Dogmatix

Nothing. It is all going to go into the pockets of crooks.

Softening of demand? What better time to impose a special money grubbing fine on foreign tourists which will know will all be stolen by crooks?

Sadly the NACC is a broken reed, knobbled by Gen Watchman through Pol Gen Wach.

This obvious posturing for political brownie points by Anutin to make himself look tough on drugs after legalizing “medical” marijuana - wink wink. Sadly his political gambit will come at the cost of thousands of families whose lives will be ruined due to a family member getting jailed for a petty offense.

Or like those meth pills that cops slip into your vehicle while searching it at a road block on a dark night.

The only way to lend money to Thais is through a Khai Faak contract with their land title deed as collateral but, of course you need a Thai citizen you trust to put the contract in their name. The missus and I have done about a dozen of these in recent years. Each time the borrower said they would definitely pay back because the land is dear to them, as they inherited it or something similar. Of all of these contracts only two were paid back. The rest were defaulted on. But the beauty of Khai Faak contracts is that the lender doesn't have to take legal action to get the land transferred to their name. The contract is made in the Land Department with lender's name added to the deed like a mortgage. When the borrower defaults at the end of the contract, the land becomes the lender's property automatically with no further action or re-registration required. The only problem is that the borrower may pester you for years after defaulting trying to get their land back. Often they request a special price, saying they are going to get a loan from the BAAC Bank to buy back the land. The appointed date for BAAC laon comes and you hear nothing from them, or maybe a bunch of excuses. The missus insisted on doing some loans of her own money without Khai Faak contracts to people she felt sorry for, either with a mortgage registered or just a written agreement and a copy of the title ded. You can guess the result - 100% default rate. The The mortgage is recoverable but you have to go to court which is a hassle and you have to pay money for a lawyer. The written agreement only loans are realistically not recoverable. I have made it clear to all who ask - no Khai Faak, no loand and I have to be satisfied with the land offered and want to own it myself. But the OP is talking about a totally unsecured loan which sounds utterly unrecoverable. It is probably a kilo of brickweed produced with pesticides that he could only sell for 2,500 baht on FB, if he's lucky.

No meaningful stats or information from this article.

Tuhao was granted Thai citizenship in December 2015.

Strange that they didn't manage to do that 10 or more years ago like other countries.

It doesn't matter much. Next year the Senate's power to vote for the PM will lapse anyway.

He fled into exile after the 2014 coup and hasn't been back. I think the initial charges against were to do with illegal logging but probably could get enough evidence to stick. If you look at his Wiki entry you can understand why they have been trying to charge him for 9 years. His father was a member of the Seri Thai and fought the Japanese occupiers in WW2. BTW I am not a fan of Thaksin and his family. "The junta ordered all cabinet members to report to their headquarters, but unlike other politicians Charupong refused to turn himself in. He claims to have taken shelter at an unspecified place in Northeastern Thailand.[7][8] As a consequence, the National Council for Peace and Order blocked his bank accounts and assets.[9] On 24 June 2014, Charupong announced the formation of the Organisation of Free Thais for Human Rights and Democracy (OFHD),[10] seeking to restore Thai popular sovereignty in the face of the 2014 Thai coup d'état. The date chosen is the 82nd anniversary of the Siamese Revolution of 1932. The organisation's name recalls the Thai underground resistance movement against Imperial Japan during World War II known as the Free Thai Movement (Thai: เสรีไทย, Seri Thai).[11] On 24 June 2015, Charupong, acting as Secretary-General of OFHD, in a video uploaded on YouTube warned Thais of the risk Thailand turning into a failed state and detailed three goals of OFHD: (1) abolition of the Privy Council, (2) depoliticization/democratization/normalization of the Thai Army, and (3) depoliticization of the Thai judiciary."

Checked out the coffee shop. It's worth a visit.

I got two bottles of THC oil prescribed by a herbal clinic for 600 baht each. Brand name is Ajarn Decho or something similar. The stuff is dark green (I think due to vegetable dye) and tastes awful, presumably to stop you from overdoing it. I took it as prescribed and a little more but it does nothing at all. It has a label saying that 30 days after the prescription date it turns into an illegal drug under cat. 5 the Narcotics Act, as more than 0.2% THC. I doubt it is really more than 0.2% but I am going to chuck it out anyway, as it is a total rip off.

Two Chula academics published detailed research on police corruption in the 1990s. There findings suggested it was already organised on lines similar to Chuwit's allegations nationwide at that time. They said that all police in jobs where money can be made had to pay for their jobs upfront and pay monthly rent after that. Anything over the monthly rental amount they kept for themselves. Jobs within the station and checkpoints had to be paid for in the same way with the money going up the pyramid all the way. The central fund is a bit of a variaton and doesn't as clean as the pyramid where everyone takes ihis cut before passing the rental payments up the tube. The pyramid system comes pretty close to the same thing.

And what of all this saith the watchman, the man who reputably had his stubby fingers on the pulse of police promotions for the last 8 years?

Taking the food out of the mouths of young children. They have no shame but I am sure this happens at just about every state school across the country and will probaby again at the same school before long.

Well the home country police clearance has never been on the list of documents anyway and I am not sure they have ever asked for the legal age thingy which is pointless, given the other requirements which are impossible for anyone to obtain by the time they are 21 years old, which must be the highest legal age in effect anywhere.

Lucrative police jobs generally incur an upfront fee and then monthly rental payments. In most cases it is said that officers higher up the chain set a rental amount and the officers can keep anythiing they make over that which means they could end up making a loss or a big profit. This is the most pratical way to manage things, as it is difficult to get audited accounts for roadblocks etc. This system according to a study by Chula goes all the way up to the police chief who also has to pay for his position.

Although the legal age certificate is on this list, they recognise it is ridiculous in most cases and are unlikely to ask for it. You have to check with them before going to the trouble and expense. On the other hand, I believe home country criminal record clearance is requested now, even though I was not asked for it back in 2010. AFAIK they go to the criminal records office next door with your finger prints and get your Thai criminal record clearance for themselves, or at least that's what happened in my case.

I don't think there is much coordination between Labour Ministry, Immigration and Revenue Department on such matters. It's highly unlikely that paying tax would ever be cited as evidence to prosecute you for working illegally. My last company refused to pay my salary while waiting only 3 days for my work permit, due to their own incompetence, since I needed to avoid a gap in order to apply for citizenship. They argued that they couldn't pay the salary or deduct tax with no WP, although I was obliged to work for those 3 days without pay. Luckily the tiny gap was not an issue for citizenship. Prior to that when I was running a buisiness myself, we took advice from the Revenue Department on this issue as we regularly had expat employees working while waiting for their WPs. They needed money to live on and had often quit a job with a competitior in Thaiand to join us and we were a competitive business and needed their work input. The Revenue Department advised that it was only illegal to work without WP but not illegal to receive income and, of course, income tax was payable on all income. For me what the Revenue Department advised verbally makes sense, i.e. pay the employee, so he has something to live on, and call it a living allowance, but he is not officially working. I hired one guy who had already been busted for working without a WP in his previous job and sent to court where he was fined 2,000 but told by the judge he would get 6 months in prision, if caught again. That was the reason we asked the RD for advice as we and the employee were concerned about his situation. In the end we paid him but we worked from home while waiting for the WP and came in to have lunch with us and talk about work. I think my more recent employee, owned and managed by extremely tight fisted Thai Chinese was just looking for an excuse to avoid paying even tiny amounts of money.

I am not a vaper and think it's a stupid and disgusting habit. However, given the amount of vaping you see in Thailand and the open availability of the equipment, I can sympathise with tourists who either didn't realise it was illegal or assumed the law wasn't taken seriously or not enforced at all. What Thailand has achieved with this is selective enforcement and an king size opportunity to extort foreign tourists with a difficult to enforce law that is out of line with most countries in the world. Given this situation I think it would be better to scrap it or make it just for "medicinal" use like dope 555.

Tourists need to have some understanding of the situation police are in. They used to be able make good incomes selling ganja to tourists and then busting them. But as one door closes, another one opens. Some years back the government came up with a brilliant plan to make vaping illegal but no one paid attention to such a stupid idea and you can see Thais vaping everywhere, while vaping materials are on sale in all tourist areas, as well as on Thai e-commerce websites. Now the police have realised that this criminalisation by stealth of a product that is legal nearly everywhere else, including China, can be turned into huge money spinner with the return of tourists who have no way of knowing that vaping is illegal, as that is kept a dark secret until the surprise nocturnal shake down in pijin English by the BiB. Who can blame them?

If over 100g at 450 per gram, the bars are over 45k baht each. A lot of inventory to show.

Looks interesting. BTW how many grams in those hash blocks?

It has been obvious from the beginning that Charlene was telling the truth and the BiB, including the commissioner, were lying. Why would she want to make up such a story anyway? She has enough popularity and publicity for herself already. Another suspicious part of the BiB story is that they had communication problems with the group of apprehended tourists which apparently included a Singaporean, Mr Sky, who apparently paid the 27k bribe on behalf of the group. They claimed to have problems because they could speak English but the tourists could only speak Chinese. Obviously Mr Sky, a Singaporean, can speak much better English than most Thai police. If he is a Chinese Singaporean, which seems most likely, he can also speak at least passable Mandarin and may have been talking to the Taiwanese in the group in Mandarin and could have interpreted for them. In addition I find it very unlikely that sophisticated young Taiwanese tourists cannot speak English at least as well or, more likely better than Bangkok's finest. Apparently Charlene referred to Thailand's "ba5tard police" in English which implies a passable knowledge of English. So if the cops had communication difficulties, it was because their own poor English but they clearly got their point over to fluent English speaker Mr Sky as he was able to comply with their demand to hand over all their cash to the cops. The days of social media are clearly making life more difficult for Bangkok's finest extortion racket.