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sandyf
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Posts posted by sandyf
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The idea of a "free" trade agreement is a myth, it will prove to very expensive. Leaving the customs union will be seen as a godsend by the EU customs authorities. The UK is already in a hole and for some reason seems to think the solution lies in digging deeper.
The British government faces a €2bn (£1.7bn) fine for negligence that allowed criminal gangs to flood European black markets with illegal Chinese goods, EU anti-fraud investigators have said.
The European anti-fraud office (known as Olaf from its French name, Office de Lutte Anti-Fraude) has recommended the UK pay €1.98bn into the EU budget to compensate for lost customs duties, as a result of a failure by British customs officials to crack down on criminal gangs using fake invoices and making false claims about the value of clothes and shoes imported from China.
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3 hours ago, talahtnut said:
Strength in trade negotiations comes from integrity, not numbers of countries.
Tell that to the Australians.
Plans by the UK and European Union to share quotas for cheap food imports after Brexit have come under fire from Australia.
Restrictions on how many products can be imported into the EU on favourable rates are set across the bloc and concerns have been raised internationally that exporters could take a financial hit when the UK quits.
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21 hours ago, nauseus said:
The result of any referendum is determined by the highest number of (yes or no) grouped responses to the question asked.
Very good English but what is your point?
Sounds good but totally inaccurate.
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23 hours ago, nauseus said:
Rerun so many times.
Of course, brexiteers would rather forget how brexit came about.
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On 12/17/2017 at 3:23 PM, Steve Mepham said:
I would have thought a few were undecided, then being told an emergency budget would be held the day after the vote must have made a few minds up, also being told half a million people would lose their jobs etc.
"I would have thought..." - Sounds like a brexiteer turn of phrase.
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3 minutes ago, Steve Mepham said:
surely that logic must work both ways, or are all remoaners so clever ??
How do you work that one out? Are you saying that people had no idea of what it was like to be a member of the EU?
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1 hour ago, nauseus said:
It wasn't a sales show. It was a referendum.
A fancy word for a government sponsored opinion poll, one of the the 3 such national opinion polls ever held.
I hate to say this but my son and his wife had no idea and voted to leave because her mother said so, I live 6 thousand miles away but his mother in law is just round the corner.
Of course I realise that you would say that is only 2 out of the 17 million, there couldn't possibly be any more that had no idea what they were voting for.
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5 hours ago, OJAS said:
Was this in addition to - or in lieu of - the "Bangkok Routine" (i.e. trips to Embassy & MFA) that my amphur insisted on when I looked into the possibility of obtaining a yellow book several years ago?
I didn't have to get anything from the embassy, translated or legalised, it was all very straightforward apart from the wait. It was a new build and my wife and I went in together, she got her new book the next day and as I said mine came 6 weeks later.
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"You offer to raise the level of education in a rural setting for free, and there is absolutely no interest."
I had exactly the opposite, in the early days I was approached regularly for various reasons English related but always declined. I was once offered a job for a week teaching English, turned out that it was to lecture police officers, about 200 at a time.
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On 12/14/2017 at 7:41 PM, ubonjoe said:
The police back ground check is not required for an extension of stay based upon or any other extension of stay.
See the requirements for an extension based upon marriage here: https://www.immigration.go.th/content/service_18
Not something you see mentioned a lot but I had one done when I applied for the yellow book in 2010, took 6 weeks to get the book.
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3 hours ago, mommysboy said:
Scotland now has a fair claim for wanting the same as NI.
What sort of muddle has now been created?
Nonsensical. There are only two solutions: all in or out.
Looks like all in. TM has pledged that the entire UK will remain aligned with the Internal market and Customs Union, that is of course her pledges mean anything.
But the joint text she signed up to just minutes earlier pledged that the entire UK would “maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union” where they were applicable to avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland.
The communication from the Commission to the Council, issued later on Friday after the PM had returned to the UK, says EU negotiators believe it will be difficult to follow through on this commitment without keeping the UK in the single market and customs union.
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12 hours ago, billd766 said:
Well I also served with the RAF for 25 years and I was one that voted in favour of the EEC.
I also voted and acted with my brain and voted for Brexit and if another referendum comes along I will do the same.
Was it a foolhardy notion to join the EEC which eventually turned into the EU?
In retrospect some 40 years later IMHO I think it was.
Do I think that Brexit is a foolish notion now?
No I don't but ask me in another 40 years and I might, or might not agree with you.
You are quite right Bill, not many on here are going see the end result but I think the history books will record it as a major error of judgement.
UK governments have a dismal track record on judgement, I am not going to repeat references to destroyed industries and lost investment opportunities. Current government performance is a fairly good indication that they have learnt little from the past.
It cannot be denied that the EU is not a perfect mechanism but overall I think the future of the UK population would be more secure under the EU than a UK government.
If you plan to buy your dream home and the survey shows the foundations are unstable, do you buy it anyway?
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2 hours ago, SheungWan said:
If you want to open a separate thread on the use of the defence budget please do, but the fact remains that the proportion of government monies committed to the defence budget have resolutely declined for over 50 years and nothing to do with Brexit. As for the nonsense re TSR2 that preceded entry to the EU so again in the bin. It appears to be the case that that the Hard Left has its own share of bunkum to line up against the Hard Brexiteers and no need to put up with it just because it sticks an anti-Brexit label on the front.
You are quite entitled to take any view you want but brexit is not a modern day disease, the root cause is embedded in historical events and continual bad management, people just fed up with a declining standard of living.
My comments were in response to a question put by another poster, why try and take it in a different direction.
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4 hours ago, ttrd said:
I have picked up the Health certificate several times in Connection of renewing the driving lisence and so far never met the doctor in person...
At the clinic the lady at the front desk ask for the Passport and tell me to sit Down and wait - she disappear less than 5 minutes and then you receive the certificate signed by the doctor stating your good health at the cost of a few hundred baht...They have a long way to go to make this check legitimate...
That obviously depends where you live. It is a fairly thorough check up at my local clinic and all for a hundred baht. It is the same for the Thais, I went with my niece she also needed the certificate to get her 5 year licence.
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How many splits equate to separation?
Theresa May has been forced to slap down her Chancellor after he claimed the £45bn Brexit divorce bill will be paid even if no EU trade deal is struck, opening up a fresh cabinet split.
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23 hours ago, SheungWan said:
UK defence spending has decreased since 1997. In fact it has been on a long decline since 1959. Are you making things up as you go along? https://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/past_spending
Are you implying that the government didn't spend a fortune on TSR2 development and then scrap it, that essential services and business would not have benefited from that wasted money.
The UK was leading the field in vertical take off, what happened? The project halted and the aircraft produced sold to the US for peanuts and now lying as a pile of junk in the american desert.
I am not against development but not in favour of wasting taxpayers money on development that gets thrown away, I am sure others can relate similar scenarios.
I read an article the other day that someone is going to produce a new Concorde and profit from more wasted UK development expense.
In this day and age there is more emphasis on manufacturing military equipment that can be sold rather than what is required to defend the realm, we buy that in.
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12 hours ago, steve187 said:
incorrect, you stop paying at your state pension age, same applies to pension credits and bus passes
You are both right to a certain extent. From the age of 60 there is no need to pay NI, you get automatic credit. If however you are still working, you still have to pay.
I stopped work at 61 and was credited to age 65, even got an incomplete year for the few months between April and my birthday.
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1 hour ago, simoh1490 said:
It isn't that increased taxes will or will not have an impact on growth, it's a case that higher taxes will be mandatory in order to pay the interest on increased government borrowings. And since that increased borrowing is to be spent on social programs rather than business growth, they will in turn drive business and wealth out of the country - what else have we got we can sell, is there anything!
How about arms? How much better off would the country be if governments had not abused the defence budget, failed military projects and a desire to be a global war monger pushed investment in other industries to one side.
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15 hours ago, oldhippy said:Do you think that the UK will no longer be bound by EU product specifications when exporting to the EU?
One of the problems is that many do not want to think. The EU require that all imported goods meet their regulations and for those that like facts, that is not going to change.
A fairly large amount of goods imported into the EU require CE marking. At the moment UK companies get CE certification through entities in the UK regulated by the EU known as Notified Bodies.
Non EU countries must send their goods to a Notified Body in an EU member state for testing and certification.
Time is passing and there has been no clarity yet on the future of UK Notified Bodies. It is highly likely that the UK will find itself in the same position as other non EU countries meaning further expense and delays in product development. Is it any wonder that business is getting very nervous.
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Who thought that the elephant wouldn't trumpet.
The talks broke down after Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, ruled out any move “which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom”.
"Regulatory Divergence" - How many that voted to leave understood it or gave it any consideration before putting their mark on the ballot paper. This will be like a black cloud over the remainder of the negotiations. People think that leaving the customs union and single market is simply about the price of goods. There is also product regulation to be considered and that topic has yet to raise its ugly head.
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16 hours ago, simoh1490 said:
Math never was the strong point of Brexiteers!
497 is 50% of the decided vote whereas 343 is 34% of the decided vote - 164 or 16% were undecided, all to zero decimal places.
And again, sampling is used in many countries to determine a range of factors from census to unemployment and political leanings.
Exactly, the devil is in the detail, something the brexiteers would rather ignore.
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Never liked Tony Blair but you cannot argue the logic.
“The will of the people is not something immutable. People can change their mind if the circumstances change.”
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21 hours ago, nontabury said:
Khun Han is correct, Polish airmen were stationed all over the east of the country. While Polish soldiers were mostly based in England, ready for the invasion. Many of them stayed in England after the war, and gained employment in the South Yorkshire coal mines. Sandy should be aware of this, as he used to live in Attercliffe,I believe.
Never lived in Attercliffe, Deepcar.
I was brought up in the north of Scotland and as a child there was a large Polish army camp across the road and several others in the area. After the war it was the Poles that created business in the town, locals left to earn a living elsewhere. North sea oil brought many back and if that hadn't come about the area would have become a ghost town.
During the Second World War Scotland received a big influx of Poles. Most of the Polish soldiers based in the UK during the war were stationed in Scotland, although the majority did not arrive until after the fall of France in 1940.
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21 hours ago, Jip99 said:
Totally unrelated.
Border issues are part of Brexit and will be dealt with. Waterloo plays no part in it either.
Irish War of Independence created the border and the border is a brexit issue so they are related whether you accept it or not.
You obviously believe that returning Ireland to a single entity as it was before southern independence is not a possible outcome.
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Thai funeral customs.
in General Topics
Posted
I have been to many funerals around here and they have all been a week but there can be a lot of variation. The majority as far as I am aware died in hospital and the body embalmed and taken to the family home. Usually at 4pm family and friends queue up and pour water over the hand of the deceased before the coffin lid is nailed down. Where I come from I think the family would freak out, the bodies I have seen have looked grotesque after the embalming. Putting the lid on the coffin can also be a bit traumatic, with my FIL they broke his arm getting it into the coffin. The coffin then remained at the house until time for the interment.
The monks come each evening and then in the morning of the final day. My brother in law often does the cooking for local funerals. In our case the funeral was a bit different. They exhumed his wife who had been dead about 10 years, built a new tomb and interred them together . The tomb can hold 5 and my wife, her bother and sister will join them in due course, hopefully I will be long gone by then.
I have seen many variations from fancy temples in BKK to simple temples around here, home funerals and funerals with the Royal Flame. One of the strangest was the cremation of an Englishman at a temple in BKK, strange to see nearly everyone in the temple suited and booted.