Ricardo

Action is scheduled for 31st April. TiT.

If you weren't a rich farang tourist, you wouldn't be able to afford to fly or have things worth stealing, so it wouldn't happen to you, it's really all the farangs' fault.

Or sideways promotion, to paid inactivity, so that no incompetents lose face ?

"..It suggests that voting is not a secret affair in Thailand ..."

If that is the case, then the real problem would appear to securing the integrity of the confidential/secret voting system. Everyone should be allowed to vote privately with no obligation to explain their choice and things will work out as they should ultimately. The 200 baht for your vote would seem to add a circus sideshow element to the process but otherwise be irrelevant.

Agreed, the problem is when you can just look through the window of your village-hall, and see who is voting for whom, and whether they are doing as they've been paid to do. This does sometimes happen locally.

It seems to me that if an individual MP buys votes, then that should be a problem for only that particular MP, but that when one/some of a political-party's executive-committee/leadership are actively involved in arranging for vote-rigging, then it ought to become a problem for the whole party-organisation.

The EC ban on the party-organisation, and the 5-year sending-off of its leadership, but not the banning of every innocent member-MP, seems a measured-response to encourage parties not to indulge in this behaviour, unfortunately TRT failed to learn this lesson in time to save PPP. Hopefully PTP will not continue the mistake.

Saw in TV. Bule shirts have gun and trown the rocks into red shirts.. don't be fooled by this source. This source own by Yellow leader Sonti Limthongkul. They lie and tallking to make Thai innocent red shirts look bad. Blue shirts form by Yellow shirts and PAD ( Navin) and gorvenment. This group was seized the airport and armed.. they are vilolence people and gave money to Yellow shirts to protest against last government.

The Nation newspaper is obviously owned by the yellow shirts and shows a one sided view of what is happenening in Pattaya at the moment

Do either of you have a source, for the claim that 'The Nation' is owned by Sonti Limthongkul, or the PAD ?

The Nation newspaper is obviously owned by the yellow shirts and shows a one sided view of what is happenening in Pattaya at the moment

:D The nation is owned by former friends of Thaksin.

You mix that with the Manager group which does NOT own "The Nation".

Quite.

And a welcome to all our new posters, however please note that when you make things up on TV, you may be 'called' on it.

The reds took down their baricades a while ago and traffic is back to normal. Apparently someone convinced them not to piss off their friends.

(The other red thread is broken).

Perhaps someone told them, there might be an Aids-Awareness Parade somewhere else, so they went to support it ?

The timing of their action, just before the biggest tourist-fest of the C.M. year, is surely unhelpful to anyone whose job depends on tourism ? But at least they backed-off. So that's all right then.

There doesn't seem to be any option, for "None, as I have my own private jet", for the barflies amongst us ?

Abhisit is hosting ASEAN Summit Plus 3 in Pattaya at Royal Beach Cliff Resort.

The reds protested there yesterday with no weapons as usual but were turned away by groups wearing black and dark blue using rubber strings to shoot glass balls.

The reds went back to gather near BigC.

Nuttawut said 10 minutes ago that there are groups wearing black and dark blue having guns, knifes, bombs and other weapons trying to stop the reds. The reds are calling more reds to come and help.

The red leaders who are at Pattaya now said there are no reporters from regular TV channels.

Abhisit government last night at 23:00 had order from court to catch red leaders for causing traffic problems.

Now no police is out to stop black and dark blue people.

George just posted an article, in a separate thread, reporting that the Red Shirts are carrying "giant firecrackers, molotov cocktails, sling shots and batons".

And the Red Shirts are also reported elsewhere to have attacked foreign reporters, which perhaps explains the lack of media, on-site ?

This suggests that the situation is not as one-sided as Koo believes. Hope that it stays calm, as armed riots might make it impossible, for the military not to intervene.

this conversation is not moving forward for me when some people just dwell on trivia and picking apart the bits of posts they don; tlike like the oysters form a chicken... That is not debating, that is bone picking.

Perhaps we're just not the right sort of farangs, we must be here for the wrong reasons, but at least we're all despised by the locals unlike yourself ?

Or perhaps we really do share your desire for a move towards increased democracy here, but don't think Thaksin is an essential part of the process, based on his record ?

You have to admit it's quite a change of direction, from saying "democracy is not my objective" while in-power, to now being a fighter (from a safe distance) for liberty, fraternity and equality.

Red Shirts smashed the window of one French journalist's car on the road from Bangkok to Pattaya, and at least two other groups of journalists were roughed up by protesters on their way to the summit.

- IndoAsian News Service / 2009-04-10

And the Red-Shirts peaceful fight for Democracy continues ... with their usual thuggish-behaviour for people they might not like.

Not that they've yet occupied Swampy, just blockaded Chiang Mai Airport last week and attacked the PM's car in Pattaya, but at some point aren't they going to look just a little bit like the alleged 'international terrorists of the PAD', if they continue to act this peacefully, in their attempts to disrupt the ASEAN-conference ?

It started a week ago, up in Fang, I believe the kids there think it ought to be a 2-week-long festival !

The only responsible solution is to dissolve the house and call for new elections.

Why?

So that the PTP can poll 40%-ish of the vote again, proclaim a 'landslide victory', and form a legal opposition in Parliament, then declare the whole process undemocratic and rigged, thus progressing democracy erm ... erm ... erm ?

If a new election is the only responsible solution, doesn't that mean it was irresponsible of PM-Somchai not to do that, last November ? Or perhaps playing golf & going to karaoke in Chiang Mai was some new version of responsible behaviour, previously unseen in power, which would have helped the country focus on its response to the global economic-crisis ?

Given the apparent number of Robbin' Hoods here, even discounting career-professionals such as the politicians & BiBs, one might have expected there to be better facilities for them ?

I guess they must just hang-out in whatever's left of the woodlands, traditional behaviour for these informal-groups of freelance wealth-redistribution-consultants, I understand ?

Whence sometimes emanates the strange sound of people practising Robbery With Violins.

You may have guessed that it's a very quiet day, here in Mae-Jo, for those of us too timid or wise to go out on the streets during Songkran.

I suppose that our time has just not come yet, but hopefully it will.

But preferably after a Good Old Full English Breakfast, then we'll be ready, for whatever life throws at us !

Speaking by phone from a train platform in Tokyo, Mr Udom said he didn't think the listing was related to safety issues, but rather to the fact that the EU commonly blacklists carriers who don't own their own aircraft, even though operating leased aircraft is common in Asia.

This would merely be hilarious, if it weren't that this guy sets the policy on safety-issues & maintenance, for his companies.

Just how credulous does he think the travelling-public are ?

Presumably all the flights to Nicaragua were fully-booked ?

Only 3 of his 4 children cried?

What about that sexy 'god daughter' ?? She didn't cry did she?

There must be a shortage of onions ...

Shopping is great at the twin towers mall area (forget the name). Great western sized stuff (they have shops like La Senza!)

KLCC.

Love KL - leaves BKK standing. No specific recommendations for hotels, but some reasonable options around Bintang (downtown) - also a good area for stores, cafe's, restaurants etc.

Will some people never learn the rules about the use of apostrophes?

This is normal, as one adjust's to life here, you s'tart by dropping/adding apos'trophe's, and rapidly progre's's toward's dribbling into your porridge or jello. Pass the bib, please.

I've known monthly-rates be a 2/3-discount to normal prices, guess that they hope to make it on meals/drinks instead, or are just happy to have filled a base-line level of capacity ?

There should be nothing wrong with a 20-year-old plane, as long as it is properly maintained, the comfort inside depends on whether it has been updated or not. TG's elderly 747-400s and A300-600s are certainly looking dated.

Perhaps 25 years is starting to push things, but there are plenty of 30+ planes flying, especially as cargo-conversions, or in the 3rd-world, or for people like Poo-Air.

instead of the phone ins I think he should get a team together and make a high quality, engaging 1 hour movie/documentry that puts forward the case for him and the reds. Then distribute it free around Thailand, translate in English too.

This was certainly an effective tactic, for the PAD reporting corruption-allegations in the early days, they even got people to buy the VCDs so that it was self-financing. This helped increase the pressure on Thaksin, who was still trying to squelch the allegations, via the heavily-influenced normal media.

If this is true I think Abhisit can handle it. It would have been really hilarious to have seen Samak on that show though.

He would have hidden in the loos, when they started asking tough questions, I suspect !

Welcome to Chiang Mai, and Good Luck, hopefully you've already visited a few times, to 'suss' things out ?

If you're shipping effects in a container, it doesn't make any real difference to the cost, whether it's full or only half-full, so I'd load it up, especially if your wife is a Thai-national returning home after 1+ years overseas, and can get the import (in theory) duty-free by putting all the stuff in her name only, as shipper & receiver ? There are threads on this, and local-agents to clear/deliver in CM, but you might need extra storage-space.

LIST is south of town, so you'd tend to live that side too, the traffic on the Hang Dong road can be quite busy during the rush-hour. Someone was advertising an apartment to-rent in that area, about a month ago ? Watch out for the flight-paths which tend to be from the LIST-end of the runway, it's not LHR or anything, but worth avoiding unless you like planes !

Please update us about the valueable metal found in the klong.

Sadly, all that glitters is not only gold, but who knows, it might have been, TiT !

Happy April Fools Day.

I tried that 'Tokay' wine, from Hungary, once. Tasted like lizard-piss.

What's the date, again ?

I would anticipate much fuming from Pattaya-based expats, who are already hard-hit by the new ban on elephant-rides, lucky that there are no changes to the visa-requirements too !

Shaky Government's will swiftly call mid term elections if they are confident they can win, or improve their majority.

There's no great altruism about it.

Abhisit doesn't call an election because he ain't certain he'll still be flying First Class to Davos when the votes are counted. If he did, he'd call an election quicker than you can say' Royal Orchid gold card'

One might make much the same comment, about PM-Somchai and the recent PPP-government, perhaps he was less confident of a landslide/swing to Thaksin's party, than some posters here ?

As I said at the time, it would have been interesting, to see how the government's year of mismanagement, and Thaksin's first actual conviction, had changed voters' opinions on him.