Purdey

Apparently the world is still worse off than Thailand in terms of COVID-19. Can't imagine the reason. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1043366/novel-coronavirus-2019ncov-cases-worldwide-by-country/

Not sure why he had 5 policemen outside his room blocking anyone from entering. Does it take that many?

Very fast work by the police. Better to wait to learn what happened before passing judgement.

Kids used to play good clean games with Action Man or G. I. Joe killing each other, or dress as cowboys with 6 shooters when I were young by gum. Then they went to high school and joined the army cadets and learned how to shoot with Lee Enfield 303s at Bisley. Aye, those were the days. Kids today don't even volunteer for the Thai army.

Well, they surely dropped a bit of money in Thailand making the video. Imagine if they made it in India with Indian girls playing Thais.

The U.N., or UNO, was formed after World War 2 “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”, to protect world peace, not from world wars, but all wars. There have been 478 wars in the 76 years between the UN formation and May 2021, so it has failed in its raison d'être. A new war has started somewhere in the world on average every two months. I would put the blame for its failure overall on the structure chosen by the winners of WWII, who must have felt they knew how to prevent war (having been unable to prevent the war just concluded). There were 54 founding members, with 193 today, and the allies structured it so that five countries only, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China and France, have permanent seats on the security council and worse, have veto power over all decisions made by the other represented countries. Hardly a democratic institution. Roughly 49 per cent of the vetoes have been cast by the USSR and thereafter the Russian Federation (let’s just call it Russia for simplicity), 29 per cent by the United States, 10 per cent by the United Kingdom, and six per cent each by China and France. The fact that the USA and Russia have vetoed decisions that an overwhelming number have supported is telling. You may have noticed that the US has vetoed any vote against Israel throughout its existence. So much for respect for the U.N. and its members. Next, the running of the U.N. is racially biased, with the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain, by the U.N.’s own calculations, overrepresented, meaning they have more employees per capita than other countries in the world. 6.75 percent of the entire U.N. workforce is American. UNICEF was founded in 1946. Since then, the UNICEF director has always been a white American. It has had eight Executive Directors since 1946. All eight were citizens of the United States, and all were white. UNICEF has begun giving occasional lip service to quality but continues to focus on enrollment – which is the only sphere in which it can claim to have achieved anything. Only U.S.A. citizens get the top spot at the World Bank, only Europeans at the International Monetary Fund. Carving up the most lucrative bodies is not even questioned. Preventing conflicts requires closing development gaps, shrinking inequality and bringing hope to people around the globe, or so senior UN officials told the Security Council in 2021. However, a lot of doubt about its success has arisen. One example: A UNESCO study claimed that mobile phones increase literacy. Actually, the study showed no such thing. It didn't look at what increases literacy. Nokia paid for the study.

I assume the government problem is that simply banning something will have a knock-on effect on the livelihood of the poorest, and most uneducated, part of the citizenry. Telling farmers who know of no other way other than burning stubble that they are bad for trying to grow food won't work. Telling the guy driving to work that he should not, when there is no efficient mass transport close to his home, won't work. Educating farmers how to make money without burning would help. Building a mass transportation network where every station was within 10 minutes walk or 5 minutes by songthaew would help.

Importantly, the government has not provided any statistical evidence that banning advertising and strange closing times have lowered alcohol consumption. In fact, they dream up and implement ideas without proving any factual information to the public that such measures actively control anything.

Cult leaders come in all shapes and sizes. There was one guy who wore a long dress and lived with twelve men.

Makes me remember there are good people in Thailand.

A wider tax base will help the government but they had no willpower to do it. Now they have expanded to the online e-commerce businesses. https://thethaiger.com/news/national/thai-online-vendors-required-to-file-taxes-from-2024-as-new-directive-kicks-in?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=thai-online-vendors-required-to-file-taxes-from-2024-as-new-directive-kicks-in

While a lot of people (with no medical training) mock vaccines, I hope no one followed the advice of a certain person to take hydroxychloroquine. https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2024/01/07/trump-promoted-hydroxychloroquine-to-treat-covid-19-a-drug-now-linked-to-17000-deaths/?sh=149b08cc2fcd

She went to the temple often. Now I know what to do to leave my skull intact. Helpful.

The police should search his house for a Kuman Thong, a roasted still-born baby thought to give its owner magical powers like invisibility. Disgusting old Thai and Lao belief.

It isn't nice, but then every country where people drink to excess faces this issue. In the UK there isn't a specific law against urinating in the street, but local rules might get you for disorderly conduct. Doesn't seem to stop people finding a convenient (no pun intended) wall down a side street. In France you used to be able to pee up against a tree or into the gutter but that seems to have been banned now. Doesn't stop Frenchmen from peeing in the street though. A lack of enough public urinals is probably a cause. Wish Thailand had them.

I guess if a Malaysian came to Thailand she would be treated no different from Thais.

it seems like people have be warned for years not to put valuables in checked luggage. Many airports put cctv in the bag sorting areas but there are ways to get stuff.

It might work, if retirees here went back to their countries of origin or on yo Vietnam or wherever, the Thai government might rethink whether they prefer to have retirees here to spend instead to taxing them away.

So, does the Thai government rely on taxes or not? Confusingly, most Thais avoid paying taxes so lowering tax should have a negative effect, no? Saying tourists will buy more alcohol and thus raise revenue means people who avoid taxes will make more and spend I guess. it would be more helpful to expand the tax base, wouldn’t it?

The majority of people here are farmers and other cheap labor. Having more babies under the current education system mean a nation of dunces one day. Giving people a future of poverty is not a choice.

If the authorities keep insisting this is all lawful, why not reveal how many times over the past 50 years has a prisoner been kept in a hospital for over 120 days? Seems pretty straightforward.

I am not so sure how deadly the Covid (probably not that deadly) is but more concerned with the NHS's ability to cope with the number of hospitalizations. The amount spent on the NHS is abysmal under the Tories.

Honestly, if you aren't doing much except browsing the web and emailing, and you have an old Windows XP or Win 7 CD-ROM at home, wipe the disk and install one of them. Add an antivirus and it should be enough. I still use Windows 7 on my home PC and Windows 11 on my work laptop. There isn't a lot of difference when browsing and emailing only. I have used several Linux flavors on very old PCs and they are great too.

Once you receive money in exchange for services, you have technically worked and need a work permit.

I tiny part of me wants to feel the Schadenfreude of Trump winning the election and tearing up the constitution, then being laughed off the global stage, creating mass unemployment and destroying the US economy to the benefit of Russia and China. And then I wake up in a pool of sweat.