You've been gouged

How can we fleece you? Let me count the ways. That probably wasn't an unusual week, just a more transparent one.

For example. Out of the blue, the Excise Department announced a 2,000% rise in the tax on jet fuel. Without warning, the 20 satang-per-litre charge went to four baht.

The budget airlines' phu yai furiously called meetings about this horrid tax rise. Quite naturally they decided their customers have to pay and they slapped on the 150-baht "fuel surcharge" all airlines keep in their back pockets.

Now the fun part: the maths. The Excise Department's Somchai Poolsavasdi said he expects to collect four billion baht from the higher tax, in total, all airlines. But the budget airlines alone will collect 8.1 billion baht from the fuel surcharge even if they just carry the 54 million passengers they did last year. That's a nice windfall of four billion baht-plus by the airlines while they are blubbering about their victimhood.

You got gazumped.

The Thai Craft Beer Liberation scheduled a meeting and Facebook Live broadcast to talk about their products. The police broke in and broke up the meeting. They said the licensed and inspected Mystic Rooftop Bar off Phahon Yothin Road, Saphan Khwai, was "unsafe".

The boss of the concerned, armed dispersion group is Pol Lt Gen Sanit Mahathavorn, chief of Metropolitan Police. You may recall he receives 50 brown, 1,000-baht bills each month from the country's biggest beer maker and alcohol distributor, Thai Beverage.

You've been had.

Suphat Saquandeekul, deputy director-general of the Department of Intellectual Property, got one more taxpayer-funded boondoggle trip to his second home of Japan (he has a Japanese university degree and wife). While there, he became tired and emotional, and lifted three cheap paintings off his hotel's walls. In the morning, though no longer smashed, he put the paintings in his suitcase and got as far as the front door where the Keisatsu-cho slapped on the cuffs.

He admitted later he was obfusticated, but lush and larcenous is no way to go through life any more for a senior government official. Even Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai said he embarrassed Thailand worldwide.

So Mr Suphat got a choice to quit and walk away with all the loot -- pension, provident fund, post-retirement board sinecures -- or take his chances with a thoroughly disgusted civil service hearing that would consider firing him with NOTA -- none of the above.

He resigned, took the money and ran. You paid for his trip and now you get to pay his millions in retirement benefits.

You got soaked.

After facing a lawsuit over their HBO nonsense, TrueVisions told the always interesting National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) they want to cancel 11 more channels. At least nine were cancelled last year.

The NBTC and you True customers have been bilked.

A still-unidentified farang on a motorcycle knocks on the windows of cars at red lights, claims in broken Thai he has been robbed and asks for "a little help".

Sureewan Supanpaesat, 60, of Lat Phrao posted his photo after giving him 20 baht to get rid of him. Others confirmed they were victims of the same dirty trick.

They were conned.

PromptPay is back. The once-failed money transfer app got a low-profile relaunch by the Thai Bankers Association and their financial toy houses. Pleas to be there or be square were more muted this time, when it turned out the smartphone app had more holes than the claims of assassination threats in high places.

PromptPay can save you a few seconds and a few baht if it works. But if it works, it's the banks that get the real loot. The head of the TBA, Predee Daochai, let it slip he expects the banks to clear 77 billion baht, mostly by firing people and hiring more machines and online services.

You'll get chiselled.

In 2001-2, the Voldemort government ordered the Royal Thai Army and National Security Council to help US Central Intelligence Agency set up and maintain a calaboose and interrogation centre for al-Qaeda prisoners.

Site commander Gina Haspel and her men waterboarded and violently handled just two high-level terrorists before Cat's Eye aka Code Green was outed in the press, stripped and returned to the army.

Last week President Trump promoted her to deputy director of the entire CIA. Asked by the media about the black site, generals in and close to the current ruling junta said they knew nothing.

You've been misled.