Covid-19: More booze bans coming? Thai province bans alcohol sale at all convenience stores: cooperate or we'll shut you down

[Winky Wilson]

Black market booze,  within minutes the opportunist will be ready.

[White Christmas13]

4 hours ago, Krataiboy said:

Just read the piece cited. Here's an extract:

 

Councillor Helen-Ann Smith, from Ashfield District Council, said . . .  "drinking with even one friend goes against the government's guidelines".

 

Glad I'm here and not there.

 

 

 

The same applies in Australia

[Ketyo]

I am so bored of living in a country run by clowns, morons and idiots...  but where do you go?... USA?  Brazil?  Phillipines? Turkmenistan? UK?   I don't know any more. 

 

 

[gk10002000]

idiotic.  Any place people congre

13 hours ago, webfact said:

more and more governors see convenience stores as places where the coronavirus can be passed on.

Idiotic.  any place people touch or interact or get near each other can be a place where the virus can be passed on.  Kind of funny that in the USA most states that are on lockdown and closed all sit in restaurants, malls, theaters, etc.  they directed that liquor stores and gun stores could remain open!

[alien365]

3 hours ago, Scott Tracy said:

 Tried to buy some hangers to replace the broken ones, no dice. Tried to get a non slip mat, to supplement the paddling pool we bought to make staying at home more palatable. No dice. Can't buy shoes, clothes, except kids clothes. 

As I'm at home all the time now I needed to buy a fan for the house, non essential, needed more lightbulbs, non essential, batteries, you guessed it. What surprised me most was that motorcycle helmets were also in the cordoned off area of Tesco, clearly not essential either.

I'd have thought keeping cool, having light, the TV remote working ???? and staying safe on a bike would be essential.

[scottiddled]

This is completely asinine and the type of Thai-style reactionary, bureaucratic authoritarianism that will make people ignore other directives, including prudent ones.

 

Some folks in this thread have made valid point about the indirect connection between selling booze at a 7/11 and unsafe social gatherings. Fair enough. Some of those folks have been reasonable and balanced, and others are off-the-hook toxic in how they frame this as an acceptable response. It's classic Salty Squad apologism for Thai authorities behaving inappropriately.

 

Sure, some people are prone to buy bottles of beer at 7/11 and hang out in public drinking. Authorities are in justified in taking steps to stop that behavior. But as many (e.g., smedley) have pointed out, that doesn't justify stopping 7/11 from selling a bottle of beer any more than that it justifies them stopping 7/11 from selling a bottle of Fanta.

 

When I read the Salty Squad write, unapologetically, that "Responsible drinkers can be considered collateral damage" (tropo) or that there is no way to differentiate responsible drinking from morons sitting by the curb together sharing bottles, I'm amazed that some people know how to turn on a laptop. It's very easy: target the behavior that is the direct threat: unsafe social gathering. But as some (e.g., petedk) point out, that's just not the Thai way. It's too hard (not logistically, but culturally) for a police officer to confront someone on the street and tell them they're violating emergency disease containment decrees. Oh, poor authorities. So rather than ask people to do their jobs and take direct steps, jackboots decide to cause a lot of collateral damage and demonstrate their toughness in indirect ways: "we'll shut particular types of businesses down (but not all types) if they don't stop selling beer which could lead to people gathering because we can't be bothered to police the gathering itself! Respect my uniform!!!"

 

The collateral damage here is that responsible people who are largely willing to make sacrifices in the name of disease containment get pushed too far. For example, there are tens of thousands of foreign workers (many of them teachers) who are stuck in Thailand for the foreseeable future. Some of them were told, even before governments started restricting travel, that they were not free to leave. No travel during breaks. No travel during weekends. It doesn't matter that it's your free time; it doesn't matter that you had plans; it doesn't matter that your families are half a world away; it doesn't matter that there's nothing even indirectly in your contract that empowers your employer to take such a position. So if you leave, you lose your job, because theoretically you might not be able to return to work because of quarantines or travel disruptions. Good luck fighting it in Labor Court. As it turns out, these fears were half right, and half wrong. Things did get worse, to the point that travel disruptions and/or mandatory quarantines (or outright entry bans) would've stopped people from being able to show up to their jobs in Thailand. But they were half wrong, because at that point everything shut down or shifted to telecommuting.

 

So here we are, tens of thousands of foreigners trapped. Setting aside the threat of losing a job, getting home is logistically near-impossible at this point. Those Songkran breaks plans? Nah. Stay here during the hottest weeks of the year in one of the hottest places on Earth. Stay inside. If you wanted to travel, to see home or family, or anything, you might not even be able to bank on the summer. Even if things improve, you might've (involuntarily) been stripped of summer break time as schools/businesses closed abruptly and decided to extend the year to make up the lost time. 

 

For me, after Songkran, I'll have had 4 weeks of "vacation"--all of which was earmarked to see family around the globe--stripped away as my immediate family is held hostage.

 

And guess what: we're being responsible. It's depressing, being so far away from everything you hold dear, and knowing that this time was originally meant to be spent far away doing much more pleasurable things. But it's for the health of our families, our students, our communities, and our planet. So we suck it up. But there are limits.

 

A few pages ago, "stouricks" hit on one of those limits:

 

Quote

 

No there is not. I go buy a few beers at 7-11 to drink by myself, in lockdown, at my home. No COvid, no driving while drunk.

So why not let folk like me go about my own, non-infecting business.

 

 

Amen. The Salty Squad is usually amusing, sometimes annoying, but this time completely out of line in suggesting that people aren't giving anything up and/or that these restrictions are reasonable. People are giving up a lot, by combination of choice, responsibility, and mandate. 

 

They've lost that week at the beach, or their pleasant family outings back home. They've given up weeks of their freedom, usually (at least in part) because of what "authorities" are forcing on them. They're faced with indefinite uncertainty about when/if they'll be able to see home again. They're kept up nights worrying about their overseas loved ones and fearing the worst.

 

One of the last-ditch "let's at least try to enjoy the 'break" contingencies, for many people, involves consoling oneself with a beer at home. It's the responsible thing to do. If you don't partake, fine. I usually don't, either. A night or two out on vacation is nice, but wipes me out. But don't let your own preference extend to telling other people how to live their lives if they aren't endangering anyone. The thought of sitting in a sparse temporary accomodation and watching Netflix ad infinitum while missing family and friends can, for some, be made a little less depressing by knowing they can enjoy their nights off with a cold one from the 7/11 down the street.

 

And when some imbecile makes that the focus of their crackdown, all it does is remind people like me of all the things we're giving up, for good reasons, necessary reasons, etc. All it does it tempt people like me to stop abiding by the "best practices" out of spite. I'm within my rights to go buy a case at Tops and invite my colleagues over for a private, inside evening. There's nothing in the emergency decrees preventing it. There's nothing forbidden about stocking with cases of beer, boxes of wine, and bottle upon bottle of hard liquor. Or traveling to another province to get it. 

 

Still, I don't.

 

But if clowns like Gov. Charnana Iamsang want to keep testing the limits of people during this difficult time, I guarantee you people will push back. Respect for authority in a crisis requires that authority demonstrate competence and compassion. I'm sensing neither from that clown. 

 

And I'm sensing complete Kool-Aid drinking callousness from the Salty Squad.

[Bangel72]

So now we have cross province runs to bring in the booze, another idea that increases risk.

[Saraburi121]

According to the local store near my house, Saraburi govt published a letter to all merchants who sell alcohol that no sales after midnight tonight until April 30th. Coul I bought a couple of boxes of beer to support my local store.  They are going to lose the Songkran sales so they are very worried. Those that can help your local small stores out please do they are going to need it.  Little more expensive but to me worth it to help a neighbor out.