OPINION

Nothing to hold onto

Re: "A better deal for the disabled", (Editorial, Aug 20).

It is an interesting editorial article that addresses the plight of people with disabilities. Yet, you overlooked one huge issue staring everyone in the face: no stair railings! Isn't there a regulation stating any stairway with more than 3 stairs MUST have a railing? Where are they, then? We have seen many, many hotel entrances with stairways -- but no railing to hold onto for help. Going downstairs is even more dangerous, and not only for the disabled. The elderly really need to have railings! And ramps. And special parking spaces -- ones where motor scooters and delivery vans are banned.

We need more parking spaces in general, and we have not figured out why Thailand continues to make tiny, narrow, short parking spaces when so many people drive large sedans, and even larger SUV's. Even brand-new hotels have the smallest parking spaces we have ever seen, plus the amount of room between other rows or stone pillars is negligible.

Faulty conclusion

Re: "Marriage matters", (Opinion, Aug 20).

Writing in favour of marriage, New York Times columnist David Brooks writes "the odds that men and women say they are 'very happy' with their lives are a staggering 545% higher for those who are very happily married, compared to peers who are not married or who are less than very happy in their marriages". What he fails to mention is the proportion of those who are not "very happy" with their lives who attribute such lack of happiness to an existing or previous unhappy marriage, or even, for some of the never-married, to a wariness of ever becoming embroiled in an unhappy marriage.

What your columnist is saying is that people who are very happily married are very happy. This truly amazing insight is hardly the justification for the promotion of marriage, merely of very happy marriages. Taken a look at the divorce rates recently?

Woolly thinking

Re: "Bad rap for CO2", (PostBag, Aug 12).

JC Wilcox's own phrase rather neatly sums up his hodgepodge of woolly thinking about climate change and the world in general.

Let's gloss over that he subscribes to the theory of malign global elites out to control us all. Let's not waste time telling him again to actually read up on the science of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In calling for vast rainwater storage systems, Mr Wilcox seems to have overlooked that this idea has been around for a while.

They are called dams. There are many thousands of them around the world, and more are being built. He profoundly advocates that people do not build in natural river courses, a little nugget of wisdom probably lost on Pakistanis when a third of their country went underwater last year. His novel urban planning proposals are in full view with the concept of designing drainage for new towns and cities before starting construction. If I'm not mistaken, the Romans were doing this, and it's been standard procedure, at least in the West, for 100 years.

Mr Wilcox is right about one thing: roofs and roads prevent rainwater from being absorbed into the ground.