Sir Dude

Well, letting in all the Indians and Russians will make that happen, as HIV is widespread in both populations... even if under reported.

9 minutes ago, MalcolmB said:

This will be another Thai bashing thread.

Nah, someone will find a way to turn it in a Trump bashing thread somehow.

This clown of a woman can't even wear matching shoes when out in public... nuff said, complete muppet.

I wouldn't even think of buying a Chinese EV at the moment. Why? Well, I'll tell you why. In China there are over 100 EV companies making EVs with subsidies from the Chinese government so that they can kill foreign producers, and the market is so cut-troat at the moment, they are all selling at a loss to make their rivals go out of business and ulimately get market share, hence they are trying to dump their EVs in foreign markets... most chinese EVs are heavily discounted to silly levels through subsidies. I watch many Youtube interviews with the CEOs of the likes of GWMs saying that BYD is the Evergrand of EV companies.

I wouldn't buy anything Chinese on this front, asking for trouble... the EV company NETA, that you see people driving their cars around here in Thailand has just gone bankrupt... good luck if you just bought one of those. The sheeple are buying these things and have no idea if the company will be around in a year or two. I recommend not buying a Chinese EV as it's a fools' errand... no way.

You are better off buying a second hand Japanese car if you want a general reliable pickup or saloon... and if you want sometime nice, then buy a second hand European brand car.

Generally, a lot of these social ills can be laid squarely at the feet of toxic social media, as it promotes isolation and social engineering/manipulation and the idea that it's easier just to not connect meaningfully with others as you don't have to now... however, older people that remember the analogue world fare much better than the kids that have never known anything else.

The effects of such things like social media manifest themselves in many ways, like the increase of not just isolation, but the lack of social skills/soft skills like communication, teamwork, or interpersonal skills etc... young people are scared of answering the phone or consider a question at work as a micro-aggression, you know, that sort of nonsense.

You don't actually now have to interact with others to live your life and many people that surround you now have nothing in common with each other... long gone are the days of community where people were forced to come together as they had common problems that affected all.

Sometimes I think that this isolation only serves those who wish to control, as it makes it easier for the puppeteers to control the marionettes of society. People are also far too self-centered with a delusional sense of grandeur and self-righteousness these days, instantly taking offence to the slightest percieved slight... not conducive to community and relationship building. One of the few things the UK PM recently said that was actually true, but then he limped out and apologised, was that the UK is in danger of becoming a "A land of strangers"... nailed it there.

Gallagher is right on this one. People want entertainment from musicians, not political lectures that they might not agree with. Also, pretty dumb on the behalf of the musician as politics is very polarizing and when you do this, then it will pretty much annoy at least 50% of everyone... bad for business.  Stick to what you are good at and gained fame for, as once you start straying from that, then your "opinion" on unrelated topics is no more valid that Bob's down the pub... and as Clint Eastwood elegantly put it "Opinions are like as$holes, everyone has one".

Many people have no time for this preachy nonsense from musicians and also from Hollyweird too in films, they just want to relax... let's call it "upward failure" in movies, i.e. they who get promoted beyond their ability and make films with political woke nonsense in them, then blame the public for not liking them when they flop. 

The optics of this whole case just get worse and worse with all sorts of suprises and doubt being cast over everything. I hope Letby wasn't just a sacrificial lamb to cover up gross negligence, or worse, by people higher up (i.e. arse-covering). It certainly needs to be properly looked at again, but I guess that the authorities fear the reaction and consequences if they are outed to have been so wrong and it wasn't her, probably why they are doubling down on it... and the arrest of her senior managers does not have a good look. 

Well Spidermike007, that could be applied to almost 80% of world country's leaders these days... everyone from the US to UK to France to the EU to Russia to Turkey to Thailand to China to Burma to Africa as a whole to South America to the Middle East, to almost everywhere. Almost everywhere you look, countries are being run by morons that have a deluded voter base. I know everyone on this forum likes having a pop at Trump, but it/the same goes for pretty much everywhere now... why the world is in such disarray and disfunctional.

This whole debacle is not just a cautionary tale about investing here, but also shows that things can just do a 180 on a dime without any concideration to who takes the hit and billions will be lost... happens on so many issues, just this is a glaringly clear one.

There's no wonder investment, public and private, has stalled because no-one knows where the goals posts are or will be in just a year or so. Business confidence and sentiment, plus things like tourists' perceptions on things in a country are fragile as hell, and once degraded or gone, then very hard to get back... especially business people, they are like skittish rabbits in headlights when stuff like this happens. The clowns that keep changing things just to justify their existence do far more damage to the country than anyone else.

This whole weed episode has been very poorly handled without properly consideration from start to finish... reap what you sow, I'm afraid. 

The BBC is not fit for purpose and has long strayed from its legal mission to provide unbaised content for all... that has long been cynically tossed to the side. The BBC should be restructured into a pay-to-view system rather than a politically biased and enforced thought-control experiement media that people have no choice over other than to watch (how out of date can you get)... make it pay-per-view/subscription and it will implode into meaningless nonsense as it is so agenda-driven.

The OP is completely correct as Xi has completely messed it up with his authoritarian policies, even the Chinese people are rebeling and the other Chinese "elders" are getting worried (people like Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao) and Zhang Youxia - who is head of the PLA - are taking back power behind the scenes. So many Xi supporters and military general loyalists have been purged... change is coming at the 4th plenum, scheduled for mid-late August or thereabouts.

The Chinese economy is in free-fall, factories closing, joblessness rising, even college grads with MA/PhDs can't find a job and are becoming Grab drivers etc. in the gig economy. House prices are falling off a cliff edge, workers haven't been paid, banks are folding with savings disappearing with no response or explanation.

The Chinese have something in their culture called "The heavenly mandate", which is that the people cede power to the CCP authorities if they provide employment and prosperity... and the CCP is in serious danger of breaking that contract.

Expect some serious changes soon... although, it "might" (never can tell with Chinese politics) be a soft landing out of power for Xi, as the CCP elders will want to maintain social order but reverse many of his policies, which harken back to Maoism really, so as to save face and let the party survive. The CCP has got itself into this mess because of personality cult policies from Xi, a hopelessly corrupt system, debt and the way it runs its economy, plus local government financing vehicles selling land to developers that were actually operating a massive Ponzi scheme, which has now collapsed... can add on to that the grey economy and all that debt too. This is why companies are fleeing, including Chinese ones due to tariffs from the US and Europe too. China is in deep do-do but the CCP MO is to just suppress information on everything or just stop collecting data and pretend it's still okay. 

A house of cards at the moment waiting to fail... don't believe the CCP propaganda, it's shot.