rickudon

The vast majority of USA citizens pay little if any income tax. and welfare seems to be to easy to get. How about a novel alternative? Give everyone welfare, at a subsistence level. Pay income tax on EVERYTHING you earn (no tax free allowances). May seem very socialist, but if you give everyone a welfare payment, no need for massive bureaucracy too administer it. Because everyone gets welfare payment, they can afford higher income tax payments. For those who are to lazy to work, they get just enough to survive - if they want more money, they have to work.

And who pays for that? Like so many other services, efficiency cuts mean money not spent on it. The climate is changing, and with it comes consequences.

I live on 5,000 baht a month. But the wife spends 35,000 baht....

OP sounds like one character we used to have in Udon Thani. Used to bemoan that farangs dressed improperly when going out, especially when going to government offices. Said we should wear proper leather shoes, long socks, long trousers, button up shirt and a jacket! Hell i am retired, on permanent holiday and the temperature is often in the mid 30s centigrade. I wear for comfort. Sandals, shorts, proper short sleeved shirt. That's it. Udon Thani does tend to have more 'blue collar' retirees than some other places, but there are interesting intellects to be found, if you look in the right places. Just need a few more Bridge players!

8-9 times a day. I do have CKD, BPH and Urgency issues if i stand up after sitting or laying down for some time. Overnight - go around midnight and usually one other time. In the morning usually go 2-3 times within 2 hours, after that OK. I take Duodart and it does help provide a better flowrate. Hopefully also shrinks the Prostate, but no proof of that yet. Since CKD diagnosed, have upped my liquid intake slightly, and Urine colour nearly always clear to pale yellow.

So many solar lights around these days it is hard to see the stars. Trees? they clean the air, provide shade, fix carbon and produce a useful product - wood. Maybe I am lucky that my entire life, apart from University, was spent in small rural towns and villages or suburbia - always had a garden (and trees). Cities are for work, not play. I also spent a year in a camp in the Kakadu national park. I saw animals you never will.

That is one thing i totally agree with. BUT i wonder how many of those belonged to corporate attendees going there to try and influence the outcome. This analysis is worth a read https://theconversation.com/cop27-will-be-remembered-as-a-failure-heres-what-went-wrong-194982#:~:text=Geopolitics&text=The invasion meant that oil,act boldly on fossil fuels.

Aseannow is becoming a haven for conspiracy theorists (with no theory) and deniers. Yes, it is sad that the 'climate emergency' keeps getting exaggerated by the media to get more clicks. BUT look at the facts. 1. CO2 levels have been steadily rising, higher than any level in the last 800,000 years. Man now accounts for about 5% of all planetary CO2 emissions, and the carbon cycle cannot deal with that extra amount. 2. Average global temperatures have been rising steadily for the last 140 years (when good records began) and is now increasing at more than 0.1 degrees Centigrade a decade and the rate is increasing. 3. Average Sea levels are rising (currently at 3mm per year) Those are 3 measurable FACTS. (there are others). The world is already seeing more extreme weather events, and other events, such as coral bleaching, more frequent larger forest fires, melting permafrost and glaciers. There are certain events which once they start are very difficult to stop and reverse. These include changes to AMOC (the Gulf stream), the dying of the Amazon forest (part due to climate change, part due to deforestation) and the loss of habitat for many important species of Animals and plants. I wish they would stop saying '10 years to save the world' or whatever, but there will almost certainly be some dramatic changes during this century if we keep our CO2 and other emissions up. Can we stop it? Not with you lot of pathetic non-believers.

Similar to my experience, except they didn't even want my UK address or any UK tax data! Just really the statement that i wasn't a USA citizen or liable for USA tax

Fish make the best pets. Do not wander off and annoy the neighbours. Not noisy. Can go away on holiday and not need to get someone in to feed them every day.

And the perpetrator hated Islam.....

I'm not a city person, and Bangkok is the last place i would want to live, Crowded, traffic bad, air pollution and relatively expensive. Rural life just outside an urban centre best - can get into town in 15 minutes by car, hospitals and supermarkets the same. I have a Fair sized garden at the house, farm and fishponds 200 metres away. have internet and Netflix. Socialise once a week, too busy for more often!

I maintain 3 UK bank accounts with monthly transactions on all of them. I have 3 pensions paid into my UK bank accounts, pay income tax and maintain a UK address. So far not had any issues (apart from new cards going only to the UK address). I have my foreign SIM registered with them all. WISE not an option, have had problems with them. Not expecting any change in the near future.

So would you vaccinate your children against measles? Only kills about 100,000 people (mainly young children). And do you use a fluoridated toothpaste?

52% of Thais are self employed, mainly in majority cash flow businesses. Most are not registered for income tax, and Thailand would have to employ another million on the public sector payroll to be able to assess their incomes!

And i spend 2-3 times that in Thailand every year - but i am just a retiree.

All 5 of those statements are totally untrue. Hardly contagious - Only took a few months starting from the first cases in a country to spread nationwide. No Pandemic - definition "a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease over a whole country or the world at a particular time." Worldwide, nationwide in most countries. And nearly everybody eventually caught it, although some may have had it and were asymptomatic. Some caught it more than once. And no recent Flu epidemic has either killed as many or infected as many. PCR tests provide no diagnostic information about Covid-19 - Strange - for those who had to do regular tests (e.g. school children like my daughter), who only tested positive twice, and each time she was definitely sick. I didn't need to be tested most of the time, but when i caught it it was unlike any normal cold - and i tested positive. Masks are 100% ineffective at preventing transmission - A laughable claim. Maybe not 100% effective, but masks have been used for years with infectious disease, and numerous tests have been done that show you reduce aerosols of virus and bacterial particles to some degree. The social distancing rule was complete nonsense - How effective it was is open to question, but it is a fact - you need to have had some 'contact' with someone to catch it - either by touching a contaminated surface or breathing in air borne virus. Avoiding sick people was obvious. We were lucky that the virus mutated into a less virulent form fairly rapidly, so the death rate gradually fell; vaccinated people were statistically shown to have lower death rates. This decline in virulence is the normal progression for most infectious diseases. The only 'conspiracy theory' which has any any truth to it was the origin - yes a laboratory leak is quite possible. Just to much coincidence that the outbreak started in a city with a laboratory studying Corona viruses. Chinese secrecy makes proving this now difficult.

Got a reliable link for that? Seems dubious. End of 2023, there were approximately 28,441,000 households in the UK. 5,400,000 households were on Universal credit. So it would be nearly impossible for 51% of British families to be on Universal credit, unless there where more immigrant families than British people (and what is a 'British' family?) As to be expected, this thread is full of disinformation. https://www.ibisworld.com/uk/bed/number-of-households/44090/ https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/universal-credit-statistics-29-april-2013-to-11-january-2024/universal-credit-statistics-29-april-2013-to-11-january-2024#households-on-universal-credit

The cat is out of the bag. The black chin tilapia is now widespread, probably impossible to exterminate. Any realistic attempt to do so would mean poisoning all waterways where they are found - killing everything. Not really practical. Best they can do is promote harvesting them (electrofishing better than netting). They seem to thrive in polluted water, maybe cleaning up the pollution would help.

Pollution monitor?

Hmm yes, like a small derelict navy, and also a number of public buildings as well. If Israel was concerned about 'strategic' weapons, why did they never hit them before? Maybe because they were afraid it would weaken Assad too much? Israel didn't care about how many Syrians Assad killed. Likewise, they never targeted the rebels either. The last thing Israel wanted was an end to the Syrian civil war.

Israel is not attacking ISIS - they never have. They only care about weakening and destabilizing their neighbours, unless they do what Israel wants.

To be fair, a 2,8% rise means that with inflation at 2.6% they will end up worse off (yet again). At first thought you might think they are 0.2% better off - but remember personal allowances are frozen and the increase is taxed - so effectively the rise is worth one third less in real terms i.e. take home pay rises by only about 1.9% in nominal terms and about -0.9% in real terms (other deductions will also apply, like pension deductions). And - even less for higher rate tax payers. In 2024, average UK pay nominally increased by 6.0% and 2,9% in real terms. So Public sector pay gets robbed again. Then you wonder why staff retention is a problem.

Compared to UK, my housing costs are around 60% less. Can grow veg and fruit for most of the year. Have my own fish ponds. Younger wife. Car running costs about 50% cheaper. Can afford Cheese, which is actually only slightly more than the UK.

Meanwhile, Israel is taking advantage of this collapse, carrying out over 250 air attacks on Syrian targets and has seized even more of the Golan hights. They are, they claim, destroying arms stockpiles etc. Reality is Israel wants to see Syria as weak as possible, also use divide and rule - will probably try to provoke more sectarian violence. Last thing they want is a strong, unified Syria.