Boys owe no debt
Re: "Rescued boys should help out society", (Opinion, July 15).
Anucha Charoenpo suggests that the boys and their coach should consider volunteer work in their community as a way of giving thanks to the country for the rescue effort that took them out of the cave.
He says that the boys and their coach didn't do anything wrong. But if they didn't do anything wrong (and I don't think they did), why should they feel obligated to "give something back to society"? Though the rescue mission was very expensive with over a thousand people involved and one of the divers tragically lost his life, the authorities and the government were only doing the job that the Thai taxpayers pay them to do. For those people that volunteered their services, I'm sure they did so without any expectation of a reward. And I'm sure those rescued are very grateful for being rescued, and they have already offered their thanks for that.
Should the survivors of the tour boat that capsized and sank in Phuket earlier this month also be obliged to do volunteer work? Should there be an obligation on everyone rescued from danger to do volunteer work? I don't think there should.
If however, the boys and their coach did decide to do some volunteer work, a decision that only they should make, then some of them might find themselves on the wrong side of the law. Khun Anucha makes a reference to nationality when he writes that "as a fellow Thai I would like them to think about how they could give something back to society..."
Though nine of the boys are fellow Thais, the coach and three of the boys are not actually Thai citizens and are officially stateless, and are unable to legally work (or open a bank account). As far as I am aware, as non-Thais, they would need visas to do volunteer work. But as they are stateless they would not have passports so would be unable to apply for visas!
Peter Atkinson
Musk just a sourpuss
A headline in The New York Post on July 15 says: "Furious Elon Musk calls Thailand cave rescue diver a 'pedo'." Elon Musk is an immature man who thinks he has the right to criticise and is used to getting his own way because he has money. Musk never met the cave diver he accused of being a "pedo". His submarine capsule was indeed, as described, too long, too rigid, and would not have made it more than 50 metres from the starting point, to get around the narrow passages.
Mr Musk should read Aesop's Sour Grapes. Musk is nothing but a sourpuss who tried to cash in with a PR stunt, as rightly told.
Marigold
Trump's id unleashed
In the classic sci-fi movie, The Forbidden Planet, an advanced civilisation is destroyed by its own collective animal subconscious, its id. The civilisation developed a technology that allowed citizens to create and transform matter through pure thought, but deep in the psyche of these advanced beings lurked a monster from their own ancient past, angry, vengeful and apt to destruction. The psychic technology freed the id and gave it unlimited power to do what these beings really, deep deep down, wanted to do, which was to destroy the peace and order that thousands of years of cultural advancement had wrought.
Donald Trump is the collective id of middle America unleashed: A swollen, blundering caricature of bullying ignorance and stupidity in dayglo orange let loose to wreck the post-war world order.
Nigel Woodward
Glass Thai houses
Re: "Suu Kyi must free journos", (Editorial, July 16).
Don't worry about Myanmar, worry about Thais' freedoms which seem to be lacking. People that live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
MR P
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