avalonmick

At the end of it, it all comes down to oil and gas prices.

Oil to make the fertiliser, oil to power the tractors, oil to power the generators to provide the electricity to run the processing factories, oil to power the distribution, oil, oil and oil.

I heard from an enormous egg producer the other day, they are actually losing money on selling the eggs ex factory because the cost of the feed has sky rocketed. Driers for this feed eat up huge quantities of lpg, which for industry is now at 29 baht a kilo. They make most of their profit for this year from selling the fertiliser produced from the chicken waste.

Anyone want a weaker baht? Then see the prices go ballistic......

As I'm not an economist perhaps someone who has more knowledge of economics could answer the question, what might happen if the baht was weaken in terms of domestic inflation?? Any takers?

Prices will shoot up - as someone else said up there: oil oil and more oil is needed to run everything, and the cost of oil goes up if the currency is weaker, so the cost of everything goes up, including street vendor food because they use LPG and petrol.

She's wrong, but it can depend on what you mean by prices. The official Dow Jones CPI figures for Thailand show CPI rises in April of 0.42% for the month and 2.47% for YTD - low, but still going up.

"Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra is preparing to tell Thais that their perception of soaring prices is just that, a perception."

<deleted>?? And this statement is followed by a statement that prices are trending downwards.

I think this may be a really bad case of selective data!

The biggest ''misconception'' to date have been Thaksin and his puppet family. To think what we could have been spared had the timing been different.

To think that the increased prices I and my wife like many others have paid of late are according to Yingluck and her band of dreamers nothing more than, ''figments of our imagination.''

Rather like her delusion that she is actually a Prime Minister and fit to lead the country.. ;

The ministry of commerce is saying prices are rising but Yingluck is saying they are falling.

Maybe Yingluck should talk to her ministers occasionally.

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What a crock of crap! How the hell can you call 320+ fatalities a success?

I guess it depends on WHO got killed, in which province, and which political party they supported

A passing phase, Thais have short memories.

which is why nothing will ever be done until it's too late. Oh well, will make moving BKK to higher ground to avoid sea level rises an easier job.

Well they are all listed nad have been for some time:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_all.html

Something is very fishy. Several hours later and USGS has reported no earthquake in Phuket

http://earthquake.us...n/Australia.php

Maybe sonic booms? There are sometimes 2 seperate booms from high altitude planes.

You think/rationalize too much. Do you really believe that so many people mistook a sonic boom for an actual earthquake?

http://www.epson.co.th/epson_thailand/printers_and_all_in_ones/inkjet/product.page?product_name=Epson_WP-4011

Laser is not the way to go: inkjets are faster, use less power and provide colour for around the same capital cost as a mono laser

Strange the statement has no comment from the TJA ....

LOS is a long long way from becoming a liberal democratic society - along with many other nations in the world.

A step in the right direction, albeit a timid one.

It doesn't pay to speak the truth in Thailand!

you can get paid for almost anything in Thailand, but for speaking the truth its go to jail, go directly to jail, do not collect your Bt2million.

Its the sort of place where, no matter how hard the truth hits you in the face - Pattaya, Pat Pong, etc - you can't talk about it because you'll upset someone in authority and maybe disrupt the chain of bribes that keeps it 'hidden'.

Explain to me how Thai Immigration has control over a 747 load of Chinese tourist arriving and none read or write Thai or English, good luck having your arrival card filled out and ready when you step in front of the officer. No matter how much the, all things Thai or wrong brigade complains there are just a few things that are beyond the control of immigration.

As LOS touts itself as a major tourist destination and draws significant revenue from 747s full of Chinese tourists, it should be right now implementing new technologies - such as in-flight immigration clearance - to speed up this process, NOT renovating a hall where people get to queue for up to an hour and fill out bits of paper that may, with any luck but knowing Thai systems probably do not, get properly filed so that Mr Chan's card lodged on entry on 16/3/2010 can be found in a few minutes and not a few months.

Snap poll.

Will Thailand ever run our of excuses?

Thailand is the hub of excuses. We need a social media crackdown before things really get out of control.

Of course it's the fault of Facebook and has nothing to do with the fact that Thai society is more or less built around accepted prostitution, the exploitation of women, and total lack of any personal responsibility whatsoever. Then throw drugs, booze, and generally poorly educated people into the mix and you have a teen pregnancy boom on your hands.

i've just registered the domain name excusebook.co.th. should be worth $10b in a few years.

Wow. Nothing to do with morality, with the lack of good sex education, with parental supervision? Certainly young people can look to such people as MPs or the police for sterling examples of moral leadership in all areas.

or the fact that they see their fathers, uncles and neighbours heading off to the local massage parlours as often as they can, and their girlfriends work the local shopping malls looking for a few hundred baht from a farang

I bet that this still doesn't stop any foreign father for going and get the court recognized letter stating that the foreigner is indeed the lawful father of the child. It has always been the case that fathers of children are not considered the legal parent just because their name is on the birth cert as there are no checks and the mother could have listed any name when registered. The law requires the parents be married or the father must petition the court for legal paperwork showing he is the father. Usually this will require a simple DNA test. The conditions are a bit easier if the child is over age 7. Of course this isn't the same for women and it's hardly a sexist thing but rather simple biology.

What an absolutely stupid and socially irresponsible dictate. How hard are they going to make it before fathers just walk/fly away leaving Thailand with even greater social problems than it has now?

My wife had a son by a Thai guy when she was in her teens but the father's name on the birth certificate is of a farang who was not even in the country when the birth was registered. She says the hospital asked for a name and wrote it in for her, and the hospital refused to put the Thai guy's name in there.

The kid is now 8 and there's immense complications when he got a passport, and again when he needed to get it renewed.

This is simply mindless anti-farang bureaucracy at work.

Let's all leave the country, never look back, and see what happens.

For the Thai government to act on this immediately would be like trying to cut off both arms and both legs: the economy would stumble badly.

This is a two generation - 25 year project. The Govt should start now, but as everyone has pointed out, everyone including the complainant has a vested interest in this not happening. He knows nothing with happen so this is just grandstanding - likes the cops annual call for teenagers to behave on valentines day.

Only Thai women can make this happen

bet this never comes up again in any reports:

"...police found two bags of ice weighing three grams an ID from an organisation bearing the name of Mr Nipon Kanchart and a name card of a Lieutenant General."

"Acting Deputy Metropolitan Police Commander Police Lieutenant General Pisit Pisutsak said he is still unsure if the photographs are genuine. If the photos are real, it signals a significant evolving of illegal gambling dens in Thailand which are now using naked women to lure gamblers into their establishments. If the dens are found in Bangkok, perpetrators will be convicted according to the law."

Means they will be transferred to another province when found

Yes, as they already have the know how they can make sure several other casinos are set up in the same region quickly.

The real worry is,if this is what he's been paid to say because it gets a lot of media space, then what is the true position?

Can we take up a collection and then pay him to say what he really thinks?

There will be blood on the streets before this is finished... mark my words!

Agree but you won't see it for the water and the rubbish it leaves behind.

I, too, have objections to the elitist attitude toward Bangkok, but this guy is the governor. If he did any less, I would be disappointed in him.

Unfortunately, they haven't really saved Bangkok--they have just decided which portions would be sacrificed--so far.

The writer has also written a rather revealing article that was published in the WSJ.(Oct. 23, 2011) He zeroed in on the real issue about the Governor.The problem is that many officials are not obeying that law or Ms. Yingluck. The military, like the Bangkok governor, is functioning independently from the government. He's right in that observation. The Governor has not been cooperative and I believe he has sabotaged the government's flood response in Bangkok.

I do not agree with the writer in respect to the protection of Bangkok, because I accept the fact that for whatever decisions made in the past, Bangkok is the most important part of Thailand and it must be protected, no matter the cost to other areas. I get accused of being a red supporter, but here I am taking a position opposed to redshirt sentiments. I do it because I know that the nation's financial heart, its telecommunications, its nerve center is in Bangkok. If anything serious over the long term happens to Bangkok, the entire nation will suffer a loss that will set it back years.Bangkok holds millions of people. Thailand cannot afford to have these people made into refugees, let alone long term unemployed.Bangkok is the tax base for the nation.

Despite my disagreement with the gentleman,it is inappropriate to call him names or otherwise insult him. Whether or not he looks like Forrest Gump, the gentleman is no knuckle dragger. B.A. (Hons) (International Relations) Chulalongkorn University, MPhil/Ph.D. (Political Studies), School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.Lead Researcher for Political and Strategic Affairs, ASEAN Studies Centre. The fellow carries some weight. Whether or not some agree, when he offers his views the people that run things pay attention.This guy is important and his views are considered. He can influence the perception of other ASEAN governments and the investment community.

Agree with all those assessments of the guy and the article. The Governor did his job as he saw it within his remit. It was not his job to direct actions outside Bangkok, nor to be the country's crisis manager ( if Yingluck had appointed him as that two months ago she would now be the heroine and he, potentially, the definitive crisis manager. Plus she would have solved her political issues as well and put her completely inept cabinet in its place).

The real problem is that, as anyone who studies crisis response will tell you, lack of preparation usually means that everyone who has a stake in the outcome or avoiding blame acts to protect themselves and their interests, often at the expense of others and causing a prolongation of the effects of the crisis.

To minimise impacts and shorten the duration there is no substitute for strong leadership. When we help entities plan for their - eventual - crisis response we psychologically profile the crisis management team members to try to ensure there are no conflicts and true leadership is possible.

This crisis is far from over - its looking like months, perhaps even years - yet no leader has emerged. Thus the problems will multiply and secondary and tertiary effects pile in. Thailand is facing some tough times for quite some while.

If this guy has the future of Thailand at heart, has influence with those who can make decisions, and wants to see Yingluck preserved, he'd better tell her fast to appoint Governor Sukhumbhand as the supreme commander of all flood management resources with everyone answerable to him, and he to the PM, while she and the Government gets on with the even harder task of economic recovery.

Is it me, or is that a completely pointless article?

H.

Well, apart from the horribly mangled metaphors (on which the whole premise hangs), unfortunate typos, and flailing attempts to appear even handed, its you.

And "decaying foodstuff and material" sounds absolutely stupid and I personally think, it is a very weak style in reporting.

But glad, I could amuse you!

It's a perfectly acceptable word. Apparently its origin dates back to 1870, so it's an established term in the English language. Concerning yourself with "style in reporting" at any time, but especially during the current crisis, does seem a bit childish ... even more so when your criticism is unjustified.

food·stuff

noun a substance used or capable of being used as nutriment.Origin: 1870–75; food + stuff

http://dictionary.re...rowse/foodstuff

My dictionary says:

noun [usually pl.] (especially technical) any substance that is used as food:

basic foodstuffs

Let's face it, we're all just puddling in trivial details when the big picture is: large parts of Bangkok and Samut Prakarn will be technically and practically uninhabitable for months, perhaps years because of all the problems above: water borne disease, air borne disease, rodent borne disease, flood damaged infrastructure, and so on.

More people will die from the consequences of this flood than have died so far from the flood itself. it's just that most of those deaths will be invisible because they'll happen at home or in hospitals and be treated as part of the normal daily life/death cycle.

Personally I won't be going back to BKK for at least a year or more.

"The department surveyed groundwater in 18 spots and found that 6 per cent was poor, 11 per cent was fair and 6 per cent was of good quality".

I'm no math whiz but shouldn't these numbers add up to 100 per cent?

They just didnt mention the 'very poor' and 'bloody awful' categories.

Oh dear

Yep; that means 77% is in the categories 'toxic' to 'fatal'

What a load of nonsense... just shows how the media can be bought and paid for.. This disaster we are going through in Thailand, was and is a man-made disaster , completely brought about by incompetent ministers in charge of all the involved agencies.. and a very naive Prime Minister.. These same people are now trying to turn the public anger away from themselves and blame everyone else.. Amazing Thailand. If Yinluck had any balls, she would resign and hang up her Burberry Boots forthwith..!

If the person in question had the items you mention then we would be in real trouble - there would be all sorts of lawsuits flying about most of them half arsed as usual.

Back to the flooding, hoaw anyone or any organisation can lay the blame on a person who has only had the rains (sic) for a couple of months - ok things could be handled more efficiently but don't lose sight of the quality of the people she has working for her. :jap:

It will take years to root out the incompetence ingrained in the multiple layers of officialdon in Thailand it will never happen in my lifetime. She (Yingluck) seems to be handling things ok especially with the incompetent tools she has inherited.

And who appointed all these incapable insincere leeches cronies and thugs?

Love it. everyone hot and bothered over a bit of water.

C'mon folks: the problem is decades if not centuries old. Nice place to have a town with a few tens of thousand inhabitants on an estuarine delta about 30 ks from the ocean, even if it is just a few metres above sea level.

But as the place swells to 20 million then you're building on swamps, waterways and all sorts of other areas you should not be right up to the river mouth itself. Squatters magnify the problem. Infrastructure - drains, roads, canals - can't keep up with that rate of growth.

This government may have made some obvious mistakes in the handling of this flood, but it can't be blamed for what has happened. It was inevitable and will, inevitably, get worse, much worse, as the risks are increased by the weather effects of climate change - as the article says.

Lighten up, we're all going to get wet feet sooner or later.

all that dirty water flowing into the gulf

has the government warned people not to eat seafood or swim in the ocean or is this to difficult

Why would you need a Government to tell you that? Its common sense.

Yeah right! So TELL THEM, for Christs sake!

Exactly. Three neighbours [get this american spell checker off!!!] in hospital last week after eating "fresh" crab.

But think how clean the streets will be, for a day or two.

Despite all the surrounding politics she seems genuinely upset to me.

This is looking like being a disastrous weekend for Bangkokians and it would be nice to see politics put aside for a while.

Agree. No-one should doubt that:

• she is genuinely moved by the plight of her people
• she is stressed beyond belief because she is truly helpless to avert even a small part of this happening
• she has a team of ministers and advisers who appear - from media reports seen online and from outside the country - to be largely hopeless and helpless, and are willing to let her shoulder the blame/responsibility
• she is faced with the near impossible task - given the nature of Thai politics and business, which gets plenty of adverse discussion here - of apportioning blame, developing a preventative/remedial plan, and getting work started all before the next monsoon

anyone of those would be enough to make me cry buckets, in private or on television.

so to all those who make snide and sarcastic comments about her emotional state: grow up and get a life

this is not about her, it's about the office of PM, the power structures in thai society, and the inability of honest hard working politicians to make progress against rampant corruption and apathy