By Harrison George |
<p>The revelation that PM Abhisit Vejjajiva’s father, Dr Atthasit Vejjajiva, has been contributing around 300,000 baht a month to bolster his son’s security has raised a few eyebrows. (More recent reports have suggested that this is not entirely true.)</p>
By Harrison George |
<p>It’s been a bad week for the scam artists.</p>
<p>Sorawan Sirisuntarin, who markets under the name ‘Pa Cheng’, has been charged with violating the Pharmaceuticals Act. She had been peddling a panacea called Maha Bambad at 1000 baht a wee bottle and an eye lotion called Jiaranai Petch.</p>
By Harrison George |
<p>It was rather naughty if the Bangkok Post to list Thailand’s initial offer of $20,000 in emergency relief to Haiti directly underneath the $50,000 that Cambodia was giving, both dwarfed by the $1 million from Indonesia. This was hitting the Foreign Ministry, who authorized the payment, right where it hurts – in their image.</p>
By Harrison George |
<p>So who says there is no press freedom in this country? Where else in the world could you find an op-ed article that as good as calls the government a lying law-breaker?</p>
By Harrison George |
<p>The introduction of full body scanners at Suvarnabhumi International Airport caused some technical problems of a perhaps predictable nature.</p>
<p>‘Whoa, would you get a look at this guy’s kor kor nor.’</p>
<p>‘Hey, we’re supposed to be checking for explosives, not admiring people’s underwe – holy bananas, what’s he got in there?’</p>
<p>‘Dunno, but anything that size looks suspicious to me. What do you think?’</p>
<p>‘OK, get him in and strip him down.’</p>
By Harrison George |
<p>For those who have spent the past 7 days in a frenzy of head-scratching, Googling and fears of incipient Alzheimer’s, relief is at hand. Below, find the answers to last week’s quiz. Anyone scoring more than 5 might be proud of their capacity for memorizing trivia. Anyone with a score of more than 10 should give serious consideration to a drastic change of lifestyle.</p>
By Harrison George |
<p>So as a dedicated Prachatai reader, you think you know what’s going on in the world. You have 7 days to answer these question before your ignorance is revealed in next week’s column. All questions have been pre-tested with Prachatai staff and any question that any of them could answer was eliminated and replaced with something even more obscure.</p>
By Harrison George |
<p>The Post Whingebag column of the Bangkok Post has recently contained the almost obligatory pre-Christmas brouhaha about the noises coming out of department store sound systems. And they do have a point.</p>
By Harrison George |
<p>‘Hello. Could I speak to Tuy, please.’</p>
<p>‘Who’s calling?’</p>
<p>‘This is Somsri. It’s about my loan.’</p>
<p>‘Somsri? Which Somsri?’</p>
By Harrison George |
<p>There has been some discussion recently as to whether the Thai constitution (2007 version) guarantees the rights of all persons, or just Thais. This is, in fact, a minor issue when compared with the special rights that some Thais have created for themselves, and which the rest of world knows nothing about.</p>
By Harrison George |
<p>At the end of the People’s Dalliance with Democracy rally last Sunday, a Thai People’s Declaration to the World was read out and is available in Thai, Cambodian and English on the Manager website. Like all such declarations, it went through a few drafts before emerging in its current form.</p>
By Harrison George |
<p>The furore, carefully stoked by The Sun tabloid, about UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s handwritten letter of condolence has revealed a shocking combination of misspelling and illegibility. Blamed on the loss of sight in one of his eyes and fading vision in the other, compounded by a natural tendency to slovenliness, the PM’s difficulties with the written word were not widely known until now.</p>