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HEADLINES [click on headline to view story]:

Money matters

Snap Shots

Modern Medicine

Heart to Heart with Hillary

A Slice of Thai History

Editorial Comment 

Personal Directions

Money matters: Safe as houses (part 1)

Graham Macdonald
MBMG International Ltd.

Buying property is by far the safest investment you can make. House prices will never fall like share prices. This is the advice offered by countless estate agents around the globe. In the absence of attractive investment opportunities elsewhere, home buyers have needed little encouragement: from London to Madrid and from Washington to Sydney, rising house prices have been the hot topic of conversation at dinner parties. Over the past seven years, house prices in many countries have risen at their fastest rate ever in real terms. We’ve seen forecasting that suggest that the DJIA could be in for a fall of 70% or more - that could never happen to property could it? Could it?

Anytime you want to find the most vulnerable segment for an implosion of a debt bubble, just identify the main asset that the lending institutions are using as collateral in making new loans. Recent history is replete with numerous examples. The banks couldn’t wait to loan money to the LDCs (lesser developed countries) in the mid 1970’s because of the fact that governments could always print money if they had a problem with too much debt.

Walter Wriston of Citibank was the largest proponent of the theory. They found out the hard way that this was not the panacea that most bankers thought as these countries used the printing press to substantially depreciate their currencies. Then the banks loaned money to the farm belt since it was obvious in the late 1970’s that inflation would bail out any problems with farmers.

This turned out to be even worse than the LDCs. The banks were loaning money to a segment of the economy that had no chance to pay down the debt. The income from the crops they were growing and selling couldn’t possibly justify the cost of the real estate that was skyrocketing at the time. At the time, Merrill Lynch even tried to sell a limited partnership on farmland to its clients. We believe the plan was stopped in its tracks only by a very sharp client (Mr. Dwayne Andreas, then CEO of Archer Daniels Midland) who warned them how dangerous it would be to do the deal with the price of farmland so high relative to the money the farmers could receive for the crops they grew.

Naturally, this also blew up in the lenders’ faces and they had to find another segment of the economy to keep the debt bubble going. Voila, energy! The lenders saw that the OPEC agreement in the mid 1970’s would be a “no-brainer”, since there were many forecasts by experts that the price of oil would rise to $100 a barrel and there would be no problem getting their money back with interest.

“These countries used the printing press to substantially depreciate their currencies”

This also turned out to be a mistake since the oil price stopped rising as exploration activities soared and energy users found ways to alleviate the pain through energy-saving engines and appliances, wood stoves, sweaters, and whatever else it took to stop the rise in energy in its tracks.

This was followed by massive loans to the “rust belt” manufacturers in the mid-west, and this turned out to be a mistake also. The following area of concentration was the junk bonds and LBOs (leveraged buyouts). Mike Milken was a hero at the time and the banks concurred that they couldn’t lose this time for sure.

Well, we all know what happened to Mike Milken, and the banks should have learned another lesson. If the banks consistently found that the areas and segments that they lent to never seem to work out, you would think that they would learn to stop concentrating on just one area or segment. But believe it or not, they never seem to learn that the only reason the collateral behind the loans rose in value was because the money that was loaned supported the collateral. What area do you think the most money is being loaned to now?

“Banks were loaning money to a segment of the economy that had no chance to pay down the debt”

You guessed it, real estate in any form. Houses, apartments, office buildings, and raw land can’t miss. Everything else seems to be wilting away, but not real estate! Now, take a guess at what segment dominates domestic non-financial debt? What area is over 40% of total domestic non-financial debt? You guessed it - Mortgages! What area now do you think will be the catalyst for the next deflationary period? You guessed it again - real estate!

Now maybe we are wrong on this, but we are highly confident in the final outcome even if we are early. We believe that just like the farmland that became too expensive relative to the prices received from crops, the price of real estate can’t be justified by the amount of rents received.

We look at this in the same way as the P/E of a common stock. If the price of the company’s stock is way out of line with earnings, that stock will eventually decline. The Centre of Economic Policy Research put out a paper comparing the cost of renting a home to the cost of owning a home. They looked at the situation just as we do. They concluded that the gap between the two is now about the largest ever.

Comstock was written up in Barron’s magazine in 1988 discussing this same theme and the gap was wide then, but it is even wider now! This gap can only be filled by rentals rising or home prices falling. With vacancies increasing in every area of real estate, we doubt that the gap will be filled by rents increasing. There is no other solution to this problem except for housing prices to fall, and that won’t be a pretty picture since it seems that every homeowner in America has been borrowing money on the equity of their homes.

The Mortgage Bankers Association of America estimates that the total volume of mortgage loans in 2002 is a record $2.5 trillion. The Federal Reserve estimates that homeowners raised $130 billion last year through home equity loans and lines of credit. (Total cash-outs of all home refinancing could be as high as $250 billion.) Many of these home equity loans are used in place of credit card debt since the interest rates are much more favourable.

However, while credit card lenders can only sue a borrower and request a lien on the property, the problem with home equity loans is that the bank can seize the property. This would very rarely be a problem with housing prices going up, and home prices have increased over 40% on average since 1997, with some areas like New York (especially Long Island), Phoenix, and Denver increasing much more than the average.

The Mortgage Bankers Association of America estimates that the total volume of mortgage loans in 2002 is a record $2.5 trillion

However, there are other areas where the home prices have softened, such as the Midwest (St. Paul, and Indianapolis) and Southeast. In these areas the banks have their hands full as delinquencies and foreclosures are rampant. Just last month the U.S. hit a near record delinquency rate and a record foreclosure rate, with almost all coming from the areas of soft home prices. If home prices that have been skyrocketing start to fall we could have a snowball effect and delinquencies and foreclosures could really get out of hand.

The real estate problem that we’re seeing is not confined to housing alone, as office buildings and apartments are having their own problems. Only recently it was reported in the Wall Street Journal that the U.S. office-vacancy rate rose to 16.2% in the first quarter. This was the ninth straight quarter of rising vacancies and declining rents. It started in the first quarter of 2001 along with the start of the recession, but just like the job market, it seems to have remained in a recession.

Apartment landlords also saw vacancy rates on average in the U.S. climb to their highest level in a decade. The apartment-vacancy rate for the nation’s top-50 metropolitan areas rose to 6.8% in the first quarter, from 6.3% in the fourth quarter of 2002 and 5.7% a year earlier. Effective rents fell .3% from the fourth quarter and .1% from a year earlier to $845 a month. Right now real estate and housing are the pillars of the individual’s investment portfolio, and if that cracks, it could be the catalyst that throws the U.S. into the same economic quagmire that it went through 74 years ago.

When you look at the record foreclosures and near record delinquencies on mortgage debt as well as rising vacancy rates in every area of real estate you start to come to the conclusion that the banks and other lending institutions could be making the same mistake again.

This article will be concluded next week, but our full 128 page report on the property markets around the world is available upon request.

The above data and research was compiled from sources believed to be reliable. However, neither MBMG International Ltd nor its officers can accept any liability for any errors or omissions in the above article nor bear any responsibility for any losses achieved as a result of any actions taken or not taken as a consequence of reading the above article. For more information please contact Graham Macdonald on graham@ mbmg-international.com


Snap Shots: Action stations for Still Life photography

by Harry Flashman

One of the most amazingly creative and satisfying aspects of photography can be Still Life shooting. The ability to position and light a subject to produce a pleasing result can fill up an entire day. In fact, the pros can take a couple of days to get a still life shot just right. That’s right. A couple of days! No exaggeration.

You see, there are so many aspects to be covered in still life photography. It is not just a case of placing the subject on a sheet of paper and pushing the button. Still life photography teaches you every important aspect of the artistic side of photography, as well as honing up your basic photographic skills.

The first good thing about still life shots is the subject doesn’t complain and tell you to hurry up and “Is my mascara smudged?” You can also just pick up the subject and move it in any direction to suit the shot. You don’t have to ask for permission. Oh yes, there are many advantages in having a silent subject!

Let us begin with lighting. The secret to all still life shots is to have two light sources. This can be daylight plus flash, two flashes, electric lights, daylight and a mirror - but you need two. One to basically light the subject and the other to light the background.

Lighting the background isolates the subject from the background and makes your subject the “hero” in the shot.

The other secret in the lighting is to produce a diffused light source. With un-diffused light, you will get far too many distracting shadows, which with small tabletop objects can ruin the overall effect. You can diffuse your lighting by shining it through some scrim cloth, transparent net curtain material or through some frosted plexiglass - the sort of material they have over fluoro lights, for example.

The next important item in still life photography is your own eye. You will find there are even books on the subject, but what you have to do is to look at your tabletop and arrange the items in a manner that is pleasing to your eye. Do you want them overlapping, or at some distance from each other? Generally there is one dominant item - bring it to the foreground and then arrange the supporting items after that. Some overlap generally works well.

Having got that far and you are now pleased with the composition, you then have to look through your camera. Help! It doesn’t look the same as it did with the naked eye! What’s gone wrong? It is because of the differences between the lens and your eye’s focal length. You now have to look through the camera and adjust the tabletop items to produce the pleasing composition you saw with your own eye. Yes, this takes time, and now you can begin to see why the pros take so long!

After you have the composition to your satisfaction - you have to light it. This is where daylight or tungsten light becomes easier than flash - at least with the sun’s (filtered) rays or diffused tungsten you can see what you are going to get. (In the pro studio, the flash units have tungsten “modelling” lights so that you can get the idea of how the flash will illuminate the subject, before popping the shutter.)

Generally, I light the background first, then bring in the foreground (subject) lighting, carefully noting “spill” of one light source into the area of the other. Again, this can take hours! In fact, you can change the whole look of a table-top scene just with the balance of lighting used.

Remember too, that the exposure settings used in the camera depend upon the foreground lighting (not the background), and for most situations (but not all) the background can be brighter than the foreground, to “wash” it out a little. But again this is experimentation.

No, still life photography is not easy, even though it sounds straightforward. Perhaps it is easier to help the model fix her mascara after all!


Modern Medicine: Irritable Bowel Syndrome and how to pacify it

by Dr. Iain Corness, Consultant

Irritable Bowel Syndrome, or IBS since we like acronyms, is an interesting condition. It is not a disease, and in fact tests for abnormalities come back reported as ‘negative’. Does this mean that IBS isn’t really in the bowel, but all ‘in the brain’?

Unfortunately, there is a school of thought in medicine that says that if all the tests come back negative, the condition is not real, only imagined. This is totally wrong. There are many conditions for which we did not know (or had not developed) the right tests. Until the last couple of decades, we did not have a definitive test for HIV - but the people had the ailment, even though we couldn’t identify it. We doctors must never forget to treat the patient, not the test results. (I thank my eldest son, Dr. Jonathan, for that sage little homily.)

Getting back to IBS, I repeat that it is not a disease, but can be a very debilitating condition, characterized by some of the following (but not necessarily all) symptoms: cramping pain in the stomach area, painful diarrhoea or constipation (now that’s confusing), mucus in the stool, swollen or bloated belly, increased gas and the feeling that you are unable to totally empty your bowel.

If IBS is not a disease, what is it? It is a functional disorder, which means that the bowel doesn’t work as it should. What appears to happen is that the nerves (called Auerbach’s Plexus from memory) and the muscles of the bowel are extra-sensitive. For example, the muscles may contract too much when you eat. These contractions can cause cramping and diarrhoea or rapid bowel movement during, or shortly after, a meal. Or the nerves can be overly sensitive to the dilating of the bowel (because of gas, for example). Cramping or pain can be the result.

Any condition that does not have some nice finger-pointing test result is then too often put into the ‘psychosomatic’ pigeonhole. “It’s caused by stress,” say the non-medical ‘experts’. In actual fact, emotional stress will not cause anyone to develop IBS. However, if you already have IBS, stress can trigger the symptoms, just as it can for a myriad of medical conditions. Stress does not cause the problem, but it can make it appear worse. In fact, the bowel can overreact to all sorts of things, including food, exercise, and hormones (women with IBS have more problems around the time of their menses).

Food and drinks that tend to cause symptoms include milk products, chocolate, alcohol, caffeine, carbonated drinks, and fatty items. In some cases, even eating a large meal will trigger symptoms.

Another complicating factor is that the symptoms of IBS can also mimic other gastro-intestinal problems, which is why in the ‘work-up’ there may be a barium enema or lower GI (gastro-intestinal) series. Barium is a thick liquid that makes the bowel show up on X-ray. Another examination is an Endoscopy. This is where the doctor inserts the ‘black snake’ into your bowel and can look through the small camera on the tip.

Although there is no ‘magic bullet’ to cure someone of IBS, there is treatment that will help. This includes dietary changes, anti-spasmodic medicine and stress relief if you are a highly stressed person. As a starter, fibre (found in bran, bread, cereal, beans, fruit, and vegetables) reduces IBS symptoms - especially constipation, because it makes stool soft and easier to pass, but you have to identify the ‘triggers’. (And it ain’t Roy Rogers!)


Heart to Heart with Hillary

Dear Hillary,
Can nothing be done about the song taew drivers? For a tourist city they give the place a bad name with their stand-over tactics and demands for fares much greater than should be the case. No wonder the foreign tourists look for taxis, but unless they have their wits about them they will again be quoted exorbitant fares, rather than using the meters. For a real fun time, try a tuk-tuk which will attempt to take you straight to the nearest jewelry shop that pays for their fuel. Until our city fathers meet the song taew monopoly head on and produce a real public transport system, this will always be a third world tourist destination.
“Where you go?”
Dear “Where you go?”
Unfortunately you are quite correct, my Petal. The song taews which do not have any fixed or marked destination will always be a turn-off for tourists, as the majority of the drivers do not speak another language. Why would you expect them to get on transport with unmarked destinations? Perhaps it is time for the TAT to get involved and issue ‘tourist bus’ licenses for drivers who meet a minimum standard in communication. Hillary has given up with the song taews, taxis and tuk-tuks, and uses motorcycle taxis when possible (still none in Chiang Mai). They appear to be a friendlier bunch and will heed the “cha-cha” (slowly) instructions. You do have to barter first, but that’s part of the fun of living in the ‘third world’.
Dear Hillary,
This is a very embarrassing problem, so you will forgive me if I don’t attach my real name. I have suffered from night-time wind for many years. My mother even tells me I had it when a child. Living on my own it is not too much of a problem as I can let one rip whenever I like, but I have recently taken up with a lovely young lady and it is obvious that she would be willing to spend the night with me. It is me that is holding back, as I don’t want her to hear the Charge of the Light Brigade and be put off by the musical items that my bottom can produce.
Flatulent
Dear Flatulent,
You have my sympathies, as opposed to my symphonies. You have several choices, however, Flatulent my dear. You can opt to remain celibate and join the clergy, but your flatulent fits might be misunderstood as music to some cleric’s ears. You can train yourself to be able to play the Charge of the Light Brigade, and make money from your musical bottom. A French entertainer did just that. Called Le Petomaine he could extinguish a candle at one metre. You can have a look at your diet and avoid milk products and green beans and see if that helps. Finally, you can always get the young lady concerned to ‘burp’ you before settling down for the night. That is what your mother would have done.
Dear Hillary,
Every day I see these Thai girls sitting sideways
on the rear of some motorcycle and wonder where did this custom come from? China adopted bicycles, but Thailand seems to have adopted the motorcycle. Do you know why this is so, and when did the Thai girls start to ride pillion in this strange way? I must say I have never seen one fall off, but I suppose they must. Any answers are appreciated.
Pillion Pete
Dear Pillion Pete,
An interesting observation. China, I believe, adopted pedal power because of financial reasons, while the Thais have always been better off and adopted the gasoline engine for boats, cars, trucks and personal transport (motorcycles) very early in the history of the gasoline engine. The Thailand infrastructure was also well developed early, so the itinerant motorcyclist could always find a gas station to get his or her fuel. However, the art of riding sideways came long before the nasty two strokes from Japan (smelly motorcycles and karaoke bars were Japan’s revenge after the war, I am sure) as Thai women have always been very aware of their femininity. Figure hugging sarongs and skirts are not new. They were wearing them over 100 years ago, and try slinging your leg over a buffalo in a tight skirt, Pillion Pete my Petal. No, you can’t, so they sat side-saddle on the buffaloes. Sitting side-saddle on a motorcycle was a very natural progression, otherwise the skirt would have to be hoisted around the waist to get on. Something you men wouldn’t mind, but something the naturally shy Thai woman would not countenance. Take a look at the clothing the girls are wearing. Tight skirts means side-saddle, while jeans means sitting astride the nasty, smelly device. As far as your question, “Do they fall off?” the simple answer is yes they do, but not because they lost their balance. They only fall off when the rider (or the person nominally in control of the machine) loses balance, and down they go, including the two girls sitting opposite each other, but still side-saddle. Thank you for a ‘real’ question for once!


A Slice of Thai History: Escape from Bangkok 1945

Part Four: The First Escape

by Duncan steam

In the meantime, their five comrades who had been spirited away in the night “were taken by auto to the OSS headquarters located in the palace of the Regent of Siam. The Regents’ elegant dining room table served as an operating table for the two Thai doctors who worked for hours repairing our injuries. One had received his training in England and the other in New York. We were obviously in very good hands; however, there was not much in the way of first aid or medical equipment,” wrote Harry Smith. He continued, “The food at the palace was remarkable. It was prepared at a five star hotel about four miles away and brought on foot by servants using shoulder yokes. We even had ice cream once!”

The five remained at the palace until midnight the next day when they boarded an old bus for a trip north. “An Australian who had escaped from a prisoner of war camp on the Jap railway came with us. He was just skin and bones and crouched in a corner all the time without ever speaking. The plan was to proceed to a rendezvous about 150 miles north of Bangkok.”

They ran into trouble in the centre of the city when the bus began backfiring. Due to the curfew, the backfiring bus drew the attention of a Japanese patrol. “The straw curtains on the windows were held closed while the driver explained to the patrol that he was transporting prisoners to jail. All the time he kept the starter engaged...”

The Japanese let the bus continue on its way, but rather than risk continuing the journey they pulled into an old racetrack and hid in the abandoned horse stalls. “A runner was sent back and soon two British-type cars arrived to take us back to the Palace ... The next night we left Bangkok with a tow truck and a spare bus following along and travelled several hours north to a small airfield in the village of Ban-Pe.”

Here they waited for a British DC-3 to take them back to India and safety. On board the plane was a replacement OSS group. Smith stated, “The DC-3 had suffered a tear in the fabric of one elevator during the landing in the rough field and there was a moment of panic until a piece of cloth and some glue were produced ... Within the hour we were airborne and headed for home. A refuelling stop was made at Rangoon, which had just been captured, from the Japanese. Seven hours later we landed at the Alipore airport in Calcutta.”

Both Smith and Copely spent the next two weeks at the Escape and Evasion Headquarters in Calcutta. It was necessary for them to go into hiding for this period of time to protect the Thais who had helped them escape and until the remaining crew members were safely in the internment camp. There was always the chance Japanese spies or Indian sympathisers would find out about their survival and escape and therefore recognise the extent of the Thai underground network.


Personal Directions:  Stress is different things to different people

by Christina Dodd

This week I’d like to share some thoughts on stress that I have found, as quite often even though we know a certain amount about stress because we all suffer from it to some degree, it is always a good idea to get the facts as well.

Sean … writes: “Much research has been conducted into stress over the last hundred years. Some of the theories behind it are now settled and accepted; others are still being researched and debated. During this time, there seems to have been something approaching open warfare between competing theories and definitions: Views have been passionately held and aggressively defended.

What complicates this is that intuitively we all feel that we know what stress is, as it is something we have all experienced. A definition should therefore be obvious…except that it is not.

Definitions

Hans Selye was one of the founding fathers of stress research. His view in 1956 was that “stress is not necessarily something bad – it all depends on how you take it. The stress of exhilarating, creative successful work is beneficial, while that of failure, humiliation or infection is detrimental.” Selye believed that the biochemical effects of stress would be experienced irrespective of whether the situation was positive or negative.

Since then, a great deal of further research has been conducted, and ideas have moved on. Stress is now viewed as a “bad thing”, with a range of harmful biochemical and long-term effects. These effects have rarely been observed in positive situations.

The most commonly accepted definition of stress (mainly attributed to Richard S Lazarus) is that stress is a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that “demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize.”

This is the main definition, although we also recognize that there is an intertwined instinctive stress response to unexpected events. The stress response inside us is therefore part instinct and part to do with the way we think.

Fight-or-Flight

Some of the early research on stress (conducted by Walter Cannon in 1932) established the existence of the well-known “fight-or-flight” response. His work showed that when an organism experiences a shock or perceives a threat, it quickly releases hormones that help it to survive.

In humans, as in other animals, these hormones help us to run faster and fight harder. They increase heart rate and blood pressure, delivering more oxygen and blood sugar to power important muscles. They increase sweating in an effort to cool these muscles, and help them stay efficient. They divert blood away from the skin to the core of our bodies, reducing blood loss if we are damaged. As well as this, these hormones focus our attention on the threat, to the exclusion of everything else. All of this significantly improves our ability to survive life-threatening events.

Not only life-threatening events trigger this reaction: We experience it almost any time we come across something unexpected or something that frustrates our goals. When the threat is small, our response is small and we often do not notice it among the many other distractions of a stressful situation.

Unfortunately, this mobilization of the body for survival also has negative consequences. In this state, we are excitable, anxious, jumpy and irritable. This actually reduces our ability to work effectively with other people. With trembling and a pounding heart, we can find it difficult to execute precise, controlled skills. The intensity of our focus on survival interferes with our ability to make fine judgments by drawing information from many sources. We find ourselves more accident-prone and less able to make good decisions.

There are very few situations in modern working life where this response is useful. Most situations benefit from a calm, rational, controlled and socially sensitive approach. In the short term, we need to keep this fight-or-flight response under control to be effective in our jobs. In the long term we need to keep it under control to avoid problems of poor health and burnout.

Stress is different things to different people. To a mountaineer it is the challenge of pushing physical resources to the limit by striving to achieve a demanding goal. To the homeward bound motorist it can be the hassles of heavy traffic and obnoxious exhaust fumes. To the student it can be exam pressure.

Most people respond to the word stress in negative ways. They see it as a destructive, debilitating force. However, not all stress is negative. The word eustress has been coined to describe positive stress. Eustress results from exhilarating experiences. It is the type of stress you are likely to experience when you inherit a large amount of money or receive an unexpected promotion or reward. Eustress is the stress of winning and achieving.

Negative stress is distress. It is the stress of losing, failing, overworking and not coping. Distress affects people in a negative often harmful manner.

We all experience distress from time to time. It is a normal, unavoidable part of living.”

Perhaps you are experiencing intense stress right now. Maybe you have a challenging job with a punishing workload, intense demands and over-tight deadlines. Or perhaps your boss or clients just keep piling on the pressure. Maybe problems with your coworkers or your team are making your life a misery, or perhaps you are just not getting the support you need. Or maybe you are increasingly exhausted as the things you enjoy about your job are submerged in a relentless flood of humdrum demands.

Manage both the sources and symptoms of stress and beat job stress starting now!

Our Stress Management MasterClass shows you how to tackle these problems at root. Where you have some control over the situation, it helps you to target the causes of stress quickly and effectively. Where you have no control, it shows you how to build robust buffers against stress. You’ll learn how to cope with intense pressure, win back control of your workload, improve working relationships, and live a happier, more relaxed life.

If you would like to contact me about our Stress Management Program or indeed any of our business and personal skills programs, then please email me at Christina.dodd@ asiatrainingassociates.com

Until next time, have a great week!


Editorial Comment: The Shame of Songkran  

by Dr Iain Corness

After many years of attempting to ignore the situation, the central government finally agreed a couple of years ago that the Songkran road toll was too high. Various attempts have been made since then to correct the situation, but not with much success. Amongst these have been threats of breathalyzers being used to find the drunken drivers and get them off the road, gas stations not allowed to sell alcohol to minors, and posting police patrols to make sure motorcycle riders have a helmet on their heads (as they ride past). The rest of the time, the helmet, usually of questionable capabilities, is left in the wire carrier at the front of the machine, or if worn is not done up.

There is always a difference in Thailand between passing laws and then policing them. Particularly when the law is not popular with either public or police. So where does the government go from here?

The first, and dare I say it, very obvious proposal, is to limit exposure over Songkran. If you stand in the road for 12 hours a day, you are more likely to be knocked over than someone who only stands there for one hour a day. Simple logic that everyone can understand. Currently, Songkran lasts generally around one week, depending upon which part of the country you are in. So during Songkran you are metaphorically standing in the middle of the road for seven days. Even greater chance of getting knocked over.

The answer is some careful gazetting by the government. Make the third Saturday in April a national day of reverence towards one’s elders, not a water throwing day. Make the Sunday after the day of reverence, the national Songkran day for water fights. The same date, all over the country. Make the Monday after the water fight Sunday a recovery holiday with no water, and let everyone return to their homes.

In this way there is still a three day Thai New Year, there is the traditional respect to the elders, an important part of Thai society, there is a water fight fun day, and a day to recover as well. The length of time you are left at risk standing in the road is now only one day.

The end result of this would be a dramatic drop in the Songkran road toll, with no policemen standing on street corners attempting to enforce unenforceable legislation on an uninterested populace. It must be worth a thought. Surely?

The second nettle that the politicians are afraid to grasp, will have tangible benefits for the future safety of motorcyclists in Thailand, but not immediately. The government already has the statistics to show that 80 percent of road deaths are motorcycle riders. The government has to legislate the minimum standard of helmet approved in this country. Currently there is either no minimum, or it is so low it is ludicrous. The plastic crash helmets are suitable to hold ice cream, not brains.

It is not difficult to find this minimum standard. The government can adopt the standards as promulgated by the UK, EU, USA or Australia. There is no testing necessary by the government. Retail outlets are given 12 months grace, by which time all helmets for sale in Thailand must meet the minimum standard. The onus on achieving that standard rests with the manufacturers. Eventually, over the next couple of years, the helmets worn in this country will all meet that standard, as the ice cream buckets have a very limited life.

The final point is an amendment to existing legislation and refers to the wearing of safety helmets. All people carried on a motorcycle must wear a helmet (and I would not worry about specifying how many people) and all helmets must be done up. Thais will always go three, four or five up on a motorcycle until all Thais can afford motor cars. The government will then have adequately provided for, and protected, the group most at risk - the 80 percent of fatalities coming off motorcycles without adequate head protection.