BKKBike09

What twaddle. They were not.

Having lived in Bangkok since the late 1980s I can assure you that, prior to Covid, virtually no-one wore masks at any time. Seasonal mask wearing because of air pollution only started once people had access to smartphone apps warning about PM2.5 levels and even then, it was a very small minority that wore masks. It is false to suggest otherwise. This is an image from 2016. Not a mask in sight.

I'm not sure how I feel about the faux engine noise but the Hyundai IONIQ 5 N is a beast. But GBP 65,000 in UK and I think THB 3.7 million here ... if money was no object, sign me up.

My charger would switch on okay but, as soon as plugged in to car, would flash an error message about current leakage and would not charge (the car would charge fine at PTT and using granny charger, so I figured it was the wall charger, not the car). It was not installed for me by BYD because back in Jan 2023 there was a queue of a month or so for the free install. I paid another firm to install (WallBox). They also supplied / installed the replacement charger. Like you I would turn the charger off at the breaker when not in use, since generally I was only charging the car once a week. The WallBox guy has now advised that it is best to leave switched on all the time. I wanted to try and repair the Duosida unit but the WallBox people said there are no spares for it. Anyway, I've given it to a Thai friend who likes fiddling with electronics and said that if he can fix it, he can have it. The new charger is a Zencar WPRO - the 7.4 kW version of this: https://www.zencar.net/product/zencar-ev-charging-station-wpro-11kw-22kw/

Now must be a great time to buy a second hand EV. With all the continuing discounts probably can't give them away! I'm very happy with my Atto 3, which I've had since Jan 2023, but I'd not recommend someone to buy any EV new right now unless money / resale doesn't matter. Just spent nearly 20K on a new wall charger as the old 'free' Duosida one gave up the ghost last month ... just outside the two-year warranty. Good time to buy second hand cars generally, whether EV or not (confession: I just bought a second hand Volvo - pure ICE - for highway journeys). Now, if the Hyundai Ioniq 5N wasn't 3.7 million ...

Ah, but I cut and pasted from the SUPREME COURT ruling which poked more holes in the earlier court orders than can be found in a hunk of Swiss cheese. No sad sack lower court piffle required. The SUPREME COURT ruling also gets to the heart of this whole sorry saga: While respondents challenge Abrego Garcia’s “removal to El Salvador,” they acknowledge that the “government could have chosen to remove [him] to any other country on earth,” thereby separating him from his family. Id. at 46a. Because respondents take issue only with where, not whether Abrego Garcia was removed, the harm that they claim from family separa- tion is not implicated or properly redressable here. Post 2019 DHS did not need a hearing to deport him to anywhere, they just couldn't send him back home to mom and her pupusa stall in San Salvador. Of course, if you were to argue that the hands of DHS were, in fact, effectively tied by that prohibition, I'd agree with you. If this guy was only a national of San Salvador, what other country would accept him as a deportee from the USA? Once again, book 'em, Dan O.

Thanks buddy. I always like to be told I'm special. Nonetheless, this dude did not have the legal right to be in the US: the judge in his case only granted him 'withholding of removal to El Salvador', which - as per the recent Supreme Court ruling - does not confer any lawful status within the United States while DHS remains free to remove the person to a third country other than the country to which removal has been withheld. The guy himself also accepted back in 2019 that he could be deported. Book him, Dan O. In October 2019, after Abrego Garcia had “conceded his removability as charged,” an IJ ordered Abrego Garcia’s removal from the United States under Title 8. App., infra, 7a; see id. at 60a. The IJ determined, however, that it was more likely than not that, if Abrego Garcia returned to El Salvador, he would be subject to persecution on account of his affiliation with his mother, whose “earnings from the pupusa business” had been allegedly targeted by “the Barrio 18 gang.” Id. at 15a.2 The IJ therefore granted Abrego Garcia withholding of removal to El Salvador under 8 U.S.C. 1231(b)(3). App., infra, 11a-15a. Withholding of removal “only bars deporting an alien to a particular country or countries,” INS v. Aguirre-Aguirre, 526 U.S. 415, 419 (1999)—in Abrego Garcia’s case, to El Salvador. Because “withholding of removal is a form of ‘ “country specific” ’ relief ” but does not confer any lawful status within the United States, DHS remains free to “remov[e] the alien to a third country other than the country to which removal has been withheld.” Johnson v. Guzman Chavez, 594 U.S. 523, 531-532 (2021) (brackets and citations omitted). https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24A949/354843/20250407103341248_Kristi Noem application.pdf

I'll stick with the facts. No need to distort anything. He was not granted legal status in 2019; he was subject to ICE Supervision: in 2019, an Immigration Court agreed that he had entered the US illegally at an unknown date and time and thus should be deported. However the judge in 2019 also ruled that he could not be deported back to El Salvador. The "administrative error" in his case is that he was sent back to El Salvador,

This all reminds me of the bleeding hearts in UK who bemoaned the fatal police shooting of Chris Kaba, portrayed by them as an innocent victim of police brutality as opposed to a gang member who'd recently shot another person in a crowded nightclub (caught on CCTV), amongst other crimes and misdemeanours.

Let's not gloss over the facts that the 'Legal Alien' to whom you and the OP's article refer wasn't some person who got randomly picked up a few weeks ago and shipped off to a max security prison in El Salvador. Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is a native and citizen of El Salvador who entered the US illegally 'sometime around 2011'. In March 2019 he was arrested in Maryland with three other men. "Ensuing proceedings established that Abrego Garcia was a ranking member of the deadly MS-13 gang and thus presented a danger to the community". At an immigration hearing in 2019, DHS presented evidence that Abrego Garcia had been “arrested in the company of other ranking gang members” and the Immigration Judge specifically cited “the fact that a ‘past, proven, and reliable source of information’ [had] verified [Abrego Garcia’s] gang membership, rank, and gang name.” In October 2019, after Abrego Garcia had “conceded his removability as charged”, an immigration judge ordered Abrego Garcia’s removal from the United States ... So this guy should really have been sent back years ago and has been living on borrowed time. The complication was that the immigration judge also said he could not be sent back to El Salvador because he might be persecuted by a rival gang - the judge did not say he could not be deported. It's all in the court docket. https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24A949/354843/20250407103341248_Kristi Noem application.pdf

You should make clear that this all relates to deportation of alleged Central American gang members, especially those from San Salvador, using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. I suspect there are many who would think that deporting gang members is not a bad thing. https://www.npr.org/2025/04/07/nx-s1-5345601/supreme-court-alien-enemies-act

Good luck to her. Maybe she can also now afford to finish the WIP on her tatts.

GCHQ made a rod for their own back with an intern recruitment campaign that specifically excluded white British students although, as I commented above, most white British students don't have the language skills that are in high demand. Why not just say "we welcome applications from interested people of all ethnic backgrounds. Those with fluency in middle eastern or asian languages are specifically encouraged to apply etc". However, I suspect that many Gen Z / Y whatever may well think that collecting email and voice traffic is a bad thing and that the intelligence services are oppressive arms of the state etc.

It says it was his 'work mobile phone' but your point is a valid one. I can't see any reason why any phone or other personal electronic device would be allowed into a secure environment. It would seem that the access was logged but why did it take a month for action to be taken? That should have been same day, regardless of the classification of the material accessed. This is all much more of a concern than the guy's ethnicity. We need native-level speakers of Urdu, Farsi, Mandarin etc and most of them aren't white British.

Ah. But major rival Sino-Thai is owned by the family of our PM In Waiting, Anutin. And if Ital-Thai is Pheua Thai aligned (I don't know about Premchai Karnasuta's politics), they are in for a rough ride. A question no-one is asking is "why did the State Audit Office need a 30-something storey building in the first place?" - yet another wasteful (snouts in trough) public procurement project. There are far too many government agencies etc in vast new buildings that are mostly empty.

How on earth can there be a definition of 'Islamophobia' that provides "protections against discrimination" while also "being compatible" with "the right to criticise, express dislike of, or insult religions and/or the beliefs and practices of adherents"? The whole thing is a minefield. Government has no business trying to legislate against 'hurty words'. Want to call someone with a few extra pounds on them a "fat c**t"? Go ahead. Want to call a Muslim with facial hair "a bearded tw#t". Go ahead.

There are various different types of cataract and they can all progress at different rates, so there's no hard and fast answer other than the 'wait till they impact everyday life'. What that means will also be different for different people. If you don't need to drive, for instance, maybe you can wait longer than someone who is reliant on driving to get around. Opthalmologist I saw in UK said that generally speaking the longer you can wait (the older you are) the better. Something to do with viscosity of fluid inside the eye and the risk of it tugging on the retina and causing a tear when removing the old lens, I think. Eye morphology is also a factor: people who are very myopic may have a greater risk of retinal or other damage, although statistically it's still quite rare. Opthalmologist also said that people who expect return of perfect 20/20 distance vision without glasses after cataract surgery are more likely to be disappointed than people who expect greatly improved clarity of vision, but possibly only getting 20/20 still with glasses. He also said that while nowadays you can get varifocal implant lenses, he usually recommends simple fixed power implants, especially if the degree of correction required is substantial.

Actually real chubsters present a clear safety issue. In an emergency evac, do you want to be trapped in your window seat by the lard bucket jammed into the middle/aisle seat? And if he or she can get out of the seat, then they'll plug up the aisle like a cork in a bottle. Plus they'd be much harder to climb over than oldsters or children.

I suspect that is why the 'cunning plan' to arrive into UK from Singapore, with its notoriously strict drug laws.

The good ship Fantasy is full steam ahead towards Reality Rocks. (Speaking with experience of casino feasibility studies in places like South Korea, Saipan, Cambodia, Nepal and elsewhere ...)

Side note: Parodontax sneakily changed the recipe for the original formula (non-fluoride) a year or so ago so that it tastes completely different. Loyal user for 30 years. I called the customer number on the packet and they confirmed the change. For more than a year they did not however change the packaging in any way to highlight the new formulation. They have now just done that as of a month or two back. Very tricky. Basically the new formula strips out all the natural extracts and replaces them with .... 'aroma'! Top package = new packaging finally showing that the recipe has changed Middle package = original formulation with herb extracts Bottom package = vile new formulation with 'aroma' There are still some of the original tubesnout in the market because Parodontax is an acquired taste - just reject anything with 'aroma' in the ingredients! [I know, I should get out more.]

Part of the problem is that while there are numerous out of work Thai pilots, many of them are not "ready for work" because they haven't been able to (or haven't bothered to) keep their type ratings up to date. Thailand is also right in the midst of overhauling the entire licensing and regulatory system (shift from FAA derived to EASA derived), which will make keeping class/type ratings current that much harder and more expensive (I recently spent a whole day in a riveting online training session “TCAR PEL Part FCL - Condition for the Conversion - demonstrate knowledge of the relevant parts of the operational requirements and the TCAR PEL Part - FCL regulation” ...)

A 'traffic infringement'! Give me a break. That was highly dangerous driving in a crowded public place; could so easily have ended with bystanders injured or worse if the clowns had lost control.. Try that in London and see how the cops react. Try it in Lagos and expect to be brassed up by the cops or military.

I don't think it was such a bad thing when "public displays of affection" typically meant holding hands, not buggery and blowjobs.

Perhaps he wasn't drunk but fell asleep at the wheel and that's why he crashed, leading to a severe concussion which is why he sounded incoherent. Possibly with other internal injuries. But hey, let's go to the police station first. He should get extra brownie points as he gallantly 'swerved left to avoid hitting the King's portrait, leading the car to overturn'.