paulbj2

1 hour ago, Anton9 said:

How many of those people really died of Covid?

I can tell you in Italy they are counting as Covid-related deaths people who had virus 2 months ago, tested negative and died due to other ilnesses or old age.

This Covid madness really needs to stop.

The WHO recommends using excess deaths as a measure of Covid-19 mortality - I only have the figures for one country, the UK, however, using those publicly available figures, the UK has the worst death toll from the virus, per capita, in the entire world. Using excess deaths takes into account all deaths, whether or not Covid-19 was diagnosed, and compares it to an historical average of the past 5 years for the same period. Government Covid-19 death figures can very easily be manipulated but the registration of deaths is much more difficult to fiddle!

1 minute ago, paulbj2 said:

I believe that's what happens in Luxembourg. The aggrieved party's insurance pays out then the insurers claim against the drunk driver

I was involved in a "no fault" (on my part) accident in Belgium when some idiot came flying out of a blind side road that had a "Stop" sign controlling it's access to the main road I was on. I glanced in my read view mirror and when I looked back at the road in front there was a car about 1 metre in front of me - I didn't even have time to hit brakes before I slammed into the side of it. Luckily I was only doing about 60 KPH (40 MPH). Equally luckily for me, there was a Police car two cars behind me, so they were on the scene in seconds. The driver of the other car failed a roadside breath test very convincingly, but was persuaded to sign a comprehensive admission of liability at the local Police station, thereby miraculously passing a second breath test. That is what some Police have been known to do in some circumstances as it works out better for all parties. The insurers pay up and everyone is happy (except the insurers). In this case, I imagine the insurers were very unhappy as my car was near brand new Lotus Elise (value 40,000 €uros) and hers was a recent Fiat Punto (value around 8000 €uros); an expensive night for her insurers!

3 hours ago, overherebc said:

For it to work in Thailand considering the wages here then the only way would be for the gov' to pay for the repairs and chase the money from the drunk driver and jail them if they don't pay, or if their vehicle has value take it and sell it to recoup some of the money.

In the case of jail for non payment by the drunk driver quite a few new prisons would have to be built.

I believe that's what happens in Luxembourg. The aggrieved party's insurance pays out then the insurers claim against the drunk driver

On 05/04/2018 at 2:57 PM, Peabody said:

Kind of punishes the victims, doesn't it?

The same applies in, at least, some European countries. If you have an accident whilst over the 50mg limit enforced in Belgium and Luxembourg you are, by law, uninsured. It happened to someone I know; he worked in a bar in Luxembourg City and overindulged a bit one night, lost control on a patch of ice and wrote off his own car by slamming into a brand new BMW 7 series that just happened to be coming the other way on the same stretch of road. The courts concluded that it was his fault as he had been driving too fast for the conditions and he didn't have winter specification tyres on his vehicle, he was banned from driving for 1 month, fined and ended having to pay for the BMW out of his own pocket - it took him 10 years!

I can't help thinking that carbon monoxide could have been part of the problem here. The  fire-bed of a BBQ is not going to have a sufficient supply of air to enable complete combustion of charcoal so instead of carbon dioxide, highly poisonous carbon monoxide would be produced in significant quantities. The effect of monoxide is cumulative as it gradually converts the oxygen transporting haemoglobin in the blood to Carboxyhaemoglobin which is a persistent and stable compound that cannot transport oxygen around the body. That is what makes carbon monoxide poisonous. 

On ‎28‎/‎10‎/‎2013 at 10:34 PM, beachproperty said:

I don't think its a case of quote "Thai people just cant imagine a young farang not wanting the date a Thai woman."...

Its more that the Thai women (now not all) WANT a farang husband....somehow in their mind I think it equates to MONEY and being treated better....

think of all the children up in the Northeast who live in these villages and the Thai's with the NICEST houses , cars etc. are the ones who are married to farangs.....so what do you think these young girls aspire to when they grow up ....."Marry a Farang"?

Not saying its right...not even saying its true....its just one mans opinion

When I first arrived in Thailand, I paid a female taxi driver to show me round the town. Within an hour of me getting into her car, she was trying to fix me up with a Thai wife/girlfriend - apparently many westerners who come here are looking for just exactly that, or at least, more or less expect it to happen. So far I have escaped the attentions of any Thai women (more or less). 

On ‎03‎/‎07‎/‎2017 at 8:51 AM, FolkGuitar said:

Chinese herbal called "Gracku." Sold in most of the larger pharmacies such as PharmaChoice, and many of the smaller ones too.  About 350 baht for 6 capsules. Taken on an empty stomach, they are effective for 24-36 hours. VERY effective. Almost comically so.  Little Willie thinks he's 16 again, and jumps up at the sight of anything with curves.   The enclosed directions say to take 1-2 capsules daily. Frankly, I'd be afraid to take more than one every two days!  Very potent stuff (no pun intended.)

I would hesitate to use Chinese herbal remedies unless I was absolutely sure of all their potential side effects. The reason I say that is that a few years back when Chinese medicine first started to be accepted in the west, researchers were astonished to find that a Chinese herbal concoction that had been prescribed in China for 100s of years was almost 100% effective at treating intractable eczema and they were hugely enthusiastic about finding what active compounds were in it and attempting to synthesize them or at least standardize their extraction reliably to make the treatment more precise (and of course to make loads of money out of it). They kicked off their research with standardized, double blind, human trials on the original herbal concoction and, although they found it was incredibly effective, they also found that it did significant damage to the liver and was thus health, and eventually life-threatening, if used over a long period as it would need to be for therapeutic benefit (it wasn't a cure for eczema, it was a palliative measure). 

Having travelled Business Class in a 787 Dreamliner, I would recommend avoiding the godammed awful contraptions at any price. I flew Oman Air, Bangkok to Muscat and I was amazed to think that anyone could think this was an acceptable aircraft to fly passengers in! The noise levels were simply unbelievable; so much so that I couldn't sleep. The seating, even in Business class was horrendously uncomfortable and the design and ergonomics of the Business class environment was simply appalling; tacky, tasteless plastic. The onward leg of the journey, from Muscat to London, was in a Airbus A333 (A330-300) and the Busines class environment in that aircraft was much quieter, much more comfortable and the environment far better designed than in the 787. On another occasion, on a direct Thai Airways Airbus A380 flight from London to Bangkok, I was in "cattle truck class", aft of the engines but, in stark contrast to the 787 Dreamliner, even on the take-off run, the noise of the engines was barely audible and the aircon, the major source of noise on the 787, was whisper quiet. 

These days I will change airlines and even pay slightly more to avoid the "787 Nightmareliner" unless the flight is pretty short.

Never forget that London Heathrow airport was once colloquially know as "Thief-row" due to the near certainty that anything of value in checked-in baggage would vanish if it passed through Heathrow baggage handling. The unions were so powerful back in those days, that that the management of Heathrow were afraid to tackle the problem head-on for fear of strike action or work-to-rules 

In the end, if I remember correctly, cameras disguised as new lighting units were installed in the baggage halls and when the Police had accumulated enough evidence, they did a mass bust and dozens of baggage handlers had their residences searched and were charged with multiple counts of theft; many of those charged, quite rightly, went to prison. The unions didn't utter a word as even they couldn't be seen to support blatant theft in the face of absolutely incontrovertible evidence. Theft from baggage is an insidious form of dishonesty that is, even today, fairly common throughout the world.

On ‎14‎/‎02‎/‎2018 at 6:44 PM, mdmayes said:

Two problems I see with this. 1. To have a system up and running (bug free) in six months is a very tall order. Tall as in Mount Everest tall. 2. This will mean hour upon hour upon hour of line ups at immigration coming into the country. Having to enter your own info at electronic stations. I forcast that it will be one big cluster at the airports.

Before I retired, I used to be a software engineer and the idea that you could spec out, design, code, test and roll out a system like that in six months gave me the biggest laugh of the week so far! If they are looking for a project manager (scapegoat), for 500,000 Baht a month, I wouldn't take the bloody job! 

I would say something more like 12 months to prepare the spec and design the system, 12 months to do the coding then a further 12 months to test and debug it and finally another 12 months to rollout the hardware and software to all international airports. 

That's a realistic total of four years - not six months. However, this is a civil service job and, based on my experience of working for very large bureaucratic organizations like that, in various parts of the world,  I would say that you need to add 50% - 100% to that timescale to allow for "bureaucratic lag".

I guess if you put the whole project in the hands of a decent software house, you might be able to do better than four years but I doubt it and in any case the probably wouldn't do that!

On ‎14‎/‎02‎/‎2018 at 4:47 PM, wgdanson said:

Now they will really have to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10.

No problem there are hacked copies of Windoze 10 available "very cheap" at almost any market if you know where to look!

19 hours ago, wakeupplease said:

vacasianhotel.com

 

What is going on here this domain name has never been registered so therefor it never existed as a website

 

Any idiot can check, except the BIB by the looks of things

 

is this a bib scam?

 

Try it yourself

 

https://www.whois.com

and

https://www.domainhistory.net

I managed to find the registration; no problem! The only thing that I find a little strange is that it is dated yesterday!

2 hours ago, globin said:

Regulation and continuing pure propaganda to justify the 100% increase in tariff to patients legitimately requiring this medicine.

A friend of mine who suffers acute back pain after breaking his back was initially given Tramadol but then his doctor put him on Morphine Sulphate tablets instead as he said they were much safer than Tramadol. That says it all I think!

I am connected through LeVPN and it's now working fine BUT I have changed the time-zone on my machine to "London". I think this may have something to do with it.

Yep - I have three different VPN services available and several different browsers but today, no browser loads the BBC and shows iPlayer as available and if I try to use the iPlayer downloads app, it comes back with "not available" same as you describe!

On 2017-6-7 at 9:40 PM, mikiea said:

english breakfast tea money ...............bada bada bing 

Presumably because he had a passport and had not been charged with any offence, he had only been called in for questioning. If he turned up in a wheel chair and given the history of the cases which the Police would have known all about, they would probably think him too ill to do a runner so they didn't bother to call in his passport. According to the reports I have read, it turns out he was swinging the lead but I guess he was pretty convincing and had a top lawyer working for him.

I was shocked to the core when I read about this; I couldn't believe what I was reading! 

Back in the early 1990s, I did a load of building work for John Stageman and his wife, I eventually rented one of his flats so he was also my landlord for 10 years and I managed his portfolio of rental properties in the town where I lived. I knew the guy really quite well and if someone, say in a bar, had told be that John was a paedophile, I would not have believed them! A bad tempered old bear sometimes, for sure, but a "kiddy-fiddler" - I would never have thought it. Don't get me wrong, I am not disputing his guilt or excusing what he did in any way at all, but I am very, very surprised. It just goes to show - even people you know quite well; you never really know them! I understand in the original failed case earlier in the 2000s, his wife Lynne was accused of being implicated as an accessory. That I do find completely impossible to believe. She was a delightful woman - as kind and caring a soul as you could ever hope to meet. I understand that she divorced him a while back, understandably perhaps, and that she herself died quite suddenly, just recently.  RIP Lynne.

13 minutes ago, al007 said:

For the benefit of the less well educated of which there are many participating on this thread, could you describe a GOOD KNOBBING a little more graphically or explicitly so we can understand, cannot find this in the Oxford English dictionary or Rodgers Thesaurus

 

Appreciated

 

God Bless

I take issue with "good knobbing"! If she has been offering sexual gratification for financial reward, that seldom includes much selflessness on the part of the males involved in the deal; "wham-bam thank-you maam. Sack now empty off you go!" Is generally more the style, or so I'm told.

5 hours ago, klauskunkel said:

I help with this:

If it yells "akbar", it's a terrorist - kill it

if it yells 'stripbar", it's a tourist - don't kill it

Nah - all the strip-bars are down the side of Brussels North station, not Brussels Central!

3 minutes ago, little mary sunshine said:

5000 guys.....really, she should take a course not

attempt to Teach one.

What  like a course of antibiotics, you mean!

Just now, HiSoLowSoNoSo said:

Maybe she needs the money for a boob job, they look like they are sagging.  

1 minute ago, HiSoLowSoNoSo said:

Maybe she needs the money for a boob job, they look like they are sagging.  

1 hour ago, simon43 said:

How old is she?  The news article doesn't say, but maybe 35.  If she started dating at 16 years old (possibly as a requirement of her 'profession'), then that's 19 years. 5,000 men over 19 years is ... er .... 1.387 days for each man!!

 

How many of those dates spotted that she is actually a ladyboy?

They can't all have fallen off balconies!