briley

Having just got the simple card I've been looking at Happy - after your card expires you get 30 days of incoming calls only. If you top up in this period you get your existing credit back.

Thanks, helpful information. You pay a LOT more than we do for service charge, even with our proposed increase 4 times our rate.

It is cheaper for me to insure myself than pay that amount!

We (the condo management) are just looking into insurance - currently there is none!

When people talk about 'all risk on the building' does that mean you cover all the risks associated with owning property so the owners do not need insurance? Or do you just cover the common area.

If only the common area is insured - how do you reach a value to insure?

If the whole building is insured how can you afford it?

It is covered in condo law - the value of the common area (this includes the land) is divided up among the owners, ownership is cancelled and everyone goes home.

Not something you want to happen but can only happen voluntarily if 75% of the votes are in favour. I think it would only happen if the value of the land was such that it was economically beneficial to pull it down and build again.

Of course if the building falls down due to a bullock hitting the building you have insurance - you are insured aren't you. The management is only required to have 3rd party insurance for accidents to people.

CorelDraw comes with photopaint that will work with images.

Probably Photopaint is not as good as photoshop in the range of things that can be done but it still covers an amazing amount of ground.

I believe if you are out of the UK for more than 6 months you are no longer eligible for NHS treatment.

But if you return to the UK to resume residence you can get treatment from the day you return - ie you can't get free treatment if you just go for a holiday.

There doesn't seem to be any problem with returning to take up residence, having treatment and then changing your mind and leaving the UK again.

PS this has no connection to being resident or not for tax purposed.

When I click 'view new posts' I get a few pages of new posts.

It used to be that as I went through each page the posts were marked as read.

Now I have to click 'mark all posts as read and return to ????' to get them marked as read, otherwise next time I do 'view new posts' I get the same posts listed again.

Have I changed something or has TV changed?

You can make up unpaid contributions even if over retirement age.

You and Yours and Moneybox (BBC Radio 4 programmes) are running a campaign to get women over retirement age to pay a few years contributions and they can then get their pension increased from retirement date.

It is a very good deal since some women can opt to pay for X years and get a lovely lump sum in extra pension. The lump sum can be more than their payment AND the DHSS can take the payment from the lump sum so they don't even have to put up a penny to increase their pension.

DHSS did deny this was possible but has had to back peddle.

But before doing this check the rules carefully.

Roskruge - seriously look at buying in past years. The economics can be good.

From what you say it sounds like you paid in many years ago. You can (due to an error by Inland Revenue) pay in from 1997(??) to the year you are retirement age.

Cost is about £350 per year.

Return is about 2.5% of the basic pension for each extra year paid. For a single person that is currently about £117 a year, for a married person, even to a Thai, £187 a year.

2 to 3 years time and you are in profit for the rest of your life. And this includes the fact that you will not get the pension increase each year.

Note that the max is only reducing to 30 years for people who reach retirement age after 5th April 2010.

btjunkie has a lot of torrents but it does not give much information about the torrent.

If you can get onto Demonoid it has a very good listings and good information about the torrents as well.

Echo that uTorrent is the best, small and efficient. At least on Windows

As many people want to transfer in the other direction it shouldn't be too hard to find someone you trust to do a swap?

Downstairs in Airport plaza, near the entrance to Tops. Not brilliant quality but the price looked OK.

On problem is to define Chiang Mai - it can mean only the central area, (tambon Chiang Mai?), or it can be the centre and other tambon's like Suthep or often it just means the province.

Most statistics do not define what they mean by Chiang Mai.

For Brits it is really like asking the population of London - is London just the city of London - the square mile, or the whole of SE England?

Patriciachas

10% band goes in April 2008 except for interest on savings.

Interested in a bit of Richard-BKK's reply that Linux is faster at downloading than windows, but then went on to say windows has real time virus checker.

I've just switch utorrent to add !ut at the end of incomplete downloads so AVG won't check them for virus.

The download speed rose a bit, from 40 to 48

Be interesting to see if there is a sustained improvement.

Link it with "is used by" - a small program that tells you who is using the program - get it from

http://www.mstsoftware.com/en/Products/Freeware

Accepting that many condos find it hard to raise the maintenance fee it should not be that difficult.

It requires a simple majority of those present, or represented by proxy, at a general meeting. The meeting must have one third of the owners represented.

I sometimes feel it is the managers/owners who don't want to increase the fee.

There is also a requirement for owners to pay all due costs, eg electricity and water, so any increase that covers these must be allowed.

(This from the condo act of 2522)

But only the interest paid on any loan. If the mortgage payment includes any capital repayment then that must not be offset against tax

Inland Revenue are very keen on that point at the moment.

Normally the 1st extension of stay you get for retirement is 12 months from the last time you entered Thailand.

Unless the system has changed?

Air asia is the cheapest and goes from the new airport. Can easily be booked on line - there are 4 or 5 flights a day and fare changes with demand. Tickets are non-changable non-refundable

You can book at the airport but the price is a bit higher.

Nok and 12go fly from the old airport.

Thai air is very expensive, having said that their fare of about 3500 baht can be transferable and refundable if your flight is late

I've been trying for some time to listen to football on Radio 5 live - you used to be able to use a proxy server but for the last two years I have been unable to find any way to convince the Beeb that I am in the UK.

For TV there used to be a HK service that streamed certain TV stations. Chargeable but at a very reasonable rate. However I've not found it recently nor am I interested as I only want the radio.

This is not the P2P services that I find do not work.

Having just flown Ryanair the baggage allowance is 20Kg per person. Two people with two bags, one 25Kg and one 15Kg are charge 5 Kg excess baggage.

Mind you the fare including tax was only 1p .............. (for my party)

I can't seem to disentangle a consensus out of this thread so far. In the light of the coming rules is a person nearing 65 well advised to pay or to not pay voluntary contributions?

Whether to make voluntary contributions or not it is very open to your feelings.

Some people think the UK pension is the best thing since sliced bread, other that it stinks.

If you are working in the UK you have no option but to pay, every year you work not just 30 years. But if not working in the UK you can pay the voluntary contributions, currently a bit under £400 a year. Put that into a private pension scheme or a saving account and it will not pay the current over £4,000 a year pension (£6,500 for a married couple). And from 2012 it will increase by the rate of increase in wages in the UK, not inflation as is the current case.

The big fly in the ointment is the fact that if you live in LOS - or are out of the UK for over 6 months and not in the EU or a couple of other countries then the pension is frozen at the rate you were getting when you left (or if out of the UK when you start your pension the rate at pension age).

Personally I think it is good value for money and many people pretend to be in the UK by just getting all their DHS mailing to a UK address.

I finally found the answer.

As most people know the UK government is proposing to reduce the number of qualifying years for a full pension to 30 years as from 1st April 2010.

BUT these changes will not effect those who reach retirement age (65 for men 60 for women at that date) before the 1st April 2010. So if you are on a reduced pension due to lack of contributions the new chages will not help you at all.

This is a warning for those within a couple of years of retirement who want to pay voluntary contributions to bring their pension entitlement up to 100%.

The law states that 50% of all the owners (by area owned) must vote for a new manager.

But if the meeting fails to get the 50% then a new meeting can be called within - is it 15 days??? - then only a simple majority is needed provided the meeting has a quorum of either 30% or one third of owners present or represented.

Sorry I always forget the exact numbers!