OPINION

Secret city business

The office of Bangkok governor MR Sukhumbhand Paribatra appears to have been renovated at huge cost long before the terms of reference were set. No surprise here as this is how the BMA operates.

It's all regular BMA practice as laid out in an imaginative and highly secret local government unwritten memo: "How to rip the people off without them even knowing it -- gambling with money and lives".

Take construction, for example (also overseen by the Public Works Department) where new buildings are given the nod long before construction licences are awarded. This allows for criminal activity on a grand (hush-hush) scale, such as the wholesale alteration of plans without consent.

Its all very simple really: Hand out the dirty brown envelopes as early as possible (the greater the amount, the greater the leeway), corrupt the processes accordingly (pretending at the same time that everything is lawful and above board) and then it's simply fingers crossed that nobody notices or speaks up. In Thailand, people rarely do either. But when they do a defamation charge (or similar) may be more than likely and the cycle of corruption is then taken to a sinister new level.

The caption for the picture of people queuing up for free tickets on the Purple line (BP, June 14) incorrectly refers to the Purple Line linking Bang Yai with Bang Sue.

The Purple Line no more links Bang Yai with Bang Sue than the existing MRT and BTS link with the Northern Bus Terminal at Mor Chit. Let's not continue the misrepresentation. Thank you Sirinya Wattanasukchai for your commentary "City leaves commuters in the lurch" on June 15.

World media is focused on the​ diabolical killings ​by a deranged nutter in Orlando. However, massacres of innocents are taking place on a regular basis in Syria and Iraq without hardly eliciting a raised eyebrow or batted eyelid.

Just hours before the Orlando shootings, a food aid convoy delivered supplies to the besieged town of Daraya, for the first time in four years and the Bashar al-Assad regime decided to bracket the delivery by dropping 28 barrel bombs on the inhabitants.

The Orlando perpetrator has been dispatched, but the state and quasi-state atrocity purveyors in the Middle East are free to act with impunity and without accountability.

It appears that the world has become inured to killing and suffering, unless it happens close to home.

You've got to admit that Thailand is on a roll. In just the past few months we have seen Ratchanok Inthanon rise to the top of the badminton standings, Ariya Jatunugarn win three LPGA titles, and King Power's Leicester City soccer team shock the world. Two male Thai boxers hold world titles.

In science, Thai scientists have garnered world headlines with a test for explosives that won European accolades, and a treatment for Aids that has all but ended mother-to-child Aids transmission.

So here's a chai yo to the Land of Smiles. It's interesting for an observer to watch as Thailand makes strides towards becoming a first-world nation.

In his June 15 letter, Will Ottevanger says my comments on America's presidential election don't belong in a Thai newspaper because people can't vote in that election from Thailand.

Is he so ignorant he has never heard of absentee ballots?

Doesn't he know that whoever gets elected president will have a profound effect on the rest of the world, including Thailand?

He also argues that, since people eat crocodiles, killing them is no different than killing cows.

Aside from the fact I'm a vegan, in my letter I noted most of the crocodiles are killed for handbags not food and are horribly tortured. Though I doubt someone with Mr Ottevanger's mentality could care less.