mfd101

Quite apart from the rights & wrongs of BOTH sides, it's an interesting example of the difficulties caused by nation-state vs cultural diversity in Third World countries or situations (cf Philippines & Afghanistan & Kashmir and on & on).

The key difficulty often comes down to the question: Who gets to sit at the table? which has deep symbolism for everyone (as the experience above demonstrates).

You negotiate with one group, but 10 other groups stay on the sidelines watching & waiting for the next move. And each group has its own raison d'être, its own priorities, its own sensitivities & leadership aspirations ... so little progresses despite what may be good will & good faith on both sides at the table.

Nothing at all.

If you plan to leave Thailand permanently or longterm or visit in future only for short stays, then - once you have your latest extension - you can do whatever you like with your money.

But you can't change your mind half-way through ...

www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/george-pell-result-the-catholic-church-never-expected/news-story/eddd4fc3a4b8289b0067dce8b4618186

Anyone remember 'recovered memory syndrome'? All the rage in Usofa about 20 years ago - screams 'n sobs, families broken up, accusations of adult children against their startled parents, law cases galore ... And then, after several years of hysteria, it all went away, as the lawyers & psychiatrists realized that an honest man or woman - even (or perhaps especially) a deeply traumatized one - may be mistaken & may fabricate all sorts of bizarre stories.

I have no way of knowing the truth or falsity of the charges against George Pell. But the handling of the case by the Victorian Police and the media, & noting the peculiar repeat court proceedings, has all the marks of a witch hunt. It will be fascinating to follow the appeal process. Given the 22-year old events alleged, with no evidence to support, and given the small but sensible arguments against the very possibility of what is alleged, I think if I had been on the jury I would have found it difficult to find guilt BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT.

2 hours ago, RotBenz8888 said:

Why didn't he fly straight to Canada? 

He was after adventure. Heading for Thailand.

Sigh. There are conspiracies everywhere. I just don't know which way to turn!

1 hour ago, Snow Leopard said:

If the Baht keeps getting stronger exports will keep falling and tourists will stop coming. A strong Baht hurts millions and helps very few. 

Well, a strong baht keeps imports cheaper than they otherwise would be. Which helps not just 'rich people' but also the slowly increasing Thai middle classes, who also consume imported goods.

But yes, some things will suffer with a strong baht. Tourism is an obvious example. If there is enough suffering, the baht will fall ...

Conclusion: Any large modern or even semi-modern economy is immensely complex. At any one time, some things are going up, some things are going down, and some things are stable. The economists' figures are just averages of activity & complexity over time. We don't have anything better to go on for the big picture.

24 minutes ago, JimHuaHin said:

If you follow the Thai government's announcements and believe the Thai government data, the Thai economy is growing great.

 

If you walk around the shopping centres and markets and talk to staff - the economy is in the shit.

 

If you talk to people who work in hotels, most will tell you that there are fewer clients than in last year, and teh year before, .....

 

And if you talk to the average Thai, they will say financially life is a growing struggle.

And as for expats, if they live in Pattaya or Phuket & think things are quiet, then they'll believe anything bad about the economy. And if, like me, you live in southern Isaan on the west-east axis, it's hard to believe anything other than that the economy is booming, and a large number of formerly poor people are driving around on 4 wheels, some very new & smart.

2 comments:

(1) I think it's possible to overestimate the 'dependence on China' issue. As with the Australian economy, there's the basic real & very diverse economy and there's the Chinese icing on top. The icing may be quite thick (in Australia's case) or not that thick at all (in Thailand - take away the Chinese tourists), but the underlying diverse economy is still there beneath.

(2) People here always ascribe too much importance to national governments, and it's the same in Western countries. Governments provide arm waving (known as 'leadership') & they facilitate (or not) ie they stand aside & remove barriers. But the important thing they don't do is: Create wealth. That is done by individuals & groups of individuals cooperating with hard work & sound understanding. The only thing that investors require - both domestically & internationally - is stability ie social & legal predictability. As with civilian governments, these can be provided (or not) by military governments. And very high quality authoritarian regimes (Singapore) can be very stable.

A new version of the Long March. The CCP will be jealous.

For those who have problems dealing with locally engaged staff in the consular area: This is the norm in every Oz Embassy & HIgh Commission everywhere in the world (and no doubt the same for every other 'Western' country too). Saves HUGE labour costs with Aussies. A nice example of pricing yourself out of the market ...

As long as they are well-trained & professional (as they certainly are in BKK), what's the problem? If you had Aussies doing the consular jobs, the price to you would double again!

My experience of visiting the Embassy on expat business (ie stat decs etc) is that they are very efficient (in & out quickly) and have pleasant & courteous professional, locally engaged staff.

I'm with AIS here. To call Oz you dial 00500 + 66 + Oz phone number without initial zero. Very cheap.

One of the problems with personal income tax is that those who should be paying a lot of tax are often able to dodge paying much or anything. And that applies also in 'Western' countries whose corruption levels are way lower than here.  If the figure above of some 10 million registered for personal income tax is accurate, however, that sounds about right for the Thai population, given widespread poverty. It would be interesting to know what proportion of the government's income comes from personal income tax.

A partial solution is indirect taxation (ie GST/VAT or other taxes on consumption). That's quite an effective way for governments to rake in the shekels but of course it's non-progressive except to the extent that richer people consume more consumables of all kinds than poorer people.

As far as I know, none of them make the top 500 universities in any of the various standard world rating lists - which in general emphasize research rather than just teaching bored undergraduates ...

I've used TW twice now (Dec & Feb) to transfer 65K+ into my BKK Bank accounts. [January was when I had a seniors moment & transferred by Swift from my Oz bank to BKK Bank. Sob sob.]

All fine. Quick & easy to initiate. From Oz it has - so far - taken 1.5 days to show up [from 0700 initiation one day to around 1600 notification next day]. Shows as FTT in my bankbook.

[On the latter it strikes me that it would be inefficient & costly to TW if their transfer to a BKK Bank account went thru a different Thai bank, given that the deal with them has already been agreed by you hours in advance. Doesn't make sense, so I expect it may be a rare event - perhaps (I'm speculating) when, say, BKK Bank computers are down or overloaded?]

I take it Dee are still only for exporting funds from Thailand, not importing to?

Lots of Thai illegals in Oz. That's why you have to go thru the hoops to get your Thai partner in the door.

I'm not a technical person but here's my observation (based on TOT fibre here in Surin) and trying various speed tests:

(1) Your service provider always LOVES Speedtest/Ookla and the reason (I think) is because it shows you only your PEAK speed during the 20-second test. If it showed the AVERAGE you get during the test (as does, for example, testmy.net) your results would then be MUCH less impressive.

(2) Your service provider always wants to run just the local (to BKK) service, which is quite impressive. But for most of us (including me) that's almost entirely irrelevant. I want to know what I'm getting from Sydney or LA or London or Paris. And again, the results then are MUCH less impressive.

43 minutes ago, Artisi said:

Falls far short of "designed to prevent the poorest and least educated from casting a valid vote."

I think it had that effect fairly consistently over its first 80 years and it would be astonishing if the various generations of politicians had been unaware of that.

Indeed, how could they be? It was often discussed in the Oz media, particularly from the 1970s on as Oz society changed, becoming more open, 'liberal' (in the proper senses of the term), practically egalitarian as opposed to merely theoretically, & multicultural.

2 hours ago, Artisi said:

Would you like to explain how the Australian system is designed to prevent the poorest and least educated from casting a valid vote. Looking forward to your considered response. 

It has a complicated history & I'm not about to type out a 3-page history lesson. You can look at Wikipedia for that. Three points:

(1) At the federal level - and no doubt at State level as federal practice spread across all States & territories - for the first 80 years (roughly 1920-2000) preferential voting favoured right-of-centre parties because there were 2 or 3 such parties. That's why preferential voting was introduced in the first place in 1918 & the 1920s. [All that of course quite apart from the much greater mathematical 'fairness' of preferential over first-past-the-post voting.]

(2) And it was the right-of-centre parties that, from the 1970s to 1990s, refused all moves to simplify the Senate proportional preferential voting system. And there's not much doubt why that was so. Once the changes were made by an ALP government, the heavens did not fall (contrary to conservatives' expectations).

(3) Ironically at present the system favours the ALP (left-of-centre) because of the multiple small lefty parties & assorted ratbag 'independents'.

In politics, as in life, perfection is a counsel of despair.

31 minutes ago, Zack61 said:

If what you say is true why would they make voting compulsory? Not sure you have thought this through. 

Voting is one thing. Casting a valid vote - one that will be counted in the election outcome - is another.

31 minutes ago, Fex Bluse said:

False equivalence. Western countries would not have had the benefit of someone else with mastery teaching them - because they were pioneers.

 

OK, but - at each stage of technical advance or at least change - they still had to build from what was there before. No different from here, except somewhere like 20-50 years behind the educational & skills game here (the quantity depending on the particular skillset).