Sir Dude

There are lots of reasons why the auto industry in Thailand is in trouble, lets do a list: 1. People are swamped in debt. 2. Banks etc. simply aren't lending on big ticket items like cars and houses like they used to through fear of NPLs. 3. Thailand is swamped with high quality repo or almost new second hand cars that are stacked up along every road for sale. 4. Electric cars are not the panacea we were led to believe, and they are a few problems... - such as cheap Chinese quality - expensive repairs - battery technology is going to change soon from liquid litium to solid fuel batteries, and good luck if you get stuck with a liquid one after that - price of electricity is ever rising plus still too little charging infrastructure - electric vehicles are still expensive, whereas ICE ones aren't - electric vehicles have a bigger carbon footprint to make than ICE cars do... take a while to offset that - still not enough government incentives/subsidies to convince many to change - replacing a EV battery might cost you a 150k baht after a few years - buying a second EV is for the crazy folks, especially here 5. Price of ICE second hand cars plummeting. 6. Oil/gasoline/diesel power isn't going away anything soon. 7. People are putting off purchases and saving in many places as they are simply not confident about the future... it's often called "sentiment". 8. Governments, not just here, everywhere are making a tax grab on folks and business. People don't like it and hide their money instead of spending it. There's probably more but can't be bothered to list them.... that's enough for starters.

Well, the usual advert for such a flawed religion... I could go on, but would be censored by the thought police.

Lol, the lefty morons having a meltdown because they can't dig freedom of thought and opinion... the irony is so thick. Maybe the majority don't like your lefty oppression and Biden was a Richard on so many fronts... it's called introspection, and that needs to happen. Sorry, but I'm no big fan of Trump but what has happened is hilarious... snigger. Hope all you lefty morons do some soul searching, as you are clearly out of touch with the US public if this has happened... stop living in fantasy land.

But but but ... whataboutarry. We aren't talking about the Tories here, it's liebour, stay on topic. Usual moron response.

Well, we can always go back to the dark ages and not emit anything. I wonder if all these eco-morons can deal with no more international travel, no cheap supermarket goods, no avacado toast or coffee, little global trade and shipping, no cheap electricity or fuel, no abundant food of every description etc. etc. etc. It's about acceptable transition, and that will take decades if not longer, unless all you eco-militants are happy with world and societal collapse, along with a general implosion of law and order etc... yeah, good luck idiots. There's no Harry Potter wave a magic wand and it's all fixed suddenly... unbelievably naive.

This "woke" nonsense is just far lefty oppressive mob group think that is trying to erradicate free speech/thought and replace it with a prescribed opinion that belongs to a nutjob minority... to hell with that, I shall continue being as unPC as I wish too. Although, when it comes to the pronoun rubbish, using "shim" here is appropriate.

Even the left wing Daily Show with John Stewart is making fun of this... go figure

Harris has a problem with her "word salads" that she delivers when in interviews... to the point where comedy channels like the Daily Show take the p*ss out of it.

Kind of funny with Harris, did she manage to deliver something that is understanderable, or just another one of the word salad speeches... haha.

Well, it's amateur hour from Labour and two-teir Kier... an awful performance in their first 100 days. Talk about a complete clusterF*** of a operation... hope all you morons that voted Liebour are happy as we are going down the rabbit hole of far leftiness, as it will be a disaster.

Well, it's the usual socialist nonsense regarding "We can get it right this time..." despite every historical case study being a complete failure, history and the present is littlered with examples of the folly of the far left.... UK will be in the toilet soon as business, job creators, the wealthy that pay 60% of the tax revenue etc. etc. will flee. Giving unions and public service workers ridiculous pay rises just to politically placate them is a way to disaster... Liebour haven't changed at all, but hey, screw the elderly and be a new nasty party. labour in it's courrent form won't last long as the politics of envy is clearly alive and well in their ranks. I could go on... but pfft! Venezuela here we come soon.

Can see Victor is still sporting that dodgy stash and commiting crimes against facual hair styling... man, should get six month in jail just for that.

Really, it's a case of six of one and half a dozen of the other with this one. Problem is, you have two historically oppressed people living next door to each other that hate one another. Hamas kicked off this latest cycle of violence to stop Israel and Saudi Arabia making a diplomatic deal at recognition etc. which Iran clearly didn't want. Iranians aren't Arabs, they're Persians and Shia, who have nothing but contempt for the Sunnis... hate each other almost (if not more) than they hate the infidel. Hamas etc. are clearly being used and at great cost to themselves, and few have come to their aid in the Muslim world. Actions have consequences, I'm afraid... what did you think Israel would do? Theocracy is a terrible form of national government. Israel, on the other hand, acts beligerently and often disproportionately in its defense, and its government always has to appease the ultra-orthodox parties to stay in power and is clearly paranoid (with good reason). Sadly, unless Israel presents a very tough MO, then it will be overwhelmed by it's neighbours and they will be exterminated with extreme prejudice, so has the right to defend itself like all other countries. There's also one other problem you have in the Middle East, and that is that all sides want the last word, hence once it starts, then it's a very difficult cycle to break unless it's some very complicated face-saving deal for both sides... remember when Clnton almost got the deal between Ehud Barrak and Yasser Arafat all that time ago, these two leaders couldn't even walk through the door first at the White House, as both thought it was a sign of weakness, and had to jointly walk through together... ridiculous! Palestine had its chance at the two state solution and Arafat ultimately walked away, Israel was ready to let it happen. Not an easy problem to sort out, as whenever religion and historic animosity are involved... intransigence and wrath emerges, instead of tolerance and mutual understanding.

Going completely cashless is really dumb, there should be many ways to pay for items and some are more appropriate than others for differing transactions. Aside from the obvious invasion of privacy regarding the banks/government knowing what you spend every baht on, right down to groceries, it's the surrendering of complete control to the financial institutions which will make them even more powerful than they are now... citizen credit scores etc. will be on the way like in China, spend too much on beer and your score goes down etc., very Orwellian. Secondly, and more importantly, you'll have to rely on an internet connection to buy anything at all... how dumb is that? What happens when the connection goes down and the useless ISP takes a day to get it back? What happens when the inevitable large solar storm hits and knocks out a few satellites (something like the Carrington Event, lucky it was only the telegraph operating back then). These lazy kiddie sheeple are walking blindly into a dystopian future which will strip away personal freedoms and privacy... but hey, as long as they can gaze into their phones and be distracted by mind-numbing TikTok shorts and Facepalm etc., no-one will notice or care.

Russia is a nation that brutalizes its people, to stay in control, and they in turn brutalize everyone they meet third party to oppress.... an awful an horrific society.

All of this sort of nonsense from these nutjobs is nothing other than mental illness... should be sectioned, the lot of them.

It could all just be part of the slow-moving plan to get rid of everyone that opposes the military and certain individuals/elite families. Obviously, they are most scared of MFP (now PP) and what it represents, to the point that they even did a deal with Thaksin in desperation to buy them time to get rid of MFP and its charasmatic leaders. After that, they need to deal with Thaksin's influence in politics and his party... and there are plenty in the Thai intelligensia that are will to do their bidding by bringing court cases etc. against who they need out of the way. The plan all along could well be to slowly come full circle back to the only political choice being military-backed parties, as all others will have been "dealt with". Can't shift that sixth sense of mine nagging me that Anutin will untimately end up as PM... facepalm that will be.

Well... here you go if you want to understand money laundering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YOLuCRxKXY

People that are on work permits have to submit a tax return before they go to the Ministry of Labour to renew their work permits, as the MoL will not issue a WP extention without the previous year's tax return being filed, and you also give them (the MoL) your tax readout from your employer. Therefore, people that get a renewed WP that has been issued by the MoL merely have to produce the blue WP book, with the extension approved, to immigration. You can't get the WP without having filed a tax return the MoL is happy with (as they check)... don't have to give immigration anything regarding tax, at least not in the major city immigration center I deal with.

Stop saying "foreign"... it's the Chinese in all these sectors regarding hospitality and tourism. Face it Thailand, the Chinese are pulling their usual slow but sure grey-zone tactics to take over economically... come on Thailand, even Stevie Wonder can see it.

Calling BS on this one... no way.

I did mention a couple in that post that I think have grated the financial world here (like the digital wallet) who consider it to be a disaster... and we all know who owns 30%+ of the SCB etc. Also, I think the increase property ownership proposals for foreigners has also got the conservative nationalists into a hot hissy-fit, with the hotel industry also panicking about the Chinese etc. swallowing up whole floors of apartment blocks and then renting it out to only Chinese tourists etc. These are industries with powerful people running them. I do think the tax law has ruffled many local and powerful rich Thais, and that seems to have been overlooked, as most of the focus/discussion has been regarding foreigners paying tax on their pensions and income from elsewhere.... I don't think it should be underestimated how much umbridge these types can take at such changes if they stand to lose out. Could also be many in the business community worried about the dumping of cheap Chinese goods everywhere... which they have only just a few days ago thought about addressing, coincidence much (just speculating though), and again powerful protectionist attitudes prevail here too. Things are often not as they seem here and countries like Thailand (as you eloquently put it before) are "gentle juntas", but juntas none the less... can be a lot of smoke and mirrors going on above a bed of organized deceit, and corruption always finds a way. I think a very few select individuals are being puppet masters and they don't like what they see, hence the dealing with of so many loose ends right now. However, having said all that, it's subjective, and I might be being too cynical as have lived here a long time. Cheers.

Well, it all looks like it's going according to a planned script. The election didn't go as planned for the elite few, so they stalled and made a deal with PT to give them enough time to get rid of MFP, as they were the bigger threat to the status quo. Thaksin and PT didn't stick to the deal and have wondered way-off script with all kinds of new policies that, quite frankly, looks like have made many powerful individuals uneasy, as it's not going in the direction the elite want. Now that Srettha and all his cabinet are basically dismissed by the not-so-free court at the top (and the decision is not subject to appeal), the way is clear for Anutin to take over and rule on behalf of the military and certain other individuals that pull strings from the shadows. So, gone will be the digital wallet (kind of handy though that they sucked up the personal information of pretty much everyone in the country in the process) after so many registered, gone too will be the visa changes, and wouldn't surprise me if the new tax law will be quietly binned... as that must have really riled up a whole load of rich Thais, politicians, and businessmen. As an epilogue to this farce, we have witnessed a coup without there actually being one, and it'll go back to how it was... no need for tanks on the streets. Will give them a gold medal for desperate evil cartoonish scheming though. This sort of MO still works, but for how much longer is anyone's guess as change is inevitable, for sure when the dinosaurs of yesteryear start shrugging of this moral coil. Although, in the short term, let's hope we all benefit from the baht going down... would be nice.

Well, can that "The Ministry of Grand Plans and Lofty Ideas" is at it again.

Kind of ironic coming from a country and government that is hugely anti-immigration and anti-foreigner... there's a word for this in English.