For a long time March and April has been the "season" of poor visibility and cancelled flights into Mae Hong Son. True, this year's cold spell has lessened the winds that help to blow our pollution somewhere else, but what else has changed?

How about something like a 20-fold increase in the number of cars on the road, all with ever-bigger engine capacity and increasing mileage as we give up the habit of walking even little distances to the shops or schools. Surely those so vocal in their anger at air quality must have at least once been in the vicinity of the Dara and Prince Royal Schools at 4pm when 2,000 cars are ferrying some 2,500 students home. To accommodate this increase in traffic the "city planners" (now there's an oxymoron if ever there was one) have worked overtime to provide flyovers, fly-unders and ever-widening roads, which has resulted in a massive increase in airborne dust from the cement and mud left lying on the road at hundreds of places around the city. Thousands of wheels per hour are busy grinding this into small particles and sending it upward in their tailwinds.

The regular middle-class citizen of Chiang Mai drives to work, sits in an air-conditioned office, buys goods that result in massive garbage piles and lives on a housing estate built on a three-metre landfill over what was once a rice field. Are they giving any thought at all to the pollution they are responsible for? Do they know how their electricity is being generated and where their garbage ends up, or is it just another case of "someone else's backyard".

We are the problem. Chiang Mai residents had the opportunity to look at Bangkok and say "no thank you, that's not for us", but instead they gratefully accepted all the conveniences offered by those people making money out of it. The air is just the obvious problem right now - look at the rivers, streams and roadside verges and you will see lots more of the same. Pollution - and we put it there.

The Alien

Chiang Mai

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Chiang Mai suffering for lack of proper planning

 A few people nearby pretended not to see the young woman urinating discreetly in a small side lane, not 50 metres from Thaphae Gate in downtown Chiang Mai. Unlike foreign tourists, she felt she couldn't go into the restaurant or hotel nearby to use their toilets. The city authorities recently blocked the road directly to the south of Thaphae Gate in an attempt to alleviate traffic problems, covering the area in paving, flower beds and patches of grass. Did they consider replacing one of the buildings they knocked down with a public toilet?

Apart from the paved concourse in front of Thaphae Gate, there is but one park in the downtown area. It is fairly small and easily missed amidst the noise of billboards disfiguring the historical monuments along the city's moat roads.

There are any number of empty or unused lots waiting for some philanthropist to develop sorely needed communal green space. Meanwhile, one of Thailand's three Forbes-listed billionaires is building yet another hotel and shopping complex in the Night Bazaar, further straining an inadequate and congested public infrastructure with another high-rise.

There is much construction along the two new ring roads surrounding the city, but at many points within and almost everywhere beyond, with the exception of municipal areas, there is no garbage collection whatsoever. This is where many people burn garbage because they don't know any better. The authorities have taken no measures to deal with the issue on a long-term basis.

Several years ago, in my capacity as a guidebook writer for Chiang Mai, I suggested at a meeting called by authorities at the Provincial Hall that the way to make the city more attractive for tourists was to make it a better place for the people who live in it.

Clean air, good water supply, integrated valley-wide garbage management, adequate public transportation and traffic management that included parking infrastructure and restrictions on private transportation downtown, more green space, historical monuments free of eyesores, public financial support for the preservation of private listed buildings - these were the kind of things I had in mind.

Now it seems that what those authorities really wanted to hear were more ideas for schemes for which tickets could be sold.

I've been seeing my downtown doctor with my own respiratory difficulties. Many people in Chiang Mai suffer from sore throats and hacking coughs. The eyes can sting when travelling on a motorcycle or bicycle. My doctor said his clinic had noticed an increase in respiratory complaints for at least five years.

If you are a visitor travelling with children or if you have a history of respiratory problems, I would strongly advise you not to come to Chiang Mai and the rest of upper northern Thailand until the rainy season.

Oliver Hargreave

Chiang Mai

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EU should not be satisfied with mere assurances

 Re: "EU responds well to briefing from Nitya", News, March 16.

I could only grimace reading the page-one headline. While it's certainly interesting that some of those attending the Asean-EU Ministerial Meeting were comforted by Foreign Minister Nitya Pibulsonggram's remarks on the state of democracy in Thailand, let's not forget how easily the EU was duped three years ago.

In January 2004, amidst the deaths of millions of chickens across Thailand, the European Union health commissioner David Byrne felt confident enough after visiting here to regurgitate the lie coming out of the mouth of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra that there was no bird flu in Thailand.

Several days later, Byrne was exposed for the shill he was when the first reported human deaths caused by the H5NI virus in Thailand could no longer be covered up, resulting in swift bans on poultry imports from Thailand to the EU.

Even though we are now dealing with different times and different leaders, let's let the government's actions drive the headlines, not their words through the EU or other foreign intermediaries.

Nok Yak

Bangkok

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To have genuine democracy, country needs elected PM

 Re: "Non-elected PM clause could be a political time-bomb", Opinion, March 14.

Tulsathit Taptim's pungent observations in his Stoppage Time column are entirely apt and wholly admirable. Their importance cannot be over-emphasised. I believe that his views are representative of the greater proportion of the Thai electorate. I believe the people will overwhelmingly vote against a new constitution that actually allows for the appointment of a non-elected person as prime minister.

If Thailand genuinely intends to become a democracy once again, then there should be no question but that the political leader should emerge from the elected members of parliament. In any democratic system of government, this is where the leadership comes from.

It is the height of folly to build a fault of such obvious magnitude as an unelected leader into a constitution intended for a democracy!

Henry Ashe

Bangkok

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Not much to celebrate at Dusit Zoo after 69 years

 The photograph of an orang-utan riding a bicycle like some sad circus act (News, March 14) while Dusit Zoo officials look on, oblivious to the obvious inappropriateness of this, says so much about this poor excuse for a zoo. What is there to celebrate? Sixty-nine years on, the zoo is a sad example of old-style animal captivity, where amusement rides and animal shows seem more important to the zoo administration than animal conservation and the education of the public.

My design students at Bangkok University International College are in the middle of a project to identify the problems with Dusit Zoo, in particular its signage system, maps and accessibility to foreign tourists. What they have discovered has indeed disturbed and embarrassed many of them. The zoo is in a sad state of disrepair, with a badly designed signage system that is rotting and mismatched. In many places foliage is so overgrown that you can't find the directions to the exhibits, and when you do manage to get there, you discover that the animals are in another location because the maps are out of date. Much of the signage is in Thai only, leaving foreigners bewildered and confused, and often that signage is hand-written on paper and taped on a wall. One funny example shown by my students was of a sign with an arrow and the word "camel" (written in Thai only) taped to a telephone booth. Another sign warned in large Thai letters but small English letters of "danger", while partially obscured by a tree. The zoo has a souvenir shop that has banners everywhere promoting "Zoo Venir" written in two lines. If a French person read this, they would not get the pun, but instead would read, "Zoo to come".

In researching the zoo, my students went to the so-called public relations office to get information, in particular about who was responsible for the design of the many different styles of signs. Other than being handed a few terribly designed brochures, they were met by shrugs, as nobody seemed to know who was responsible for the design of the zoo's signage system. More importantly, nobody wanted to help. As one student put it, "they seemed to want to pass the buck to someone not in the office at that moment". This was not an isolated incident but the repeated response to inquiries by nine groups comprising nearly 50 students.

Lastly, the students found the animal habitats badly maintained, the animals living in cramped quarters without much that is natural and lacking enough water to drink.

The students originally set out to address a simple design problem and come up with a solution. However, in addition, what they have learned so far in their project is that the zoo is much like the country itself: it has an administration that focuses on the wrong priorities, with no clear vision or plan, that exploits the principal inhabitants while not caring for them properly, and with nobody willing to accept responsibility for the state of things.

Brian Lewis

Bangkok