ableguy

A good idea in some respects. It also enables Big Brother to know where you are.

More conspiracy theory ? what on earth makes you think they want to know ?

The cold light of reality suggests that the ruling elites of Thailand constitute a kleptocracy. That is the nature of politics which is at its core just a system to determine who gets the money and who gets the knife. It is no different anywhere else regardless of the operational fictions that pertain. In America, 1 percent of the population holds 40 percent of the wealth and is determined to get more of the pie and is succeeding. The European 'democracy's' are more or less similarly constituted even though their privileged leadership espouses support for socialistic values and its egaltarian assumptions. Currently 'democratic' governments around the globe are trying to enforce the idea of austerity (getting on with less) to their populations even though the privileged and the leadership has no such intention for itself. In Thailand expectations are high among the masses for 'getting more' through democracy. All the players in the political process here have encouraged this belief. Campaign promises are the clearest example of this charade and it also illuminates and heightens the danger of raising expectations that no political player here would in fact support.

Thaksins time in office was a kleptocracy,

The old elite in Thailand has been a feudal entity slowly receeeding into the past, while the more modern kleptocracy uses modern PR methods and old school Feudal control methodes to hound a larger share of the elite pie from the old guard.

Old school feudal systems were built on a diety give right to rule or pull differing segments together under on umbrella for security and societal issues as city states developed and merged. MAny died off much earlier, others became more figure heads. In Thailand there seems a tendency to blame the top for the malevolent workings of the middle ground players. Kow tow societal customs makes all below scrabble to be above. And this more than an amorphous elite is the true cause of keeping the poor poor. But you can fight against a concept with in the society and expect to get a win in your lifetime, hence going after the top.

I feel extremely indignant.

They cant touch you for it.

So what is the bottom line.......the minimum wage hike is unacceptable because business profit demands dictate business simply cannot afford it?

Or the business managers are rolling happily along and don't want to afford the new minimum wage level as they may have to get out and increase turn over to accomodate the rise?

Businesses fall into many different categories, many are operated on a very thin profit margin because of competition. The percentage of companies who make very large net profit is not that big. Small business is the backbone of total business in every capitalist country in the world - mostly small business with limited profit and high risk of failure.

The competitors who are clever will take your customers in a second if your not very careful, which means that you need to devote a lot of time to etaining clients, and often this means price, as well as gaining new clients in case a segment in your business model changes / disappears, etc etc., the old 80/20 principle.

What's to some extent missing from this whole argument is other means to share the bottom line common wealth of Thailand or any country. Redistribution of wealth.

One factor is taxes. You might note that pt have said raise daily pay and reduce corporate tax all in the same breath. Day one of economics 101 says that equation doesn't compute. And why am I left thinking that policy to reduce corporate taxes, or any taxes, is totally innapropriate when pt have offered a plate of goodies which will bankrupt thailand in five minutes. Plus there's no increased budget for education.

Policies to share the wealth need to be looked at much more seriously. The first example is health - well something is in place already but could be much better. Another simple examples, subsidized mass transport, and other factors which would comparitively put quite a lot of extra cash in the pocket of low wage earners.

Another possibility for Thailand is to 'force' a better geographical spread of factories, value added work, etc. In some states in India you apply for a licence to start a new enterprise, and if it's approved the government also indicate where it much be located within that state, to spread work opportunites, often including freight subsidies etc., taken from the overall common wealth.

The dems started the policies and laws to produce a capital gains tax, another way to redistribute wealth and common in many countries in the world, don't see pt talking about this and probably never will.

For me the long-term bottom line is: a lot more attention to real education which breeds analytical, creativy, innovative people and a better spread / volume of value added work opportunites which ultimately means that a much larger percentage of all Thais have a good quality of life through their own productivity. I don't see pt talking about any elements of this - just lots of unaffordable goodies.

Productivity to my mind is essentially a bi product of the way employees are managed, educated and trained. Are we blaming political parties for the lack of effort to develop employees? Perhaps if business is educated to accept their staff as something more than a cheap expendable resource, they may take on the role of development more readily. Many of the major corporates have these type of development programs in place......perhaps a contributor to their global success.

Quite true that productivity is very important, and resources invested wisely to generate productivity and quality gains is one way to possibly be ahead of your competition, but the clever competitor is always lurking to steal your customers, perhaps by price or perhaps by other clever marketing activities.

But it's also the responsibility of government to take care of the various foundations.

The country is lacking infrastructure to place factories the same as India does, ie railways.

Minimum wages are not upheld now and nobody to enforce it. Burmeses and Cambodians will work and do from 75 baht a day up the lucky ones getting around 170 baht a day in Bkk, guess they will be in demand .

Sorry to hear of your problem but a word of warning, we too got turned over , my response fit an alarm system costing 24,000 baht. I have since been told by the police they do not respond to alarms in houses going off unless the home owner makes the call, I fit it to protect the house when nobody home but a waste of money the only protection is the alarm may scare someone off. Oh and I was told do not set the alarm to ring for more than 5 minutes as if goes off in the middle of the night any time longer than five minutes keeps paople awake, go figure , only in Thailand.

I too love samosas. If you ever go to Bangkok, try Little India. Opposite the new, sort of department store, at the entrance to the soi with lots of shops in it, is a family that makes delightful samosas. If you continue down that soi, about 100 metres , is an excellent Indian grocery shop.

At the entrance to the Soi with lots of shops ??????? in little India ???????

Eastbourne

but only the western suburbs!

Next to the railway station helps one to get the hell out fast.

I filled the form in on line and paid at airport HCM $ 25 dont know why anyone would pay $50

Sooner you than me

If you cant do the time dont do the crime, no sympathy.

who on earth goes out at 5.30 am for a ' Pleasure Ride '

Dopers

Does anyone recall when the chicken flu scare was on maybe 4 or 5 years ago, the EU sent out a minister to assess the situation who was led on a guided tour by Tacky, he was to decide whether to ban all chicken meat exports to Europe, a bullshit tour was organised and all known deaths attributed to Avian flu was denied, the minister was very impressed with the tour and stated so, the next day news of several past deaths in Thailand broke all attributed to the said disease, his reaction was to state publically he would never believe another word this man uttered. Does anyone remmember the dried mangosteen scam with China another Tacky government scam. China wanted 70,000 tons of dried mangosteen and offered in payment some Chinese type of warships for the Thai Navy, the deal was signed and the Thai government alledgedly set about buying the said product when the Chinese said they were ready for the first delivery guess what , the government warehouse was found to be empty tyey could not have shipped one klg, all brushed over, does anyone recall the school milk scam another Tacky inovation, had to be canceeled in the end as they would insist on delivering diluted milk.

This is the guy they want to represent Thailand ? he would be great though for any dealings with companies where graft is involved, say people who sell armoured cars, fire trucks, blimps and so forth. After all a convicted crook so people will be aware of who they are dealing with.

While it seems more than a little ridiculous to try the US officials in absentia in Iran, (because the alleged crimes did not happen there), I have no complaints with charges being filed internationally by Iran. It's common knowledge that some US forces (and UK forces too), have tortured prisoners, and committed other excesses. If war criminals from other countries can be tried at the Hague, why not US officials ? A war crime is a war crime, regardless of the citizenship of the person committing the crime. I hope they also find some evidence on Blair, Bush's pet warmongering lap-dog. It also seems eminently sensible to cut ties with companies associated with the alleged perpetrators of these crimes. After all, if it's acceptable for the US, EEC, and other countries to use sanctions, or refuse to trade with "rogue" countries and companies, it must be acceptable for Iran to take the same stance.

Bunch of clowns and thugs, what a joke and you are with them ?????

Another scam with the BIB they are such a bunch of crooks, however waste of time persuing the case and you will never see the money again, do you think any Thai cares you have lost 30,000 they will be jealous that they were not in on the scam, but thays it . Why anyone would visit that toilet Phuket is beyond me.

My wife and I would like to say congradulations to the new Thai Government, but also warn Thais you may have opened Pandora's Box

In Australia we have a Female Prime Minister who won the election with Lie after lie and is sending our country down a roller coaster of destruction

If the new Government do what they said before the election and put the people first before her older brother, maybe Thailand can find peace

But if her election promises where just lies like the Australian Prime Minister, Thailand has sad days ahead

You posted this to at least three different threads... r u on CTRL+C CTRL+V mission?

am tired of reading this too

The demands of the Thai people were actually pretty simple. They wanted an elected government. Is that wrong? Yes, I know that the farang political experts will insist that it was an elected government. Was it really?

Now I see our gloom and doom political prophets posting venomous, hateful totally non productive opinions.

I'll take the old tried and true track and say that if you don't like it here, leave!

The vote shows that although the poor upcountry bumpkins may be uneducated, they are not stupid. They know very well that if the democrats had their way, the countries poor would lose their right to vote.

what a load of rubish.

Shows how out of touch the Thai Visa news section regulars are with the opinions of the majority of Thai people IMO.

Great day for Thailand - putting the military and elite firmly in their places once and for all.

firmly in their place ??????? are you joking ?????

I have no sympathy for foreigner investors who get screwed here in Thailand. Everybody knows the deal here. Even if this news break is 'tongue in cheek' foreigners have always been banned from owning land/ property . Try and and make it all legal through fancy names,accountants,lawyers and companies and this is what could happen. This is not the generous west ,This is Thailand.<BR>Thaksin is about to be re-elected by proxy and you can bet he will demand 46 billion baht be returned pronto! This country belongs to the rich Chinese- Thais. not us farangs. The only thing a western man can do legally in Thailand is marry a poor Isan girl and the government will gladly give you a worthless marriage certificate and her a Thai passport for passage to Europe. Take a useless isan wife to Europe and get her to send money back to Thailand every month. Farangs are considered a joke here .

You are an extremely bitter man. My heart goes out to you. It must be difficult to wake up in the morning, inside your head. Take an aspirin. Take a vacation. Get out of Thailand for awhile. Meet some nice people. Do whatever you have to do, but stop inflicting your constipated ideas of the world on those that have found a place to live that we enjoy. As for your comment on useless Issan women, I will not even dignify that bit of racist garbage with a reply. Get a life, you waste of a human being!

The post is not demeening Issan girls , perhaps its you who needs a pill.

Old news. I think someone didn't get their fair share and decided to "rattle" things up a bit.

But i'm pretty sure the officials will go after the little fish first, retirees and so forth,... you know... to show that they are "hard" at work at finding the "bad" guys.

Don't you just love greed!

They will also be selective in finding prime sites for themselves and cohorts, things never change some land will be grabbed and then it will all blow over unless the police in Pattaya get in on the act then watch out.

sorry i meant 15000 /week

yes

although not in answer to your post but related. my gf's friend uses a thai dating site, and has had emails from two different men. the emails are from ''engineers' in the uk, who it would seem are very successfull, but are looking for love. they send pictures, and everything appears to be normal. well, normal to a thai person reading them. i could tell after reading the first email from them, they are not who they seem. their emails are so sweet, everything a woman might like to hear. but the man never answers any questions and never goes on msn. they just copy and paste a pre written response and send that to the girl. i am not sure what they are after. money~? but if they are ''successfull'' in the uk how can they expect to get money from a thai girl. it is quite sad of the man - to raise the hopes of these girls.

they are not from nor are they in the uk

A pal of my gf got something similar from a well known dating site, no names but initials TLL shortly after the message the package got held up in Malaya and she was asked to send 33000 baht to release it, the original was from a purported guy in the USA, it took me ages to convince her it was a scam as he had been communicating with her for 3 or 4 weeks, she actually tried to borrow the money to send , at first I thought Nigerian scam but it was a bit complex for them so I thought.

you need to sign up to the site mate and get a password

Who is this bloody cop ? i WANT MY BOTTLE AND A BUNNY ON MY ARM, does this make me welcome here or am I sober yesreday what you problem red shirt, how can man not live if bars closet all time what my rites heh answer that heh my money good heh ? no I know this two.