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And the debate goes on...
Dear Sir,
Thank you Andrew Drummond for replying to my “open” letter. I thank you for
your comments and also offer the following comments.
If you had indeed understood my letter you would have noted I did not
condone James Fraser Darling’s intentions towards young children. I did,
how-ever, try to warn the expat tourist community about falling foul of Thai
law, to which you also partially agree in your final paragraph.
I am not prepared to argue he did, he did not, but I again only advise
people here in Pattaya, James Fraser Darling was “raided” - not broken into
as you state, by word from a fellow teacher. If everyone can be raided by
hearsay, then the Orwellian forecast must be true!
The Child Rights Protection Centre is a good thing for Thailand. However, a
person’s rights must be upheld when approached by these Non-Government
Organisations - NGOs.
The initial letter stated that James Fraser Darling will be made an example.
He has not been tried by a fair court of law to this time of writing
(innocent until proven guilty?).
At a recent preliminary court appearance in Phuket, the judge reduced a boy
witness to tears because the boy was presented as knowing James Fraser
Darling, yet he could not (much to the judge’s chagrin) identify “Uncle
Jimmy” and was shouted at by the judge. Again, as you state Mr. Drummond,
“The Thai system of justice is far removed from that which most tourists are
used to”.
I do not agree to bribery. If someone has committed a crime, let them be
justly tried and sentenced, no pre-judging, and certainly no power plays by
NGOs. If James Fraser Darling is honestly tried and given a fair and
unprejudiced re-presentation, then the verdict must be accepted by all...
...Why do you not respond to my comment on the brothel owner in Phuket who
today walks free when in ‘84 three girls burned in chains?
...Stop foreign sex offenders by all means, but don’t allow a phone call
from some miscreant to destroy one’s life. Give everyone a fair chance to be
proved innocent or guilty, no campaigns, no witch-hunts!
Sir Lance
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Pattaya’s Status:
City or Municipality?
Dear Sir,
Even though I have lived in Pattaya since my early retirement from British
Local Government Service in 1990, as a “Farang” it is NOT for me to comment
on how the local citizenry should administer their affairs, nor would I
presume to do so. But as someone with over 25 years professional consultancy
experience in organisational and administrative analysis (including 12 years
in local government), I do feel qualified to offer some personal comments on
the subject.
One of the first things you learn in my profession is to identify the cause
of a problem. More often than not, when a line manager says, “I have a
problem with ‘X’”, investigation shows that ‘X’ is only a symptom of the
real problem, not the cause. Treating the symptom may buy breathing space,
but it doesn’t cure the disease.
It seems to me that the current debate on Pattaya’s status, whatever the
outcome, will not cure the city’s illness because the real problem is not
how the city representatives attain their office or how many of them there
are. The problem is the absence of any clear demarcation of responsibilities
and well defined lines of communication between the elected representatives
and the city manager.
‘Pattaya City Inc.’ is a multi-million baht business and running its affairs
efficiently requires the skills of a full-time professional business
manager. It is not something to be undertaken by part-time politicians nor
local shopkeepers and hoteliers.
The role of the elected city council members is an important and responsible
one: it is they who set the policy for the development of the resort’s
services, decide how its budget should be spent and who monitor the
performance of the hired professional managers in achieving their policy
objectives. In turn they are responsible and answerable to the people who
elected them.
The city manager is responsible for the day to day implementation of policy
decisions made by the elected members and the general administration of city
affairs, for advising members of the council on the most cost effective
means of implementing their policies and the financial implications of
policy decisions, and for advising on (not sanctioning) policy development
issues. He must be held accountable to the members (and through them to the
people) for the effectiveness of his management of the city’s affairs and
for that reason he must be given absolute responsibility for his actions. If
he is subjected to undue political pressure on matters outside the ‘policy’
domain, his ability to perform professionally is compromised and he can no
longer be held accountable.
In the long run, that benefits neither the elected members of the city
council nor the city manager; it certainly doesn’t benefit the people of
Pattaya. Under such circumstances, the whole organisation is in danger of
collapsing like a house of cards. The answer is not to change the building
regulations so as to sanction bad practices, but to enforce the standards
and safeguards set out in the existing rules.
It is unfortunate that in Pattaya the cause is, it seems, being obscured by
smoke from the symptoms of a fire that is smouldering beneath the surface.
Constitutional change is not going to improve the administration of ‘Pattaya
City Inc.’ unless the real problems are also addressed.
Finally and without expectation of a response, if the city council, the city
manager or even His Excellency the Provincial Governor felt that my
professional experience as a principal management services consultant in
local government could assist them in any way, I would consider it an honour
to serve the country and the city that has been my home for the past seven
years.
Yours faithfully,
Dave Freeman
Jonathan Court
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Soi Bongkot still full of trash
Sir,
From your Friday March 21-97 issue “Litter free to be expanded”, not all of
your information is accurate about Soi Bongkot. You had better check again.
At one address, there are six households using one paint bucket for trash
and such. Lots of misses and dogs. The same next door, four or five
households using one trash can.
So, “look before you leap!”
A Soi Bongkot Resident
Parents’ dictionary
Dear Editor,
Here’s a great new list of definitions parents can relate to.
AMNESIA: condition that enables a woman who has gone through labour to have
sex again.
DUMBWAITER: one who asks if the kids would care to order dessert.
FAMILY PLANNING: the art of spacing your children the proper distance apart
to keep you on the edge of financial disaster.
FEEDBACK: the inevitable result when the baby doesn’t appreciate the
strained carrots.
FULL NAME: what you call your child when you’re mad at him.
GRANDPARENTS: the people who think your children are wonderful even though
they’re sure you’re not raising them right.
HEARSAY: what toddlers do when anyone mutters a dirty word.
IMPREGNABLE: a woman whose memory of labour is still vivid.
INDEPENDENT: how we want our children to be as long as they do everything we
say.
OW: the first word spoken by children with older siblings.
PRENATAL: when your life was still somewhat your own.
PUDDLE: a small body of water that draws into it other small bodies wearing
dry shoes.
SHOW OFF: a child who is more talented than yours.
STERILIZE: what you do to your first baby’s pacifier by boiling it and to
our last baby’s pacifier by blowing on it.
TOP BUNK: where you should never put a child wearing Superman jammies.
TWO-MINUTE WAR-NING: when the baby’s face turns red and she begins to make
those familiar grunting noises.
VERBAL: able to whine in words
WHODUNIT: none of the kids that live in your house.
Prmiscila Sanchez
UC Santa Cruz
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New
paparazzi leader
Dear Sir,
After reading issue no. 13 I was a bit disappointed with your contents. When
looking at some of your boring pages (i.e. page 6) I drifted away into the
past and remembered a letter in the Mailbag around a year ago, which was
about ‘Bet on your local G.M.’ In this race the G.M. of the Amari Orchid
Resort was first runner up with 5 (five) pictures and 1 (one) un-accompanied
quote (which is 1/2 point) in one issue.
In last week’s newspaper I counted 25 (TWENTY-FIVE) pictures of Philippe
Decaux, President of the Foreign Correspondents Club.
I think we’ve got a new leader here (never mind he’s not a G.M.).
Congratulations,
Dick Z.
A MUM’S TALE
by Noel (Tippler) Thomas
I am a Welsh lady and before you start trying to guess my age, I’ll
have you know that I am as old as the Queen. I’m not going to tell you which
queen, as that would really give the game away.
Anyhow, my tale is all about me trying to keep tabs on my second son. Ever
since he was born he has been a nuisance, but it seems that the older he
gets he becomes more like a menace. I finally tracked him down in a place
called Thailand: you wouldn’t believe the trouble I had in finding the
place. I scoured a map of the British Isles for hours but had little
success. It was only thanks to the wife of a commercial airline pilot for
whom I clean on a daily basis that I stumbled upon the location. Certainly a
fair hop from my town of Newbury in Berkshire.
My boy has always been something of a gadabout, but this time he surpassed
himself. Thailand is far from being off the west coast of Ireland as I
previously thought, believe me. I was convinced that the ‘plane was going to
run out of petrol because we were flying for what seemed liked hours,
although I’m not that stupid as to think that a ‘plane could possibly stay
in the air for such a time. I’m not in my dotage yet, by no means, although
I sometimes believe that my son is. He has been jaunting all over the world
for years now. He has dragged me off to ridiculous places the globe, but it
has not been such a burden as he has one of those gold AMEX cards and so
it’s not as though it’s costing him anything. He simply flicks the card
across the counter and does not have to part with any cash whatsoever. He
may be a bit wayward, my boy, but he is far from stupid. I must remember to
borrow that card from him just before Christmas time.
When the British Airways flight eventually landed at Don something or other
airport in Bangkok, I have to admit to being quite confused. They told me
that it was seven o’clock in the morning, but I’m not as green as I’m
cabbage looking. I suggested that they should get a refund from the person
that had sold them their fake Rolex watches, as they had all clearly lost
eight hours. My boy had ‘filled me in’, as he put it, that there are some
people who copied good named products in Thailand and passed them off as the
original. I didn’t really believe him at the time, but as soon as I waved my
walking stick only to see the boys run for cover, I knew that he had been
telling the truth. My boy had arranged for a taxi to drive from Pattaya and
pick me up at the airport. When I found out that he had paid the man Baht
500, I was livid. Yes, he may have the money, but I didn’t want him wasting
it on me by being so ridiculously extravagant. When he tried to argue with
me when I pulled him up on it, I had to give him a slap as he vehemently
maintained that a standard white taxi would have cost Baht 2,000. When will
he ever lose his compulsion to lie to me? I had a bit of a nap on the way,
as the Queen and I are not as young as we used to be and so we have to
conserve our energy at every opportunity.
At some place called Chonburi, we stopped off at some hovel as the driver
apparently wanted to ‘Gin a Cow’. I had no clue as to what that meant, but I
went along with it all the same. Within minutes, I was presented with a bowl
containing something which resembled what I had cleared out of the u-bend
from under the kitchen sink the previous week. For some reason, I had no
appetite. I watched in amazement as he devoured the contents of both our
bowls like a pig that had not eaten for a month, before ordering two more
and disposing of them in similar fashion. For one with such a ferocious
appetite it was amazing to think how he could possibly weigh no more than
forty-five kilos, even if draped in a saturated bath-towel as he stood on
the scales. I’ve seen more fat on a moribund Biafran child who hadn’t eaten
a grain of rice for two months.
When I was presented with the bill, I promptly explained to him that he had
more chance of getting a tip from me than me paying the bill. For good
measure, I informed him that the last time that I gave a tip was back in
1953 when I simply confused a shilling for a sixpence when paying the bill
for our twentieth anniversary dinner whilst all I really wanted was two
lollipops to take away. That wasted sixpence haunts me to this day.
The driver finally paid up for the lunch, but it was clear to all that he
was less than pleased with the situation.
We headed off on our way to Pattaya without further interruption to our
journey. There was the annoyance of the traffic jam at a place called
Sriracha, but I suppose that the seven dead people who were so recently in
the pickup truck, plus the four deceased motorcyclists (not to forget the
dog that was perched on the shoulders of the first bike’s driver before the
petrol tanker made impact). It was certainly a messy business and a sight I
would rather have avoided. I nearly forgave the deceased for the
inconvenience that they caused me but the garbage truck that came hurtling
through ran straight over one of the unfortunate victim’s head, showering
our windscreen with his brains. It took the driver a further full ten
minutes before we were once more Pattaya bound as soon as the driver had
delicately scraped the grey matter from the screen. Some people can be so
inconsiderate.
As we turned right into Tanon Theprasit, the driver expertly guided two
motorcycle taxis into the ditch separating the carriage ways on the
Sukhumvit Highway, which pleased me as I was more than fed up with these
stupid little morons cutting us up as they drove at breakneck speed with
their adjusted exhausts so as to make the maximum amount of noise and
demonstrate to other unfortunate road users that they were about to reach
puberty. I had been so annoyed that I didn’t have a gun with me, but the
taxi driver’s excellent piece of driving comforted me as I watched the two
idiots sail headlong into the concrete support only for their dead bodies
soon to be accompanied by their mangled motorcycles.
As we made the turn, another motorcyclist was despatched to meet his maker
as he had preferred to fiddle around with his throttle cable with his head
between his legs rather than watch the road as he hurtled towards the
junction at warp 4 before slamming in to the wrecked bus that was happily
rusting at the roadside.
We reached my boy’s house a few minutes later and I was very grateful to
have a nice cup of tea. I was a bit disappointed that my boy’s house didn’t
have any carpets, but I supposed that he was simply saving up for them. My
future daughter-in-law then cooked me a lovely meal, although my boy
wouldn’t tell me what I was eating on the grounds that it was best that I
did not know. I was as sick as a dog the next morning when I caught sight of
the eighteen inch long frog’s carcass hanging in the kitchen. That memory
will haunt me until the end of days.
The next day we visited the beach at place called Jomtien. I was happy to
sit there sunning myself whilst my son was making a determined effort to
wipe out the resort’s entire stock of Kloster beer. One thing that struck me
as odd was the amazing number of Europeans who had Thai sons in their
company and were so affectionate towards them. I also noticed quite a number
of male couples walking along holding hands which struck me as being a bit
strange, but I’m wise enough to know that the Continentals have always been
a bit different to the British.
As the sun began to set, we headed off to the lights of Pattaya. After
successfully convincing my son to buy me a Mac Donald’s as an alternative to
the questionable fare that he wanted to get from what appeared to be a
Salvation Army line of food stalls, we began a tour of the town. Now my
son’s idea of a tour turned out to be quite unlike my own. All we did for
the first three hours was hop from bar to bar. In the end I put my foot down
and insisted that I wanted to see more of the culture of the place. In an
effort to go along with my wishes, my son took us to a ‘Go-Go’ something or
other establishment. We didn’t stay long as it was far too noisy for me and
I was a bit upset to see that the girls who were dancing were obviously so
poor that they could not afford to wear brassieres. Also, although I can’t
really explain why, I felt a little bothered that so many of the girls had
Adam’s Apples and funny voices. There was one particular girl who seemed to
have taken a strong shine to my boy and I just had a strange feeling that
something was not quite right. To be more specific, it was the growing bulge
between the girl’s legs that concerned me most of all.
Anyhow, we soon left and went straight back to the house. As my son had a
bottle of Thai whisky for a night-cap, he tried to explain that many of the
‘girls’ in the ‘Go-Go’ place were in fact men who had had operations to make
them look like women. It was obvious to me that it was only the drink
talking as what my son was saying was just totally ridiculous.
The following evening we went to an excellent cabaret called Alcazar, but
the evening turned sour when my son had to keep insisting to me that all the
girls in the show were actually men: this culminated in a furious argument
between us. I then became seriously worried about my son’s sanity and I am
sad to say that he still maintains that what he said was true. What can a
mother do?
I ensured that we steered clear of such establishments that could prompt my
boy to come out with more of his nonsense for the rest of my stay. He always
has had a strange sense of humour: as far as I’m concerned it often borders
upon sick. As an example, he took his two dogs with us to the Crocodile Farm
and tried to sell them for fifty baht each as live food for the reptiles. He
explained to me that he declined to part with them as the farm would only
pay forty baht per canine quadruped. It was only the next day that he told
me that he had only been kidding, but that so-called joke cost me a good
night’s sleep.
My son came with me in the taxi on the way back to the airport and amused
himself by keeping score of the dead motorcyclists and dogs that we passed
on the roadside during the journey. He seemed quite put out that the tally
of dead dogs outnumbered that of motorcyclists, although it was a close run
contest.
It was with mixed emotions that I boarded the flight back to England. On the
one hand, I found Thailand to be a beautiful country as indeed were its
people; on the other hand, I believe it would have been wiser to have
someone other than my son to chaperone me and act as my tour guide. After
all, who in their right mind would try and persuade a woman of my years to
make a Bungee Jump?
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