Good morning,

Seven people are still missing after a long-tailed tourist boat sank in the Andaman Sea. Navy boats and a helicopter are being used to find the missing people, who were among 30 people on board but it does not look too good at the moment.

Is the military-proxy government in more trouble than expected already? The opposition is going to mount a censure debate tomorrow and aims to impeach the PM on 14 counts of corruption – it is unlikely that these efforts will bear much fruit (unless they have more evidence available up their collective sleeves) but it is the kind of thing the cockroaches did when they were in opposition, largely because it was too difficult or too much hard work to come up with any policies of their own. However, the decision to give the King Prajadhipok Institute a role in hosting talks aimed at ‘political reform’ indicates a desire to escape from proper discussion of the issue. The Institute will bring together 50 people who, it will no doubt be claimed, will be non-partisan (i.e. they will be right wingers) without political ties (i.e. independently rich and predisposed towards the status quo). After seven months, these people will no doubt come up with a variety of superficial and eminently predictable reforms aimed, as usual, at preventing elected officials having any real power vis-à-vis the ‘invisible hands’ who actually control matters here. The point is that the Democrats will claim that there is no need to discuss politics for the next seven months and they can get on with their usual activities.

Staff at Suvarnabhumi Airport are expected to be involved in the ‘Wildlife Trafficking Stops Here’ campaign, for which the clue is in the name. “In January last year, 1.4 tonnes of live snakes were discovered in Hanoi on a Vietnam Airlines flight from Suvarnabhumi airport and in June more than 1,000 snakes and rare turtles were found at the airport.” That’s a lot of snakes. You could make a film out of that.

Back tomorrow.

And Kebe must score!