Without those, you were simply a mead-swilling, debt-ridden hobbit. So what constitutes a "fit and proper person" today? Owning an English Football club, a shedload of hidden assets and being able to say, "How can I corrupt my own money?"

 Sometime in August Prattus Maximus Sinatra may well enter the Man City football ground, adjust his toga, wave to the crowd and yell: "Are you not entertained?" Actually, we already are. This is pure theatre. You couldn't make it up. Its just a hunch, but I don't Thaksin will be returning home any time soon. As the cases pile up against him - and presuming some of them stick - Thaksin will then play his master card. The joker in the pack. He will do a Charles 1 of England and declare: "I do not recognise this court." But Charles was already in prison. Thaksin is not. He will claim that as the coup was illegal, any charge would be deemed irrelevant and thrown out of any real court. There is an extradition treaty between Great Britain and Thailand but there is no way his lawyers will allow that to happen as they will simply claim that his life will be in danger if he returns. Sorted.

 The range of excuses can now be expanded. "Sorry, can't make the AEC hearing next week. We're playing Chelsea away." His wife will become more creative. "Sorry, can't come to the tax-dodge thingy: my racoon has hepatitis, the chihuahua has a migraine, and the Malaysian house-boy has run off with the leopard. It's enough to give one heart palpitations."

I don't know, but the idea that wealth can accumulate and men decay is not inherently a foolish one.

UUU

Meanwhile, the opposing political forces are suspicious of one another to the point of paranoia, superior to the point of smugness and irritated to the point of violence.

No matter how low you set the bar of political behaviour, these guys effortlessly limbo underneath it. They shout the language of democracy, but this is primarily about power.

Politics has turned out very nicely for these men because they follow the two central tenets of Thai political culture, which are aspirational and acquisitive. When you have been at the top for a long time the little people really don't count for much.

Its hard to see what any of the 61.5 million citizens of Thailand have got out of these endless power plays - apart from being caught in the middle.

They are distinctly underwhelmed. Many are drained because they are working too hard for too little, others are anxious because they aren't working at all. "It's not dark yet, but it's getting there," wrote Bob Dylan.

Or as my girlfriend has it: "It's raining stress."

UUU

Defence Minister General Boonrawd Somtas telling reporters, one of them allegedly wearing a "Make Bono History" T-shirt, that the insurgents in the Deep south "were on their last legs" is like suggesting Keith Richards is a morning person. It doesn't compute. Neither does the suggestion that the BTS Skytrain tack on an extra carriage without TV advertising. This would prove so popular that by the time the 7.14 from Onnuj had reached Siam Square, the fogged-up carriage would resemble a scene out of "Schindler's List".

I'm becoming more convinced that people who have grown up in an age of non-stop noise find silence disturbing - even frightening.

UUU

I wonder what Salman Rushdie's immediate reaction was on hearing he had been knighted. Did he punch the air and scream "YES! Sir Salman at last!" or did he just moan "Oh God, no ..." and minutes later the maid found him face down in the soup. Still, it will do wonders for the English tourist industry as planeloads of head-hackers arrive to seek him out. Fatwa is revived. Prize money is up. There will, of course, be complaints in the accounting offices back in the more excitable areas of the Northwest frontier as the expenses are gone through. "Two nights at The Ritz? Three rocket-launchers? A thousand bucks for chainsaw maintenance?"  And to think the Brits once knighted Robert Mugabe and no one said a damn thing.

UUU

Quote of the week:

"FIFA seem to want to try to run the South African World Cup as efficiently as the Germans did. What a load of bull. The Germans could invade Poland in three days. We couldn't invade Swaziland in three months." Trevor Phillips, who runs the South African Premier Soccer League

UUU

Reading press reports you'd think bears were having a hard time these days. Bears have always had a hard time. Even cute little Knut received death threats. The polar bear, Thalassactos maritimus, is the aristocrat of bears and is just the latest to be in deep doo doo. I'd like to think they will make it. After all, an adult can take your face off with one swoosh of its paw.

 Mr Auliagnier in his "Dictionnaire des Aliments ert Boissons" writes: "When the Yakuts, a Siberian people, meet a bear, they doff their caps, greet him, call him master, old man or grandfather, and promise not to attack him or even speak ill of him. But if it looks like he may pounce on them, they kill him, cut him in pieces and roast him and regale themselves, repeating all the while: 'It is the Russians eating you, not us.'"

Compiled by Roger Beaumont