Thai'd Up In Nots.

I don't normally like to get involved in political debate (plenty enough blogs around for that!) but when the Thais get all upset and decide to kick off, it's quite something to behold.
For a number of years now, a small portion of their population, The Peoples' Alliance for Democracy (PAD), have been fuming about their government pouring some of the easily earned money from their tourist trade into poorer rural areas, in the form of grants for development, cheap health-care, etc. So they had a coup a couple of years ago, in which no shots were fired, to depose their then Prime Minister, Thaksin (Frank?) Shinawatra. He's since been replaced by a fella called Somchai Wongsawat, who PAD claim is just a puppet for their former PM.
So thousands of them have taken over their capital's airport and closed it down, again without the use of guns, and say they're staying put until Wongsawat rights a wrong and buggers off.
Their army leader, Anupong Paochinda, has told PAD and the PM they can both bugger off, before sloping off to make a cup of tea and settle in front of the telly for a bit.

Meanwhile, the 'mericans are taking it a bit personally by claiming that the Thais are doing this to strand a large number of their lardies in Thailand, ostricising them from their turkeys and ruining their thanksgiving!
Sky News has even gone to the extraordinary length of interviewing one lardy and this was the response...

>>Cheryl Turner, 63, of Scottsdale, Arizona, said she had asked neighbours to pull an 18lb turkey from her freezer to defrost for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.

"My turkey is sitting in the sink at home," she said.<<

A phrase that, if slightly misconstrued, could cause a great deal of offence to a large number of Asians. You can read the whole article here.

So the match is ready to kick off with PAD (in the yellow shirts) holding the country's main airport, dug in and waiting for the UDD (poor people in red shirts, but tons more of them) to attack them with rocks, wooden sticks and a sea of menacing grins.

I'd love to give you a little more insight but unfortunately, due to the non-violent nature of their protest, I'm afraid they haven't left me with anyone to interview on the matter.

Mind you, it does give me an idea of how to deal with Infratil.