OPINION

Money speaks loudest

Re: "Mahakan demolition to go ahead", (BP, Feb 28).

City Hall has announced the demolition of homes in the Mahakan Fort area is to go ahead despite claims that some of the houses could be traced back to the early and ancient Rattanakosin era, and according to historians the area is home to generations of residents.

I find this ironic when a luxury 24-storey hotel in downtown Soi Ruamrudee was ordered by the court in 2012 (and was upheld by the Supreme Administrative Court) to be demolished on the basis it was built illegally, but is still standing. Is it a case of money speaking louder than the poor?

The Thai government seems to love foreign tourists visiting this country. These travellers pay top dollar for high-class hotels, passes into national parks, entry into temples and so on -- it's a big boost to the economy.

So why does the government put so much stress on foreigners who have chosen to live and work in this wonderful country? Are we a burden? Hardly ... we pay taxes just like any other Thai. In fact, a lot of Thais don't pay income tax at all, so we are "a bonus".

So what is it with this ridiculous 90-day reporting thing? I know foreigners who have lived here for nine years and have their names stamped on title deeds for condos -- yet they still have to report every 90 days to confirm where they live. Surely, the government's high-tech computing system could confirm this without making honest people spend four or five nightmarish hours every three months at an immigration department office?

Why? I'll tell you why -- because if foreigners miss one day outside of the seven-day window they face an automatic fine of 2,000 baht.

It is interesting to note that Aung San Suu Kyi has broken her silence over the assassination of one of her top aides a month ago. Her silence about the harassment, murder and terrorism against the Rohingya in Rakhine province by the Myanmar military is deafening. The lady needs to "get off the pot".

Re: "Food banner hits raw nerve", (BP, Feb 28).

It's acceptable the DSI avoids physical force in dealing with monks and temple followers. Instead, they should cut all utility supplies to the temple compound and shut down all daily necessity supplies, including food.

The Bangkok Post and CNN are one and the same -- they only attack President Trump. The president has met with business leaders in every major industry in the USA and also with sheriff associations. Many large businesses have said they will expand and hire more workers because they are inspired and believe that corporate tax reforms and other regulation reforms will be great for business. The stock exchange has set 12 consecutive record highs because of this.

Re: "Grade 6 students fail in Thai essay writing", (BP, Feb 25)

Writing in Thai is easy. It is like driving. There is only one rule; stay in the left lane (most of the time) and that's it. Same for writing, make sure you spell words correctly, other than that anything goes.

Unlike English, the Thai language has no rules regarding sentence structure, subject-verb agreement, subject-voice consistency, incomplete sentences, sentence fragments, fused sentences. The Thai language has no punctuation marks; words are written contiguously, no space between them. All one needs to do is string words together, skip a space once in a while at will, because there are no rules for spacing either. There is no article in the Thai language. Moreover, a sentence can be a mile long, containing several pronouns and you won't know which one is for what noun.

As a result of no rules for writing, Thais have a hard time with English writing. It is no surprise most Thai graduate students in the English programme can't even write a decent paragraph let alone a decent English paper. The problem with Grade 6 students, however, is not regarding writing. It is about misspelling, using slang and colloquials which should be easy to fix. Mai pen rai.