Former leader Thaksin Shinawatra is expected to be less of a nuisance to the Council for National Security (CNS) and the Surayud government as his wife and two of his children are being tried for various counts of tax evasion.

It's ironic that the former leader and his wife Pojaman, both hailed as exemplary parents during their heyday, should have let two of their offspring become embroiled in a tax-evasion legal tangle that could destroy their future.

The famous couple's love for their children has somehow led to their two children being forced into a double bind - they are accused of a type of fraud that only seniors could understand and formulate, and they are being made to pay for it.

The vainglorious ex-premier must from now on concentrate his energy on defending his family from being convicted of tax evasion, and forget about returning to power with a bang.

Chavalit Van

Chiang Mai

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Put windfall from Shinawatra children to good public use

How fortuitous! The taxes Panthongtae and Pinthongta Shinawatra owe the Thai government almost offset the Revenue Department's estimated shortfall of Bt15 billion for 2007. This is great news for the people of Thailand for two reasons.

First, with the additional government revenue, we can scrap some of Thaksin's ridiculous public programmes such as "free" loans to villages and start spending the money on useful projects such as infrastructure and education without incurring further public debt.

Second, it demonstrates that no one is above the law - even clever politicians who create policy and then worm their way through the loopholes to avoid responsibilities, like paying taxes.

What is pitiful is that Panthongtae and Pinthongta probably do not have a clue what happened. They were appointed directors of Ample Rich and served as middlemen to for Shin stock share transactions bought by Temasek.

Now their pictures are splashed across the front page of every Thai newspaper like felons. Perhaps Panthongtae and Pinthongta should ask their father to make a long-distance call and explain why money was his most important priority.

Outraged Taxpayer

Bangkok

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Govt has no obligation to bail out spend-happy farmers

Re: "Council of State to rule on farmers' fund, debts help", News, March 28

Call me naive, call me silly, call me adult. Indebted farmers are "demanding" the government help them out? They borrowed money from probably a number of sources: Bank of Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives? The village fund? Illegal money-lenders?

What are the most likely ways they spent the borrowed money - with the encouragement of the last government? Pickup trucks, motorcycles, televisions, mobile phones, etc - nothing that generates income, only expenses.

Since these farmers have suffered no untoward natural disasters, other than their own incompetence, irresponsibility, and materialism, why does the government have any responsibility to help them? Moreover, according to published reports, their debts are mostly to illegal money-lenders, from whom they borrowed to pay off legitimate lenders. Yet they expect the government to pay illegal moneylenders, whom, in fact, the police should be arresting and imprisoning?

My advice to these farmers: Grow up! Pay the piper. Learn your lesson. Stop thinking democracy means "Mommy-and-Daddy-cracy". It doesn't. You create your own problems; you solve them. That's real democracy.

Emotional immaturity accounts for a great deal of Thailand's problems and one of the main reasons why Thais in general do not realise their full potential, in spite of a population with great natural talents.

An adult

Bangkok

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Faith in fortune-tellers puts CNS in a bad light

It's been reported that top Council for National Security (CNS) members recently travelled (using tax money?) to the Chiang Mai area to meet a fortune-teller to get his advice on governing and policy decisions. Please tell me it was an April Fool's joke. If it's true, then it's a sad ridicule-prone state of affairs at the top. We've already accepted that Thailand is stuck with non-elected leaders, most of whom dress in brass-laden uniforms. But to have those guys be seriously swayed by crystal ball readers would be the epitome of silliness.

Their fixation with hocus pocus might explain why they're so worried about such things as amulets rather than serious affairs of state. Didn't the September coup-makers promise elections within a year? By my reckoning, a year from September 2006 is September 2007 ... not December, as recently announced. Maybe the Chiang Mai soothsayers were able to tweak the months around a bit.

Brahmburgers

Chiang Rai

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Book on Laos underplayed impact of American bombing

Michael Smithies' review of what happened to the Laotian royal family after 1975 in the book "Bamboo Palace" by Christopher Kremmer ("Disappearing the King", Style, March 25) correctly commends Kremmer for writing about a controversial subject with considerable flair. I too enjoyed the book, but unlike Smithies was very disappointed that it wholly ignored a huge and central issue of the "Secret War".

On page 212, Kremmer makes the fanciful and absurd conclusion that, "The elusive Pathet Lao leader Keysone Phomvihan's subterranean villa was spacious and airy, and its vast family and meeting rooms with their sunny aspect would have provided quite comfortable living".

Kremmer should be reminded that Keysone was living in the cave during the longest and most intensive bombing campaign in world history. While Kremmer includes Fred Branfman's "Voices from the Plain of Jars: Life Under an Air War" as suggested reading, nowhere in the main text does he mention the suffering, death and misplacement the bombing caused. But then, Kremmer has also written on the Afghan carpet wars and knows a thing or two about spinning a good yarn.

I don't know if Smithies has ever been to Viengxay and the caves that make up the "hidden city". I've been there a few times and always look forward to my next visit. It's a stunning landscape. Every visitor I've spoken to has been enthralled by the caves at Viengxay and has been eager to learn more of what life must have been like for the 20,000 or so people who lived in these caves and endured the American bombing.

If Smithies hasn't visited Viengxay, I suggest that he go. Once he has experienced the caves first hand, I'd be very surprised if he maintains his view that this site is "likely to generate only limited interest". I certainly beg to differ.

It's ironic that the day after I read Smithies article I should find myself in the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. Confronted by images of women and children scarred beyond recognition with horrific skin lacerations from US experiments in white phosphorous, Agent Orange and napalm warfare, I fume over Smithies' easy accusations of Lao leaders being "ideological perverts" and wonder if this charge should be directed elsewhere.

Dr Paul Rogers

Senior Pro Poor Tourism Adviser

SNV Lao PDR

Vientiane

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European Union - bloated, corrupt and on the way out

The article you printed on April 2 entitled "European Union's 50th anniversary a cause for celebration, not cynicism" (Opinion) read more like a typical piece of EU propaganda, although it was probably not meant to be!

I don't think people are being cynical at all if at long last they begin to see the light and tire of the way that the EU has developed into a huge, corrupt, bureaucratic, and obsolete organisation; they are just being realistic. The modern world is leaving such bureaucracies behind and unless the rulers of Europe accept this, the EU, as it is presently constituted, will perish.

Britain seems to be leading the crowd with more and more people saying that the country would be better off out - and other countries may not be far behind.

Observer

Bangkok

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Iranian crisis spotlights weakness of Western nations

Re: "Decision not to air alleged confessions shows 'positive changes'", World, April 4.

We see a hapless Tony Blair floundering in how to deal with this inopportune crisis that has beset the twilight of his reign. Having secured a deal in Northern Ireland to overshadow the festering sore that is Iraq he was hoping for a high on which to quietly leave the stage of world politics.

However this "Iranian crisis" shows in utmost clarity actually how impotent Western nations are in reality and how ill-fitted armed forces are to do anything other than peacekeeping or all-out war. This also further raises the question as to the role of nuclear deterrents in a modern non-bipolar world. Iran has shrewdly calculated, to humiliate those that would seek to curtail its nuclear ambitions, through Britain.

I am sure it escaped the Iranian calculations but the timing is especially bitter given the 25th anniversary of the Falklands war when Margaret Thatcher saw off the impertinence of the Argentinean invasion of the Falklands. Where this will finally end is anyone's guess but the mighty have certainly been shown not to be as mighty as they pretend.

Dr John Symons

Bangkok