I feel saddened that no sooner than the Thai PM is almost out of the way, talk of scrapping or diminishing the Bt30 healthcare scheme enters the discussion arena.

The fact is that although the scheme is sustainable if government wants it to be, it's a difficult balancing act given competing calls on tax revenues including roads, public transport, education, defence and poverty alleviation.

Government just has to explain in simple terms that caring for the nation's health probably means less spending elsewhere. And it may be that more affluent members of society will have to contribute more to cover the costs.

But let's be plain about this - universal free healthcare is a human right that has to be protected and any democratically elected government trying to take this away would have a very short political life.

David Prescott

Bangkok

Media should not give tobacco free advertising

Last week my friend showed me some photos of the international Grand Prix printed in a hai newspaper. We saw some brands of cigarettes clearly on the winners' clothes, ie, Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso's.

Tobacco sponsorship is prominent in sport and brand images, an important strategy for foreign tobacco companies that have used it for a long time to enhance their sales.

On "World No Tobacco Day", which is celebrated on May 31 every year, the World Health Organisation has suggested the campaign "Tobacco Free Sports - Play It Clean" and in 2004 raised the issue "Tobacco and Poverty: A Vicious Circle".

Many of us might remember that in 2004 His Majesty the King expressed concern about the problem of cigarette smoking among children while graciously addressing an audience on his birthday.

A slogan for World No Tobacco Day this year is "Tobacco: Deadly in Any Form or Disguise". We appreciate The Nation for showing responsibility to the public by not giving room for tobacco companies to advertise their deadly products and hope that other newspapers will do the same.

Suchada

Nonthaburi

Safety improved if drivers are told their mistakes

I had the pleasure of taking the theory test for a driver's licence at the Ministry of Transport after I decided it was time to have a Thai motorbike driver's licence. I was surprised that participants were not told which mistakes they made on the test after the results were available.

I guess improving traffic safety in the Kingdom of Thailand can be achieved without telling prospective drivers what they have done wrong.

Keeping people in the dark about what they do or do not know seems to me to be a unique approach to educating about traffic-safety regulations. Whether it makes sense is a question that apparently no one dares to ask.

Utopia

Bangkok

British citizens shoulder the expense for the embassy

The British Embassy has just sold a nice big plot of land in Bangkok worth a ton of money and now they have the nerve to ask people to pay Bt400-odd for the honour of applying for a visa, so as to make the process more comfortable.

It is disgusting that they want people to pay this fee. We pay enough for the visa already, and now this on top of those expenses? It is all about downsizing and making more money. They cannot raise the fee on their own because it is fixed by the home office, so they slip the increase in this way. The British Embassy should shoulder the costs, not make us pay for the upgrade. And who is this private company? Why is the elite being favoured again at the expense of the downtrodden?

It is already bad enough to be looked down upon by the translator, who is meant to be neutral, now it is going to be by the whole office. Once again, nice one!

Insulted in BKK

Bangkok

Thailand's UBC offers us some great services

Re: "UBC charges for what is given free elsewhere", Letters, April 17.

While John Shepherd derides UBC for overpriced news channels, he conveniently forgets that television is not exactly free of charge in the UK. UBC deserves praise for bringing us the excellent BBC Prime. Oh, to be able to watch the Mitchells and Fowlers from "EastEnders" here in the Land of Smiles. Fantastic.

JJD

Bangkok

Manipulation of auditor's office raises questions

Re: "Democrat asks Jaruvan to probe alleged Bt3 billion corruption", News from the Web edition, April 17.

The article relates: "[Auditor-General] Jaruvan [Maintaka] said she told [Democrat deputy leader] Alongkorn [Pollabutr] he should not have come to her, as people might think she was responding to the calls of the opposition because of her recent conflicts with the government." This brings two questions to mind:

1) Is the Democrat Party any better than Thai Rak Thai, or are they just gaming the situation so that they may replace Thai Rak Thai and themselves reap the spoils due the ruling political party?

2) How can an election, purposely called with less than 90 days to go and thus eliminating the possibility of any but the same old candidates running, be considered any more than the gaming of the process by the ruling party?

Khunying Jaruvan could not have run in the last election if she had wanted to. And now the Democrats are trying to destroy her credibility for any future possibility.

I can certainly understand a very deep sense of cynicism born of despair, among the ordinary people, the victim-voters of Thailand. Is it any wonder they are so "short-sighted" when it is obvious to anyone with any sight at all that they are just pawns in the game played out before their eyes by the same old players, year in and year out?

John Francis Lee

Chiang Rai

Educational system graded by standardised testing

PM Thaksin found administering our all but dead-and-buried educational system was so daunting that he quickly gave up as education minister. No wonder he wants something simple to qualify students for university - like giving more weight to grade point averages (GPAs).

But what's easy is seldom best. Few teachers will say that a 3.0 GPA from Wat Nowhere is equal to the same GPA from, say, Triam Udom Suksa School, yet that's precisely what PM Thaksin's assuming.

Schools will be sorely tempted to inflate their grades to help their pupils enter universities. This will, in turn, pressure universities to lower their standards or flunk out increasing numbers of students.

Standardised national exams - like the O-Net and A-Net - give universities the means to compare students from schools across the nation. These tests should focus on students' aptitude to handle university-level work and their ability to think, not to regurgitate memorised facts. The weighting of these tests should be raised.

Secondary schools should give grades on a forced curve: they can give out any grades they want, but the GPA of each class must not exceed, say, 3.2 out of 4.0. That way, though quality would still vary widely between schools, to be adjusted via the O-Net and A-Net, there would be no GPA inflation.

Above all, we should focus on education's objective. As the University of Chicago puts it: "We teach students how to think, not what to think."

Burin Kantabutra

Bangkok

Election discrepancies are easily explained

Re: "Such a strange election", Opinion, April 17.

Chang Noi is of the opinion that voters should have expressed their opposition to Thaksin on the party-list ballot. Well, they did. While Thai Rak Thai's constituency candidates lost only 1.2 million votes over 2005, Thaksin lost 2.6 million. His previous advantage over the constituency votes of 2.4 million was reduced to one million.

One would not expect that more people voted for minor parties on the constituency ballot than on the party-list ballot. Minor parties on the constituency ballot are irrelevant to constituency-level politics, and they had very few candidates across all 400 constituencies. On the other hand, all parties are listed on the party-list ballot countrywide. Thus it makes sense that in the 2001, 2005 and 2006 elections, party lists of minor parties would always get more votes than their respective constituency candidates combined.

In this context, it should be kept in mind that a constituency ballot is more easily spoilt than a party-list ballot, simply because you must tick a number on the constituency ballot for which there is a candidate, while you can tick any number on the party-list ballot.

Some care should be taken in the use of the expression "protest vote". Not all "no votes" and invalid votes were protest votes against Thaksin. In fact, most of them were "avoidance votes", since the preferred parties of many voters boycotted the election.

I fully agree with Chang Noi that reporting of results by the Election Commission (EC) was pathetic. It was in 2005, and it has become even worse.

MN

Nonthaburi