault

Well he does have a very dodgy haircut so he clearly had it coming.

"It is certainly not wrong to showcase His Majesty's projects as examples
of efficient water management in this country, but that is not enough
to deal with the kind of natural disasters we are likely to face in the
future."

Surely this is suggesting the Kings idea was not perfect... Less Majeste! String him up for suggesting such a thing.

It would be nice to think the Mekong basin countries could agree something sensible, like no dams ont he mainstream Mekong or ones such as the Lower Sesan 2 in Cambodia, which will cut off a major tributary. However as it seems most of the planned mega dams are just ways to line powerful peoples pockets across the region I don't hold out much hope.

As Siamese rosewood is restricted and regularly controlled by authorities..., you would imagine that the authorities would know where it grows and therefore put in place measures to prevent it being cut down then, wouldn't you?

Or am I missing something here?

Apart from the rampant corruption, influence of the usual trough feeding suspects, etc. etc. ad nauseum....

This was a topic a while ago, and measures were taken (NOT) to stamp out the dead wood so to speak.

shows that blind eyes are active again. greed and money ALWAYS the key.

Local town and head villages SHOULD be aware of where it is going on. It is NOT a wood that is growing everywhere and common. So it is aknown fact where it grows and who is in control of the care of it. Do the bib ask any questions with the local admin ??????????

Correct, the locals know where every Rosewood tree is, even the small ones not yet ready to cut. If the authorities really wanted to stop this they could. I was amazed on one trip to the forest with Danish botanists, we had 2 local cops with us (because of potentially dangerous loggers, ha!). When the botanists asked the local guide if he knew where they could get samples of Rosewood trees one of the cops stepped in. We were at the time 3 hours into a 6 hour journey through the forest, in the middle of nowhere and yet the cop stopped the truck and took us to a small tree (maybe 10cm in diameter) about 200 meters off the track. He knew exactly where it was and found us another specimen a few hundred meters further away. It may sound surprising to many people but literally every valuable tree is know.

Two points here, prices of rosewood are not 1-2m baht per cubic meter, they are around 300,000 per cubic meter.

As can be seen from the very small size of the logs they are now stripping even the smallest rosewood trees, very soon they will be all but extinct. Same going on here in Cambodia where it all goes to Vietnam.

Is there any USD involved here, obviously not , the matter would have been cleared up long ago, sorry I have a low expectations of anything to do with the Thai government and most of its departments, this is a serious matter and you would think Surapong was trading fish..

I maybe wrong but I am pretty sure a drop to tier 3 would affect some aid$, which is why the Thai govt is even bothering to talk about this.

Regarding the somewhat fatuous remarks about Thailand supporting nuclear terrorism and proliferation... I guess he is referring to votes in the UN or possibly Thai involvement in rendition.

Wow, so many obvious mathematical errors I don't know where to start. 129,000 is apparently a 4% drop from 130,000???

I certainly wouldn't want this person in charge of my money.

Without wishing to appear callous and with the greatest of respect to the mother of the deceased...

"World Health Organisation (WHO) statistics reveal a high road casualty rate in Thailand - 39.1 per 100,000 people in 2011, which was the highest in Southeast Asia and third highest in the world."

So with the Songkran death toll rising over the past 2 years, Thailand must be well on course to become a world leader.

Anyone know much about this subject or have good links?

It has been a hot topic in the EU & North America for the past 5 years. This is why the western "prepared" meal/food industry has invested in the labeling of its containers. The best material remains quality glassware. Remember the old style pyrex dishes and bowels?

A bit longer than that, more like 30 years at least in the UK. This is an old problem that the Thai's only now seem to be waking up to. I remember in the early 80's scares about dangerous clingfilm. A little over a decade later I was in India where this was suddenly national news. It seems a foreign company had a decade earlier sold its old (and now dangerous) technology to India on the cheap without mentioning possible dangers.

The Thai's are just light years behind everyone else.

I had to laugh at my wife when we had a clear out recently. I tried to get rid of her mass of hideous plastic glasses, only to be told not they were very expensive, 'special plastic'.

"Plodprasop, known for his outspokenness and belligerence..." actually I think he's mostly known for his blinding stupidity.

Will the projects involve a lot of propellers?

It raises more questions. High Velocity, why not say sniper. Who was the bullet intended for. I can only conclude it was a head shot intended for a protestor. It would appear that 'shoot to kill' orders were given way before 'live fire zones' and the eventually crackdown at Rajaprasong. Evidence is slowly creeping out about who escalated the violence (in order to justify the killing).

You concluded all that from the use of the term 'High Velocity'?

A year and a half old bridge breaks apart. It cost 80 million Baht to make.

Try your glasses, it clearly says it cost Baht8.2m and was 9 months old.

I am confused, yesterday it was a 30 year old bridge, now its seems it was just 11 months old and had been repaired 4 times already and was due to be repaired again when it collapsed???

By the way, if you want to stop 4 wheeled vehicles using it you put up concrete bollards at either end. Cheap and simple. At least that's what they do with the 2 small suspension bridges I have seen here in Cambodia.

Amazing Thailand.

I don't know where to start, utterly moronic article in every possible respect. I despair at this country and its idiot leaders.

I am so sick of these stupid spoiled children bickering over a few football pitches of land. We are talking splitting 4.6sqkm that's roughly 4.5 football pitches each. Draw a <deleted> line down the middle and be done with it you pathetic little people.

Yada Yada Yada. I thought the average death toll was over 50 per day?

Not that impressed. More paperwork, more delays, more $. The simplest way of improving the safety of Thais would be to refurbish the national road system. And lets all applaude one more example of terrorist hysteria.

I think that's known as hitting the nail directly on the head, several actually.