jonclark

they were imprisoned for representing some populist program, demanding release of the prisoners the protesters defend this program. Quite a large proportion of the society do share similar views - todays large crowd's prove it

There was more people at Old Trafford on Saturday. They are just a noisy minority. Furthermore, the leaders were NOT jailed for what they represent, but for inciting violence for your use of the word "program" one could more aptly substitute it for "agenda", the main part of which you fail to even mention.

It seems to me that the most the Reds can muster in terms of crowds are between 10'000 - 40'000 and I'd imagine most of those (and this is pure assumption) are from the NE who work in Bkk. Even at their height when Jatuporn screamed his million man march less the 100'000 turned up. My own view is that the reds have lost their way and are slowly running out of steam (and options) whilst riding on the backs of the 91 dead by claiming to be their champions. Although, to be honest that wasn't the objective of today's rally, was it?

Ho-hum another day another pointless and inconvenient demonstration. Still got to credit them persistent little buggers. A bit like cancer.

I hope this article is correct on the drought. But may be I'm missing something. This article says that the water storage is 10 billion cubic meters less than last year. So the drought is over.

Absolutly no idea - however the quote "There is currently only 19% of water left in the dam." Would suggest that 81% of the water is missing and therefore the drought is not over. Like yourself totally confused

I went on this one last year on Valentine's Day ... http://www.thaicruis...ophraya2_en.php (see: http://www.thaicruis...n.php?newsid=27)

It was nice for the price. Nothing spectacular but no complaints either. It simply was nice and I was happy we went. Food was good but the buffet table does get a bit crowded.

Edit: Call for reservations if you want to go Valentine's day. Definitely nice to go on this day as they have fireworks along the river and believe they happen on the way back after dinner.

thanks Nisa, hope your valetines this year is wonderful....

Last time I took one I was very disappointed for the price (1'400 baht per head if memory serves me right) i thought the buffet was shocking food was a sad indictment on Thai cooking and the overall feel was one of; get them on, feed them, get them off. NEXT!!

If you want a nice dinner, there are loads of places where you get more bang for your buck. But each to his or her own i guess.

Surely it would be better to stuff him in the suitcase with the Boas, pythons and spiders and give him a round the world trip - see how he likes it.

The loss of our planets biodiversity is startling and it sickens me when people exploit our shared heritage for a few qucik bucks.

I think the Thai Wildlife Protection Officers need to get off their <deleted> and make weekly raids to JJ. If they are unwilling to do so, then i suggest they find new jobs - if they like teamoney then i suggest the Police Force.

Thais sneaking illegally into another country to work, tsk, tsk. That sounds like something those dastardly Burmese, Khmers or Royongi do to Thailand.

I can see from your both of your comments, you really don't know anything about Muslim's and their practices. My apartment has 5 Mosques within 1 km of here. I get used to it and it doesn't bother me, actually in the morning I used the morning prayer as an alarm clock.

Whybother - if you don't like it, then you should go up to the Mosque and tell the man to stop the Adhan and see what he or those preparing for Prayer do. Will they pull you aside and bunch you out, tell you to get out of there. No, let them be and if you don't like it, then move. This is not your country.

Many Thais would reply that it's not their country either, smart guy. Thailand is a Buddhist country. Since you seem to like them so much, why don't you move to a muslim country? Malaysia is just around the corner

The answer is simple - Just get your own huge PA system and as soon as the call to prayer goes out crank up Lady gaga or some other annoying shit and drown them out. If they object just politley explain you are the cult of gaga and this is your own form of worship.

After all what's good for one is good for all, isn't it??

Give him a gun and let him go and get shot - war mongering armchair general stuck in the past and unable to accept the 21st century realities

60+% accept government corruption

60+% would accept money for their vote (another recent poll)

The scary part is that many of the government workers/politicians are involved with corruption, so add them to the public population figures and we have a vast majority with this mindset.

We could probably add in the prison population to put the number in a real perspective and thus move up a notch or two from vast.

I guess reading between the lines this implies that if we westerners want to be successful here we need to accept corruption in our business practices and be corruptible in our business practice with Thai. So, if we pay tea money to Thais we should bump up our prices when dealing with Thai and pass the cost on to them. After all they accept it!!

" The result is a shortage of coconuts, prompting prices to skyrocket to Bt2030 per fruit. "

dam_n that's some expensive fruit - Even the coconuts at nana plaza ain't that expensive!!

yep - then this - are there no proof readers in this paper? Its rawcoconut cost has increased from Bt78 to Bt20 per fruit.

lol.....swiftly followed by this .....the supply of coconuts for its plant producing coconut milk had dropped sharply from 150 tonnes to 6070 tonnes per day.

To the editors of the Nation - If you want to be taken seriously as a paper look at the above and decide if these mistakes are worthy of a serious newspaper. It two TV members can find these mistakes ask yourself these questions - <deleted> are your proof readers doing? And why are you allowing such glaring mistakes to be shown globally on the internet??

Thanks for the laugh though !!

" The result is a shortage of coconuts, prompting prices to skyrocket to Bt2030 per fruit. "

dam_n that's some expensive fruit - Even the coconuts at nana plaza ain't that expensive!!

I guess then we should all assume the militarys silence as an admission of guilt. I mean what could the all powerful military have to fear by allowing officers to testify at the fact-finding sub committe if it is sure it acted within the limits of the law.

My guess, it knows its' operation didn't go as smoothly as it claimed it did, and is trying to avoid any responsibility / loss of face.

My message to the PM and Deputy PM - show some balls and order the military to provide account. Lets have some Truth and Reconciliation in the country

<snip>

Racism and bias has always been the white man's disease.

<snip>

That's a bit of a racist thing to say isn't it.

Personally I am a firm believer that people aren't born racists, but are 'taught' to be racists. And therein lies the problem with many of the Thai history texts used in schools. The discourse centers on preserving 'thainess' by belittling non thainess. Some of the least 'racist;' Thais i've met are the ones who dropped out of school at the end of P6 / M3 to go and work on the farm, which says a lot about the nature of education.

Not wanting to be a spoil sport, but surely 770 billion baht would be much better spent alieviating poverty (micro finance schemes and adult vocational training) and upgrading the school facilities (imagine how many teachers that could train to alleviate the chronic overcrowding) and as has been highlighted by recent news articles fixing the financially crippled state run hospitals in Thailand.

The army has a &lt;deleted&gt; cheek to ask the Thai taxpayer to fund this. This request should be met with the response - go blow it out your arse!!!!

I do - the bleaching event is over with the last visible bleaching remaining gone since about mid-December.

Check out the other articles/threads on this issue, this is one in a series and there is a misinformation campaign going on, I presume to garner political support for the $$$ grabbing and pocket stuffing.

So the coral has recovered???

Another deliberately misleading article. Just to put the record straight:

1. Diving does *not* cause coral bleaching. There is no relationship whatsoever. None.

2. Closing dive sites will *not* help coral recover from bleaching (see point one).

3. The primary cause of bleaching is high water temperature.

Articles that seek to imply a link between diving and coral bleaching are disingenuous.

I've seen a recent survey from the Prince of Songkla academic who is pushing the diving ban, and the other thing that was in it was the introduction of a (large) resource management fee for diver access. Given the current corruption scandal about park entry fees being pocketed by parks staff, I don't think that's a particularly helpful suggestion either.

Cunning plan: Blame coral bleaching on divers => introduce "management" fee to "solve the problem" => pocket fee and do nothing.

Sound familiar?

Sorry, must have read the wrong article - Where in the OP did it state that coral bleaching was the result of divers? It didn't. The closure is to reduce the disturbance in the area and hopefully increase the rate of recovery and encourage the zooxanthellae to return.

As for the 'management fee' diving is a cash cow and no doubt it will happen (rightly or wrongly you choose). But until the coral recovers who is going to want to dive at these sites?

Whilst it is sad that people will lose income due to the closure, I feel that we need to give nature a break and give it time to recover. The quieter and less disturbance then hopefully the quicker the whole ecosystem will return to it's pristine best.

Or you could try the PGCEi from either Sunderland or Nottingham uni a distance learning course (must have a degree first) . Gives you English teacher level qualifications ( minus the QTS)

"The source said foreigners' savings often were quickly used up on entertainment and women."

"The source said the government should review its policy and focus on quality tourism"

Who is "the source'? - a motorcycle taxi driver, a hooker, my dead gran who has been contacted by psychic mediums?

When a paper fails to name it's source the news it purports to report is worth less than the paper on which it is printed. Absolutly awful journalism that lacks, reliability, authority or credability

Or in journalistic terms " The source said cra* journalism is alive and well in Thailand".

Also (while i'm on my soap box. If the Thai wife has nicked his money find the wife and make her pay. It's her fault for taking all his money in the first place. And as for the parasitic foreign-thais in the UK claiming free health care on the NHS........well don't get me started

Note: I use the term parasitic as it is implied in the context of the OP that the foreigners here are in some way bleeeding the hospitals and taking resources away from Thai people, so what is good for one is good for all. It is not a personal view of Thai people or foriegners in the UK.

:jap:

I can see tourists lining up now to come to Thailand because of the safety confidence Riot Insurance adds.

And how does this insurance program come out to an almost 1 Billion Baht Budget???? Do they really expect to pay a full 300,000 baht claim to 3300 farangs? As I understand it is medical and not property insurance. How many Farangs were hurt in the last uprising? What are they expecting now?????? And how do they save 232 Million by discontinuing the program early? Does it take that much to run a program where nobody is currently making claims?

The only thing I can think of is the government actually hired an insurance company (maybe a relative of a leader) to cover the costs rather than self-insuring which would have made a heck of a lot more sense in terms of simply covering up to $10k worth of medical bills for those farangs injured during the riots. I also suspect their may be a clause in there that says Farang is not covered if participating in the riots or ignoring orders to stay out of certain areas.

Good point. I actually wondered the same myself - How would you claim? I'd also be interested to see how many claimants have been paid. Purely because it seems like an ideal way to skim money. As far as i know no tourists have been directly injured by riots. Wouldn't it be odd if there were a a couple of dozen claims that had been processed?

"When the party members say they won't promote Thaksin, then who will they promote to win the election?"

Maybe promting a wide ranging set of policies to help people would be a more worthwhile activity

Just who is going to enforce this law??? Utter joke - how many police do you see 'on the beat' on or after 10pm on a Saturday night? Very few and should the few that are on duty be rounding up children, who may or may not be doing anything wrong? Or would their time be better spent trying to stop people over 18 drinking and driving? All questions which need answers before we chastise the entire child and teenage population for the failings of the adults.

BTW what is the student police?

Guess the gardener thought it was OK to check the melons.

Indeed only doing his job.

If the protests occasionally inconvenience those who like to "hang" in Bangkok's upmarket malls, screw them.There are more important issues at stake.

I'm sure when the airport was taken over by the yellows, you thought .".if the protests inconvenience those who are able to fly, screw them . There are more important issues at stake ??"

Am I right?? .....Thought not.

It is a good idea. But, who will be monitoring the CCTV. Will it be streamed live to a local police station, which may or maynot have a policeman watching or to a central hub where all the cameras are under 24hr supervision, by a group of specially trained CCTV operatives, and the hub has a hotline to the local police stations.

Or as i'd imagine, will the cameras have no one monitoring then and will simply be recording, so by chance they may or may not catch any criminal activity, which may or may not be reported.

A few more details of the actual implementation would be welcome.