Showing 1 - 10 of 63
Take the guns away
Oped, Postbag, Published on 16/02/2026
» Re: "School shooting suspect arrested", (BP, Feb 12).
Reinvent Thailand to revive growth
Oped, Boonwara Sumano, Published on 11/02/2026
» In the 1990s, Thailand ranked second in Asean for state performance, behind only Singapore. Today, we trail several neighbours. This decline has unfolded gradually over three decades -- through repeated economic crises, institutional stagnation, and reforms that never quite went far enough. What is different today is that the cost of inaction has become far more dangerous.
The last word on weird book titles
Roger Crutchley, Published on 14/12/2025
» Being somewhat old-fashioned I still love browsing in bookshops. It provides a brief escape to a completely different world, both relaxing and therapeutic. Alas it is a pleasure future generations are unlikely to experience as these days bookshops are something of an endangered species.
The time I really put my foot in it
Oped, Roger Crutchley, Published on 19/10/2025
» A half-hearted spring-cleaning session at home during the week came to a welcome halt when I unearthed a couple of my father's wartime RAF books under a pile of disintegrating paperbacks. The Air Ministry books, published more than 80 years ago, always serve as a reminder of when as a kid I made a faux pas of embarrassing proportions.
Paper bags, patriotism and mushy peas
Roger Crutchley, Published on 10/08/2025
» One of the more thought-provoking stories of the week was an unnamed Thai hospital being fined after it was discovered private files on patients were being used to make paper bags for popular street snacks. Apparently some people at the business entrusted with destroying the files instead took them home and made paper bags out of them.
Dear DOGE, it's high time to tear down those dams!
News, Tom Zoellner, Published on 12/07/2025
» No big government infrastructure project made an imprint on the landscape and economy of the West more than the US Bureau of Reclamation's 20th century dam-building spree, which peppered 490 dams across the country, created an agricultural civilisation dependent on federal hydrology civil engineering, and brought about a welter of environmental difficulties after drying up dozens of once-healthy rivers.
Resetting development finance
Oped, Carlos Cuerpo and Joseph E Stiglitz, Published on 03/07/2025
» At the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development this week in Seville, delegates are calling for urgent action to fix a system that has stopped working. Prior to the third such gathering a decade ago, in Ethiopia, we had witnessed unprecedented advances towards reducing poverty, increasing school enrolment, and providing clean water worldwide. Today, however, progress is not only slowing but potentially stagnating -- or, worse, reversing.
UN turns 80 amid wave of global crises
Oped, John J Metzler, Published on 02/07/2025
» Amid wars, global strife and massive refugee dislocations, the current global scene is overwhelmed with crises ranging from the Middle East to Ukraine and a dozen African conflicts, which rarely make the news. The contemporary world situation in many ways resembles 1945 and the end of WWII. There's a strange deja vu of a history most people do not know or would rather forget.
Choices have costs
Oped, Postbag, Published on 16/05/2025
» Re: "No German engines for submarines", (BP, May 15).
Rethink the South
Oped, Postbag, Published on 10/05/2025
» Re: "Govt 'ready for new talks' on peace in deep South", (BP, May 7).