Dogmatix

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.

Personally I can't stand vaping but I see hi-so Thai guys doing it all the time at sporting events I go to. It seems like a sort of status thing for them to be seen vaping in public. There are dangers associated with vaping but there are also benefits by allowing smokers to at least transition away from tobacco. It seems pointless to ban it on that basis. As far as tourists are concerned it looks even more ridiculous than Singapore's stupid ban on chewing gum, particularly as there is no publicity put out by TAT warning tourists of severe penalities for vaping and possessing the equipment. Vapers should be clearly warned and given the opportunity not to come to Thailand at all, if they don't want to cease vaping temporarily. The TAT could launch a campaign based on "Smoke Dope, Don't Vape" or something similar.

I would think that companies are right to be cautious regarding the PE issue since the LTR visas are new and no cases have been tested. The BOI is doing a good job of promoting the LTR visas but is not in a position to speak for the Revenue Department which is a venal and corrupt organisation that loves the chance to shake down foreign companies for cash - ask Philip Morris how good their tax advice from internationally renowned tax advisors turned out to be when the RD went after them. It may all turn out well but no one can guarantee that at this stage. My own personal choice for someone planning to stay long term would be to get the UK employer to do a deal with a Thai subsidiary to act as the employer. Get a normal non-B visa and work permit which will be a breeze with a substantial Thai employer. After 3 full calendar years apply for permanent residence. 5 years after getting PR apply for citizenship (with a Thai wife you can skip PR). I can see the instant gratification attraction of the LTR visas but after 10 years you got nothing and have to renew. In that time you could be a PR and on the way to becoming a citizen. Perhaps you can still apply for PR and/or citizenship on an LTR visa but without a Thai employer I suspect this would be difficult or impossible.

Is that so? I would have thought the opposite. If you are working abroad for a UK company, you are no longer covered by UK employment law and would have no protection under Thai law either, as you would be a free lancer, as as far as they are concerned. But if you work for a Thai subsidiary or affiliate, you are at least covered by Thai employment law which has provisions against unfair dismissal and for redundancy payments.

Because she is not in Thailand and, is standing her ground and can't be intimidated, this may end up in childish threats of criminal defamation charges which would be meaningless, since she claims she never wants to set foot in the Kingdom again. That's how it went with Hannah Witheridge's sister when she had to temerity to criticise Thai police for framing the 2B for the murder of her sister and David Miller. Also for their disgusting behaviour, luring the Witheridge family to police national HQ with the pretense that they had new information to share but actually merely to make money by selling access to the grieving family without their knowledge to reporters and photographers who were allowed to photograph them huddled together and stick microphones in their faces to ask them how they felt about the brutal murder of their family member and the corrupt police investigation into it. The police have shown themselves able and willing to fabricate and destroy evidence in far more serious cases then the Taiwanese actress, so why would they hesitate to the same in this case.

Yes and how about police body cameras too?

That could be a winner. No need to go South America or Afica to experience the thrilling risk of being waylaid by highway robbers. It's available in Amazing Thailand right here in SE Asia provided by Bangkok's finest.

Initial police response was to pretend they didn’t have a roadblock in that area at that time.

The motto of this story is that Chinese, Taiwanese and others should pay for the police escort and protection in advance and they won't be harassed. Thailand needs to make up for all the lost tourism income.

Yes, very boring non-post.

Looks like a link to your own FB page. Tegridy Thai looks like a small coffee shop in HH. It has FB page with a lot of unrelated content. No more detail.

The UK discrimination is quite pernicious because all decent unis there are state controlled and therefore apply the dual pricing. The US does it but I think residents' prices only apply to state residents in state colleges, which seems more acceptable. No benefits in this for getting Thai citizenship but no discrimination either.

This type of escort service had been available for a long time. I remember being given a quote that was something like 10k a day for a police car and 5k for a motorbike plus tips to escort VIP visitors around Bangkok. We used the service for a visiting director from our parent company. They did a great job in traffic turning on sirens to get cars out of the way - well worth it. The director believed it was because the cops considered him genuinely important.

Very funny. The van was from my mother-in-law’s village. These were real people with husbands, wives, children, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters.

Back in the 70s the Edinburgh drug squad was known to charge people arrested for possession of cannabis and other drugs with a fraction of what they were actually caught with and sell the surplus back into the market. None of the people busted ever complained about this. Often it meant the difference between a prison sentence and a fine and probabation. So why would they?