I have just returned to Malaysia after a week-long holiday in Thailand, the country which I still see as ''home'', despite being a British national.
While I was there, the Rayong oil spill disaster occurred and developed, and I was dismayed to learn that no one in the Kingdom seemed capable of adequately dealing with such an environmental catastrophe, with the Thai government having to call in international support to help with clean-up operations.
There are clearly many learning opportunities arising from the mistakes made by all agencies, which have highlighted mismanagement and a lack of preparedness in the face of a relatively minor oil leak. Surely one of them would be that the authorities in Thailand cannot be trusted to offer the most basic protection towards the environment and living species in the event of a similar leak from a nuclear power installation.
So can we please now have assurances that the Thai government will permanently shelve yet another rushed megaproject, which is ostensibly designed to pursue the nuclear ''option'' for power generation?
GMT
ISA dooms free speech
The Yingluck Shinawatra government, in invoking the Internal Security Act (''Cabinet invokes ISA in capital'', BP, Aug 1) prior to the House debate on its controversial reconciliation bill, shows it is not acting in a democratic fashion.
This bill, if passed by parliament, will bring the greatest division in the country because it aims to eventually help only one person _ former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
The result: The country's system of law and order will become meaningless and only outlaws will rule.
And by using the ISA as a tool to suppress opposing voices, the government is turning the country gradually into a dictatorship; not a democracy.
The result: Thailand as the land of the free will become redundant.
VINT CHAVALA
Divisive reconciliation
The common man (and woman, of course) must become informed and involved in the issues of the day if democracy is to realise its full potential, for politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians (Charles de Gaulle), and that government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part (Thomas Jefferson).
We cannot trust our elected leaders, for to me, neither side wants to negotiate in good faith. Look at the amnesty bill now before parliament. The alleged reason for the bill is to reconcile us, yet the cabinet knows full well that vast parts of society are bitterly opposed to it; hence it is invoking the Internal Security Act. How can a bill so divisive achieve reconciliation?
For the opposition's part, Suthep Thaugsuban said if the bill passes all readings, the Democrats would encourage people to vent their anger against the government, saying that the military and police must stand by the people because the government would lose its legitimacy to run the country.
That's malarkey. The Yingluck Shinawatra administration was elected in a relatively free and fair election, and remains legitimate until unseated at the ballot box. So I say to both sides _ plague on both your houses! (Shakespeare).
Dear reader, become informed, seek to understand both sides, and force your elected leaders to look to your interests first.
BURIN KANTABUTRA
Slapstick abounds
Re: ''All's not well at CTH'' (PostBag, Aug 1).
How did the English Premier League (EPL) ever allow Cable Thai Holding (CTH) to broadcast its product?
After many calls to CTH over the past two months, they showed up yesterday to install the equipment. They arrived in a taxi with a four-foot stepladder and a dish hanging out of the boot.
One hour later they told me they couldn't install the dish as it needed to go on the roof and they did not have a ladder to get up there. It was like a scene from Laurel and Hardy.
Then they left, and I still do not have CTH. What a joke.
How did True lose the EPL and why did the EPL allow this cowboy outfit to broadcast its product? A truly shocking situation.
ANDY
Oz as corrupt as here
Re: ''Where's the evidence?'' (PostBag, Aug 1).
George Cuppaidge asks Nik to produce the evidence for his claims that Australian politicians are not corrupt and only lie to retain office.
Well, the evidence abounds, but unfortunately for Nik, the evidence is against him. Some Australian politicians could run master classes for Thai politicians to teach them how to get their snouts into the public trough.
Among many others, there is the infamous case of Rex ''Buckets'' Jackson, a former New South Wales minister for corrective services, who in the late 1980s had charge of prisons and took bribes from convicted drug dealers to organise their early release. Jackson ended up behind the very bars that he had previously been in charge of.
Then the Sydney Morning Herald reported the Independent Commission Against Corruption's findings in the case of New South Wales Labor politician Ian Macdonald, long ago dubbed by the media as ''Sir Lunchalot'' for his reputation of enjoying free lunches from patrons and on his expenses account. According to the ICAC, Macdonald was a man who went ''from demanding a free lunch to a crook who swindled taxpayers out of tens of millions of dollars''.
Face it, Nik, some Australian politicians are the best money can buy.
The difference between Australia and Thailand is that Australia has the effective Independent Commission Against Corruption, which acts without political bias to root out these corrupt politicians and expose them for what they are _ criminals.
DAVID BROWN
Grains of truth
I am staggered by George Cuppaidge's critical response to my letter.
First, he completely missed the point of my letter which was to point out that two of the main Australian newspapers picked up the story that the failed rice-pledging scheme would cost the country billions of dollars.
If that doesn't do Thailand any harm tourism-wise alone, then I give up.
With the recent murder of an Australian travel agent and the recent transport incidents also making the news and knowing how fearful some of my countrymen are of going overseas at any time, this publicity does no good at all for anyone.
I know how much safer Thailand is violence-wise compared with Australia, but non-visitors only see the bad news.
If a scheme like this happened in Australia _ and it never would _ the government would fall immediately.
Negative articles have been in the Post continually since the scheme began. Not once have I read a favourable report on it. If George doesn't believe the scheme is totally flawed, then he must be in another universe after all the condemnation of it by everybody other than the fugitive convicted criminal who was in fact convicted for abuse of authority in the Ratchada land case.
Is that not enough evidence? Or was it only politically motivated?
I'm most certainly not saying all Aussie politicians are not liars. In fact, a few are facing criminal charges for theft of public monies and other kinds of malfeasance right now. But you can bet all of Thaksin's money that if they are convicted, they will go straight to the big house and not be allowed to flee the scene. I rest my case.
NIK
Clarity on asbestos
I manage Britain's Asbestos Watchdog organisation (www.asbestoswatchdog.co.uk) that exposes and corrects the exaggerated claims of asbestos risks and protects property owners from resultant fraud.
There can be no doubt that mesothelioma is probably the most dreadful cancer one can get. It is always fatal with no known effective treatment.
But an article by David Crookes (''Governments failing in fight to ban asbestos use'', Opinion, July 10) on the supposed lethal implications of exposure to asbestos cement needs some clarification.
Asbestos-related mesothelioma is not caused by exposure to chrysotile, better known as white asbestos, even at extreme levels of exposure.
Published reports by the UK government and peer-reviewed papers by internationally recognised asbestos experts underline this fact. White asbestos accounts for all asbestos used in Thailand and comprises 90% of asbestos minerals used worldwide.
In Europe and the US, all the genuine mesothelioma cancers are caused by exposure to amphibole types of asbestos.
These minerals are better known as blue and brown asbestos and are chemically and mineralogically totally different minerals to the white asbestos fibre chrysotile.
The article by Mr Crookes confuses the differences in risk between the various classes of fibre by lumping all under the same commercial name asbestos.
In the UK and US, there is a serious issue with exposure to amphibole fibres but this deception that makes white asbestos appear to have the same risk properties as the blue and brown fibres have resulted in as many as 90% of all asbestos mesothelioma claims being false.
This has the effect of robbing genuine victims of available compensation funds. Fortunately in the US the perpetrators are being exposed and prosecuted and hopefully the same will happen shortly in the UK.
JOHN BRIDLE
UK Asbestos Watchdog
Not a black or white issue
It was extremely interesting reading the article (Opinion, July 31) which raised the question of whether US President Barack Obama is ''too black'' or ''not black enough''.
It was noted that Mr Obama had said that 35 years ago he could have been Trayvon Martin, the black US teenager who was killed by George Zimmerman.
But I doubt that if 35 years ago I had asked Mr Obama what he was doing in my neighbourhood, he would have responded by breaking my nose and continuously smashing my head against the pavement. Yet that's how Martin reacted in a similar situation. (And that's assuming Zimmerman even approached Martin).
Also, Mr Obama was never suspended from high school. Martin was suspended three times. Martin was no Mr Obama and Martin should not be made into a hero.
White Americans such as myself did not give Mr Obama the votes he needed to win so he could become a ''black'' president.
We voted for him to become a president who was black. And it makes me sad that Mr Obama sometimes fails to make that distinction.
ERIC BAHRT
Keep on publishing!
Congratulations on your 67th anniversary. I have been a Bangkok Post subscriber I moved to this country in 1990. This means I have been with the Bangkok Post for nearly a third of its history.
RH SUGA
Bus service abysmal
Today I waited at 6.40am, in the dust, in the heat, in the fumes, for my Raikhing 556 bus in Nakhon Pathom. At 7.50, having run out of time, I was forced to take a taxi.
Imagine my shock on reaching Boromratchonnanee to see a 556 pass the end of the road where it should turn off to Raikhing, and do a U-turn to return to Bangkok without collecting any Raikhing/Don Hwai passengers.
I had been blaming the poor service on the failure to adequately maintain the buses, but this is obviously a human decision to cut off the Raikhing loop.
I had to wait more than an hour; I had to pay 210 baht for a taxi; I had to miss my breakfast because of this.
ROGER HASLOCK
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