Dogmatix

Do you think the mega corruption in the rice pledging scheme would have been uncovered, resulting in decades in prison for some, if Yingluck had remained in power? Do you think there is no corruption in this government because the receipts have not been found left carelessly lying around?

The major advantages are the lack of any equivalent of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in China and the heavily padded price tag.

Lead poisoning is endemic in Pattaya. Perhaps his doctor advised him to take early retirement to avoid this health issue.

Strip out the Chinese vaccines from the numbers.

I don't think the UK recognises any vaccine certification from Thailand yet. Indians are up in arms that their certificates are not recognised even those who had Indian AZ which was also imported and used in the UK. They started recognising certifications only from Europe and the US. I think they are slowly getting around to other countries. I don't think Chinese vaccines or Sputnik will ever count as vaccines in the UK or US though.

Just amend the Condo Act to allow foreigners to buy up to 100% of freehold condos but only the foreign owners of the first 49% of the usable space get to vote. That way the freehold land of the condo remains technically controlled by Thais. I am sure the Chinese are not interested in attending the condo AGMs anyway. Land is too emotional an issue for Thais and will make Prayut very unpopular in the election if he railroads it through before then. Chinese should not be allowed to own land anyway because Thais are not allowed to own land in China. I think allowing longer than 30 year leases to be registered at the Land Dept is a solution that Thais could accept more readily. The law already allows 50 year leases for land for commercial purposes in certain areas but conditions are probably too onerouos for most. Just allowing 50, 60 or maybe even 90 year leases for up to 1 rai land in housing estates will be good enough in my opinion. Prayut is obviously listening to property developers who hope make fast bucks ripping off Chinese buyers. Let's see what happens when he has to listen to the constant sniping of ordinary Thais who are all against this. Compromises might suddenly start looking likt a good idea.

No worry about land prices because they will never allow it.

Many condos already have a big problem with not getting a quorum for AGMs etc and often the farangs are the only ones interested. This will help a lot.

The reported that CRA had already vaccinated 2,000 school children with SP which it confirmed has not been approved by Thai FDA for children. It seems FDA approval is not required in the case of SP but the government is unlikely to take responsibility if anything goes amiss. A friend says he is getting heavy pressure from the British headmaster of his daughter's international school to sign for her to get SP without mentioning the lack of approval or explaining why the school cannot get into the government's Pfizer roll out.

It would definitely be galling for those who have jumped through hoops to become citizens to buy land. But don't worry. The land ownership will die a death or will be made virtually impossible to do. I think they might look at increasing or eliminating the foreign ownership limit on condos though which has already been in the works for some years. That would make more sense because there is no demand from Thais for many resort condos and less threat to Thais because foreigners, especially Chinese have been condo buyers for years. Expats are up in arms but they ain't seen nothing yet. This is more of threat to the average expat than the Elite Card was because that was more of a sort of club membership than an overhaul of the visa regulations that were just fudged to allow three monthly roll overs of visas without really creating a 5 year visa. If they get even a part of this done, they probably won't be able to resist raising the bar on retirement and marriage visas. The finanicial requirements haven't been raised since the early 2000s and are due for an uplift. But the last time the people who already visas based on the old requirements were grandfathered in permanently at the old rate. However, the numbers were much smaler then. Anyway I am sure all here will still feel much better off as citizens.

Look at the history of foreign land ownership laws in Thailand. In 1999 they allowed a rai of residential land in certain zones under impossible conditions and with the permission of the minister. In the days of the treaties until the early 70s when foreigners were allowed to own land, the permission of the minister (the King in the days of absoute monarchy) was also needed. Foreigners often complained that waited for years for this permission, although, of course, there were foreign purchases. The British Club is a treaty purchase that survives to this day. HSBC, Standard Chartered and East Asiatic Co also owned large pieces of land in central Bangkok, as did of course the British Embassy. The British Club had a good connection with King Vajiravudh at the time it got permission to buy its land, some of which was actually purchased from the King. I am sure the other foreign companies that owned land had good connections to get the approvals. I don't know if there were many ordinary Joes that were able to buy land in the treaty days.

If they granted land ownership rights for 5 or 10 years, you can imagine the bribes that would be demanded to renew the special visa when they know you own land. That is basically what happens with BOI privileges, although I am not saying the BOI asks for bribes. I think that foreign owned BOI promoted companies prefer not put their investment capital into land. It make more sense to rent or to set up a Thai nominee company to buy the land regardless of the BOI promotion.

If you are so wealthy, you can indeed move all your copious wealth to Thailand. You can invest in a business (with Thai partner owning 51% of course) and apply for PR and then citizenship. With just a fraction of your wealth, you can invest in a medium size business and hire a capable farang to manage it and just sit on the beach waiting for your PR and citizenship which will just drop into your lap with that sort of wealth.

I have already seen FB posts from Thais saying that Thai people will become beggars in their own country having to pay high rents for somewhere to live to rapacious foreign landlords. It seems too late. They should have worried about that before they allowed children of Chinese migrant workers to become Thai just by being born here. They already own most of the wealth and squeeze Thai people dry. Letting wealthy foreigners maybe own a rai each under hugely restrictive conditions is not going much difference now. But this is all familiar from when the Democrat government in 1999 decided to amend the Land Code to allow foreigners investing B40m in certain special assets in the hope wealthy foreigners would come in droves and drop helicopter money to bail out the moribund Thai real estate sector at the time. The original bill also allowed foreigners married to Thais to buy land without having to invest B40bn but that was scrapped after bitter attacks in parliament including from the government's own MPs who said Thais would become beggars in their own country etc etc. Finally there was a backlash from the bureaucracy that stalled on drafting the ministerial regulations for 3 years and then refused to issue any of the qualifying investments. Meanwhile government ministers were taking credit for having opened up the real estate sector to foreigners. I think we all know that nothing will come of this. If it does, foreigners already here should prepare themselves for new regulations raising the bar visas making it harder for the not well heeled to renew visas on the basis they are no longer required.

I think they said the first million or so would arrive in 4Q21 and the balance in 1Q22. I guess that most of the people who could afford to book Moderna and were able to get in the queue have already had 2 shots of AZ. I am not sure, if there is any point in consulting a Thai doctor on this as they won't know much but will probably say avoid it because that is what Dr Sophon has advised. Most of them won't bother to consult a doctor and will go ahead anyway. So Thailand will have some data on Moderna boosters following AZ+AZ soon. Dr Sophon's caution about Moderna boosters is funny considering they threw caution to the winds when going ahead with the SV+AZ regime, SV+SV+AZ and SV+SV+PFE. It depends what is expedient, so we can probably ignore everything he and the other Thai government experts say. There is no credible data on cocktails containing Chinese vaccines or on the vaccines as stand alones because no credible countries have used Chinese vaccines.

"Dr Sophon also recommended that people who have received two shots of AstraZeneca or Pfizer vaccines not get a booster at this time." But didn't give his reasons. Very useful Dr Sophon. Thank you.

The BiB charge the media to be invited to these events, knowing they make excellent tabloid style theatre when there is good audience participation like this one. it is nothing to do with crime solving as the accused have already confessed and could be taken to the scene discretely, if it were really necessary to help find evidence or something. If any evidence emerges contrary to the police case, it will be ignored, e.g. the 2B in Koh Tao obviously had no clue what had taken place at the murder scene, following their plastic bag confessions, and a cop could be heard coaching them in the video.

A big chunk is owned by the Vayapak Fund which is taxpayers' money controlled by the Finance Ministry.

They refused to take action over the report from Rolls Royce that it had paid bribes to a number of named THAI directors over a long period. I can't stand Thaksin or Suriya but this smacks of nonsencical trumped up charges. The management of THAI at the time should take responsibility for its decisions, unless there is evidence that Thaksin pressured them into requesting the planes they didn't want.

Just talks nonsense all the time but can be minister of public health in a corrupt feudal third world country.

They have no idea why foreign tourists come or why they don't come.

There are some contemporary accounts that dispute this myth about Il Duce. There is little evidence that he really made the trains run on time but he did upgrade the rail system in the North of Italy and built the first autostrada or expressway. In keeping with fascist principles the poor and less productive parts of the country were left without any improvements to their mobility.

Great that she was able to retrain as an online fraudster during the pandemic. They don't say how she got caught.

Definitely. Someone wanted the business. Could have been another farang.

The media say the government is giving Pfizer to school kids but a friend told me he received an email from his daughter's international school saying his 12 year old has to get Sinopharm at the school. What's up with this? Sinopharm has no credible international accreditation (apart from the dubious pro-China WHO), performed poorly in countries outside China that used it wdiely and it is only the Chinese say so that it is safe for children. The school is owned by Thai Chinese who I am sure will be getting Pfizer for their own kids or grandkids.