williamgeorgeallen

by the books, translates to, everyone that need it got their back hander. looks like thailand may get a small refund after the company in england had its assets frozen. wonder if the money will run back through the same sets of corrupt hands to take a cut coming back the other way.

doubt any cop even in thailand would shoot for such a small target as a finger. never heard of a cop shooting at a suicidal person to stop him from killing himself. all seems wrong. most likely explanation is the gun probably malfunctioned and blew up in his hands. at least that would be more believable.

off to jomtien immigration on monday for 90 day reporting. will see if it is in effect then.

A real look at the USA national debt.

Obama began office in 2009.

The debt was $10,6 Trillion.

Interest on the GW Bush debt is around $200 Billion / year. = $1.6 Trillion

2 GW Bush wars add around = $2 Trillion.

The GW Bush financial meltdown crisis cost = $3 Trillion or so.

Obama unemployment extensions = $800 Billion.

Total $18 Trillion.

When Obama took office the GW Bush yearly budget deficit was over $1 trillion.

Currently the yearly budget deficit has fallen under $500 Billion.

The General Accounting Office places Obama job growth at 14.6 million new jobs.

US Exports are at an all time high. =1.3 Trillion last year.

Stock Market is at all time high.

Dependency on foreign oil at all time low.

Dollar strong.

Not sure why the conservatives are complaining. Things are much better than 8 years ago.

Who would want to go back to the good old days of GW bush?

things are not better than they were 8 years ago.

the national debt is now at a record 20 trillion.

house hold debt is at a record high

home ownership rates are falling, americans are becoming a nation of renters as the rich become the home owners

record numbers of people are on food stamps. many of them working jobs that dont pay them enough to live on.

the middle class is dissapearing. the rich are becoming extremely rich.

It was also sold to another 23 countries around the world. And you know the saying. You cannot con an honest man?

plenty of honest men get conned out of houses and cars by their beautiful thai brides. remember a few years ago australian bought some frigates from the yanks? aussies were not allowed to inspect the boats hull for some reason, but decided to buy them any way. replacing the rotten hulls cost more than buying the boats in the first place. and lets not mention those collins class subs they bought as well. lots of military and govt funds spent in irresponsible ways but this bomb detector one is one of the best. how hard would it have been to open the case up to look inside?

"Police have said that there is not sufficient evidence to support a charge of premeditated murder."

This should be up to prosecutor, not the cops, to decide.

maybe they didn't practice Vipassana before the crime, hence it was not "premeditated"? (sorry, didn't want to help myself)

Did they charge the girl because someone has to go down, and she doesn't have BIB parents? Are Thai men incapable of making decisions if their honey pot encourages them? "Oh, okay honey, I guess I have to do it because you told me to"

interestingly in thailand the police gather evidence and then determine what crimes have been committed. the case is then handed over to the prosecutor. i was caught with the wrong address in my work permit. 2 years later when the case was passed over to the prosecutor i was charged for not having any work permit. my lawyer said it was just easier to along with it than fight it.

there has been enough publicity for the attackers to actually be held accountable despite being related to policemen. hope we get to hear what happens and i hope the guilty do their time, not buy their way out.

most of irans planes are pre 1979. more than 35 years old. defiantly time for some new ones. and for some new cars for cuba while they are at it.just finished reading a book on the hostage crisis. interesting story. capitalism and trade between counties can help with international relations and this is a good example.

ok so i have been living in pattay for the last 8 years. almost every girl i met down there was a girl trying to get money to support their grandparents who were raising their kids. i am now staying for 5 months in esan and it has been nice to see that most that guys are actually loving fathers who look after their kids like they should. men who abandon their kids disgust me. i would like to see thai woman have some way to get some child payment from the father but this is thailand and thailand dont work that way. face is everything to thais and the majority of thais look at bargirls like they are dirt for choosing to sell themselves. next time you meet a single mother (probably in a bar) buy her an extra drink or give her a tip for making the sacrifice of degrading herself to see that her children have food and clothes.

RIP Steve.

This should be a lesson to ALL the foreigners who think that they are welcome to Thailand.

But my guess is that tomorrow the following foreigner is digging his grave in Thailand.

The lessing should be..

** Don't walk around in Thailand, with other than a Tatoo as your Identification.

Because, this could have happened to anyone..

Taking weeks, for your family, to find out you died..

The other unfortunate part..

Steve made sure his wife would get blamed, if something did happen to him..

Hopefully, he did have a huge life insurance policy, that his daughter should get..

sounds like the guy had his wallet but it went missing. if there is some sort of payout i hope the mother can manage it efficiently. also hope someone finds out what happened. after a month is may be hard to find out what is in his blood or urine.

ok so i have been living in pattay for the last 8 years. almost every girl i met down there was a girl trying to get money to support their grandparents who were raising their kids. i am now staying for 5 months in esan and it has been nice to see that most that guys are actually loving fathers who look after their kids like they should. men who abandon their kids disgust me. i would like to see thai woman have some way to get some child payment from the father but this is thailand and thailand dont work that way. face is everything to thais and the majority of thais look at bargirls like they are dirt for choosing to sell themselves. next time you meet a single mother (probably in a bar) buy her an extra drink or give her a tip for making the sacrifice of degrading herself to see that her children have food and clothes.

I was recently visiting upstate NY, a visit I make at least once a year. The town I visit, like Mount Pleasant has the best schools in the district and consequently a magnet for wealthy families.

But I noticed a change the past two visits I've made. A town which had almost no apartments is not being changed to one in which family homes are now being divided, a floor offered for rent or being sold, the above article perhaps describes why that is happening. What is surprising is this is happening in what was until very recently solid, affluent middle-class territory.

Drive only ten or fifteen miles away from the towns along the Metro North lines and the picture changes dramatically to the worse. Whole ares of private homes have, again as the article points out, been transferred from private ownership to the rental market and the power house of the US economy, middle class consumer spending, has collapsed. The most conspicuous symptom of this is the lack of new cars on the road, whenever I took British visitors to this area 10 or so years ago they almost always remarked on the number of flash, new, high end cars being driven around. There are still a lot of flash high end cars, but very few new ones.

The whole area, and much of the American middle class, has an air of hanging on to past glory.

Fear not. There is wealth about and it is growing at break kneck speed. Take a drive through The Hamptons or Newport Rhode Island and you'll get an idea of where all the money is going.

And of course, always be wary of the game of cups, the bean is never where you thought it was. While we are being constantly told to worry about the next housing bubble, the real threat to the US, and as we have been so recently reminded, therefore to the whole global economy, is not a housing crisis or mis-sold mortgages.

The threat comes from a debt Americans as individuals cannot walk away from but which collectively is the biggest smouldering financial threat going, the totally unsecured education debt.

That one has yet to play its part, but rest assured it will show its ugly face into your savings, investments, job security and pension in the not too distant future.

great post and very interesting reading. friend of mine just got back from LA and was amazed at all the homeless sleeping under bridges. i wonder if america will continue to be a world power house with a small middle class. i can see civil unrest becoming more of a problem as people realize that it is harder to live the american dream. while the house hold debt cripples the individual the 19 trillion government debt cripples the nation. very hard to see a way out of this with the economy running on consumer spending which just fuels more debt.

Texas, of all places, has actually dealt effectively with this problem. And how did they do it? Government regulations. That's right. Evil government regulations that stifle the free market. You see, back in the 80's during the Savings & Loan crisis, Texas experienced a huge amount of mortgage default due to deregulation. After being bailed out, in effect, by most of the rest of the country, Texas instituted very strict controls on mortgages. Basically, you can't get a home loan unless you came up with 20% cash of the total cost of the home. No exotic mortgage plans allowed. The result, in the last wave of mortgage defaults, virtually no problem in Texas, home of the unbridled free markets. Funny how that works.

I paid 5% down when I bought mine in Texas- and that was well after the S&L debacle.

If you can come up with 20% down, you don't have to buy PMI- Private Mortgage Insurance, which saves a couple of points on the loan.

But make no mistake, you can buy a home in Texas with very little money down.

same in new zealand. 20 percent downpayment on existing homes and 10 percent on new builds. if america followed same rules there would be far more owners and far fewer renter today. there have been something like 4 million homes foreclosed on since 2008. suicide rates show a significant increase. i heard there are more empty homes than there are homeless people in america but of course they can not afford to buy them. what a mess.

the american dream slipping away. the people who caused the housing bubble were then given more money in the forms of bail outs. interest rates are now about as low as they can go. next stimulus spending by printing treasury notes to borrow money. just how much can you stimulate an economy? whole system is based on nothing but rich people playing a game of monopoly. they dont care about the stress poverty causes on families. all come down to greed.

Instead of blaming the RTP the parents should look at themselves.

They are responsible for their 14 year old daughter, not the police.

seems the parents have allowed their 14 year old daughter to be somewhere unsupervised with alcohol. sure they are paying a high price for their mistake, i would never recover if this happened to one of my kids. could also argue the thailand as a whole is at fault for not paying the police properly to do their job. either way i dont blame the parents for at least wanting some answers and maybe a tiny bit of closure.

very sad. unfortunately the cops exist to line their own pockets. shocking how often these balcony mishaps occur.

just another way for the cops and their associated criminals to collect money from people not really doing anything wrong. remember when they banned elephants from bangkok? fair enough as they were a hazard, however they did not fine the owners of the elephants selling bananas to tourists to feed the elephants, they fined the tourists feeding them. cops dont want to stop crime, they want to profit from it.

quite funny to read all the negative stuff about ladyboys here but see support for the wider gay community.

The tourist visa plan, whether using the single-entry or multi-entry variant (the latter of which can only be obtained from one's own home country I thought), doesn't sound like a recipe for long-term success since it depends on the goodwill of the Immigration Officer on each and every one of your entries. One IO, somewhere, someday, up & decides you're "not a tourist" and the visa you thought was your guarantee of entry is suddenly not worth the page it's taking up in your passport. (And remember, the visa-issuing authority of the consulate/embassy and the immigration authority at your point-of-entry are two different arms of the Thai government.) So depending on a back-to-back succession of tourist visas for the next 16 yrs (at which point you'd be eligible for a retirement visa if you have adequate funds and things don't change) seems like quite a stretch in this day & age. Years ago it wouldn't have been a problem.

i had put a bit of thought into this while i was working in thailand. what i would do for a visa if i stayed in thailand if i stopped working and no longer had my non im B. surely having to fly home every 9 months to get a new METV would work out about the same as the elite. alot more work and hassles and no gaurntee of actually getting the METV. would be interesting to hear from anyone who actually stays he by that option. not that it will help the OP as he has no job or no money.

elite visa is the perfect visa solution for someone under 50 who has no thai children or wife. people who have this visa speak very highly of it, seems everyone else complains about it without giving any valid reasons. it works out at about 3000usd per year which is not a massive chunk out of someone who can afford to live in thailand self funded. the programme has been running for a long time and is tried and tested. i am still waiting for one good reason as to why this is not a good option to stay in thailand long term.

I do think the Thai govt will keep their promise, so it is a good option for those that think 500,000 Baht up-front for a 5-year visa is affordable ($150K USD /yr from $2.5M USD invested?) and who are absolutely certain they will stay here for 5-6 years.

That said, I earn many times the average Thai salary, and live here quite comfortably (condo by the beach), and there is no way I would "spend" that much money at once on a visa for any country (even if I were still only 44 and could get full-value). Would I put it in the bank in my name, like 50+ people can, to prove I can support myself? Sure.

The real question is, why limit the age to 50 for those who can show 800K in the bank? Maybe throw in "if the balance dips below the minimum, your have 24 hours to get out," like work-visas. Why send middle-class people to the Philippines and Cambodia to spend their 500K to 1.5M Baht /yr of foreign-sourced income? How does that benefit Thailand in any way?

there is no reason to limit the retirement age to 50. think they just like to have the control over us. 50 is not bad however as in many countries it is 60 or even 65.

I came here retired at 41, initially on tourist visas but then on Non-Imm O based on volunteer work until I was ^{50, then went for the Retirement Permit. During that time there were a few hiccups with tourist visas and scaremongering but I managed to muddle through OK.}

^{No visa is guaranteed, particularly in the current climate. Be prepared that things could change at short notice, leaving you high and dry. This is} not scaremongering just a reality of life here.

Even the Elite Visa, which personally I consider to be an expensive option, is subject to conjecture about its future on occasion.

PS- I have no idea why the text has jumped!

elite visa is the perfect visa solution for someone under 50 who has no thai children or wife. people who have this visa speak very highly of it, seems everyone else complains about it without giving any valid reasons. it works out at about 3000usd per year which is not a massive chunk out of someone who can afford to live in thailand self funded. the programme has been running for a long time and is tried and tested. i am still waiting for one good reason as to why this is not a good option to stay in thailand long term.

Good. You don't see people having heterosexual-pride parades..what gives them the right to boast their preference to everyone?

would hetros be shot at and pepper sprayed if they did have a march? hard to believe there are homophobes still out there hanging onto the old ways. freedom 4 the gays to live life like the rest of us.

need alot more info about you and your business venture to know if you would have any chance. it is a long shot at best but if you have assets to back the loan or a good thai guarantor it might be possible. will your business have assets?

Sure it's impressive. Now wait for Immigration Police to issue warnings for working without a permit and doing work that Thais could and should do.

T.A.T., take note. "Come to Thailand and clean up an amazing beach"

I often hear folks on TV warning about doing good deeds, without pay in Thailand that they will get in trouble for not having a work permit.

Yet, I have never met a person or even read a post from a person who has had problems because the volunteered to do something good for the sake of doing something good.

The whole thing behind work permits is to prevent non Thai people from taking paying jobs away from Thai people.

Unless someone has been paying Thai people to pick up trash on the beach and have lost their jobs because foreign volunteers have done such a good job that trash no longer exists....I don't see a problem.

I have volunteered to help out at my local school before ( without a work permit ) and worked right along side local police officers and Immigration officers who were also volunteering and were aware of my status and they had no problem with me helping at all.

Thai people are not as stupid and unreasonable as some foreigners would like to believe they are!

Th

well of course it is nice of them to be cleaning up the mess but it is taking a job away from a thai person so they are breaking the law, as stupid as that is. worst case of people breaking the law for volunteering was the german team of forensic experts that came over to help retrieve the bodies after the tsunami. they were ordered to stop and returned home while the bodies were left to rot in the sun. thailand is a great country to live but often i am left scratching my head.

I came here at 34, now 45, not married, no kids and don't have a business or work for anyone and have never been on the Thailand Elite visa

Each and every one of the visas I have been on has been a legal visa before anyone asks

There is ways however I will admit it is getting harder, will I be able to stay here until i'm 50 and qualify for a retirement visa? I don't know but I hope so

that was then this is now, elite is the best legal route

No use to the OP, he is not rich, and only mugs throw away money like that with no return.

no point suggesting the elite visa for this guy who can not afford it and he will need a visa to work if he has no cash. elite visa is the perfect visa for under 50 year olds. works out at 100K thb per year. thats only 3000USD per year which seems pretty good to me. i have an non im O based on my kids. if i did not have kids i would get an elite visa. 3 thousand dollars a year gets you a hassle free visa to stay in thailand. how can you say that is nothing? never heard anyone who has an elite visa complain about it. only people who seem to complain about it are those who dont know how good it is or those who can not afford it.