John V
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Posts posted by John V
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Just an update on prison statistics. I have to delve back into my memory for this, but the statistics are collected once a year. That means that those with short sentences, unless they land on the particular date they're officially counted aren’t visible and most inmates are short term. In other words, you could get a three month sentence, then a month, then another three months and not even appear on the statistics. If you count the prison statistics by that criteria it’s probably three times higher than the official one.
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The other day I met a fellow Brit, under 50 and he’d gone the border hopping and Ed-visa route, finally buying one of those five year elite visas for a quarter of a million. He’d practically bankrupted himself doing it and it’s due to expire next year. I asked him what he was going to do next year and he just shrugged. OK he’s still young, but imagine that happening in your 60s?
I’ve just wasted 15 months applying for positions that schools say they’re desperate to fill, yet I don’t even get the courtesy of a reply to and my patience is also wearing thin. Having thought about all this and talking it over with the other half, we’ve come to a decision. If I haven’t had a decent offer by the time the new semester starts in mid-May, my wife stays here, looks after the house and her little business and I go back to the UK, update my skills and work from there. Come back for holidays and retire here later on if I get a good job and that’s what many of the Europeans around the area we live in do now. It’s not that I lack skills in my own country, so I’ll go back there. Problem solved.
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CG1 Blue
Go to any capital in the world and you’ll get the same response. Yes, spitting is socially acceptable, but becoming less so as people are fined now for spreading diseases. Taxi ripped you off? What’s new? You didn’t go to the Great Wall in Beijing, you went to a replica tourist attraction. Queues aren’t a national habit and there no ‘pubs’ – drinking is done in restaurants. You didn’t know lighters are banned on planes, even when put in luggage?
You didn’t do your homework CG1 Blue and it takes about six months to get into the Chinese lifestyle. I spent six years in Inner Mongolia and loved every minute of it – after the initial culture shock wore off, of course. Yes, had you not done the Farang holiday thing you would have had a much better experience.
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An April 2019 update in how countries in Europe and not in the EU are the richest in Europe.
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***Breaking News***
Trump applies for a retirement visa in Thailand and is told he must have 800k Baht!
????
I think if you’re in high office then both your past and earnings should be transparent. Trump badly loses on his past business activities and little wonder he’s trying to hide behind privacy laws.
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Re: The op. I had the same problem with my wife and I think it’s the law of Buddhist karma. I feed the stray soi cats and dogs and my wife couldn’t understand why I was wasting money. Finally she told me that I was interfering with the laws of Karma and that these unfortunate animals had been put there for a purpose by Buddha. I told her that Buddha also rewarded acts of kindness and that seemed to put her mind at rest. She now feeds them too and so I think what we see as indifference or even cruelty is often just the Thai mentality based on a philosophy.
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For what it's worth - I came to Thailand at the end of 2008. Later I left to work elsewhere and then came back in January 2018, so in all I’ve lived in Thailand for just over four and a half years. The changes when I returned were stark. The old ‘characters’ I remember had left for rehab clinics back home, or been deported and in their place were the Europeans with high pensions, and/or those from anywhere with a certain amount of wealth. More than a few had left for destinations such as Cambodia. Largely gone were the Farang hotels and in their place offers of ฿5m condos in near empty sky rise blocks and offers of a Thai elite 20 year visa for only ฿2m! Half a million for five years if you’re strapped for cash?
In my recent application for a marriage visa lasting around 15 minutes, two thirds passed in trying to discover how much I was worth. Even my medical was returned to me across the desk as not being needed. Having a settled address in a house I paid for, looking after my wife, contributing socially to society previously as a teacher and before that a volunteer didn’t matter. Big Joke’s phrase of ‘good guys in bad guys out’ has changed to ‘rich in not rich out’, with ever increasing attempts by immigration to define the term ‘rich.’
Thailand was never a rich man’s playground. Millionaires do not generally choose a developing country to retire to and there is a distinct lack of men in business suits standing in the immigration queues at Suvarnabhumi airport. Thailand was always the ordinary man’s destination after a lifetime of drudgery in the west, where he could dip his feet in a blue sea and buy a sausage on a stick from a street vendor.
Who knows what new rules will be implemented tomorrow? I’m pessimistic about the future and I’m in Thailand with one foot here and the other back in the west. If I leave, maybe I’ll come back as a tourist occasionally, or maybe in Cambodia where immigration rules are much easier and less likely to change. Yet for every genuine Farang that can support themselves and is forced to leave it’s another nail in Thailand’s economy.
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I can sense the same thing happening again as happened to the Dutch and French who voted on the ‘European Constitutional Treaty’ in 2005. Both voted ‘No.’ A few sentence changes were added and it was renamed the ‘Lisbon Treaty’ and so the ‘No’ vote was disregarded. In 2008 the Irish voted ‘No’ on ‘The Lisbon Treaty’ and were told to vote again until the answer was yes.
"They must go on voting until they get it right" - Jose Barroso, President of the European Commission.
I’ve a feeling this will happen to the Brexit vote. The PM will look for some kind of deal and then declare the Brexit vote is null and void because it didn’t concern the new deal forgetting that Brexit wasn’t about a deal and demand another referendum on the new deal. That’s seems to be the way the EU operates. No country to date has ever been allowed to leave the EU.
No more extensions, no more deals, no financial penalties - hard Brexit! ????
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34 minutes ago, david555 said:
I can understand your explanation … correct and well thought about ...BUT this was not explained when the referendum came up …. isn't it ….? THAT is the real problem and because that the U.K. is now in a total mess (and for years politically ..) Now the facts comes up not the blind ideology anymore ,and wait when the people count their penny's as a Brexit result ...
But please go ahead ,because we as E.U. has had it …. enough is too much already !
Not the fault of E.U. as it is the U.K. who is leaving ,not the E.U.....
The referendum was about in or out. It’s assumed that the voters know the difference in voting for or against the EU, just as they do when they vote labour or conservative in parliamentary elections. Just imagine for a moment if the remainers had got the majority vote. Would the electorate have been accused of not knowing what they voted for, or cries for another referendum vote hoping for a different outcome? In these sort of authoritarian dictatorships you only get one vote and you’re tied in for life.
The mess the political system is now in is a result of the EU. We no longer have a parliament that decides laws, we have a parliament that rubber stamps laws and directives while trying to pretend it’s autonomous. That contradiction goes against what is best for the UK and its population v what is best for Europe. Fishing quotas in national waters, or an immigration open door policy are two examples where what is not best for the UK is not necessarily what someone else decides is best. You can only have one governing body, it’s either the UK parliament, or an unelected commissioner in Europe. The people chose to retain parliamentary sovereignty.
I’m still waiting for someone to explain why being in the EU is preferable to a UK parliamentary system voted for every four years.
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3 hours ago, david555 said:Not convincing you , not even trying ….only wondered what is taking the unhappy U.K. so long to leave …..no glue on the seats or chains on feet …..just no courage to walk out seems …..
The reason for the delay is that a large amount of politicians don’t want the UK to leave. Leaving the EU benefits the country and its people, not the politicians. Leaving doesn’t mean ‘crashing out’ with threats of fines, or half in and half out, or continuing referendums until the EU gets the right answer. It means not being tied into a single market and being told what the UK can produce and who it must sell to. It means no more paying £10bn annually to Europe and for the people, prices being reduced by 20% as VAT is abolished. It means more available jobs for the indigenous population as borders are closed …
Conversely, the remainers can’t see how the UK could survive alone. It will survive by selling to the world, as it did do for hundreds of years before the EU was invented. The EU elite are terrified of Brexit as it means they’re starting to lose the dictatorial grip on countries and if Britain succeeds without it, there will be a mad scramble for the exit.
This is why the political elite don’t want Brexit.
MEPs second pension: 'gravy train' pay and perks of MEPs
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Brexit. Italy and Poland are forming an anti-EU alliance. Hungary has built fences around its borders. Germany is moving towards Russia for its energy supply. Serbia is refusing to obey mass-immigration EU laws … The whole idea of no nation states in a cultureless mass of Europeans is falling apart.
When I compare the EU to the SSR it’s because I was there and saw exactly the same system. Top down directives, the same five year plans, vote for representatives but not vote it out … the EU is simply a European update. To those who think they’ve discovered something new and exciting – you haven’t. What you will get is a never ending bureaucratic red-tape nightmare of directives and fines if you disobey, because that’s the only way it can work.
Is this the sort of society you want to live in?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=MGeDX-6DINM
Come on and convince me. Why would the UK want to be a part of this?
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One thing that hasn’t been mentioned is what exactly does the UK get out of remaining in the EU, which is completely separate from the previous EEC trading block? Vote in MEPs thst have no power to change anything as that’s done by unelected commissioners? Does the UK really need to be part of an EU army, with an EU flag and national anthem? Why do we need to be told what we can produce and who we can sell it to from what is in effect a corrupt private organization in which billions magically disappear every year? Why would we vote to give an unelected commissioner the power to enforce open borders and change the country’s demographics? And for all this we also pay billions a year for the privilege? So what’s in it for the UK?
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6 hours ago, SheungWan said:Readers slightly bemused at the EU=Soviet Union garbage peddled by our friendly Conspiracy Theory Hard Brexiteers will be at least amused at the attached junk documentary linked to above. Produced by Martin Durkin, not only formerly associated with the uber fruitcakes of the Revolutionary Communist Party, but leading anti-green, anti-global warming campaigner. Nutters. All of them.
I’ll give you a tip. When you’re presented with documentary evidence, quotes and videos, concentrating on the poster and source instead of content means you have no counter argument.
The ball is in your court. You now have to find evidence that the EU is democratic, countries are benefiting from membership, open borders and mass third world immigration have worked and the UK benefits from paying billions a year to be ruled from Brussels and how it ever managed without it.
Now, please rise for the gullible EU national anthem and no laughing please. ????
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_Gq_Avh1WQ
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47 minutes ago, SheungWan said:Populist Conspiracy Theory gibberish.
Lol. The conspiracy theory is that the EU was some great democratic ideal voted in by European populations to create a multicultural socialist utopia. So, how’s the multicultural ‘all cultures are equal’ open borders doing? How does the EU envisage any one country getting out of the recession when all must do so equally, or not at all? Remember Cameron boasting that the UK had finally made a profit and the EU levelling a tax on it? (Which despite the initial fury the UK was forced to pay). What do you feel about Europe eventually being divided into zones not countries? Not that you’ll have any say in it.
Watch the documentary. It’s not a conspiracy theory, it explains what the EU is and its effects on the UK. The conspiracy theory was that we’d all ignore cultures and live in a socially engineered utopia and the 20th century provides enough examples of that failing. How many generations in the 20th century listened to the same type of politicians promising the same pipe dreams?
‘It was devised to make sure that the great mass of the people could not control government, ever again.’
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If you look at the old Soviet system, you’ll find the updated EU from the EEC is very similar because that’s what it was modelled on. The Soviet Union didn’t collapse, it moved to Brussels taking the same system and characters with it. Top down rule by unelected commissioners, anti-democratic and corrupt, in which the former ‘workers unite’ slogans were replaced by cultural Marxist identity politics. The EU is what a political elite take-over looks like – a political elite gravy train and a bankers paradise.
The EU gravy train (3.55m)
Anyone remember Hungary and Czechoslovakia trying to distance itself from the Soviet Union? You’re not meant to escape from similar entities like the EU and the EU doesn’t want to put ideas into heads and have a similar vote or referendum elsewhere. It’s not about making Britain great again, it’s about the public having the final authority on who governs them and able to not only elect them, but to un-elect them. What point a parliament meant to represent the people if it becomes a rubber stamp for laws and directives issued elsewhere?
Like him or hate him, Nigel Farage tells the EU elite exactly what they are (3.10m).
The final irony is that the British were finally allowed to vote in or out for something they never voted to join in the first place and they’re now finding out it wasn’t a legal vote but a referendum and the political elite, led by publicly unelected remainer Theresa May are doing everything possible to thwart the majority decision. The EU will collapse in its own good time, just like all the other attempts create utopias before it, but the damage it leaves in its wake will last for generations.
"Of course, there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?" - (Jean-Claude Junker, unelected President of the European Union Commission).
"Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals we dare not present to them directly. All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised" - Valery Giscard D’Estang, member of Constitutional Council of France, on the Lisbon treaty.
For the 'remainers'; are these the kind of people you want to govern you? (0.33m)
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The EU always reminds me of the old Soviet Union, which in fact is what it’s based on with its top down rule by unelected commissioners, five year plans and what they politely termed a, ‘democratic deficiency.’ A takeover coup by the socialist political elite. Open borders, economic chaos and more than one bankrupt country propped up by IMF loans. It was never meant to work; you can’t collectivize countries by a small private group of people, which is what the EU is and expect them to all rise together and so they all fall together – the lowest common denominator principle. That now produces the backlash of some countries building fences and right wing extremism. A Europe built on the failed ideologies of multiculturalism, diversity and equality using Gramscian cultural Marxism (identity politics), was never going to succeed.
BREXIT European Union | The Facts Behind Liberal Fascism
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Nothing like a bit of optimism OJAS. ????
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Online teaching: Don’t be fooled, it’s not the suggested goldmine it’s made out to be and I personally know people involved in it. It’s a scheme of private tutoring to individuals or small groups in their spare time, normally at w/ends or holidays and done by skype. There is no classroom full of students or software technology involved. The concept arose from the webinar. The providers are individuals or companies who have access to schools and potential adult clients, such as individual homeroom teachers themselves, or increasingly recruitment companies who are sniffing a profit.
It’s still in its infancy as once was the large well know private ‘school’ that has glass walls so people could walk past and admire you. Likewise, Internet teaching is the virtual reality of having your own personal tutor. There’s a high turnover of teachers as they discover it’s work and not a money making scheme and the clients who after the initial boasting of a personal tutor find it’s also expensive because there’s a middleman involved.
I’m not disparaging the concept and this type of teaching might well be the future, but as in all teaching the person delivering it isn’t going to make lots of money from it. Presentation, looks and performance are prerequisites as in all face to face teaching and an old man sitting in his underwear earning lots of money is the hype. If it’s a bit of w/end work you’re after it has its advantages, but you’re not going to make the 100K Holy Grail benchmark figure.
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3 hours ago, Tanoshi said:
That's 15 months!
I assume you meant valid until April 2018.
You then applied for a 1 year extension of permission to stay at Immigration based on marriage.
Your current permission to stay stamp should expire on 28th April?
Sorry, yes April 2018 and expires May 1st.
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There’s no chance my Thai wife would sell the house – security and all that. I don’t blame her. She spent her earlier years living hand to mouth in Bangkok bringing up two children on her own, so she sees the house as security in her old age which I can understand. The plan was to pay the mortgage off and then continue working in China until 65 and use that money to put towards the low pension to top it up every month. Unfortunately, the company I worked for lost its government contract and I was made redundant coming back to Thailand at the age of 63 and finding it almost impossible to get another job.
I’ve never heard of a Non Imm O ME visa. Where do I get this from?
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46 minutes ago, ubonjoe said:
Not sure what visa you got that was valid for 6 month or allowed you to stay that long.
A non-o visa issued by an embassy or consulate can be a single entry visa that allows one 90 day entry and is valid for 3 months from the date of issue or a multiple entry visa that allows unlimited entries for a year from the date it is issued.
There is no problem with entering the country with a non-o visa.
You have a one year extension of stay issued by immigration, It is not a visa.
OK, I’ve just looked for it in my passport and got the six months wrong. The wording is: ‘NON-IMM’ visa, valid from 30 Jan 2018 to 29 Apr 2019, so that’s three months. The one year non O visa that I originally arrived on many years ago was from the UK and I’m not aware that I can get the same from outside the UK, or from a Thai Embassy.
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I’m not sure I follow the terms correctly. The Thai Embassy issued six month visa from Laos is simply an extension of stay only available from outside Thailand and I assume that's the one being suggested? The marriage 'visa' I have now is a Thai immigration issue one. The last time I got a six month visa from Laos was in January 2018 and there were signs up then warning you were only allowed so many (it didn’t give a figure, but I’ve heard it’s two) and then they ban you from entering Thailand.
Due to travelling and working abroad, I have about 4/5ths of the full pension.
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2 hours ago, lopburi3 said:
As mentioned if the issue is only not having enough funds for extension of stay the visa or multi entry visa option is still available and expect will remain so for humanitarian reasons. Currently the multi entry O visa is available from either Savannakhet or HCMC in the local area without financials. Cost to obtain/hotel/transport should be under 10k from most Thai locations. So even if you have to leave every 90 days and return this may be a good option until your pension becomes available.
That’s a good suggestion Lopburi and it’s what I did when I first came to Thailand, plus the infamous Cambodia border hopping which most of us did. They’re tightening up everywhere now though, but yes, a couple of Laos visits would get me to retirement age, but you only get so many of those and then have to get a proper visa. I don’t think a British state pension is going to cover the necessary 40K Baht (near £1,000) minimum monthly requirement.
I suppose what I’m looking for is a long-term visa that doesn’t require minimum financial proof and so I can use that useless 400K baht stuck in the bank minimum requirement for a marriage visa to top up my pension.
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But please; no online teaching spam. I’ve already had the ‘I work 30 hours a week and earn 100k a month.’ That’s 833 baht an hour and after the company takes its lions share. Online is p/t weekend work when students and adults are free. I worked in China for a number of years and I know what they earn. Ditto bit coin, writing and selling Master’s theses, dodgy business suggestions …
Our house is in Thailand. I’ve already been told my pension DOB age group is 66. I’m knocking out applications during the holidays in the hope that when schools don’t get the twenty something blue eyed blond(e) they’re looking for I might find an opening.
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A marriage visa and funds running short
in Thai Visas, Residency, and Work Permits
Posted
As I said, wifey and I had a long talk and realized it wasn’t a question of how to work around things for as long as possible, but money. I can’t even get a job at 30K Baht in Thailand with experience and a Master’s degree? OK, I’ll go back to the UK and quadruple that, taking 700K Baht savings with me. One day the Thais are going to not only wonder where all the teachers have gone, but the retirees that helped keep the local economy going. If you think about it, someone who has 400K spare to leave untouched and an income of 40K a month means you’ve literally priced the ordinary guy out of Thailand retirement and they’ll go elsewhere. Perhaps that’s the reasoning behind it? If so, it succeeded with me.