Good morning,

Another rotten apple Democrat has been thrown out of parliament (well, prospective parliament, so to speak) in disgrace: Samut Prakan MP-elect Soracha Weerachart-wattana has been red-carded for vote-buying. This is the kind of offence which has been followed by dissolution of the political party but this is not likely to happen to the Cockroaches for reasons which I need hardly spell out.

Songkran approaches and, these days, that means just one thing: government will forget about the economy, unemployment, dead and dying refugees, violence and terrorism to concentrate on what is really important – stopping poor people having a drink. On the pretext of preventing drink-driving, the Public Health Ministry will waste who knows how much time and money preventing garages from selling drink for some length of time.

A smuggling ring has been captured, apparently red-handed, smuggling (as smugglers do) Asian pied starlings into Malaysia. Some 500 of the birds were involved, of which 300 had died because of the poor conditions in which they were being kept. The birds, also known as the pied myna, can be trained to talk and is also keen on eating insects – yet it is not very clear from this story quite why smugglers are so keen on this endangered bird. Are there fiendish bird-talking-training syndicates in Malaysia ready to cash in on the lucrative bird-talking circuit? We should be told.

Back tomorrow.