soalbundy

If all else fails there are the defamation laws, casting aspersions on the honesty of the doctors diagnosis and on Mr T himself is not a good place to be.

Chief advisor? hmmmm, ok, cross out advisor.

How about doing something drastic like not making waves then you won't get arrested. Anybody living in China know that they are living in a dictatorship, an individual isn't going to change that so why stick your neck out? Even in a dictatorship like China there are hundreds of millions of people who live a good life without being harassed. In the past in Eastern Europe the communists repressed Christians who went to church, the alternative of course was to pray at home, read your bible with your family but some chose to undergo arrest and deprivation, that's also a choice. As a devout, peaceful coward I say knuckle under and grow in the shade, sunshine can burn.

So the British embassy didn't contact her???

Yeah, of course he did Some small minded people would think the news comes out of the TOT office.

It's down against the Euro as well

This will eventually affect America negatively according to many financial analysts on Youtube and could push the US into a recession. Europe is already tightrope walking with a recession so I don't see where all these tourists will be coming from. A worldwide financial turn down, inflation, broken trade links, and political tension is going to affect Thailand just as much, if not more, than the major economies.

How many more civil servants are they going to have to employ to check all this, it's a quagmire but maybe the revenue department is attempting to build an Empire, the bigger the department the more important it is.

Whatever, I merely wrote concerning my own experience at the Surin Tax office.

Yes, I had this problem once. The Thai tax office won't give you a declaration because you have no tax number (obviously because you aren't working) When I explained this to the manager he said he still cant give me the declaration because I may have unregistered income. My problem concerned the German tax office. I was advised to ask for a declaration from the German embassy which stated that the tax office in Thailand wouldn't sign the no income declaration and to send this to my tax office in Germany, this I did and it was accepted, I heard no more from them. Best of luck, I know how worrying this can be.

That's for the snobs in the degenerate corner

usually yes.

They are just the ones with no self respect, walking unshaven into Tesco's or the IO dressed in a string vest and shorts wearing flip flops.

Echos of Marjory Taylor Green

If you put your hand on a hot oven plate no decision is made to remove it and in fact the brain lies to you about the sequence of events and gives you the impression that you made the decision. The decision was made but ordered the muscles to react a second after the hand was removed, the brain does a time swap. This is a special case of course and necessary, had the hand waited for the order it could have been seriously burnt. There are several experiments regarding free will that seem to negate that such a thing exists but most people don't want to accept that they are marionettes. Fraudsters work on the principle as does the army which is why PTSD is a thing, normal people don't kill other people, the army (and society) brainwashes you into thinking it's the right thing to do (your 'free will' is put out of action) later your thinking returns to normal and you are horrified at what you have done, if free will is so transient it isn't real, it's just a thought we carry with us, causal events determine our actions not free will.

I only apparently chose. Like everything else choice doesn't exist in and of itself, there are many many causal events that have to occur before an apparent choice is made. I could take early retirement at 57, my work involved being able to at least see the Thai language and the alphabet fascinated me so out of interest I spent several years teaching myself to read and write it before retirement purely as a hobby. After reading my first book in Thai (Harry Potter) and then a second (The pirates of tarudau) I chanced to meet a Thai in Munich and asked him if I could practice speaking Thai with him. After about 10 minutes he asked me where I had my experience and when I said from books he laughed and said no wonder you speak like nobility, books have a different Thai to normal everyday speaking, you should go to Thailand and read some gutter press newspapers and then speak to normal people (like bar girls for instance). I learnt German from books (the godfather was my first German book) and afterwards refined my German with several girlfriends so the idea took hold in me, my only experience of Asia was a six week holiday in Bali. So I took several holidays in Thailand and when retirement arrived I just flew here. Another causal effect of that is my 16 year old son.

Nobody chooses from an early age to be a murderer, a rapist, a pedophile, a genius, or a philanthropist, it is what happens, choice doesn't exist. Experiments by Benjamin Libet in the 1980's have shown that for example an arm movement will be carried out several seconds before the decision making process in the brain sends its decision to do so (the findings have admittedly been challenged). The Buddha's teaching that 'the world is empty' doesn't mean he believed that nothing existed but rather that nothing existed 'in and of itself'. Observe a flower, if you remove the earth, the sunlight, the rain, and the pollinating bees there is no flower. When Buddha was asked if there was a god he remained silent. He was ambiguous on reincarnation as well but could be moved to favour incarnation because there was no self to reincarnate, as an example he lit a candle from another candle that was burning, the flame (tendencies) could be transferred (incarnation) but not the candle (a self, reincarnating). He considered the mind to be merely a sixth sense but IMHO he ignored that man is not only aware (as are all sentient beings) but man is aware that he is aware, a huge difference. Buddhism is a philosophy not a religion and I have no belief in any religion.

Not self, meaning there is no core of 'self' that is independent and unchanging. There is only interdependence on other things eg. your life depended on your parents, afterwards you are dependent on food and air from the world which is dependent on the solar system which is dependent on the galaxy and so on, all the organs of your body are in an indirect way made up of materials from a supernova and you have no direct control over their workings, they will age and die without needing your consent. All your thoughts, attitudes, beliefs etc. come from the society in which you coincidentally live, your tendencies come from your inherited genes, your experiences are causal effects beyond your control. What you call 'I' doesn't exist in and of itself, the 'I' is an assembly of aggregates which are themselves interdependent on other things. What do YOU mean when you say 'I', your heart, your liver, your brain (which is just another organ of bio chemical electrical nature), your character, which was never independently formed or your beliefs which you never chose. Your so called 'free will' is dependent on all the other aforementioned dependencies. Your body changes as you age as do your desires and beliefs, nothing about you has a core of unchanging stability or independence, ie. there is no 'you', only an impermanent manifestation.

''Forgive me father for I have sinned'' ''Tell me about it......and spice it up a bit''

That nothing happened due to there being 'no self'

You say 'not bothered much', that isn't quite correct, the country is run on what one could loosely call a mafia style of management, in such circumstances one keeps ones nose clean and looks in another direction. Only the brave or foolish try to change things for the better. I dare say that many western countries have similar methods of control, just more subtle and not so violent, instead of a bullet to the head one is ruined financially or politically or a long forgotten dark deed from the past gets dredged up and you find yourself in prison.

One born every minute in Thailand apparently.

How about all these fricking adverts, Asean Now must be making real cash now.

being shot in the Isaan province can be very painful.

So it wasn't because the cheque bounced.