Postbag
Re: ''Street vendors serve purpose'' (BP, Feb 23). Ricardo uses the word ''poor'' three times in describing the vendors and their customers.
Perhaps Ricardo does not live in Bangkok and therefore is unable to observe the many vendors arriving and leaving in their cars and trucks, or paying others to wheel their products to the sidewalks.
Perhaps he doesn't observe the thousands of well-dressed and not so poor office workers, not to mention tourists, who patronise the vendors.
What about, Ricardo, the poor residents, such as me, and workers who are daily forced to walk on the roads and face being hit by cars and motorbikes (which is a regular occurrence) because the vendors, many of whom make an excellent rent- and tax-free living, have selfishly left insufficient or any room for others to walk?
Yes, the vendors provide a service with their now not-so-cheap food and clothes, but they are out of control and ''allowed'' by the authorities to dominate so many areas which are intended for pedestrians. By all means keep vendors, but regulate them better so they do not dominate the areas intended for others.
MARTIN R
A spectrum of news
Thank you, Spectrum editor, for a wonderful and interesting story about King Thibaw, the last king of Myanmar.
This is one of the very few informative and historical stories since the demise of the Outlook section several years ago, which used to carry this type of story almost every month.
JACK GILEAD
A truer aim in life
Deputy Prime Minister, and newly appointed chief of toilets, Plodprasop Suraswadi's career path has been weighing heavily on my mind of late.
Having failed miserably in the dam business and now obsessed with westernising Thai bathroom behaviour I would offer a suggestion which might provide him the place in history he seems to covet.
Why not scrap the toilet initiative and get out of dam dealing entirely in order to devote the same money and effort toward providing every Thai home and school with insect screens and flush toilets (whether squat style or western style is immaterial).
Consider for a moment how many lives would be saved and how much suffering alleviated for so minimal a cost.
What about it, Mr Plodprasop? Do you really give a dam?
MICHAEL SETTER
Bang Saray
Silly ivory disparity
The law says it is illegal to sell ivory from wild elephants but not domestic ones. Do they wait for the domestic elephants to die from natural causes or do they kill them to get the ivory sooner?
As I've noted before, there are no laws to protect domestic elephants from abuse and they are treated horribly.
Furthermore, everyone knows poachers kill wild elephants and Thai shops sell the ivory as though it came from domestic elephants. By making a technical distinction between ''wild'' elephant ivory and ''domestic'' elephant ivory, Thailand is making a mockery of the international effort to ban the sale of it.
ERIC BAHRT
Panic causes problems
During the ''great flood'' of 2011, the government under-reacted and was caught with its pants down. Now the government is over-reacting with the ''looming great power crisis'' about to hit Thailand in April.
Chances are no one will even be aware of any power problems. But this panic the government is whipping up has caused the price of fuel to increase, and public transit fares to rise due to ''expensive'' electricity costs which have not been implemented yet. All this because no one in this Pheu Thai government did any homework before causing a panic, as usual. The name of the game is, ''cover your own backside, just to be sure''. It matters not at whose expense _ the consumers', of course.
MENTSCH
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Article source: http://www.thethailandlinks.com/2013/02/25/regulate-the-vendors/
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