allan michaud

Does the 300 Baht pay rise (with increased efficency) apply to bargirls too? Just asking

8% better BJ's maybe

8,000 in 76 provinces.... So the gov has an average of 105 air con units in each province which need cleaning. Urrrrmmm!

These people could not organise the proverbial booze up in a brewery.

Give them a tablet, that will fix it.

That tablet is a bit big to swallow ... how can it make them better ...

Well that would reduce the number of deprived kids

Government official inspecting a tablet computer

loansharks borrow at easy acces.

blinded by the amounts they "can" borrow they don't want to know the cost's.

No paperwork required, anyone can borrow, deaf , dumb or blind.

danger lurks around the corner when more en more debt collectors resort to violence and in some cases ...lethal violence

in many situations loansharks target the remaining family members if a creditor bails out.

all in all a loose-loose situation for all involved.

a public awarness campaign should be launched, but i seriously doubt that will ever happen while many of these sharks are "well placed" public figures.

Dumb post. Probably better to know something about the subject before commenting.

Do you really think anyone will lend money here without paperwork? OK may a few thousand between bargirls, but come on...

A bit unfair, apart from the "no paperwork required" (id card is enough) comment the rest, violence, targeting remaining families, public figures, is all pretty damned accurate.

To "theoldgit" - yes, you can indeed get "stitched up" by a family who might have known or even arranged that you had sex with their 12 year old daughter but the act itself is still illegal and morally inexcusable.

That's not what I meant, I'm talking about a family that might stitch up an innocent person by saying that they had procured a youngster for sex for them, when in fact they hadn't.

I don't know if this guy is guilty or not, nobody here does, but from the comments here most people would have had him hung, drawn and quartered by now.

I do agree that the act itself is illegal and morally inexcusable, and I wouldn't attempt to defend it.

Its not that unusual. A friend who runs several guesthouses has taken in several street kids, educated them and given them jobs, he's very well respected and liked. A family around the corner sent their young daughter to try to get taken in by him, he talked to some of his staff about doing this but was then warned that she had a family and it was their plan to accuse him of molesting her and then blackmailing him.

I am also not condoning anything, just commenting on what does happen from time to time.

Some Thai man has run off my wife's 13 year old Grand daughter from Singburi to Bangkok, the Mother told the police but when the man said he would pay for the loss of face the Mother/police have forgotten about it, that was 8 months ago, no money has been seen as of yet

Personally I would cut his nuts off.

Yeah, good luck with that. 2 trillion baht is 65 billion dollars, near what France makes from tourism every year and they have 80 million tourists per year, 4 times the amount Thailand has.

But I'm sure if Yingluck wants 2 trillion in revenue, then that is what TAT will report regardless of how ridiculous it is.

Ah yes but given the apparent attempts by the govt to dramatically drive up inflation they might actually achieve this figure???? Muppets the lot of em

TAT spends THB220 mil in overseas promotion

At the same time, the TAT will make three short documentaries on nature-based tourism, community-based tourism, and product purchase, which are aimed at enhancing the image and tourism of Thailand. The documentaries will be shown on various world-renowned channels, such as BBC and National Geographic. The project is scheduled to commence between April and June 2012.

-- NNT 2012-03-26

As a filmmaker I hope they have spoken to the BBC and Nat Geo first as they won't just stick your film on just because you made it. I suspect they are just throwing names about.

I do have a suggestion for a new slogan, considering the predictions of so many new tourists, how about "Thailand, Land of Unbridled Optimism"

The balloons had to have been filled with helium, which is an inert gas.

The balloons were filled with air. At 0:54 in the video the balloons are released and fall to the ground...no helium, no hydrogen, plain atmospheric air!

Now I don't wish to appear rude to the average Thai security guard but seriously, how many of you out there honestly think he/she is going to have any idea what inert means? or for that matter know what the effects of these various gases would have on said balloons?

I have to say if they are going to have this security it needs to be enforced properly. I don't like the hassle of being searched on the MRT but I do understand it. What I do not understand is the arbitrary security elsewhere. The big shops at Siam Sq always seem to have security on one door but not on another, why bother?

reminds me of the sopranos.

dumb and dumber

This place is going to shit.

Going? Some would say, the train left the station long ago.

full of balloons

and muppets

Populistic policies are implemented not because they promise any real progress, but because they are, well, populistic. They sound good in slogans and re-election campaigns. Nobody ever expects any improvement from them, at least not those with an IQ above room temperature.

Celsius or Fahrenheit?

Same same at zero.

No 0c=32f

Scary isn't it? "The sinkhole on Rama IV Road, possibly the result of sand seepage through an old tunnel, will have no effect on the subway service in the area and its real cause should be known within two weeks"

So they don't know the cause yet, but confirm it was have no effect on the subway below it.

"The sinkhole, which was five metres in diameter, or two lanes across, and about 2 metres deep" will have no effect because "the subway station at Lumpini Park because the station was about 20m underground."

The ground above had only been compressed, and station is 20m underground.

But what's really scary is "By 5am yesterday, the BMA had filled the hole and paved the road with asphalt before reopening it to traffic"....

They don't know the cause, but decided to fill it in anyway. Ah! Well. If you can't see it it ain't no problem I guess...

I don't think I'll be driving down there for quite some time.

-mel

Dito, my thoughts exactly. This will come back to bite them.

"The government plans to hand out 900,000 tablets to Prathom 1 students with a budget of Bt1.8 billion in the first semester of the next academic year."

900,000 tablets at B8,000 = 7.2 billion

Dumber by the day.

Banning plastic bags would help! A recent study after floods in another Asian country found that plastic bags were a major cause of blocking waterways.

"Prime Minister Yingluck has ordered all government agencies to reduce energy use by 10 per cent," Kittiratt said.

Urmmm just like that?

(actually, by my calculations it would only take a 20% cut to tea money to achieve)

"If officials are found guilty, their punishment will be harsher" than what other convicts would face, Somsak said.

I can't help thinking he should have continued on to say "...assuming they are not high ranking or well connected individuals, in which case we will gloss over their involvement and nail some meaningless underling instead."

THis is terribly sad.

but it isn't helped by those who start crying and moaning about "crime on the increase" "it's getting worse" - these are ridiculous conclusions to draw from this incident.

I don't think it's crying and moaning it's stating the facts,perhaps if you reside in Thailand full time you are more akin to seeing this type of headline on a daily basis and are hardened to it,some like myself who split my time between here and the UK don't always follow the day to day news items when back working in the UK,all I can say from my recent personal experience of the last 3 months being present in Thailand is that I am now more aware of the daily Farang deaths,accidents,stabbings muggings,child abuse and general crime.

I have been married to a Thai for 8 years, out this way for 10 and I have to agree with you. Just from news on this forum alone it appears the number of foreigner deaths in Thailand since the turn of the year has risen dramatically. I don't know the exact number but it is fair to say it's well into double figures. Some are accidents and some violent crimes but I find it quite shocking and am becoming concerned for the safety of my family, to the point where there is no way I would take them to any major tourist spot in Thailand right now. If this got the attention of CNN or the BBC, Thailand's tourism could really suffer badly.

Just because the wildlife sanctuaries is owned by Farang, it does not automatically be respected, nor immune from raids.

Farang are not GODS. There are bad Farang as well. Some deal with drug, some underage protitution, some traffic humans, set up casio, some sell animal parts, etc.

And don't change the subject.

Why Wiek had no papers for more than 100 of the 450 animals at his centre?

Edwin is a good and well respected man doing something that Thai's should be doing themselves, sadly most Thai's don't give a dam_n. As for the papers from what I have seen on numerous blogs and videos on the raids, the officials turned up and demanded papers instantly and did not permit them even an hour to try to locate all the paperwork. This is just about retribution nothing else.

This is a very Thai problem that the Thai people should be dealing with, why is it left to a farang to point out problems like this.

sparebox2

The Thais need to take their head out of their arse and stop thinking they are better than others and learn to compete in the Asean market place.

I couldn't agree more, they need a forward looking politician to have the balls to tell it how it is. This is just one example of how this country has stagnated under politicians all too ready to play the nationalist card.

This is what you get when your country is run by self serving thugs (Red, yellow or otherwise).

Appalling situation but sadly a typical Thai response to being caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and totally embarrassing to the entire country.

I would like to see the international broadcasters picking this story up to see if that might help to embarrass the govt into doing something about the this sad thug.