rickudon

I retired at 57, having my (then) 30 years in the bag. But the new state pension was then started just before my 65 years of age pension date - but i now needed 35 years! Had to return to UK and sign back on as unemployed. Didn't claim JSA, but got the pension credit. Fortunately they credited me for some incomplete years and i soon got the 35. However, as i had been contracted out of full rate NI for 25 years, they deducted 1/6th from the new state pension rate - which strangely enough gave me exactly the same as the old state pension rate - minus the married/widows pension benefits i had expected when retiring. Do not count your chickens until they hatch, as they say.

Sorry deniers, Most glaciers are retreating - 85% of Arctic glaciers are retreating. Mid-latitude mountain ranges are showing some of the largest proportionate glacial losses. Examples for such mountain ranges are the Himalayas in Asia, Rocky Mountains in North America, the Alps in Europe, the Cascade Range in North America, Southern Alps in New Zealand, the southern Andes in South America, as well as isolated tropical summits such as Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa. Those that are not are probably due to increased snowfall. And yes, it is due to climate change. You may argue that the human impact is small, it is not. Plenty of evidence. On the other hand, pretty close to zero evidence for other causes. It is not all CO2, but also other emissions from Industry (or lack of, the reduction in smoke and SO2 has resulted in warming, still due to us humans). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850

So, is Israel going to give up all the land they have occupied since then? Even the 1948 partition plan was heavily biased - 56% of the land was allocated to israel, while they made up only about 33% of the population of Israel (a lot of whom were recent migrants). At the time, the UN consisted mainly of European and American (North and South) countries. Zionist lobbying in the USA led to pressure being applied to many wavering countries to vote yes to the partition plan. European countries were sympathetic, largely due to the holocaust. Was it not surprising that the Palestinian Arabs and their Arab neighbours went to war?

The Falklands war showed that anti-ship missiles can seriously damage large ships. Ukraine's Neptune missiles have done most of the damage to larger Russian Warships; drones have had a cost effective success rate against smaller vessels. Submarines and aircraft put an end to close blockade in the 20th century, missiles and drones are doing the same in the 21st. Just like on the land battlefields, nations will need to update their defences at sea. As for the future, a British scientific autonomous submarine just completed a 5 month research trip, alone, both near surface and at depth. The implications for conventional naval warfare is going to need a big rethink.

The original post could have been lifted from a typical UK insurer, but most Thai insurers do not provide these, just the dashcam discount. Pretty rubbish original post.

When i came to Udon 15 years ago, i found most expats friendly and helpful, made a few friends. There was an expat meetup once a month which would see about 20 people turn up. Unfortunately all started to change about 3 years later. Other expats stopped saying hello to strangers, the monthly meetup attendance fell until i was alone or just one or two others. Had up to 12 people at our local bridge club, now down to 4 or 5, but half over 80 now, haven't been able to recruit anyone new in 5 years. Had 3 fishing companions, one dead, one gone and one had a stroke and doesn't fish anymore. I think many are just too old and sit at home most of the time. Others have become conspiracy nuts or take offence at the slightest perceived offence. Declining exchange rates and frozen pensions have not helped. It is true i have never met so many people who admitted to being criminals here! I must admit i rarely socialise with other expats now, as bars not my thing and i stopped drinking (rarely drank much anyway, stopped when wine taxes made it as expensive as imported spirits). Only know of one social gathering on a Friday, but other side of town and conflicts with school pickup, so rarely go. If you live in Udon Thani and would like to play bridge (no experience necessary) or go fishing I am still friendly enough! Can PM me.

To vague to be of much use. And can you scam an AI into giving access to an account?

I love trump, he lies more than i do!

Just a load of thugs. Bald heads, overweight and beefed up on steroids. The SA (Hitler's brown shirts) would have loved them.

Mine is from the UK, no flat fee, just MC exchange rate, which compares quite well to Wise when you factor in their fees.

Look again - the lower temperatures are still going up. Every year has been warmer than 2013, you cannot take one warm year and use that as the basis that temperatures are going down. And the USA is suffering colder winters due to the Jetstream moving, which has offset warmer summers, slowed USA warming. Anyway, the global temperatures have been up nearly every year. Lots of high temperature records broken the last 3 or 4 years. for some actual figures, here you are, decadal temperature anomalies. As you can see, running at about 0.2 degrees centigrade per decade. Using decades wipes out the 'noise' of individual years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record

TallguyJohn; Obviously if you intend spending a lot of time out of your home country, look for and get a card with free foreign use. My credit card allows fee free foreign cash withdrawals and purchases. Just need to pay off the debt quickly or the interest mounts up. Been doing the counter withdrawal ever since they introduced the Thai ATM fee.

No one thought to mention, if someone has given you genital warts, you might have HIV or some other disease as well. Time for some tests.

USA should put a Thai style defamation law into practice. Then Trump could get massively rich by suing everybody who mentions his lies. Still a way to go to make USA like Thailand though... scrap SS, most labour laws, and stop feeding the homeless.

So 2 people who cannot analyse a graph so far. Average temperature shown in this graph has increased by 2 degrees Fahrenheit between the 1990's and the 2010's. Your just looking at one hot year, not the averages over several years. More dumb deniers.

I worked twice in scientific jobs which were well paid - but the back stabbing, working conditions (once worked a 36 hour shift!, no extra pay) were tough. Got a government job for half the pay, but much less stress. Then government job ended (outsourced) back to private sector, worked for IBM - i thought they would be more professional, but all i saw were people hammering square pegs into round holes and only interested in getting moved to the next post before their chickens came to roost. And the back stabbing again - accused of doing an audit wrong (i didn't) so they could deny a pay rise and make me redundant. They had to employ 3 people to do the work i did and then within months stopped doing it at all! At least the redundancy/early retirement let me move to Thailand...

As for Thai tax, not a problem for me as i am retired and also have a government UK pension (not taxable in Thailand). Anyway, when married and retired you do not pay tax on 40,000 baht a month. Unfortunately UK not so generous. Have to pay tax there, tax goes up every year. Fortunately do not live in Bangkok, so do not care about MRT and BTS....

Nothing wrong with most Thai hotels. Never had a problem with cleanliness, once power points didn't work. Far worse hotels in UK. And in Thailand, can still get a room for under 1,000 baht a night. Problems with Thai tourism - Chinese, Russians and taxi drivers.

photo of blueberries is captioned as blackberries, sloppy work.

I do a counter withdrawal every month at Krungsri. Most Krungsri branches allow this without a fee. You will still have to pay the fee of your card issuer. I use a credit card and have no problem withdrawing 50,000 baht a time.

Have never seen a python in Udon Thani in 16 years. Have seen 4 metre water snakes, but not pythons. Strangely enough, one of a similar size also attacked my brother-in-laws chickens only 2 weeks ago here. Their extending their range?

Thete is nothing wrong with Thais speaking Thsi. The problem is the 44 or more characters, tones and other symbols. As has already been said, Reading and writing Thai is a struggle because of the script. And how do they start teaching reading and writing in Thai nursery schools? The 26 character alphabet. Also, the inability to transcribe Thai characters/words into the alphabet with any consistency causes chaos in translation, which impacts on Thais learning foreign languages.

I just completed this quiz. My Score 40/100 My Time 105 seconds  

The entire roof of Global house in Udon Thani is covered in solar panels. It shows that businesses n Thailand are realising the value of renewable power, it isn't just a scam.

Carp are quite edible, still popular in europe, i have eaten them, and other types of carp in Thailand, no problem. Sure, i would prefer Salmon or swordfish, but those are rather expensive! The Black chin Tilapia are not really predators, but omnivores. They just yend to outcompete other fish. The main problem with selling them is their size, rarely bigger than 6 inches, so a lot of work for a small amount of flesh.