OPINION

Lift booze curbs

Re: "PM defends delay lifting nightlife ban," (BP, Nov 17).

Those living in their ivory towers and making their selective draconian rules regarding the banning of alcohol in restaurants are affected not one iota by their actions.

Many people are now in dire straits due their decisions. Many businesses are going under. Many are out of work and families are going hungry.

Is it not time to remove these restrictions before recovery for those affected is impossible? It's time to realise that Covid is here forever and we will have to live with it, as we do with other contagious diseases. Concentrate on getting the population vaccinated to reduce the effect of the disease and let the people get on with their lives before it is too late.

Re: "Education system failing," (Editorial, Nov 15).

Talking about education reform in Thailand is like flogging a dead horse. The one-size-fits-all system imposed by a bloated bureaucracy is the main cause of the rot. Bodies such as Ohec, Onesqa, TCI, and many others have created a culture of perpetual red tape. Schoolteachers and instructors waste their precious time filling out a variety of useless documents to keep their jobs.

The new mandate of enhancing research output in universities has also led to a culture of churning out garbage. The citation of TCI indexed journals is not only dismal but also symptomatic of mediocrity promoted by many agencies. The Ministry of Education has created a system in which not only schools but higher education institutions are strangled by mandates, regulations, and paper pollution.

In a nutshell, most problems of the Thai system of education are closely linked to central command and control, red tape, lack of autonomy, English language proficiency, and the poor skills of teachers and college instructors. All these problems have their roots at the top.

Hence, Thai education requires a sort of Glasnost. Unless the entrenched bureaucracy and patronage system is dismantled, nothing will change.

Re: "What's going on?," (PostBag, Nov 17).

We need to ask ourselves who benefits from all this Covid-19 madness and vaccine obsession. Pfizer has made US$24 billion (780 billion baht) -- so far -- from their vaccine.

That would be more than enough money to feed all the millions of people in Afghanistan who are on the verge of starvation. Politicians can use Covid to move in the direction of controlling the public. When I first heard Michael Yeadon, who was the chief scientist for Pfizer, say the vaccines are part of a plot to set up a totalitarian police state. I thought he was nuts. Now I can't think of any other explanation that makes sense.

I can tell you that there is no disease that the media will not exploit if they think doing so will be good for business. During the Aids scare, I directly spoke with the CDC and I am telling you those people are the biggest liars I have ever encountered. I'm not telling readers to agree with me. But keep an open mind and never assume that the media or the medical establishment has their backs.