LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Thaksin should consider a career as a Fifa referee in the event he's booted out of office
Since our beloved caretaker PM Thaksin may soon be out of a job, I thoroughly recommend he apply for a job as a referee at Fifa.
Instead of having to tolerate biased referees intent on making sure the big, rich footballing nations get through every time, Thaksin would stand for no such nonsense and side with the poorer sides instead. Even though they may be completely useless, Fifa's referees have proven, once again, their love for the game's big shots and made sure they get to play every match without being the victim of some horrendous penalty or red card. Thaksin, as a Fifa World Cup referee, would tolerate no such incompetence from fancy household names who spend more time working on their cola contracts than on the training field. While this year's World Cup has been full of controversial decisions in favour of the big teams, Thaksin would come to the rescue and make sure (for a change) that a few pathetic decisions sided with the poorer teams instead. Unlike Fifa's current referees, who are completely afraid of any backlash if they were to send off a "big name", Thaksin would show such television stars he didn't give a darn who they were and have them and their fancy hairdos packed off to the sidelines. If any of the useless playboy riff-raff had the cheek even to dare criticise Referee Thaksin, he would threaten them with a two-year ban or a lawsuit. Out with the present Fifa rubbish! Give the little teams a chance and vote for Referee Thaksin! Steve Suphan Suphan Buri -------------------------------------------------------------- Child labour is rampant in the mean streets of Bangkok
Re: "Girl, 9, dies selling garlands on street", News, June 28. I am absolutely appalled to read that very young children are still being forced to sell garlands at busy city intersections. What does this say about Thailand's so-called rapid development? It smacks of the worst kind of hypocrisy. All major intersections in Bangkok have police officers on duty. Why are they not doing their duty? Lewis Gibson Singapore -------------------------------------------------------------- Follow Bhutan's example and target only quality tourists
Re: "Cost keeps Thais from following Prince Charming", Business, June 28. In regard to the high cost of travelling to Bhutan - visitors are required to spend a minimum of US$200 [Bt7,700] per day - I would like to enlighten you about the facts here in Thailand. The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has a mandate to raise the number of tourists entering the Kingdom, and what I have seen over the past two years here in Pattaya is nothing short of amusing. Tourists visiting Pattaya from abroad don't use transportation; they walk. At all hours of the day, they can be seen buying foodstuffs from hypermarkets, of a type that needs to be prepared, like rice, cooking oil and raw meat. So, instead of Pattaya becoming the Miami of the East, it looks a lot more like a flea market in a rundown Miami suburb! I challenge the TAT to come up with a plan that focuses on bringing higher-value tourists to Thailand, not just any foreigner with a passport; otherwise, the government has to bring back 10-per-cent value-added tax and start taxing all food. I would like to suggest tourists book their 30-day visa online for a fee - $30, similar to Australia - or pay $50 upon arrival. Also that the government assess a hotel tax - there should not be hotel rooms in Thailand that can charge as low as Bt500 per night; obviously the current system doesn't tax the customers enough - which would be consistent with other holiday destinations, such as Hawaii. And the government should also consider the Bhutanese system of requiring visitors to spend a minimum daily amount of currency. Do you really want tourists to come here and spend less than Bt2,000 per day? Maybe the TAT should focus on the spending amount per visitor and total revenues generated instead of total arrivals. We spend our tax money to pay for the operational costs of the TAT, and when they bring in low-spending foreigners who use public roads, parks and services, whose money is being spent? Ours! TAT, please rethink your targets and the macroeconomic impact they have on the Thai economy. Philip Cook Chon Buri -------------------------------------------------------------- America is responsible for half of all that is spent on war
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the total expenditure for war in 2005 exceeded US$1 trillion [Bt38.41 trillion]. About half of that came from the Americans, the very people who seem particularly eager to point fingers at other countries and accuse them of possessing or even just planning to possess weapons of mass destruction or of being overly militaristic. Incidentally, President Bush may be dumb, but he is smart enough to know that the American voters are even dumber. Right on the heels of being found out he had fabricated the case for war with Iraq, he is doing it all over again, to take his country to war with Iran. Cha-am Jamal Phetchaburi -------------------------------------------------------------- Writer was a bit selective in citing TV news report on Iraq
Re: "Letter-writer scolded for failing to heed Fox News", Letters, June 28. Sue P attempts to justify the US invasion of Iraq on the basis of a Fox News report of US Senator Rick Santorum's claim that 500 weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) have been found in that country since 2003. What she doesn't mention is that Fox reporter Alan Colmes the very same day confronted Santorum with a statement by a US Department of Defence official: "These were pre-1991 weapons that could not have been fired as designed, because they had already been degraded." And the official went on to say these were not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had and not the WMDs for which this country went to war. Santorum responded by saying he could not comment until he knew who the official was and what the reaction of the Bush administration would be. The White House has known since April of the report Santorum cited. Yet when his partner on the show, Congressman Pete Hoekstra, was asked why George W Bush hadn't referred to it, his rather weak response was: "The president has been forward-looking and concentrating on the development of a secure government in Iraq." Sue also refers to UN Resolution 1441 as an ironclad justification. I think she and the readers of this newspaper should remember that this resolution stated the UN Security Council remained "seized" of the matter of whether Iraq should face serious consequences if it continued to violate its obligations for disarmament. (And we should remember that despite Santorum's claim, no credible evidence of the weapons' existence has been presented.) Conversely, Resolution 687, adopted in 1991 after Iraq invaded Kuwait, stated that member nations should use "all necessary means" to repel Iraq, an obvious and significant difference. Sue's final statement of evidence is sourced from an unnamed former Romanian "spy chief", who claims that Russia provided and then helped "deep-six" the alleged 500 weapons possessed by Iraq. It may be true, as fantastic and cliched as the spy's words sound. However, in paying attention to them, we should remember the uncontroversial fact that the United States funded and armed both Iraq and Iran in their civil war and dropped Iraq from its list of terrorist nations directly after its worst terrorist outrages in the 1980s. Tommy Nakhon Pathom -------------------------------------------------------------- A thorn is still a thorn by any other name
Re: "TRT, Democrats on brink", News, June 28. Now let me see if I've got this right. All the main political parties might be given the chop, and if that happens, the Thai Rak Thai Party can still govern the country under a different name, and then Thaksin can come back to be the next prime minister? Slightly changing the words of the great bard, William Shakespeare: a thorn is still a thorn by any other name. Chiang Mai Mike Chiang Mai -------------------------------------------------------------- Protect the Constitution from the whims of politicians
Your newspaper's various reports over the past few years, particularly in recent months, prompts one to ask what on earth it is that has gone so seriously wrong with so many Thai politicians? Why is it so many of them seem to be in politics simply to enrich and empower themselves rather than improve the state of the country and the lot of its people? If your reports are true (and there is no reason to doubt them), a large number of senators have recently been elected with very unhealthy personal relationships to members of a particular party whose reputation for corruption is as bad as it could possibly be. In fact, to be blunt, politics in Thailand absolutely stinks! Now we have reports that the leader of a new party, a veteran politician, is blithely suggesting it would be a good idea to suspend parts of the country's Constitution, in order to assist the parties in breaking a political deadlock of their own making. What a rascally and outrageous idea! The Constitution is supposed to be the guardian of the people's rights. It is not there to be interfered with at the whim of various politicians trying to wriggle out of their difficulties. According to your reports, it has already suffered enough at the hands of a government with precious little respect for it. So little, in fact, that I would suggest the group of establishment people possibly defined as Thailand's "great and good" (from which, by that definition, politicians would be excluded) begin seriously to think of ways to tighten it up, so future governments cannot bend it to their will. Henry Ashe Bangkok
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