More expats please
Re: "New long visa favours expats", (BP, Sept 3).
We badly need long-term foreign talent to rise from our last-in-line in SE Asia GDP growth. Let's:
(a) expedite work permits for graduates of the world's top 100 universities, following Britain's lead;
(b) slash red tape, like making reporting every 90 days for year 1, then once annually for Y2-5, and once every five years thereafter;
(c) allow land ownership of 1 rai after Y5;
(d) Lengthen the validity period for long-term stays. We now kick foreigners who help us grow out after 10 years, just when they feel at home and want to retire. That's cruel, very off-putting. Let's make their visa lifelong after Y5, provided that they maintain bank guarantees or marketable assets like land of a given amount.
Burin Kantabutra
Let's avoid Thaksin
Re: "Thaksin, 16 years on: Coup was a stab in the back", (BP, Sept 19) and "A high note?", (PostBag, Sept 17).
I think Jason Jellison was a tad bit effusive in his praise of Prayut Chan-o-cha's tenure as leader of Thailand. While Prayut may have done a good job as leader of the country, I don t think his tenure was nearly as good as Mr Jellison portrays it. Nonetheless, I agree with him that there is a good crop of people who could replace him as prime minister of the nation, most notably, current Bangkok governor Chadchart Sittipunt.
Anybody but Thaksin Shinawatra's young daughter! I think this country has had enough of the Shinawatra dynasty, what with Thaksin and Yingluck Shinawatra already having been the leaders of Thailand. While the Shinawatras may have been democratically elected and have done an effective job, the fact is that in a truly democratic country, people do not nominate and elect those from the same family. Any political party which does this is inviting charges of corruption, and rightly so.
An expat in Thailand
Worse than weed
Re: "Anutin slams call to re-list cannabis as narcotic plant", (BP, Sept 20).
Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul may be right that "there is no evidence of improper use of cannabis under existing laws", but even if there were such improper use, that would be no reason to recriminalise a drug that should be at least as freely available for recreational use as the far more harmful drug alcohol has long been.
The doctors concerned about the drug's possible harmful effects have every right to speak out about those harms just as they regularly bewail the greater harms of cigarettes and alcohol. But the doctors are not experts on public policy and are certainly not competent to speak with any authority on matters of ethics. The hilariously misnamed Democrat Party is merely showing its traditional loyal contempt for the Thai people in its insulting presumption that Thai parents are not to be trusted to refrain from pushing alcohol, cannabis, cigarettes and whatever on their own children. I believe the reports were that the Democrat Party's long-nurtured poster boy Prinn Panitchpakdi found alcohol, not cannabis or any other, a very useful drug to give to his alleged victims!
Felix Qui
