Dogmatix

Barclay Spencer, the forerunner of this shyster’s Platinum Financial Services ponzi management group in Pacific Place was one of my first experiences of cold callers by fake financial advisors in the late 90s. Young Brits would call up claiming to be operating as UK licensed IFAs which was impossible because the UK doesn’t license anyone to operate outside the UK and they weren’t licensed in the UK anyway. They would burble away reading from their scrips trying to get a meeting. At first I would ask them questions about their Thai securities license for which a knowledge of Thai was required in those days or their work permit or sometimes a tough question about investments but they always batted it off with answers from the script like saying they would arrange a meeting with their boss to answer that one or call over the supervisor. Eventually I used a trick learned from the book Liar’s Poker. Just put the receiver in the desk drawer and leave the idiots burbling away to themselves. One of them called back and lost his rag with my secretary.

The Thai Revenue Department should also go after the fake expat financial advisors for tax like Al Capone. Their business model was to set up companies in Bangkok that ostensibly provided administrative services for offshore financial advisors and funds. But actually they were selling the Ponzi schemes and fake funds in Thailand with income booked offshore that should have been declared for Thai tax, since it was generated in Thailand. 40m is a very low ball estimate of the scams they have done over the years. I remember stories of people being threatened they would be kicked out of the country, if they didn’t stop asking for their money back. Obviously they did have good police connections in those days but their luck seems to have run out, since the SEC started to take complaints by foreigners seriously. Good for them.

Nope. platinum Financial Services, Barclay Spencer etc were scamming expats for two decades. Thai SEC only took action against them in 2016 for operating without securities licenses. Going back to the early 2000s people were complaining to the SEC about them and other unlicensed fake financial advisers but the SEC always refused to take action because they were careful to avoid targeting Thais. One of the other directors, Andrew Wood, used to run a financial advice column in the Bangkok Post. Complaints to the Post board went unanswered. Good to see he is being asked to account for a fraction of the scams.

So he joined the police at the Yannawa station in 2012, presumably through connections and/or paying a bribe. After 7 years in Bangkok he was transferred to Isaan which was presumably a punishment. Yannawa is a lucrative area in the centre of Bangkok. It is unlikely that a cop would volunteer to undergo a drastic cut in bribe money by moving to the boonies of Isaan. All the information about his poor behaviour is from his 3 years in the force in Isaan. How about some information about what he did in 7 years in Bangkok and what he did to get transferred to the boonies. The police should also shed some light on this practice of punishing police by sending them to low income parts of the country where they can't make so much money. People have to live in those places too.

They probably keep them on because they know too much about the corruption. This guy was obviously caught with drugs in such a way that it could no longer be covered up.

Seems things could have been done better by TRTP to avert this. They hired a known drug user, probably because of family connections or he bought his way in or both. The police were very proud of the huge project of importing Sig 365 9mm handguns to sell to cops at discounted but still very expensive price vs US MRSP, meaning lots and lots of profit as they buy at a big bulk discount to MSRP and pay no Thai taxes. The police chief at the time allegedly massively enriched himself with this project, as did many interior officials. The ex cop used one of these guns. It's fine for police to order guns but they should pay for them and issued them to cops as service firearms, not sell them for big profits. Then when cops leave or are fired they has to return them to the armourer. Also having a standardised weapon to train police on and have armourers maintain and order police spec ammo for would makes sense. But the system of getting cops to buy expensive firearms to make profits for big shots starts them off on the corruption path. They borrow from senior officers' wives who are loan sharks to buy the guns and extort the public to repay the loan sharks who obviously must be repaid.

Many farang countries have similar PR systems. The US green card is almost the same. If you stay outside the US for more than a year, your green card is cancelled. The UK has developed an ugly racist side that manifested itself with Brexit and is put into practice by Tory governments. There was a nasty case of a Singaporean woman who was deported, despite having Indefinite Leave to Remain (PR) and living for 25 years in the UK with her British husband and son. Of course she had never applied for British citizenship because she was reluctant to give up Singaporean citizenship. She fell foul of the PR residence requirements because she had to go on an extended trip to Singapore to take care of her terminally ill mother and returned to her family in the UK when her mother died. She started receiving notices that her PR would be cancelled and tried to appeal to no avail. Then one day the police showed up at the house and dragged her off to a detention centre a couple of hundred miles from her home, making hard for her family to visit her without letting her pack a bag. Two weeks later she was put on a plane to Singapore with only the clothes she stood up in and 5 pounds in her pocket. She had only a sister left there, with whom she wasn't close, and had to beg to stay with her and sponge off her. Her crippled husband in the UK had no one to take care of him, as theire son had had to move to another city for work. I am not sure if she ever got back to the UK. The family had no money to pursue an expensive legal case against the Home Office. I have never heard anything as horrible as that happening in Thailand. But the UK courts make rulings that foreign rapists can't be deported after finishing their sentences because it would cause undue suffering to their families in the UK.

A drunk cop poked his maskless face through my car window at a check point when I was driving my 1 year old son to the emergency room late at night with a high grade fever that turned out to be COVID. His face was bright red and grinning as he swayed about asking, "You ding bir mai." The Thai missus gave his colleague a tongue lashing and the drunken idiot was called off when the message got through to him. Don't mess with a mother protecting her baby. Hopefully the caught COVID like the rest of us. Farangs have a choice but most Thais have to stay here and put up with the disgusting drunken, corrupt, murderous rabble in uniform that passes for a police force. It's a wonder they don't rise up and burn down police stations more often like they did in the student power uprising in 1973 that led to the ousting of the military dictators for a few short years.

What happened to the drunk police captain with a collection of Lambos who killed a street vendor? Nothing!

I think banks in most civilized countries would have an exhaustive system of checking before they did anything like this. Seizure of someone's home and possessions is difficult to do in most Western countries. In Thailand the laws are designed to protect the wealthy and large corporations.

It is a requirement that PR applicants should be contributing to Thai society or somesuch and they do sometimes ask that. I wasn't asked that question but had already set it out the answer in my covering letter which they never referred to in my two interviews. It does seem to be a very broad requirement with a very low bar. I have never heared of anything being rejected for not contributing enough. It just seems to be a hoop that they like to make you jump through. Perhaps it is just a deliberate trap to encourage people to say they do volunteer work and then catch them for working without WPs. I know someone who was asked that question in the panel interview. He said his contribution was having a wife and Thai kids which seemed a rather feeble answer to me, as anyone can get married and reproduce without making any contribution to Thai society at large. Citizenship is a lot more pragmatic. They just want to see receipts for your hard cash contributions to Thai society in the form of chartiable donations. Most easier to assess.

Well done for also passing the Por. 6 exams. It was quite a sweat, I thought, having to write a essay in Thai and do dictation etc. Of course you will never be penalised for submitting too many documents and you never know what might make a difference. I was just thinking from the point of view of overseas documents that might be difficult to get certified. I wouldn't bother, if they are not that important. When I applied for PR, I didn't have a case officer at Immigration like you do at Special Branch for citizenship. I had two formal interviews with different officers just verifying all the information submitted on the application form and my documents. They were not particularly friendly. For citizenship I had quite a few informal meetings with my case officer before the final formal meeting to do the tests and finalize the information on the application form and scrawl my name in Thai. Plenty of time to develop a rapport and the case officer also follows up with you after the application which was not the case with PR. Of course things change in both processes.

I am not sure if submitting certificates for universtity courses that are not degrees are worth the trouble, if you have to get them certified. They tend to just tick the boxes and ignore everything else. For something which is not a degree, they have no box to tick. It might be more worthwhile if it is a professional qualification or something directly related to your job which relates to how you can bring expertise and training to help Thai colleagues. I remember being told that submitting my certificate from the Ed Ministry for passing the Por. 6 exam for foreigners that used to be required for foreign teachers to teach in Thailand (most failed and had to resit over and over, meaning that they could only get 3 month visa extensions and WPs) would make a big difference in view of the Thai language requirement. In fact the other just said, "What's this?" and when I explained she just dropped it on the pile without comment and went on to the next question, obviously uninterested because it was not a masters degree.

https://www.freshmediq.com

Ha ha. Boots does seem to be the worst offender. I never go to a small Boots for drugs because its usually a waste of time. I expect they will take the pharmacies out of the all the smaller stores and be like Watsons and probably close some of them altogether. When they first set up in Thailand during the 1997-98 financial crisis, they opened lots of stores around the country to see which worked best and closed down the duds when the leases ran out. Now they've expanded a lot again.

When I first came here, you get amphetamines in the form of slimming pills, codein mixed with paracetamol, tramadol, tranquillisiers pseudoephedrine etc without prescription, Some of it like the codeine was openly out on the racks.

I went to a ganja clinic in Bangkok as I was curious to try CBD oil to help with sleep and hoped to get the government produced GPO stuff which is the purest and cheapest AFAIK. The doctor told me CBD was useless for insomnia and gave me some THC oil for 600 baht for a small bottle but it turned to be not GPO but the original cannabis oil in Thailand, Acharn Decho's, which is a low dose of only 2mg/ml (vs 81mg/ml in the GPO THC oil) that I think was the original concentration approved by the MoPH in 2019. It seems to have some dark green coloring and strong bitter flavoring added, probably to stop patients from downing the whole bottle in one or smoking it. Unadulterated THC oil AFAIK has very little colour or flavour. I haven't noticed any effect from the drops which are very nasty to take at bedtime due to the horrible taste. So rather disappointed in the final result but I got talking to the doctor about extracts and the law and he expessed the opinion that edibles that use raw but decarbed weed, rather than oils or extracts are legal because they just basically throw the ground up plant matter into the mix rather than extracts. On the same basis it could be argued thatt hash is still raw plant matter, if it made by applying a little warmth and pressure to kief but no chemicals. On the other hand it might be difficult to prove that no extraction was used in the production of edibles or hash.

Does that mean that all our communications will be monitored by Chinese security services.?

Somkid was never an economic wizard and did a lacklustre job as the junta's deputy PM for economic affairs in charge of all economic ministries. Better for everyone if he just plays with his grandchildren and great grandchildren and gets his cataracts done or whatever.

Legalized pot with no restrictions whatever; legalized abortion; same sex civil partnerships on the way. Junta rules OK.

Well done Canada! But I wonder if she had been a 50 year bloke with nothing much to recommend him, would they have scooped him out of the airport or told him to wait in the queue which is several years long?

They should also put a load of navy river launches there with their motors on driving the waters faster to the sea. That really helped save Bangkok in 2011. 555

I expect the HH course was operated by SRT originally and then rented out for a song to Singha. When the railway was planned royal grants of land were made to SRT, then SRS (State Railways of Siam), so that they could make HH into a destination for greater numbers of railway travellers, who didn't own their own land and villas like the nobles who previously came by boat. Obviously a hotel and a golf course were essential. Hence the Railway Hotel, now rented out to Central as the Centara Hotel, and the Royal HH Golf Course right behind the station. I think you could use a membership to the golf course, just to save costs, if you played in HH often enough, without worrying about the snootiness of other members. Loads of tourists there in normal times anyway.

Interesting re how his children have made out. Purachai obviously didn't see improving Thai education as an issue to push for when he was in the cabinet as he had already voted with his feet as far as own kids were concerned. However, he understood very well why foreigners were interested in the security of PR since he enjoyed that privilege in NZ without being willing to reciprocate NZ's kindness himself. Not sure where he got the money to buy a house and move his family to NZ. He was an academic at NIDA before Thaksin discovered him. He cultivated this image as a Mr Clean, fair, straight shooter but it is far from clear that he was devoid of corruption or how he could have been appointed as Thaksin's interior minister without a clear understanding to pass slush up the pipe (same applies re Chartchard as Thaksin appointed transport minister under Yingluck) The foreigners whose PR and citizenship applications he knocked back without cause didn't see him as fair. He signed almost zero citizenship approvals,. whereas they were running at around 300-400 a year before he took office. HIs clean image was given the lie by his mealy mouthed excuses as minister in charge of the Land Department for failing to take any action over the flagrant criminality of Thaksin and Snoh over the Alpine Golf course land scandal which surfaced on his watch. (Eventually someone in the Land Dept took the hit with a prision sentence for this malfeasance.) It seemed like he was trying to outdo and eclipse Thaksin in onservative popularism with his ridiculous 'social order' campaign that went alongside Thaksin's murderous war on drugs. Exits to pubs were blocked causing serious fire hazards and patrons were obliged to take low quality drug tests that showed positive on menstruating women. But Thais thought this was all great, as they love a strongman type like Sarit trying to discipline their wayward kids, at least until they get bored of him. One of Purachai's attractions to Thaksin was that he had no faction supporting him in TRT and was actually hated by all the party's faction leaders, not least because he took the lucrative and powerful interior portfolio from under their noses. Having no faction to placate made Purachai dispensible to Thaksin, should the need arise, but Purachai, being a naive academic, didn't seem to really grasp this. Before long, like Icarus, he flew too close the sun and when media started talking him up as a potential successor to Thaksin (of course laughable with no MPs behind him but unacceptable to Thaksin), Thaksin acted fast. Purachai's feet didn't touch the ground when the boot connected with his rear. He made a feeble attempt at a comeback in 2011 as leader of an obscure new political party that quickly fizzled out, proving that he was actually just a political force created and shut down at will by Thaksin. Finally a thoroughly unpleasant, hypocritical, self-seeking,. narcissistic man was dumped for good out ofThai public life.

I don't think Brits and Americans, the largest providers of farang applicants, have ever had more than about 40 applicants in a year.