OPINION

Oversight due

Re: "'Temple swindler' assets to be investigated", (BP, April 6).

If a close acquaintance of a temple's abbot can embezzle 190 million baht from the temple's funds in less than four months, isn't it time that these entities are subject to some sort of oversight? They should be registered as a legal business/charity and thereby obliged to adhere to all legal obligations applicable to bona fide businesses. Misappropriating funds intended for temple or school improvements is simply depraved. I cannot see anyone arguing against introducing equitable regulations in this area unless those making the argument have ulterior motives.

Re: "Covid-19's lessons for democracies", (Opinion, April 5).

The global response to Covid was tyranny, plain and simple. People were forced by threat of violence to comply with draconian measures such as loss of economic liberty, being imprisoned at home through curfews, and forced to be "research monkeys" by coercing people to take untested medicine.

The government responses were motivated by political concerns of exercising power and social control, not by scientific information and standards. Even the WHO admits lockdowns, masks and jabs were ineffective against a virus with less than a 1% rate of mortality. More so if there are not any co-morbidities (health issues) present with the infected. An easy way to see this is with the government response to the one of the major mortality factors, that is cancer! There are more deaths every year from cancer than Covid can ever cause. Yet the collective global governance does not ban the usage of carcinogens or declare "lockdowns" for commercial activity that are carcinogenic.

Re: "Immigration kudos", (PostBag, April 6).

David Brown says he went to renew his retirement visa in Rayong and was "in and out in less than seven minutes" (as compared to the 6-7 hours normally required at Chaeng Watthana).

What he didn't say was that 7 minutes was the time needed for the officers to tell him to return the next day with: a hand-drawn map showing where he's lived for the past 20 years or so; a copy of his bank book updated that morning; and a comprehensive bank statement for the entire year -- since a statement for "only" the past 6 months (showing a continuous balance of several million baht) is insufficient proof of solvency. Never mind that you've also provided proof of $250K private health insurance.

The Immigration Bureau's impeccable logic for demanding a retroactive, year-long bank statement seems intended to prove that: if you had actually gotten sick 11 months earlier you would have been able, theoretically, to cover your hospitalisation at that time. Makes perfect sense. Kudos are indeed in order.

After several of my letters to PostBag regarding men's ATP tennis being AWOL went unanswered, I called TrueVisions and was informed that they had in fact cancelled it because, "we couldn't agree to the copyright". So after 23 years as a TrueVisions subscriber, I regretfully cancelled my subscription. Hopefully, TrueVisions' CEO Suphachai Chearavanont will realise before it's too late that cutting back on customer services (that had been promised) in order to save money doesn't necessarily equal greater profits for the company.

Re: "Puzzling plurals", (PostBag, April 7).

I think the words ending in S in the current Target solutions are verbs in the present tense (third person), not plural nouns. There clearly has been a change from previous practice, but there is some logic to it. If, for example, "foamed" is permitted, then why not "foams", which could be either a verb or a plural noun?