Thailand schooling UK and USA beyond Animal Farm and 1984?

An interesting article as always by Khun Surinya in the Bangkok Post on Thailand schools:


https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1687488/school-merger-policy-so-unfair-to-kids


And a follow up editorial article by xxx to spell out this vital issue in further detail:


https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1687888/school-mergers-need-extra-care


Some 18,000 THhi village schools in danger of being merged within a 6km radius and a further 3,000 such schools in border regions preserved due to mountains or near the frontier.

Separately that last point a factor in East Kent NHS planning with the perpetual attempt to reduce services based on the centralised view from The County Barn quartered safe in Maidstone but fenced in by their empty champagne cases and road noise from over-centralised tarmac and tax.

That overly bureaucratic drawing of lines on maps failing to reflect conditions on the ground or in this case the large blue expanse of the Channel that makes up one side of Frontline East Kent - indeed the longest coastline of any English county.

On similar ground Khun Surinya pointing out that a broad brush to removing village schools could endanger the wider societal benefits of education especially in the Charter regions of Isaan and North and Deep South where the mountains and canyons are not the highly-funded glass and steel of Bangkok.

And are regions where travelling is that much more difficult on potholed country roads in the monsoon and blazing sun of the dry season not the aircon luxury of BKK Skytrain or more clunky buses.

Both points apt for African and ASEAN Smart Cities given East Kent's involvement in the crocodiles of Walking Buses.

Truth in the rumour that most Bangkok airconditioned shopping malls use more electricity than most Thai regions?

On that last point UK Acting Ambassador to Thailand, Margaret Tongue highlighting in a Renewables Energy conference that ASEAN sunshine is 30% more productive than UK for solar panels. UK taking no lessons from anyone in The Age of Climate Change in rapidly divesting its coal and oil industries for solar and windfarms, the largest UK windfarm already off the Kent coast.

And also constituting many of the new Marine Reserves to begin reseeding the oceans.

That delayed in Kent as the County Barn now caught out by £260M as its fossil fool speculation with public sector pensions fails again after the zillions wasted on Icelandic bank speculation. Chief Constable Pughsley sent me a Resilience Fax that he will have to stay late and work longer in cutting Kent Police pensions. Somebody needs to clean out the County Barn Aegean stables he says, as it's a right old pigsty.

### Breakfast of Irn Bru and bagels ###

Govey, the UK Environment Minister and former Education Minister and now PM candidate against Jezza H and a strangely subdued Sajo, perhaps infected with the curse of the too-large Home Office, wisely taking lessons from Caroline Lucas UK Green party leader on oceans and forests (a new UK Tree Tsar in place) and the less glamorous topic of top soil raised by Kasetsart University.

Govey pausing from his breakfast bagel - probably Warburtons - to highlight 40% of UK top soil lost since 1840 and only six harvests away from famine.

The dynamic NFU leader Minette Batters no doubt doing the same to her members and agricultural colleges. The Daily Mail highlighting the absurd scandal of garlic capable of being grown in UK flown from China and frozen for 6 months shipping, placed in non-biodegradable plastic pots by M&S and those pots flown in from Belgium on non-solar Boeing and Airbus planes.

Lessons from Thailand on OTOP and Doitung long overdue. Indeed from East Kent Core Company Bakkavor (now 27th on London Stock Exchange) on food management whether fresh fruit and veg or healthier pizzas and desserts.

Former PM candidate Foxy busy laying out the groundwork for UK Strategic Rail Groups in the new Morocco hispeed rail, Africa's first, and Cairo Metro, one of the world's largest and crowded cities. Foxy no doubt pausing only for a can of Irn Bru, made in Scotland from girders, from the buffet car to save his hip flask to share a dram or two with Ivanka at the Trump State visit dinner.

Why no Ivanka Fashion brand still? At the very least donate all the profits to USAid Africa from her successful trade visit? The Trump tartan looked quite boring too surely Kent's Vivienne Westwood could glam it up and punk it up a bit?

And if there'd be few takers for a Trump perfume (the smell that lingers? , the smell of Trump?), surely a Melania brand on perfumes and interior decor would be a breath of fresh air? Even a First Lady brand for the future?

The wheels wobbling on the Trump visit over silly London Mayor insults and off the cuff NHS remarks but Melania effortlessly crowned the Queen of Fashion in every UK newspaper with full page reviews of her dresses and hats.

But I'm still having to use Esmerelda my best pig as an air conditioner at the County Barn.


### Water water everywhere in Budapest ##

While travel on the ferries and canals and islands of Asia surely ripe for consideration as part of the major Hungary UN Water Conference in Budapest in October alongside Mekong dams, 10 Asia rivers and ocean plastic deposits and recycling, and RNLI and swimming lessons and pools.

UK again taking no lessons on those less criteria aside from the bizarre and foolish Gucci fire station demolishing the Ramsgate swimming pool and tarmacking sports fields gifted by the Edwardians for health.

Kent slipping backwardness and worsening mortality rates.

Tracey Crouch, Kent's former Sports Minister and Gambling Safety Tsar limbering up on the touchlines as the only qualified FA referee in parliament, the chirpy John Bercow and august Lindsay Hoyle Deputy Speaker aside respected for their skills in managing the Brexit silliness and kindergarten rowdiness of parliament, with her freewheeling Olympic Swimming Pool Campaign for all 34 UK counties.

If UK invents products for USA to manufacture (trains, cinema, USA, television, democracy, Bermuda shorts, internet etc etc) then UK as a threadbare Sporting Superpower is also truth in cliche.


### Burmese Days wasted ###


Thailand's village school reforms aside, although Chi Onwurah MP's solar panel work with Vodafone/EE for remote villages in Africa surely as relevant in the mountain bothys of Cairngorms as Kalasin and certainly the mountains of Myanmar after years of UK failure, there is a wider issue in Thai education.

Orwell would be turning in his grave at his Burmese Days now long wasted with a faltering UK Embassy and British Council.

As with Road Safety the same debate occurs each year with an increasing education budget, no flies on Thailand's education planners in meeting the needs of a 21st century Thailand 4.0, but hugely underperforming English language skills.

English pride in Shakespeare or East Kent's Dickens aside, it's interesting that Uncle Tu highlights George Orwell's Animal Farm on his reading list. Interesting in that Orwell's profound prose can be easily read by a school child, whether in Pegwell Bay or Satun Bay, and in Thailand's future political debates.

https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1688920/stuck-in-our-own-orwellian-nightmare


Uncle Tu no cardboard cutout dictator of the old school but no doubt wisely foreseeing the battlelines being drawn between the new parliament and 250 senators of the military regime and Khun Thanathorn and Future Forward party coalition lead of reformists.
Uncle Tu's unusual PM coronation and 250 handpicked senators perhaps out of the Orwell playbook as Animal Farm as a satire on the totalitarian Soviet regimes upto just after 1984.

https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1688884/pms-book-choice-baffles-nation

And Uncle Tu as PM with a 20 party coalition and majority of 3 votes the green shoots of a return to the chaos we've seen in the Bangkok Shutdown and Brexit 52:48 narrow win.


### Twitter trenchlines dug ###

Or the chaos this week of the Tiananmen Square Massacre anniversary. UK and Thai troops standing firm together in South Sudan as neighbouring Sudan convulses into more protests.

While the Twitter trenchlines are being dug long after Princess Ubolratana's seismic #howcomeiytsthewayitis with FWP #porrakpor and the European Tour of Khun Thanathorn and Khun Pannika and Khun Piyubtar to the BBC and posing in front of the George Orwell statue.

1984 equally valid for schoolreading lists and along with East Kent's sandwiches and Hunger Games salute symbols and Chula-Tham football match symbols of rebellion and opposition and criticism.

But, Bubbly Rory Stewart MP, and DFID Minister, beginning his MP campaign with impromptu public speeches channelled at Hyde Park Corner the basis of English free speech idolised by Orwell.

The New York Times citing Rory as goofy perhaps true (although as with Ken Dodd, Orwell's rival for Greatest Briton?, maybe he could eat an orange through a tennis racket's strings, and the curse of NHS dentistry supposedly free and excellent) but less sulphorous than the rather nasty E Chor insults facing Khun Pannika as opposition politicos try some political hairpulling to try and undo her policy points and Princess Leia-style pigtails/buns.

And if USA Ambo Woody has stumbled into the minefield of the NHS despite his State Department insurance surely American dentistry is ripe for growth if NHS is failing in its mission of free healthcare. Those gap-toothed British schoolkids in their asbestos classrooms might yet thank him as they finish their Kelloggs cornflakes schoolbreakfast and Illinois moo juice. And Florida orange juice.

Sonny's Specials might yet feature every week in every Asda-Walmart with the UK red tractor (is it a John Deere or a Massey Ferguson?) food spec brand for organic and free range and SME foods. Epecially with POTUS Trump now calling for a trebling of UK USA $$1TN trade as part of the Extra Special Relationship.

Despite the chlorine chicken totem, and that easily washed away in USA agri-reforms, most USA farmers are small family firms. Part oof the barn converted for some jars of honey to export to UK surely a no brainer for the bee crisis. And tree farms growing saplings and hedgerows for replanting on the prairies too. UK with 47 trees per person needing to treble that to achieve UN forestry targets. What's 60M x 47? About 300M? Those don't grow every year nor on trees.

And Rory might yet sink his gnashers not just into delivering UK dentistry but DFID dentistry and Kent-Virginia's Operation Smile cleft lips to South Sudan and beyond and the wasted Burmese days of a weak UK embassy and British Council.

Clearly the NHS-created-and-funded Moorfields Eye Hospital for Arabian Gulf royalty needs review too. Joe Public UK funding it but not for Joe Public Arabia?

While Rory's DFID predecessor Penny Mordaunt has highlighted hospital ships - and certainly Danish style armoured ambulances - for UK troops and aid and supply chain ripple effect through UK shipyards. Plundering nurses from the Commonwealth may be more palatable with extra training and Resilience facilities.

The first Surin Schools in Vietnam in the Mekong delta with HSBC's rather excellent Water programme in the delta and Vietnam mountains, unfortunately tripped and fell at the first hurdle. As did the Mali schools and school lunches programme.

It's too early to detail my Hyde Park Corner language schools project, but certainly Kent's Mickey Mouse Paramount theme park is overdue review. Cardboard cutouts optional (unless English seaside ones) but Uncle Tu could visit and consider that as a project for Siam Cement investment as well repairing the ongoing seismic faultlines in Thailand of Shinawatra and Pheu Thai.

Disney or Japanese Hinka theme parks aside, Thailand's cultural heritage well-preserved and surely a Victoria and Albert fashion museum exhibition with Thai silk overdue. Certainly culture wars could take a backseat to the military-antimilitary group that's unlikely to be bridged soon. A 10% increase in military spending during the Tu years likely to be unscrewed, stored and investigated in detail whether submarines are Stryker armoured cars or conscription in general and the number of generals and army size.

All debates here in UK, the bubbly Rory perhaps unwise to emphasise his brief role as colonial governor in the disastrous UK army regime in Basra in Iraq War the Sequel, potentially for Orwellians here in Brexit Britain. His opium smoking perhaps wiser for drab Brexit and PM campaigns although it's easier to get it here in than Afghanistan despite 20 years of UK military action.

Certainly it seems a bit mean of USA to charge $80M for 37 Stryker armoured cars when they're essentially scrap after the Iraq and Afpak wars winding down. And rather than tooling up USA police with surplus Iraq kit to machine gun yet more black people in USA's broken cities, shouldn't UK be considering buying them off the USA shelf rather than the duplication and bloat and reinventing of the wheel on the rates of Ajax and Boxer armoured cars rusting in barracks? Or the thousands of lorries in BAOR storage on the Rhine?

The latter surely waiting to be sparked to life and driven across any Gibraltar road-rail bridge (the first bridge already opened at Kuajok to smooth the way to Juba and lay the groundwork for Wau-Juba-Kampala rail) through the minefields of North Africa to UK's friends in South Sudan and African Commonwealth as the first school buses and public transport?

Lord Adonis citing a £2 fare cap on all UK buses in the transport and PM debates. In my MP and Mayor campaigns I've urged a flat return fare of £50 in UK from Lands End to John O'Groats. Perhaps with a Tube Zone-style 30 minute radius (or is that a circumference?).

Last week's Tobias Ellwood Defence Minister article raised the silliness of 3% NATO spend from a 2% target not yet met by most European nations: c.1.5% on average. And every European nation literally that much nearer to Russian panzers than UK. Tobias shooting himself in the foot by revealing that UK was already paying 2.3%. So beyond ex-Army vanity and MOD bloat and remnants of Empire and Cold War, it's clear somebody was sleeping through Sandhurst War College lessons.

And a concern if Parliament's Defence Committees are only staffed with ex-Army cheerleaders and Colonel Blimps looking for wars and budget-grab. The Pentagon's latest Iran War seemingly such fluff.

Young Turks such as former captain Johnny Mercer must be tempted to roll a grenade into the defence committee latrines at such twaddle. No doubt Kent's Defence Chair Tom Tugendhat and Ramsgate's former Defence Chief General Dannatt lighting the fuse for him. Or at least preparing his rations for him: a bit more bully beef in those sandwiches than the years of torturing and bullying of UK army veterans or Irish civilians or Deepcut soldiers.

UK and Thai soldiers whether in South Sudan or the Irish Guards in Kwai probably thinking how best to work together on UN Peacekeeping missions. Rumours swirl Chief Constable Pughsley is coordinating a Sudan Medal as a condition of the QPM, Queens Police Medal only given for bravery or senior typing, for UN Police duties.

No doubt Big Joke in Thailand would agree that no UK Deputy Chief Constable should even be considered for a Chief role without say 6 months duty with say the South Sudan police and UN Police. Kent Police with the proud but sad record of a UK police casualty on UN Peacekeeping in Cyprus in 1954.

A UN Peacekeeping College linked to Hendon and Sandhurst and Government House seems far more practical than the UN University of bureaucrats on the rates in Japan.


### A Supersewer of Brain Drain ###


Regardless of Thai schools, UK schools debates mired in concerns over leaky buildings, and boilers that fail in the Autumn not Winter, and deadly asbestos and parents funding pencils and notebooks (paper ones not Apples) and toilet paper. The latter probably to write on as well as use. While the scandal of pupils off-rolled to reduce classroom violence and improve school grades a factor in Chief Pughsley's review of truancy and social dumping in Kent from London.

A Brain Drain magnified into that SuperSewer again.

One factor worth considering more closely in Surin Village Schools was its success in beginning to link Kent and UK schools. The exchange of presents between Surin school and Ellington School for Girls wasn't just Union Jack pencil cases or Thai silk skirts but the basis of lessons in language (those Thai-English lessons again) and culture.

Especially with AIS and True weblinks and Open University MOOC's. Wiser retail heads such as Khun Supaluk of The Mall Group might consider not just fashion events but a live Teach-In broadcast to drum up footfall in the overbuild of Bangkok malls? Making maths fun would be going some (although my fashionista daughter managed to be good at both from algebra to zips) but certainly STEM highlights or English language via football?

Certainly UK universities needing to remain at the top of their Champions League with the first court case over Mickey Mouse degrees - not Disney brand studies or animation courses - but weak courses from Anglia Ruskin University.

The Surinistas drawing a thousand versions of Big Ben to highlight their impressions of UK. Kent's Trade Minister to USA Antony Phillipson probably tearing his hair out not just at the kids flying the flag the wrong way but Macys too. At least they're trying to make America Great Britain Again though. Certainly the UK USA Trump visit schooling both sides in the potential to increase the $1TN trade - POTUS Trump echoing Davey Cameron, more generally on UK trade, in wanting that to double and triple rapidly.


### Sonny's Specials a supersized farm sale and yard sale ###


Leaving aside the sterling efforts of USA Farm Chief Sonny Perdue on growing a new crop of brands and businesses, a glaring black hole is just 3M USA tourists to UK. UK achieving the same to USA (and 1M to Thailand) with a much smaller population.

POTUS Trump might well take lessons from the quietly capable Leo Varadkar in Eire his next port of call in his DDay commemorations to Eire in gaining UK passports for visits and residency from Brexit. A Boris bridge already raised for Scotland-Ireland in the Boris PM campaign and ripe for Irish-American know-how and The Six Companies with Murphy. Virginia and Kent's Terry McAuliffe years of work in Ulster and Dorothy McAuliffe's school dinners work creating fitter kids that could bridge the Atlantic and the Irish Sea and Straits of Gibraltar.

While if I've written before on the DDay implications for UK and USA:

http://lovekentloveramsgate.blogspot.com/2019/06/dday-uk-and-usa-next-75-years.html

There are also implications for Thailand in a closer working with UK and USA universities. Former PM Cameron's promise of a minimum of a year's work visa after graduation for international students has faltered but held. Both Uncle Tu and Khun Thanathorn must surely want a united front for Thailand's universities and language schools and 130 UK and 34 Eire universities.

And one of the absurdities of the Brexit twaddle was that Eire (4M people) and Malta (400k - a third the size of Kent) could have been the only English speaking nations the EU and thus losing the right of English as an official EU language.

Thailand and ASEAN could have been the only nations flying the flag for UK with English as their second official language.

The increasingly bizarre and lacklustre Manston airport crimes collapsing on the first day of a strange DCO private sector land theft as none of the Riveroak tax haven finance details from Delaware to Panama to BVI to Helix Switzerland were disclosed to the investigators.

That relevant for Security Minister Ben Wallace rightly gaining the front page of the Sunday Mail for exactly this sort of NCA, the UK FBI, scrutiny needed for white collar criminals such as lawyers and estate agents with dirty money hiding behind court paper and delays.

Lord Grabiner of One Essex Court barristers, and still a judge, castrated not just over the BHS scandal but now court fees profiteering on the GPO Postmaster scandals with the Great British Postman accused of fraud when their IT systems failed - not only was Postman Pat innocent but the crimes far worse than the LIBOR frauds.

Riveroak and their white collar enablers failing to beheld ot account for wasting public time and tax. The Londongrad culture of High Court failure on Magnitsky crimes and Unexplained Wealth Orders long delayed.

The High Court becoming a pig sty to rival the County Barn as the clerks and judges slide around in their own muck.

Aidan Quinn QC and Bar Standards Board struck dumb with a deafening silence on why he hasn't raised the barrister crooks issue. Effectively handcuffing himself to the case as gamekeeper turned poacher on that farm. His colleague Naomi also a High Court judge which is strange regulator infiltration also silent.

The EU language debate flagging up the years of effort and funding in EU to preserve languages: Irish and Scots gaelic or Welsh or Cornish benefiting here in UK with even a new BBC Scotland television channel. That, and the seafood and independence politics of Sturgeon and Salmond, surely a lesson for Thailand in preserving and developing Isaan languages and Khmer variants rather than if not persecution then official downgrading?


### The Road to Brighton Pier ###


And why not Isaan television broadcasts in the UK alongside existing Thai channels and language learning on the Open University with British Council. And Thai Community Radio far more vibrant than UK with a rather monolithic cost-saving approach. Dreamland in Margate and far away Brighton Pier receiving the same music on rotation.

And if the rather excellent UK animation of the 1950's of Animal Farm is as neglected as the first 1984 movie before the Richard Burton blockbuster anniversary movie then the BFI British Film Institute and Film School in Beaconsfield must surely thank Uncle Tu in leading the charge on not just Orwell and UK films and literature but also the Thai literature and film industry.

What else is on his Summer reading list, or his song playlist? Surely BBC Four or EMI would already pick up a documentary of Thai music from Morlam to Chelsea and EFL's Carabao to general croonings?

Chief Pughsley leading one of UK's most Progressive Police forces and no doubt handing out a 1984 Kent Police speeding ticket to London Police Chief Cressida Dick on facial recognition policing on the rates without any parliament or council approvals or budget disclosure. Shades of those Tiananmen Square repressions and current Uighur gulags - and Bangkok Erawan terrorism - raise their ugy heads.

One of my favourite publishers in Thailand is Lotus Press (available in all good, nay superb, Asia Books stores with UK newspapers and magazines even the niche Private Eye just xx sales in UK) while other publishers also working hard as Khun Kong Rithdee with one of first translations of women writers.

Khun Apirak or other senior military types might well grumble at a George Orwell building for Coup Studies at the Army college (over half end in failure and almost all in more economic calamity than the civilian versions). Surely a few of Uncle Tu's tunes would be be a bit more relaxing rather than the rather strident Horst Wesselian constant blasts of martial tunes on barracks radio.

Rumours swirl that before his gypsy camp sojourn Chief Pughsley wanted to pipe in the The Laughing Policeman into Kent Police barracks but nearly had a mutiny on his hands. They'll not be laughing when they see their County Barn pensions or the new UK army recruitment tactic of a Sven Hassel Regiment of bank robbers and junkies recruited from prison.

Is it wise to give bank robbers and junkies firearms training and access to high explosives? Maybe it;s cheaper than storing all that Helmand heroin.

But perhaps the Thai Navy wise in steering clear of such issues since the Battle of Bangkok in 1952, for a life on the ocean wave and part of the Pacific Resilience Group.

Protection of those Kitchen of the World trade routes vital - coffee and bananas to rival the Blue Mountains of Jamaica but also mango and pineapple and rambutan even Thai orchids and roses part of the Airport City and EEC project with Belgium freight yet to figure in UK supermarkets and dinner tables.

The case for submarines and warships less viable than helicopter ships and rescue helicopters, ocean and fisheries mapping (both vital for Thailand Scouse John West and East Kent Core Company Thai Tourism Saga Cruises) and hospital ships. FWP calls for IUU oversight seem a little harsh given Thailand's and Thai Navy successes in recent years even though their Economist ads look as though they've been put together with a knife and fork.

Two subs good and four subs bad perhaps apt in Animal Farming for the Thai Navy if not none at all, with Asian arms limitations and robosubs.

A Thai Navy School of Advertising would be just silly though given the real possibilities of the above.

And maybe not the Orwell Coup Building just yet before the Returning Happiness project is complete.

@timg33