mfd101

I haven't yet encountered a queue long enough to try it, but getting me and my Thai b/f thru together might be an interesting experience.

Works no problem on entering Oz ("Australian & NZ passport holders and family").

32 minutes ago, Old Croc said:

Repeating the conservative governments political mantra as fact is a little disingenuous.  The boats never stopped, just the reporting of them was censored. At least Labor was honest in it's reporting to the people.

There have been at least 30 boats attempting to come to Australia since the current government came to power in 2013.

Check out Table 2 in this parliamentary report (It is probably not a complete list)

 https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/5351070.pdf

I think you'll find that the relevant table in your reference is the very first one, entitled 'Boat arrivals & boat 'turnbacks' in Australia since 1976', from the same impeccable Parliamentary Library source. It tells beautifully the story I have rather sketchily narrated above.

The lesson in all of this is: Mindless do-goodery is, quite apart from the hypocrisy involved, worse than useless.

(1) The $55m (or whatever the real figure): The cost of allowing people in willy nilly is that more keep coming and more & more. And then they get to drown in large numbers in the Indian Ocean. Some 2000 drowned as a result of Labor's stupidity a few years ago, despite the best efforts and high risks taken by RAN personnel. When the government was voted out and the Coalition came to power (largely as a result of the borders issue), the boats stopped coming and 'refugees' (genuine or not) stopped drowning. During the recent election campaign, which Labor was expected to win, the boats started arriving again. Fortunately, Labor lost ...

(2) Both Usofa - a country of immigration just like Oz, but with more difficult borders - and modern Europe (with basically no enforceable borders at all) show what happens when you lose control of your borders. The People say: No more! stop! And the fascist Right starts competing irrationally with the irrational fascist Left.

Two points:

(1) Economic refugees are not 'refugees', whether under UN definitions or according to common sense, so they have to meet Oz rules for immigration - which cover skill sets, work needs & potential, family reunion etc ... If they pass the qualification hoops, they get to join the queue;

(2) The social-political deal within Oz is the same as it would be in Usofa or Europe if they also enjoyed Australia's geographic advantage (distance + surrounded by water) - We the People will accept very high levels of immigration, including also refugees, providing You the Government keep control over our borders. Lose control (as the previous Labor government did a few years ago) and all deals are off.

9 minutes ago, JamJar said:

What have you against economic refugees?

Nothing at all against them. Sensible people, like all those Tamil 'refugees' who - in fear of their lives and with nothing but a plastic bag over their shoulder - instead of making the 40km trip across the straits to Tamil Nadu where their ancestors came from, paid for a death-dealing multi-thousand km trip to Oz to better their lives.

Great. So join the queue, Fellas. There's only about a million others ahead of you, waiting in orderly line for their turn.

Sob sob. Enough is never enough!

Most negotiations get to the '90% done' stage pretty easily, because that's how the negotiations are structured by anyone with a brain: Do the easy stuff first, make a few minor concessions so everyone's feeling good, and only then do you start into the 10% of 'difficult' or 'impossible'.

Examples: Kim & Donald love-ins; Brexit ...

5 hours ago, 473geo said:

Have a daughter approaching Uni age, the other day, out of the blue, when we were discussing her future my wife mentioned, come out of Uni, no work, nobody want......

I'm guessing a change of plan could be on the way, possibly an introduction to full time employment by family members already working in the factories, maybe the new preferred way to go

Either way the decision will be my daughters at the time, if not before, we shall see, I guess it depends if she plans for a profession, or just employment

The problem is of course that, depending on her family background & where she lives, she may have even less clue about future possibilities than her falang equivalents in The West would have.

I live here in Surin amongst the clueless peasants. We have a 16-year-old niece living with us to go to high school in Prasat. She did well enough at the village school earlier to win a scholarship from The Princess, so she has at least some potential, but there aren't too many signs of awareness of or planning for the future. 'University' looms but, in a family where only 1 aunt went to 'university' (with no outward sign of change in life style or earning capacity or a house full of books ... ), there is little awareness of anything more than 20 kilometers away or not on Youtube.

27 minutes ago, CGW said:

True! They weren't bought up as coffee drinkers, 25 years ago it was near impossible to get a passable cup of hot coffee in Thailand, Nescafe was about the only thing on offer, there were NO coffee shops or stalls.

My first visit to Vietnam a few weeks ago. Didn't have a decent expresso ('short black' to an Aussie) in the 2 weeks I was there.

I wonder what the "445000 seats" actually means. Is that the number of full-time students the Thai universities are funded for? Or is it just the first-year entry numbers?

If the former, it would be woefully small for a country of c70 million. [Australia, with 1/3 the population, has that many FOREIGN students in its university system and some 1,500,000 full-time equivalents. Whether that's good or not is a different matter ... ]

I plan next month to do a fair comparison of TW service (having transferred funds to TW in advance so that that particular blockage is removed) vs using my Oz Citibank debit card (which I have used only for atm withdrawals to date) to make ฿65K+ transfer around 20 July. Will compare timing, xrate & fees (expressed as ฿ received), & FTT showing.

Will report in due course.

6 minutes ago, theoldgit said:

 

I called TW on Thursday and they advised that the payment had been put on hold as I'd asked for it to be routed via Bankok Bank into my Bangkok Bank account, and they were looking into it, I reminded them that there was a reason for this and that my last two transfers were routed the same way.

I had the same problem at the Oz end of TW this last week: Ordered up the funds last Thursday before 0700 Thai time. All fine. Payment to BKK Bank account due next day - has always been around 1500 the next day. By around midday Friday the website was saying not due for payment till Monday. Now due this afternoon. Not obvious what the reason is but it could be, as you suggest, my ringing them - as they advised me to do each time - to have the transfer done VIA BKK Bank to BKK Bank. Why that simple task should delay receipt of the funds is beyond me ...

On 6/22/2019 at 6:43 AM, ezzra said:

Trump is playing with the Iranians just like a cat plays with a mouse before the final act, admittedly, no one wants war, least of all Iran, but Iran being Iran with it's well known passion for rhetorics and death and destructions proclamation to anyone whom they don't like, and Trump being Trump, he will hold on as long as he can before he will have to strike back, casualties or not, just to maintain and show who's boss here...

Mmmm, not entirely clear who's the cat & who the mouse.

Not sure I understand what this thread is about. Motorcyclists only? Corrupt police demanding money for no good reason? People driving without licence or with no current rego or with defective vehicle or no helmet ... ?

I get stopped (Mazda 3) here in Prasat at the same spot about 4 or 5 times a week as I'm driving to or from brunch at PTT. Usually they either just wave me thru without stopping, or if I'm in a line of vehicles they glance at me thru the window & wave me on. About once a month I get asked to show my licence (usually elsewhere). No sweat.

Since these police checks became more common over the last couple of years, I notice the number of motorcyclists & their passengers driving without helmets has declined sharply. Not sure what people are complaining about.

Clearly destined for greatness.

Churchill's private life was something else again ...

monito.com is always good to make comparisons between transfer providers including relevant banks. For me (AUD) TW always comes out 2nd best (after Singapore-based Instarem - who are impossible to join, however, if you don't still have a home-country address).

The important thing is that the comparison is between baht-in-your-account end results, while showing the process details too (xrate + fees). So no stupidities about 'X doesn't charge fees so they're the best' or 'X has the best xrate so they're the best'.

1 minute ago, GeorgeCross said:

 

err its down 22% in 2 years. how is that stable?

Perhaps his concept of 'relative' is purely relative.

I've just (Thursday) initiated my monthly transfer of funds from Oz to Thailand via TW:

(1) I initiate before 0700 Thai time & money arrives in my BKK Bank account afternoon of the next day. This was signalled on their messages this time but then the signal changed to delivery next Monday. Don't know why. Not a holiday in Oz ...

(2) Having had one occasion over the last 6 months when the intermediate bank was NOT the BKK Bank & so the transaction does not show in my bank book as FTT, TW advice by phone in Oz is that EVERY time I organize a transfer, I should ring them to ask for it to be done via BKK Bank. Works fine now. Phonecall is local cost (00500 on AIS - other service providers here have similar arrangement).

Can't quite find it but I'm sure there must be a conspiracy lurking in there somewhere.

We often see monks eating at PTT where my b/f and I have brunch most mornings. They look at us as if we were from another planet ...