mrfill

5 hours ago, Enzian said:

There seems to be some cultural belief that such obscene inequality and exploitation is what keeps harmony in the spheres, keeps chaos at bay, keeps everyone in a state of ecstatic oneness and belonging. If Thai people ever stop thinking this way, what might happen?

Not really a cultural belief but just the story put around by the uber rich and their pals in the media world.

The same happens in a lot of countries which explains why the uber rich get away with paying so little tax.

58 minutes ago, Dexxter said:

Not much different to Australia where we allow short-stay foreigners to work as fruit pickers because Australians don't want to do that work especially for the low wages offered.

UK is similar except they also do the same for nurses and doctors, a lot of whom are decamping to Australia and need replacing by others, probably from countries like Thailand, leading to shortages in those countries.

32 minutes ago, Hakuna Matata said:

That's a good news. Non verified users will be degraded. End to anonymity and fake accounts. The long awaited feature.

 

According to some sources, more than 40% of user accounts on Facebook are fake!

Is that source one of the many fake twitter accounts?

I expect he'll start a GoFundMe page to pay off the huge fine.....

28 minutes ago, Phil1964 said:

Air fares from Europe for anything resembling a convenient hassle free journey are now a £1,000 plus, (Thai, Eva, Emirates, Qatar, FinnAir). My Mrs is going to her family this month and Eva Air was £1,100 return when booked in April! Flights westwards to Mexico, Caribbean and USA are popping up in price brackets akin to 2018-19 at £350 to £500 return. Heading east is a non-option at present. It's cheaper to fly to many Latin American than SE Asian destinations in 2023 from London, (it's a long time since that has been the case).

Thailand is Asia's Spain /Portugal, 'so near and on the doorstep' hence the visitor numbers from India, China, Singapore etc, these days dwarfing the number of debt encumbered visitors from recession haunted western economies.

I guess not what the beer and bar girls want to hear or endure. 

 

Be interesting if political unrest erupts, then watch tourism die a death and the baht tank...

 

 

I just checked Skyscanner for a London-BKK flight in January. EvaAir direct flight - £697.41. Qatar (1.5hr transfer) - £704

So there is definitely a secret deal to form an alternative government.....

Slip of the pen for sure. They meant to say 25 BILLION.....

19 hours ago, ikke1959 said:

Only 5 years?? and no pay back of the 20 million???  Justice in Thailand..

That's not what the article said.

In the linked article you didn't read.

40 minutes ago, Purdey said:

Funny as I remember reading of Romans carving their names into British monuments a thousand years ago, so it is payback time.

Quite a lot of payback for the offender though. There is plenty of ancient graffiti at the Colosseum but recent addition have proved costly. £15800 costly in one case.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-30182678

1 hour ago, HappyExpat57 said:

Someone asked me if I thought all the Titanic sub jokes were in bad taste.

 

I said, "No, I don't think they're in bad taste. I also don't think they're jokes.

 

"I think we're at a point in society where the friction between regular people and the ultra wealthy is fostering genuine hate, and I don't think it's unjustified.

 

"Why would the average man mourn the death of a billionaire taking a frivolous expensive trip and having the hubris to ignore the risks?"

Is the answer 'because they are considered so much more important than the 500 poor lives lost in the boat off Greece' ?  It does show that the de-sensitising programme is working fine.

Check the local Mercedes dealer

1 hour ago, glegolo18 said:

They are sure that they really want what they are bargain for with an increase of muslim tourists??? In Sweden we have seen the consequenses of that.....

Did it cause many outbreaks of racism and bigotry?

20 hours ago, Moonlover said:

Early hours of the morning, powerful motorcycle, high speed. It all adds up doesn't it. 'And another one bites the dust'.

 

It used to be a regular occurrence on London's North Circular Road as well. I don't know whether it still happens there.

Not since the early 70s. Nowadays the Ace Cafe is a very fancy mecca for expensive car/bike meets and not really for the teenage bikers and the North Circular has been very sanitised.

4 hours ago, bignok said:

Gay marriage is not allowed in Thailand. 

But you just said it was miles ahead of the west. Marriage or civil partnerships are fairly common in the west.

2 hours ago, webfact said:

Taxi drivers have been told to be polite with each other for a good image to tourists.

Headline says "Phuket Taxi Drivers Asked to be More Polite to Tourists"

Presumably a compromise has been reached whereby taxi drivers are consistently rude to everybody

53 minutes ago, nauseus said:

Yes, 2011/12. The problems then were not so much to do with the sea-level than forced water release from the dams within the Chao Phraya river basin system after months of extra high rainfall from a strong SW Monsoon, as well as tropical depressions delivering even more rain late in the season. Earlier release of reservoir water would have helped but then there is a risk of not having enough water reserved for the following year, if there is no late rain. 

 

The Chao Phraya does not drain well due to sandbars near Bangkok, and is tidal up to just past Ayutthaya so drainage slows or stops as the tides flood. Spring high tides can cause local flooding in any case.

 

 

Ah! The floods of 2011/2 where the water wouldn't go into the sea so the great ideas men in Bangkok came up with the idea of pointing a raft of long-tailed boats upstream and have their engines running full bore to hurry the water to the sea.

Comedy gold...

5 hours ago, Will B Good said:

The interest rates are just mental.....in our village they are 3% per month.....people only tend to borrow small amounts, but even so!!!!

This is on a different level at 3.75% per DAY.

What date was it he said he'd return?

Gosh!  DVDs

How very quaint.

4 minutes ago, Liverpool Lou said:

"Priceless"?  Yeah, right.  Almost valueless, more likely.

“Cecil Graham: What is a cynic?
Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
Cecil Graham: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.”

― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

Makes a change from bagging a snatch

Only 380000 years before the Empire State building disappears