OPINION

Bananas over colours

Re: "Cause enough to drive anyone bananas", (Sunday, Aug 20).

Our Dear Old Crutch, who is a lot younger than he thinks he is, wrote a lovely column on bananas, which got me thinking of something. I used to grow red-skinned stubby bananas along with my traditional yellow banana trees. We used to call them "guats", short for Guatemala. But they'd never find a market and when I took my stalks of yellow bananas to the market I was always told, bananas have to be yellow to be bananas.

Then I remembered Payak or Black Tiger beer, brewed at TAB in Bangkok. It was truly a delicious, brown lager, just so wonderful. But it did not last long, because, well, we all know beer must be yellow.

I was enjoying a few bottles of brown Beer Lao which my British friend Andy brings from time to time when he crosses the border. He lives close to the Beer Lao brewery. A Thai friend joined us, took a sip, and nearly spat it out. "How could you drink beer that is not yellow?" he asked? I know what I was going to respond with, but discretion is the better part of valour.

Thais are really colour coded for so many things from political parties down to drinks and foods.

I fully agree with Auditor-General Pisit Leelavachiropas and former finance minister Korn Chatikavanij that allowing Bestlin to join in the new round of bidding for 489 city buses would run counter to good governance practices (BP, Aug 21).

Thai government procurement has been rampant with corruption for ages, and all Thais welcomed the junta's pledge to cleanse us of this plague. Allowing Bestlin, which the Customs Department accuses of seeking to evade import duties on a massive scale, to bid would send a clear message that we're not serious in our fight.

Bestlin must be banned from seeking to supply goods or services, directly or indirectly, for the BMTA unless and until its name is cleared -- and ideally, this ban should apply to other public sector units as well. Like Caesar's wife, bidders must be above suspicion.

The cartoon published on Aug 21 depicting the shadow of President Trump as a Klansman is repugnant, unkind and false beyond comprehension. This sort of demagoguery which is cooked up by a media that hates Mr Trump is monumentally destructive to the American body politic and undermines our democracy.

Our president is no more a racist than the most open minded among us.

Re: "Going back in time", (PostBag, Aug 21).

Phil Cox says Donald Trump has taken the US back in time a whole generation, achieving what science fiction writers have only dreamed of.

Yes Phil, you are right, and if we are lucky, he just might be able to take us back a little further, say to around the 1950s.

You see, I remember those days as a teenager, when we had no locks on the house doors. Didn't need them. You could walk down the street after 6pm in Compton, California, and not worry about getting mugged.

At 14 years old, I was a bat boy and clubhouse boy for the Ventura Yankees baseball team, a farm club jn the California League for the New York Yankees. I could hitch hike to and from the ballpark (seven miles from our home) and never had a problem. Can't do that today.

Those days are dead and gone. Even Donald Trump cannot bring us back to those times, but I'll always thank him for trying, even if he fails.