OPINION

Earn your keep

Re: "District polls may backfire", (Editorial, July 13).

I fully support political decentralisation and Bangkok Post's call for "healthy debate to discuss the pluses and minuses of district councillors." Discussions should cover both district and city councillors, for their roles overlap significantly: the former advise district directors and channel voter concerns to district officials and the latter pass laws and keep the governor and other BMA officials in check.

We should combine the positions -- for example, those who pass laws must also know voter concerns, and those keeping officials in check must be able to advise district directors.

However the debate turns out, the elected officials must be much, much more active in representing voters than before. Having lived in Bangkok for half a century, I've never seen hide nor hair nor heard from my district's representatives during that period. Earn your keep, elected reps.

Me and many other Thailand Elite Card holders would feel much better if Thailand Elite would pick up this government nuisance fee. Obviously some minister is going to make bank by imposing this ludicrous fee on people that don't know better. It is a scam of the highest order and others should carefully examine the personal benefit of this 300 baht add-on fee to each ticket.

We used to pay 500 baht per ticket and I think at some point it went to 800 baht per ticket. It is yet another tourist rip off adding another 300 baht to total now 11,000 baht. No one believes they are going to receive 500,000 baht coverage at a first-class hospital if you're injured. This is a money grab, plain and simple, by someone in government who thinks he can get away with it.

Re: "Castration bull", (PostBag, July 17).

The Thai legislature's approval of the choice of chemical castration given to sex offenders and Burin Kantabutra's criticism brings to mind the case of Alan Turing, a mathematician who cracked the German Enigma code during the Second World War and later partially credited in winning the war for Allies in Europe and Pacific. He is regarded as the father of computer science.

After the War, he was criminally prosecuted for homosexual acts in 1952. He then accepted chemical castration as an alternative to prison. He died in June 1954 at an age of 42 from cyanide poisoning and was determined at an inquest as suicide. The offence was abolished in UK in 1967.

After a public outcry, Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister in 2009 apologised for "the appalling way [Turing] was treated" and Queen Elizabeth II granted a posthumous pardon in 2013.

The Turing case is different from the proposed Thai legislation. Turing was prosecuted for his same-gender preference while the Thai proposal is applicable to sex offenders irrespective of sexual preference.

The choice as proposed is very much like a Hobson's choice if taking chemical castration would have a direct effect on the mind of a recipient ending like Turing at the premature death of 42. Alternatively, with no choice, is it riskier to have a sex fiend at large after a prison term? I presume Parliament and that good doctor MP must have done enough study to come to that conclusion.