OPINION

Disaster beckons

Re: "Land Bridge to nowhere" (Editorial, Sept 17).

Congratulations to the Bangkok Post for performing the task of the Fourth Estate in Thailand. With a budget estimated at 1 trillion baht, but which will surely balloon to more than twice that figure, and an overall cost to Thailand and its 65 million citizens that is incalculably higher still, this big, ugly, boondoggle project is only conceivable by politicians for politicians and their entitled cronies in big business.

Anutin Charnvirakul has always wanted to be prime minister. He must learn the lesson of good governance if he wants his dream job to last.

Serve the interests of the everyday common people of this land with your every waking moment and to the best of your ability. Your elitist billionaire friends do not need your help. Don't even answer the phone when they call. Listen only to those 99.9999% you don't already know, and your dream might have a chance of coming true.

Upping the ante

Re: "Right -- not far right", (PostBag, Sept 16).

Anna Aarts was quite right about the nature of most people who are demonstrating against the housing of migrants in hotels in towns and cities in the UK. They are mostly concerned citizens, but I am sure that some of them are racist as well.

It would be an odd cross-section of the population if there weren't some racists in any given community of people. Nonetheless, they are genuinely fearful of potential attacks on female members of their communities, a fear that is to some extent encouraged by right-wing organisations and newspapers. To be honest, I share their concerns for a host of other reasons as well.

I also support their right to demonstrate, but to say that peaceful protesters are not infiltrated by extreme right-wing organisations -- people who are not members of the local community -- is extremely naïve.

If you watch the demonstrations, the locals are peacefully making their case, and justifiably so. However, there are an increasing number of men (almost always) who arrive wearing black masks to avoid easy identification, and they are the ones upping the ante, jumping on and kicking police vans, smashing windows and assaulting police.

The reality is that the extreme right is also well represented at most of these (larger) demonstrations, which does a gross disservice to the peaceful, local folk. The article would have been better entitled: "Right -- and far right".

Tourism crash

Re: "Thailand sees 7.1% drop in visitors", (Learning, Sept 17).

Due to lifelong dyslexia, I am fond of putting simple numbers on big equations, and while the title of this tourism crash report does somewhat convey that Thailand's self-inflicted tourism fiasco is getting serious, we need to do some simple math.

Let us suppose that every one of those 7 million tourists who found other places spends about $2,000, or a nice round 60,000 baht, while here on tour. On your calculators at home, multiply 60,000 times 7,000,000, and I will point out that's money already gone; past tense, as in we already lost it.

I think that's starting to convey the Depression-like implications, but until Thailand has leaders who will meaningfully tackle the cannabis crisis and stop using a LGBTQ+ rainbow cudgel to tell families that the needs of the few exceed the needs of the traditional family, I'd suggest we all brush up on our Vietnamese, "cam on."