OPINION

Still fighting corruption

Re: "Food safety a pig deal", (Editorial, Dec 18).

I feel sure it will come as no shock to the Bangkok Post when I say my wife has not come home recently complaining about cheap pork prices.

As much as other citizens have sympathy with small pork farmers, they are also trying to make ends meet in a society with low wages and high prices.

You appear to be suggesting small pork farmers can't compete with their bigger local rivals when the real problem is the illegal imports of pork on a massive scale by a company that can even have an investigator removed.

We are once again seeing the costs incurred by officials deeply involved in corruption and allowing 200,000 containers to "sneak" into the country.

The SRAT needs fight corruption instead of ensuring businesses can maintain low levels of wages paid to hard-working people who need all the help with low prices that they can get.

Thankful for what we've got

Re: "Eye on Washington", (PostBag, Dec 18).

I first came to Thailand in 1979 and discovered there were two English language newspapers, the Bangkok Post being by far the better choice.

The Post's Sunday edition was an absolute delight; monumental in both size and the quality, as well as the amount of effort that went into producing it every week.

With the advent of the internet and now AI, one must congratulate the Bangkok Post for being able to navigate a tsunami of economic challenges and continue to offer its invaluable print edition.

Its intermediate and advanced English language learning content is a wonderful education resource for the many keen students who are so woefully underserved in this nation.

I would therefore suggest to John F Kane that rather than trying to tell contributors what not to write (as so many others have done), that he tries to pen something original and informative that contributes value to the PostBag forum.

As Joni Mitchell sang, "Don't it always seem to go. That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?" -- from Big Yellow Taxi.

Reflecting on local issues

Re: "Eye on Washington", (PostBag, Dec 18).

If readers were primarily interested in global issues they would read a publication that covers such.

The Bangkok Post is a Thai/Bangkok-centric publication and the letters page should reflect that, in my opinion.

System is a shambles

Re: "Senate refuses to back down on referendum", (BP, Dec 18).

The dance about regulations for changing the constitution is laughable considering with what ease generals can tear up and make up new constitutions at will.

It should be clearly understood that a dictator's constitution should be scrapped at once by a freely elected parliament.

But unfortunately, parties aligned with the generals for influence and money hinder this, while those representing the people are being serially disbanded.

The political system is a shambles and development of the country is going nowhere. But the "elites" are sitting pretty on their money piles.

PM needs clearer vision

Re: "New initiatives launched in Northeast", (BP, Dec 21).

PM Paetongtarn's pledge of "prosperity for all the people" sounds nice, but is so vague it could be a mirage.

For example, she could have said, "In 2019, both Vietnam and Thailand had 6.2% of its population living under the poverty line, which was, for us, earnings of B2,762/month.

"Today, Vietnam's figure has plummeted to just 1%, but ours has risen slightly to 6.3%. By 2026, ours, too, will be 1% -- or less -- and will stay there."

Speaking at that event, she also should have outlined the strategy by which she would achieve that objective.

For instance, she could have noted, "Today, 64.7% of Thais aged 15-65 can barely read and understand short texts to solve simple problems.

"Also, today, 74.1% of these Thais cannot perform simple tasks like finding product prices in an online shopping site. By 2026, these figures will be halved, and halved again by 2027."

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