Dogmatix

Vote buying with taxpayers money pure and simple.

True. FFP’s infraction was much less, reported by the party itself and easily arguable that it was not an infraction at all, due to unclear definition in the law. This one is very clear cut. And yes, the money laundering was done by PPRP not the criminal donor.

The 3 mil came from the formerly Chinese businessman’s legit business of selling soft drinks in his drug parlour/brothel. So no problem.

Right. Big Joke has already been canned from the police for doing just that.

Chinese with Thai nationality = normal Thai Chinese gangsters. Why not round all of them up?

It's pretty clear that, in spite of their protestations about intending to legalize for medical use only, marijuana for recreational use was exactly the main intent. Top BJP worthies have huge vested interests in plantations. If medical use only was all that was required, why bother to legalize the buds? Medical marijuana was legalized in 2019 and available in clinics all over the coutry, mainly in oil form. The emphasis on keeping extracts with more than 0.2% THC illegal was smoke and mirrors to make most people including govt MPs from other parties believe that only CBD plants would be legal. The strategy worked well.

There wasn't any department stepping with a big hammer. It was all Anutin's work and he even signed the two page decree himself. Anutin's Cannabis and Hemp Bill, which contains very similar provisions was voted down by the Democrat party MPs in the govt coalition. With no Cannabis Act in place, Anutin is vulnerable to attacks from the conservatives in the next election, criticising him for creating a free for all. So he went for a stop gap solution in the form of a ministerial regulation he could issue himself. This is obviously much easier to repeal than an act of parliament but Anutin is banking on still being able to conrol the Public Health Ministry. Anutin is basically going for the minimal regulation he can get away with without triggering a conservative backlash that could harm his prospects in the next elections.

Not so. The daytime break for selling alcohol is a revolutionary decree from a military government in the 70s that had fallen into disuse a few years later but never repealed. It was simply revived by Thaksin.

This is a shame, albeit inevitable, given the backlash from conservatives. Even though I have only indulged a couple of times since legalization, I liked the idea that stuffy, uptight Thailand had suddenly become the most liberal cannabis country in the world. I think it was a great idea for tourism and that may all be killed now. People who invested in shops off the main drag that never seem to have customers in them were probably dependent on online sales and may lose their investments now, if there is enforcement against online sales. However, this may be difficult when you look at the proliferation of online selling on FB and LINE by those who obviously don't shops and will be reluctant to give up this new source of income, while their customers will be relunctant to stop ordering low cost weed online. Considering that Thai police can't stop police selling illegal guns online, the prospect for stopping online sales of a legal product seems rather dismal. I guarantee that, if you google the right words in Thai, you will come across a short term pop up site selling illegal guns that will operate for a few days, make some money and then close down and pop up again somewhere else. So why not with weed for which penalties will be much much less than for guns.

This is an obvious loophole. Privately smoking dope in a private massage parlour room cannot be cracked down on, even if technically illegal to smoke on business premises. It would be no different from a hotel allowing guests to smoke in certain designated guest rooms. The masseuses might not be so keen though.

That was only extracts and the THC limit was and is 0.2%.

This is nonsense. The headline makes it seem that these are special visas only for Aussies. The guy quoted talks about buying a 3 bed house as if he thinks foreigners are allowed to own land in Thailand. No mention of cost of healthcare vs free govt healthcare in Oz or having to sell up everything at a loss and high tail it back home with nowhere to live there any more for free medical treatment. I have seen this sad scenario unwind for a number of retirees in Thailand. Some had even acquired Thai families they couldn’t get visas to take home and had to abandon.

Just let it go. Not all Thais are interested in football. So using taxpayers money for this is not justified. The World Cup damages productivity as people stay up late to watch it and billions are wasted in illegal betting. The whole thing is a big yawn.

Under the Civil Registration Act district offices have an obligation to register all foreigners residing in their districts. The interpretation of “residing” seems to be generally taken as being on longer term visas, eg NON-B and marriage and retirement extensions. Your DO is in breach of the law for not registering you. The problem is that DO heads are allowed to operate like little hitlers and often come up with their own laws. If you want to pursue it, you could write to BORA in Bkk which supervises DOs. If they ignore the letter, you could sue the head of registrations at your DO in the Administrative Court which handles disputes between private citizens (including foreigners) and government departments. This is a big hassle for you but also for government officials who get sued and they often have to keep going to court hearings in retirement as cases drag on. So they are generally scared of getting sued there. First of all I would recruit a lawyer or any well educated, knowledgeable Thai to go along with you and ask to see the head of registrations to sort out a misunderstanding. Show him the relevant section of the Civil Registration Act and ask him to explain why he thinks your case is not covered in the law. A work around that has been done in similar cases would be to get a Thai friend in another district to register you in their household and then transfer to your own district. I don’t think they can refuse to transfer someone who is already on a tabien baan, as there are specific regulations for this and they are not allowed to “disappear” people already registered. People who cannot be registered in a specific household, eg when a householder reports someone has left their household but there is no corresponding report of their new household or new borns reported by hospitals but not yet registered in family household, have to be registered in the district’s central pool of people registered but unattributed to a household. I think it would be a headache for your DO and/or the one you leave if your DO refused to register in a household a person already registered somewhere else.

If these cruds are overstaying and breaking other laws, why can't the BiB arrest them all the year round? If they can arrest foreigners on Interpol red notices, why can't they put Boss on one and have the murderous jerk arrested overseas and brought back to Thailand in chains?

Thai Rath also reported further developments on the arrest of a Chinese national called Sao and his Thai driver Satawat, 36. He was driving his boss around as if he were a diplomat. This has already been reported but it is still not clear what the difference is between just driving your boss around and driving him around like a diplomat. Does the latter mean bribing corrupt traffic cops to supply a police escort?

One important thing they did for the World Bank Conference some years ago was to round up all the lady boys who hang out in Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy and other red light districts and tell they would their asses in jail, if they dared come out during the conference. One thing they were very scared of was that one of the delegates would be found with his throat slit by a ladyboy and his Rolex and gold necklace missing. Nana without the ladyboy pick pockets and street walkers was bliss. Pity they couldn't get rid of them permanently.

How convenient that Mr Boy died after selling him the revolver for 20k and that he never knew the name of his dope dealer. A few more plastic bags over his head should change that.

You have to understand he was allegedly handpicked by Gen Watchman as his bagman which is supposedly why he was flying all over the country dealing with high profile money spinning businesses like casinos when he was nominally only head of Immigration. After his fall from grace which cannot be discussed frankly here, Watchman was said to have intervened and saved Joke from prison or worse. He is assumed to have worked tirelessly behind the scenes to secure Joke’s rehabilitation and reinstatement into the police. Whether true or not it is obvious that he had some very powerful to avoid prison and come back to suc a powerful job. But with near total lack of accountability in Thai society it is neigh impossible for the Thai people to learn the facts behind this highly suspicious looking career.

Still a little unclear what joke meant. Is it OK for Chinese gangsters to operate in the Kingdom, if they have naturalized as Thais and renounced Chinese nationality. Is it only dual nationals he sees as a problem? I wonder how many dual national Chinese gangsters there are. Chinese, which includes Taiwanese, Hong Kongers and Macanese in Thai govt classification, are indeed the largest nationality applying for Thai nationality each year. However Chinese law strictly prohibits dual nationality. The Thai Ministry of Interior writes to the embassies of all newly naturalised Thais to inform them in the hope that country will do their dirty work for them and revoke their original nationality because the Thai law doesn’t have its own provisions to do this. Does Joke have information that all the Chinese gangsters are able to bribe the Chinese embassy to intercept the letters from the MOI and throw them away in order to retain Chinese nationality? Another issue is that Special Branch and the National Intelligence Agency thoroughly vet all applicants for Thai nationality and check them for home country, Thai and Interpol criminal records. The NIA is also supposed to check their home and business circumstances with unannounced visits, if appropriate. Is Joke saying that all this vetting is ineffective because they can easily bribe their way to Thai nationality? Another possibly is that these Chinese gangsters don’t have dual nationality at all but have fake Thai ID cards provided by corrupt district office officials which has been reported in the past. That would also avoid the need to bribe the Chinese govt not to revoke their Chinese nationality. If this is the case, I hope Joke will also have these criminal district officers rounded up in the same time frame. Finally, I wonder what will happen to Joke, if his master, Prawit, loses power at the next election or simply falls off the hook. There must be a lot of other cops who didn’t appreciate his rapid promotions or his reinstatement to the force after his mysterious fall from grace for reasons that cannot be discussed here..

Great to know that all these dual national Chinese gangsters will be cleaned up by big joke in 3 weeks. But that will still leave the vast majority of Chinese gangsters that hold only one nationality - Thai.

I suspect the numbers are more. The frozen pensions group on FB estimates 500,000 with frozen pensions, mostly in Oz, NZ and Canada but there must be more than that with pensions that aren’t frozen in the EU, US, Philippines and other countries where they qualify for the increments. Then there are expats and foreigners who own property and shares in the UK and have to pay UK tax on rent and dividends. Since it has been mooted before the Treasury must think it’s worth going for. We already know from the frozen pensions they feel taking money from expats, especially pensioners, is like taking candy from a baby. They have no effective way to fight back via the ballot box and voters in the UK hate them because they escaped the misery of British weather and incompetent and corrupt government there.

It is indeed to do with PayPal as explained in another thread. PP has to verify ID of users and chose a private sector Thai company to do it that has a wonderful system that can only deal with 13 digit Thai ID numbers. Even PRs, who also have a 13 digit Thai ID number are excluded. PP could also have opted for manual verification of ID, as done by many others but chose not to, obviously thinking the business from expats not worth the trouble. Thais already have their own system of payments with no fees. You transfer bank to bank online and send the payment slip via LINE. They don’t need to pay fees to an American company to do that. I expect PP will be disappointed with the results of its decision to go onshore in Thailand and ditch its expat customers.

It is a form of vote buying but getting the citizens to use their own money to buy their own votes. The unseen part is that the criminals who organize illegal football gambling will make a lot more money, if the games are on TV and they are willing to pay big money under the table to make that happen. Then they can be pushed for campaign contributions for the elections next year too.

A hammer would do the job.