Good evening,

The Lunar New Year celebrations are winding down now – Chinese and ethnic Chinese Thais have been welcoming the arrival of the Year of the Ox. At these times, it is common for people to talk up the positive virtues of the animal after which the new year is to be named – this time last year, there were efforts to elevate the rat from its lowly reputation, with only mixed success, frankly. However, the celebrations have been largely low-key in comparison with previous years owing to the ongoing economic crisis. Expenditure is reported to be down 3% on this time last year (earlier predictions were both more pessimistic and more credible).

There is no shortage of other gloomy economic news: the Central Retail Corporation has delayed its ten billion baht investment plan because of the current climate; farmers have invaded Government House seeking help for their endemic indebtedness; gold prices have been fluctuating so severely that gold shops in Yaowarat closed their shops yesterday until the situation became calmer; 7,000 jobs are said to be at risk after Fujitsu sold its hard disk drive business to rivals Toshiba. The list could go on and on.

Three more people have been murdered in the southern border region. It seems likely that hard liners in the South will have been outraged by the Thai military’s treatment of the Rohingya ethnic minority people (the army denies everything etc and so on), since they are fellow Muslims and because they can perhaps relate to suffering at the hands of unaccountable security forces (the security forces deny everything etc and so on). Even some of the same people have reappeared.

Back tomorrow.

Play up the valiant Biscuitmen and defeat the perfidious and pernicious Wolfs.