Tourism Ministry Revives Controversial Elite Card

[webfact]

Fugitive Ex-PM Thaksin's brainchild, the Elite Card scheme will stay

BANGKOK: -- Tourism Ministry agrees to recapitalise Thailand Privilege Card by Bt500mn. More info as we have it.

-- The Nation 2012-08-29

Previous news and discussions about the Elite Card:

http://thai.vi/Pt8OaF

[sangfroid]

At 40% rakeoff I suppose there is no limit to the number of times you can flog a dead horse.

[ezzra]

Hey, why kill a good thing? a good thing that is for the leaches, cronies, the idle job positions

holders with the bombastic titles that this revival will bring to the close circle of people that need to be looked after,

nothing here is done for the country or the consumer,,,

[Buchholz]

Are they now offering a large chunk of rock cocaine as an incentive to purchase the plastic card and use it to draw up lines?

[TheFishman1]

What New this is Disneyland

[thurien]

@all: pls acknowledge that this is just a revival of the "world-wide travel operators' and states representatives' incentives"; only very few with a sane mind paid real money for this plastic in the past - most of them were "proudly given away to important people", who in most cases gave a shit on the possibility of suddenly being enabled to own 1 rai of land...

[Reasonableman]

Hey, why kill a good thing? a good thing that is for the leaches, cronies, the idle job positions

holders with the bombastic titles that this revival will bring to the close circle of people that need to be looked after,

nothing here is done for the country or the consumer,,,

There will always be a market for people with lots of money to stash abroad... just not enough of them to make the scheme economically viable for the Thai taxpayer, unfortunately, who gets to kick the can again to the tune of half a billion Baht. LOS, "Hub of Elite Safe Havens".

[thaicbr]

i thought they had ALREADY spent huge amounts paying off the original card holders!!!!!!

[Soutpeel]

Now I am convinced of the validity of the saying which talks about the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome

[alchik]

Hey, why kill a good thing? a good thing that is for the leaches, cronies, the idle job positions

holders with the bombastic titles that this revival will bring to the close circle of people that need to be looked after,

nothing here is done for the country or the consumer,,,

There will always be a market for people with lots of money to stash abroad... just not enough of them to make the scheme economically viable for the Thai taxpayer, unfortunately, who gets to kick the can again to the tune of half a billion Baht. LOS, "Hub of Elite Safe Havens".

[alchik]

Sour Grapes!

[Buchholz]

Hey, why kill a good thing? a good thing that is for the leaches, cronies, the idle job positions

holders with the bombastic titles that this revival will bring to the close circle of people that need to be looked after,

nothing here is done for the country or the consumer,,,

There will always be a market for people with lots of money to stash abroad... just not enough of them to make the scheme economically viable for the Thai taxpayer, unfortunately, who gets to kick the can again to the tune of half a billion Baht. LOS, "Hub of Elite Safe Havens".

Squandering another 500,000,000.00 Baht more of taxpayer's money in order to maybe pick up 3 new card purchasers....

Thaksin, Ver. 4.0 ..... more of the same from the same brainchild

.

.

Edited August 29, 2012 by Buchholz

[Soutpeel]

Hey, why kill a good thing? a good thing that is for the leaches, cronies, the idle job positions

holders with the bombastic titles that this revival will bring to the close circle of people that need to be looked after,

nothing here is done for the country or the consumer,,,

There will always be a market for people with lots of money to stash abroad... just not enough of them to make the scheme economically viable for the Thai taxpayer, unfortunately, who gets to kick the can again to the tune of half a billion Baht. LOS, "Hub of Elite Safe Havens".

Hey, why kill a good thing? a good thing that is for the leaches, cronies, the idle job positions

holders with the bombastic titles that this revival will bring to the close circle of people that need to be looked after,

nothing here is done for the country or the consumer,,,

There will always be a market for people with lots of money to stash abroad... just not enough of them to make the scheme economically viable for the Thai taxpayer, unfortunately, who gets to kick the can again to the tune of half a billion Baht. LOS, "Hub of Elite Safe Havens".

The sad thing about the whole TE fiasco is that they could have turned this into a very viable/useful scheme as a vehicle for someone to stay long term if someone was prepared to pay for the privilage

[shaurene]

Are they now offering a large chunk of rock cocaine as an incentive to purchase the plastic card and use it to draw up lines?

I am from New Zealand and I have APEC card worth double it's weight in gold.

[noitom]

They stiffed earlier cardholders. Now they plan to start the double cross again.

[Mosha]

Fol me once = Shame on you

Fool me twice = Shame on me

I wonder if the people dumb enough last time, will be dumb enough this time?

[maidu]

Just line up facing the wall, pull your shorts down and bend over. My question: Shall I bring the vaseline, or is it provided complementary when I purchase the card?

[TheWalkingMan]

500 million in tax payer funds and wasn't there just an additional sin tax to raise more revenue along with a report to hire more tax collectors?

[Buchholz]

Are they now offering a large chunk of rock cocaine as an incentive to purchase the plastic card and use it to draw up lines?

I am from New Zealand and I have APEC card worth double it's weight in gold.

Yes, but you only paid NZ$150 for it.

It's not nearly as "elite" as the Thai Elite Card's NZ$60,000.00 purchase price.

.

[bkkjames]

No doubt there will be hundreds if not thousands of people lining up to get this valuable piece of plastic - again.

[madmitch]

Could it be that there are Elite card holders with a very strong legal case against the Government and this is their way of saving face?

Or has the Government just thrown 500m baht into the dustbin?

I know my name on here uses the word mad but it seems to apply more and more to this current crop of politicians.

[Buchholz]

No doubt there will be hundreds if not thousands of people lining up to get this valuable piece of plastic - again.

The original plan was to: Sell A Million Cards to make A Trillion Baht.

With the price of the card 50% higher now than it was then, they'll make even more. Heaps of money. Container ships of money.

.

[AleG]

Thaksin saving face at the expense of the tax payer, wonderful.

Same idiocy as reinstating the 30 Baht health scheme, it doesn't matter that it's stupid, the idea comes from the Dear Leader and it must be carried out.

[Ricardo]

At 40% rakeoff I suppose there is no limit to the number of times you can flog a dead horse.

If only they could flog Elite-Cards too !

Still it's only half-a-billion Baht, and the government has no liquidity/cashflow problems, although one suspects that they may be on-their-way shortly.

Why can't they just accept, this was 'dud', and let it go ? Start investing in European-property, or African diamonds & gold-mines, instead ? Oh, of course, someone's lost face !

[philw]

BANGKOK: -- Tourism Ministry agrees to recapitalise Thailand Privilege Card by Bt500mn. More info as we have it.

So, no info available for the revamped scheme, ( perhaps it's not even going to be revamped ) no details given so far and yet 23 posts of condemnation..............................

It's all very predictable.

[jerrysteve]

That is a rather Elitest Attude on their Part...

[belg]

good thai economics

take something that clearly does not work

and push it to the limits to fill some people's pockets

[jerrysteve]

The real Elite people won't get one! Real wealth is truly knowing what you can live without !

Edited August 29, 2012 by jerrysteve

[bkkjames]

What about starting something a little more modest in nature.

"Not quite so Elite Card". all the benefits of the above at half the cost. lol

[steveromagnino]

Actually, to say they could not sell them is simply not true. I resent that anyone would say such a barefaced lie.

Of the approx 2,300 cards issued so far, around 1,000 were given away to selected individuals for free (most of whom happen to be friends of the former TAT Governor or the former PM) and the remaining 1,000 approx cards were sold.

So to say they could not sell them is not true at all, they in fact raised a total of 1,000,000,000b baht from the campaign. Admittedly, the marketing costs alone for the scheme were more than this, and the annual cost to the Thai tax payer is somewhere in the realm of (I think was was disclosed before) around 85,000,000b+ a year (because it is incurred on all the cards, including the free ones to the friends as well) but again, that still means that there is a considerable benefit to Thailand if they ressurect the scheme. By which I mean to selected individuals in Thailand who do the following jobs:

- agencies who manage media spending

- consultants who get commission on cards issued (not sold)

- perhaps company owners/managers such as golf clubs with flagging members who want a nice legal way to get fixed income every month from the government for giving something away for free - for instance that nice former RS Singer's family who has a golf course - could be easily worth a few hundy thousand of income every month

- senior members of various departments who want to have a nice legal gift to friends from abroad

- maybe former TAT governors or former PMs whose hands are filthy with skim, but want to appear legitimate by simply launching the same scheme again (since no one complained the first time)

So really, everyone wins, there are no losers in this. Well, ok, Thai tax payers lose on this, but the government can say, well we are going to lose around 1b of your money a year, but that's NOTHING compared to the 150+ billion baht we are going to lose on the rice pledging scheme, so really, are you going to argue about something so small? Hmmm? And the Thai tax payer will say, "Hmmmm honourable gentlemens make a goods points, I am want to have cards for myself too" and then the government can say, "well since you asked nicely, I will give you this card, which is really nice, and looks like an elite card, so you can feel like a high roller of rock and rolla too, it's called THE BILL"

And the Thai tax payer will be all like "SWEET"

And the PM will be like "I would like to overcome all members back to the country of Siam Country Club for Elites Cards"

And we will on Thaivisa be like "I feel like I've been kicked in the nuts"

And the Tourism Minister will be like "Dude, look over there, you HAVE been kicked in the nuts"

And we will be like "SWEET I love that show"

It's deja vous all over again.

I do like the idea of the less elite card. I think it could be a PLEB card and costs 1b and you get entry to the best beer bars and a free greeting of "Hello Sir where you go, I go with you?" in Pattaya. In fact, if you will all give me 1 billion baht, I think I can make it happen!

Edited August 29, 2012 by steveromagnino