City name row stings ORST

[Mekong]

The Office of the Royal Society (ORST) is taking flak from netizens over confusion about what Thailand's capital should be called between the widely recognised Bangkok and the official Krung Thep Maha Nakhon.

However, Krung Thep Maha Nakhon has been set as the capital's official name since 2001.

The cabinet on Tuesday approved in principle a PM's Office draft announcement on updated names of countries, territories, administrative zones and capitals, as proposed by the ORST. The update will not come into effect until it is vetted by a committee in charge of scrutinising legislative bills.

The announcement, approved by the cabinet meeting on Tuesday, said the ORST's committee on the dictionary of international geographic names, including experts from the Foreign Affairs Ministry, had updated the spelling of countries, territories, administrative zones and capitals to be in line with the current situation. The panel submitted the list to the PM's Office to issue the announcement.

The draft announcement also revokes the prime minister's announcement on names of countries, territories, administrative zones and capitals dated Nov 9, 2001, using the ORST's announcement on updated names of Sept 1, last year.

In the update, Krung Thep Maha Nakhon will remain the official name of Thailand's capital. However, the official name will be followed by the name "Bangkok" in parentheses. The ORST also updated the official spelling for other countries, including Rome and Roma for Italy's capital, the change of Myanmar's capital from Yangon to Nay Pyi Taw and the change of the Kingdom of Nepal to the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal.

However, deputy government spokeswoman Rachada Dhnadirek said nothing had been changed in the capital's name but for punctuations marks. "Krung Thep Maha Nakhon; Bangkok" with a semicolon between them which has been used since 2001, will now be changed to "Krung Thep Maha Nakhon (Bangkok)", she said.

The Thai name Krung Thep Maha Nakhon will remain as the official name. The name Bangkok will still be recognised in parenthesis, she explained.

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[Mekong]

This must rank up there as the silliest decision made by a government of all time.

The silliest which involve me, was October 1990, General  Muammar Gaddafi decided not to put the clocks back in The Socialist Peoples Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (SPLAJ) aka Libya so that Libya would be “One Hour Ahead of the World”. As can be imagined this played havoc with the timetables of, all be it limited, International Flights.

By the time airlines had rearranged their timetables he decided to then change the clocks.