Starving residents have now replaced tourists at Pattaya’s famous Bali Hai Pier.
Tour boats and jet-skis have been pushed aside to make way for trucks full of donated food to be handed out to thousands who are now begging for help in lines.
These disgraceful scenes are being broadcast throughout the world, via social media, and bring shame upon the authorities in Pattaya whose incompetence has led to this embarrassment.
Those fools who have closed down restaurants and allow only deliveries to be prepared, throwing thousands out of work at a stroke.
The fools who have ordered conveniences stores to close down at 8pm, leading to more job losses, as they try to convince reasonably intelligent people that the VIRUS can tell the time.
Let us be sure that if it is safe to pop into 7/11 at 6pm, it is equally safe at 11pm. Do not be told otherwise. And have a thought for the former night shift who are now on that food-line, hungry and frightened for the future.
The same fools who have insisted that barbers and hair salons are shutdown for reasons we can’t even guess at. Maybe it is just so somebody at City Hall can go home and boast to his wife about the power he was able to throw around during the day.
Does his wife believe he is saving lives. Or does she realise his stupidity is ruining them?
It is estimated that 80 percent of Pattaya’s population once depended upon the tourism and nightlife industries, which have been closed for many months.
All of those people, hundreds of thousands of them, have not earned any wages for six-months or more. The lucky ones shipped out of town and back to their home villages long ago, because they had families to return to.
Many others are sitting at Bali Hai Pier, or queuing outside the temples, every morning begging for food.
This is a national disgrace and those responsible should be ashamed of themselves, but they don’t appear to be. Indeed, from the reports we receive they seem to be very pleased with themselves and are continually boasting about how many lives they are saving.
The authorities in Pattaya are fooling some people, but not all of us. Their arrogance, ignorance and stupidity is now creating far more casualties than the virus can.
But ‘Nooo, they all cry.. If it wasn’t for us things would be much, much worse. Trust us, we will take care of you all.’
This is how tin-pot dictators have done their bidding for centuries. ‘Trust us, we will protect you.’ It is the mantra of the tyrant.
And the problem is, many people are so scared that they do trust them. And that is leading to a down-hill spiral.
Let’s face it. It takes either abject fear, total ignorance or plain stupidity to believe that wearing TWO face-masks whilst riding a motorbike will keep you safe, but neither you, nor any of the five children you have piled onto the back need to bother with safety helmets as you pass police check-points.
Don’t worry about helmets, you have TWO faces masks on, you are all EXTRA safe.
And the more you see of that sort of stupidity, the longer the food-lines in Pattaya and elsewhere will become.
Or, the sooner more people realise, (many already do) that the things they are being told just do not make sense then the sooner there may be a return to some sort of normality.
But that doesn’t look to be anytime in the foreseeable future – Albert Jack
Maskless Pattaya police chief orders everybody else to MUZZLE-UP
