Johpa

Venturalaw is spot on with his example....I have used the same one before BUT you can't explain this to some people, they just don't get it. I'm not actually having a shot at you....trying to understand what your point is about income tax and pensions?

Well here goes my sad class envy on display again, but Venturelaw's example, the exact same moronic parable, word for word, that I have had sent to me in countless e-mails over the past several years, has at least one fatal flaw in its concept. It assumes that income distribution would be represented by a straight line slope on a graph and this is simply not the case.

As for class envy and jealousy charges being levied against anyone who criticizes those who imagine themselves to be of a higher economic class than the one doing the criticism, it is just a droll ad hominen attack. I would point out similar criticisms against sectors of the elite being made by the likes of Warren Buffet and Bill Gates Sr. directed at those who oppose the Estate Tax in the US. Are we to imagine that they too suffer from class envy? Now I am certainly not in the same economic class as are Buffet and Gates, but I may not be from a class significantly different from that of Venturalaw, but this is not a forum where any such claims could be verified so it becomes a moot point.

There is no such creature as a salmon trout. Perhaps confused with a "Steelhead Trout" which is a rainbow trout that travels around the ocean like salmon for a few years before returning to it's original stream. They are as big as a smaller salmon ranging in the 10-20 lb. area. Hardest game fish to catch IMO.

One should note that Steelhead are used to quickly diagnose those who fish for them in the winter as being totally crazy and in need of counseling.

If you want some good salmon keep your eyes out for Copper River reds(sockeye) or Copper River Kings. These are the best you can do to taste fresh wild salmon without being there. Farm fish?? Keep it thank you very much.

I agree with the lackluster appeal of farmed salmon as compared to wild salmon, but the Copper River craze is, IMHO, just a big marketing scheme and not worth the added price.

But to take from those who are successful and to provide to those who have little initiative is flat out wrong.

Well, how Protestant of you in your views of the poor. They are poor because of lack of initiative and not due to circumstances such as geography, access to education, or access to credit. And of course your perceived success is completely due to your personal god-given initiative.

I can't believe how many of you neo-sahib ex-pats believe this nonsense. Onwards Christian Soldiers and a Merry Christmas to you all as you relish in your wealth and comfort. Baby Jesus would be so freakin proud.

God I hate socialism. It NEVER works.

Crikey, and I feel the exact same way about capitalism. But have you noticed that most people are avid capitalists on the way up and then turn into avid socialists on the way down. Or in other words, as we see throughout the western world, the privatization of profits and the socialization of losses.

But I do like all of you who seem to think that money sent to the lower economic half for cell phones is somehow inferior to tax breaks to corporations, the savings of which are used to purchase imported cars into the streets of Bangkok.

The ones who choose the profession are looking for an easy way out of poverty. For every woman who makes the choice, there are thousands who choose not to.

There are few easy ways out of poverty and although hiring a prostitute is an easy and inexpensive way for many of the wanke_rs on this board to get a cheap thrill, it is not an easy way out of poverty. What exactly are you thinking here?!?

And not to add more insult, but why not considering you feel that prostitution is an "easy" way out of poverty, in fact there are only a handful of similarly poor women in Thailand who do not choose to enter the sex trade for each one who does.

Yes, it's just not very clever. No-one gets ratted-out faster than a foreigner whose bought drugs

from his "Thai friends". Who then call and inform the police earning bonus credits for themselves.

Actually those who bring in drugs from overseas to sell and thus compete with local dealers are far more quickly turned into police hands than are paying customers.

I hate to interrupt the British circle jerk here, but in case it has not been posted yet, I highly recommend the most recent musings of that dynamic tag team duo of Achaan Pasuk and Chris Baker, Thailand: Fighting for Democracy. Thanks to Andrew over at NM for the link.

That's good news, and I stand corrected. Shame it wasn't more advertised though, recently I was having this conversation in the Isan village I live with a group including the headman and a couple of Or-Bor-Tor, and they all assured me the degree was still necessary. I'll have to educate them. Unfortunately, it will still take a while, if ever, for the poor to trickle through.

One also does not need a degree to run for head of the local Tambon Development District, your Or-Por-Tor, or OPT for short. The OPT, in many places, has become the lead government agency in development and modernization of the rural communities and has far more direct impact upon the lives of the people than even the District Offices, the Amphoes. This has been a significant change around our home where 20 years ago everything went through the far more distant Amphoe offices.

My brother in-law worked in the local OPT and also ran in the election to head the office even though he has no formal college degree. He did not win that election but does have a large enough political following in the area to attract the attention of the political parties who have toyed with the idea of him running as an MP. They don't seem to have an issue with him not having a college degree, but this may partially be explained by the fact that many of them refuse to believe that he has no degree as they have a hard time accepting that someone who does not have a degree can be more educated and articulate than themselves. Crikey, a college degree in Thailand or one of those store-bought degrees from the pay-your-way BA colleges in the US favored by many scions of those in Bangkok mean relatively little.

I have a friend doing some history detective type work using an old photo believed to have been taken somewhere in Muang Phrae back in the 1960s. Anybody on these boards living in that province?

Abhisit may be looked down upon for his connections to extreme right-wing factions but it is good to finally see a homosexual prime minister accepted so freely. If only the west were so progressive.

Apart from the dubious claims that the man in question is gay, what does being progressive have to do with extreme right-wing politics?.

Abhisit born in newcastle_upon_Tyne will the pound go up

Do you expect the people of Newcastle to celebrate tomorrow and declare it a national holiday? Like in Kenya what the balck man make a historic win?

Maybe he will bring Watney's into the pubs in Thailand.

To add some perspective, I run a small retail operation in the US that has been around for 35 years. Business in my store and in my neighbor's stores has been down most of this year. But this month, the holiday month of December, we are seeing those sales drops double from previous months. The past few months, the only two major retailers seeing gains were Walmart and Costco. This last month it was only Walmart as a majority of people are now buying down in quality to save a bit. The train has left the recession station and is now heading elsewhere down the track to an as yet unnamed station. Having spoken to many of my peers, I know that once we get passed the holiday season we will be seeing large layoffs in both the retail and service sectors of the US economy, and I suspect the same elsewhere. And with the continuing higher unemployment sapping consumer demand, expect to see Asia, including Thailand and the PRC begin to deal with increased civil unrest as the unemployment affects its billions of population

All aspects of the Thai economy are going to be hurting badly, including tourism and exports. And there are fewer farms for the soon to be unemployed to retreat to. And on the farms that still exist one sees fewer folks raising their own chickens and pigs than 20 years ago. A great deal of knowledge related to self-sufficiency has been lost.

So hold onto your seats boys and girls, the roller coaster ride has only just begun.

20,000 sheep all led by the deviant shepherd Thaksin, the pervert of Thai justice supported of course by his vitriolic mouthpiece supporters on this forum. Still we all now what suits sheep don't we - carved up with mint sauce on a plate. Let's hope that the wiser factions of Thai society do all they can to protect the metaphorical from becoming factual.

Alas, currently there does not exist any wiser factions of Thai society. You have red sheep led by Thaksin and yellow sheep led by Sondhi, and underneath it all there is little to differentiate the two sides apart from which side is currently getting the biggest piece of the pie, as in the old Thai euphemism for politics "kin muang". But of course there are the other sheep, the majority, who do not wear colors and just go along for the ride hoping to catch a little sanook along the way.

I just stayed in the Amari Hotel at Don Muang Airport for a night prior to coming home. A nice hotel .......

Well there are a few of us older Thai hands who will shed no tears at the demise of the Don Muang Amari, once the bastion of triple pricing based solely on race: one price for Thais and Chinese, double that for Farangs, and a price in the middle for a Thai-Farang couple.

That aside, the national economic systems that are doing relatively well are those with a strong central government that are guiding their domestic business world in specific directions with funding opportunities, the internal version of installing tariffs and protectionism without violating external treaties. Thailand has a weak central government and no vision. The country is simply not competitive outside the sex industry. The trend in the larger tourist industry is already shifting towards eastern neighbors.

CMSally made a brief mention of it a few days ago, but I think it is worth posting a link to Philip Bowring's excellent and concise article "The Crowd and the Crown" as it is getting some note in the larger bollockosphere. Bowring is a veteran observer of Southeast Asia, one of the few "old hands" still publishing observations and peering over the clouded horizon. Discussion of some of the specifics of Bowring's article are not appropriate to this forum, although thoughts on the PAD are fair game. The article itself should be required reading if for no other reason than to read the thoughts of someone who had been observing the scene as long as anyone out there.

You made some very good points there. The sex trade is unrivaled. Everything else is easy to find elsewhere.

With the global recession teetering on a global depression, I would anticipate seeing a global boom in the sex trade across all borders. As the unemployment numbers continue to go up so too will the number of prostitutes and basic economic equation of supply and demand will cause the prices of a quickie to drop. Thus the need to travel to Thailand for affordable sex will diminish.

Couldn’t bother going through the 14 pages of this thread, but before we think of “re-educating” rural Thais, if the government just try to “educate” them, it would be a nice move.

But it wouldn’t change the election result, quite the opposite indeed.

Methinks it will be far more difficult to enlighten those who imagine they are already educated. I have found it quite difficult to convince folks a generation younger than myself that information, in and of itself, is not knowledge.

Ah ha......its not over until the fat lady sings

So very true.

:D

In history it will show the PAD protesters to be the true patriots and hero's of Thailand.

You jest of course. History will show that the PAD represents the assimilation of a large number of Central Thais and assorted others into what once was the Sino-Thai Bangkok cultural group. This is the final and complete rebuttal of Prof. Willliam Skinner's hypothesis, where he got it arse-backwards. People tend to assimilate towards an elite, even if that elite is a minority. This new Thai cultural group sees itself as separate and superior to the more Tai oriented ethnic groups such as the Isaan/Lao folks in the Northeast as well as the Khon Muang groups up north. Members of those groups have been denigrated as uneducated and unworthy of being allowed to fully participate in the affairs of the Kingdom. They, the PAD, are patriots only to themselves and certainly not to the Nation as a whole. In fact they have fractured the Nation, perhaps irreparably.

If you are not happy with Isaan folks being used as political scapegoats in order for a few to profit then just wait awhile. I would assume that it is now only a matter of time, as the unintended consequences of these action by the PAD are felt, that newer scapegoats will be sought and I would venture a guess that the small minds that makeup the PAD leadership will sooner or later direct their follower's frustrations upon the white guys walking around with the Thai women half their age and then onto all Farangs.

The only joke I see is that statement (the misspellings are horrible - must be a Thaksin front organisation). The law is the law. PPP broke the law. Chart Thai broke the law. The judges issued their verdict in accordance with the law. While we may or may not agree that the punishment fits the crime, the punishment was correct according to the law. In my view the only positive effect of the 2006 coup was that it seemed to free the judiciary from the undo influence that Thaksin wielded over them. They seem to be acting according to "he who must not be named" direction that they rule according to the rule of law and with integrity for the sake of the nation.

Oh please, every political party in Thailand "breaks the law". Just about every high ranking government official "breaks the law". Just about every high ranking police officer "breaks the law". Just about every high ranking military officer "breaks the law". And quite frankly, the judiciary of Thailand has never been without its dirty laundry and it too has always been under the influence of one political faction or another. What has changed is that Sondhi has used his media power to demonize the opposition and so now we have the pawns of both megalomaniacs, Thaksin and Sondhi, wearing their gang colors avowing to destroy the opposition. So the chess game will continue. All that has happened is that one side got some leverage over the judiciary who then threw the board up in the air to mix up all the pieces and start anew. But the stalemate will continue. There is no good news here for the Kingdom and the Thai people.

House Speaker and People Power Party Member Chai Chidchob

And rumors abound that Khun Chai's benevolent twin brother Admiral Ackbar is about to save the country from the evil plotters.

I don't understand the idea on changing the constitution. It was voted on by the people and ratified. Now the people in power can just change it however they want without having to go back to the people for another vote on the changes? That means that whoever is in power could change the constitution however they wanted without having to get approval. That is just a recipe for chaos.

I have had the pleasure of following Thai politics since 1981 and I can't remember any period since then when constitutional change was not part of the local news.

Meanwhile, the stalemate continues awaiting the cosmic signal for the checkmate and then the real endgame commences in earnest.

Those folks look like Santa's elves so it must be Santa heading back to the North Pole after vacation.

I would imagine that as this point in time you could bargain for a room at the Orchid Hotel for two months, use their gym and pool and proximity to the trail up Doi Suthep for exercise, all for the price you are looking for.

Yes - I do have an answer,whether it is correct or not is another matter, in reality it is only an informed opinion.It is an opinion that has been reached after reading a number of documents, articles etc that are not available on this website.

As I said previously, you will not get an informed opinion on this website - look elsewhere.

Feel free to ignore my suggestion if it suits you.

I would ignore you for your arrogance alone.

That being said, there is indeed a great deal of noise here, but less so on this particular thread than in the threads in the news forum, but one can glean some useful insights and read some valid opinions. One can also visit Bangkok Pundit or New Mandala for less noisome speculation, but it is all equally just as speculative. Those who claim they "know" don't and so we are left to glean from the speculations of informed others as well as from our own personal experience, flawed as that might be.

As for censorship, the forum rules clearly state, and understandably so, that direct references to the Royal Family will not be tolerated. Yet I have found that creativity is not being discouraged and is tolerated.