stratocaster

Talking with a guy whose UK parents are retiring to Thailand to be close to him. He is positive that they only need one retirement visa and the other can be a dependent on that visa, so only one bank account with 800,000. I thought that married foreigners were treated as individuals, except they could have joint accounts with 1.6 million instead of two bank accounts with 800,000 baht.

I have just re-watched the select committee party gate inquiry in to Bozo's behavior. Contrary to what he said in his resignation letter the person that crucified him was not Harriet Harman but the senior Tory on the committee Sir Bernard Jerkin.

When my Volvo's AC packed up I was close to a Volvo dealer. They took the car to an AC specialist shop as they said they know more about ACs than them. They diagnosed a leaking dryer, never a problem again.

There is a recent story of a guy refused a SETV in Savannakhet for staying 90 days continuous in Thailand. When he pointed out that he had done a border bounce 30 days previously they showed him his stamps that he left Thailand on the 23rd and entered Thailand on the 23rd, so as far as they were concerned that is a continuous stay.

Johnston only resigned because he was given the select committee inquiry report in to his behavior during partygate yesterday, which stated that he was to be given a punishment of more than 10 days suspension which means he would be sacked as an MP. Rumour has it he will stand at the next general election as an independent candidate in Henley on Thames where his new home is. But the long knives are out already. Sunak returned Johnston's original honours list of 100 names and told Johnston to reduce it. The next list had 50 names but only 48 were accepted. Names removed were a knighthood to dear papa and a peerage to his squeeze Nadine Dorries The original plan was for Dorries to take up her lordship immediately triggering a by-election. As that plan was scuppered Dorries had to resign to trigger the by-election. Why they want by-election. Dorries seat is a previously safe Tory seat, if there is a large swing away from the Tories vote, or heaven forbid they lose it to the Lib Dems, the Nat C division within the party can say that Sunak is not the person to lead then into the next general election and should be replaced. This will appeal to the MP's who are in marginal seats and will probably lose their seats at the next election. Of course the original plan to replace Softie Sunak with Bozo the clown has disappeared.

Here is the condensed story. In 2007 the Volvo Thailand truck business was taken over by Izuzu Truck division called UD trucks. Litigation then followed as UD Thailand trucks is not a wholly owned Izuzu subsidiary but a joint venture. In 2013 the case was settled and production started at the Volvo factory of both Volvo trucks/bus and UD trucks/bus for local distribution. Volvo Thailand truck division have announced that they will start producing 1000 electric trucks annually, at the Thai factory for regional export. I would image that as they will need added capacity they will stop the UD truck manufacturing side at the Volvo factory. To make up for lost capacity they will look to other UD truck factories to take up the slack. UD also have an agreement with Mitsubishi Fuso Thailand to assemble UD trucks. PS The market for Volvo and UD buses has totally collapsed due to the proliferation of Chinese made buses. Next time you drive Bangkok/Pattaya along highway 7 check out the manufacturers of the tour buses you pass.

How to gaslight the British public part 3. Braverman stood in parliament yesterday and claimed asylum seeking detainees had dropped by 17,000 since 2022 due to government policy. Twice she was told to redact that statement (which she did not do) as figures quoted from the Home Office state that the correct figure is a 10,000 person increase.

Service bill from UK.

How to gaslight the British public part 2. We are constantly told that the UK has the highest growth rate in the G7 especially on PM's question time by Softie Sunak. From Office of National Statistics. Office of national statistics show that the UK’s GDP growth between the final quarter of 2019 (pre-pandemic) and the final quarter of 2022, was the lowest in the G7, at -0.8%. This means the UK is the only G7 country in which the economy remains smaller than it was before the pandemic. For comparison, the US GDP grew by 5.1% over this period, with the second-worst performing economy, Germany, growing by 0.2% between Q4 2019 and Q4 2022. In summary. High growth is true when comparing the growth in annual GDP between 2022 and 2021. However, when comparing quarter-on-quarter growth in 2022/2023 to date, the UK is among the worst performing in the G7.

I would imagine that once this blows over the TV presenter will be given a peerage by the government for keeping the Sunak, Johnson, handbags at dawn feud, off the major news paper's front pages for 23 days.

I should be on holiday there in the next couple of days. I have a good Laos friend who does a bit of Thai visa agency work so will post on the latest news on my return.

As the UK is mentioned, here are some stats from 2022 regarding EV cars. Total car registrations were 1.6 million cars. Of that number 20% were all electric, so 320,000 cars. Of that number 67% registrations went to fleet and company sales to total 214,400. Therefore 105,600 were individual sales. The government predicts that by 2030 the UK will need 300,000 charging points. To meet that target it needs to open 100 points per day. The average target to date is 23 per day.

Here's my prediction. Before the end of the year Savannakhet will introduce an appointment system. I am going there on holiday soon and went to book a hotel which includes a Monday night, and both the Aura and Avalon are fully booked.

A little bit of history. From 2015 to 2016 I lived in Thailand on 5 SETV from Vientiane all extended plus 4 land crossings to Malaysia all extended, everything done using an agent, so almost 2 years. I reckon there were around 200 people per trip and 3 trips per week, with a lot working in Thailand. First trip we did not even have to go to the embassy. Last trip we were treated as normal applicants. So even then they were tightening the rules. When I posted that embassies were going to have to change the rules, I was laughed out of TVF.

Here's another irrelevant post. Just talked with a guy who was bitching and moaning that he has been trying for 2 years to sell his 22 million baht house in Thailand. He showed some pictures of the house. The interior doors are Global house fake wood. Some rooms have slatted glass windows. AC pipework is exposed along the walls. Rooms have individual ac's where for 22 million I would expect central air. And to cap it all most of the electrical wiring is stapled to the outside of the walls. There once was a general rule of thumb for property development in the UK and that was figure the selling price of the house, then try to balance that price by 33% for land costs, 33% for construction cost and 33% for profit margin. Obviously that formula does not work in Thailand due to the land price being the dominant factor.

My mate in the UK has just finished the electrical work on a 4 million pound barn conversion. He has described the electrical work installed and it blew me away. Every light, every curtain, every appliance is ethernet connected. Everything is operated by a phone or on a timer.. Every room has mood lighting settings using different colours and intensities . Doors out to the outside all remote controlled. Underground parking. There is a lift from the garage to the the top floor. The owners do a lot of home entertaining so there are two industrial ovens, a walk in freezer, and walk in fridges. The reason I mentioned this, is what do multi millionaires think of so called villas in Thailand. You could not even get a reliable power supply to run a house like this in Thailand. There is a 40 million baht villa for sale in Phuket that does not even have a remote gate opener.

Regarding visa appointments for HCMC. it appears they are doing the 14 days notice as others do. First available time today is 7th June only 4 times remaining. 8th and 9th June all times remain as you will not get your passport back until the following week. Checking on Monday 22 May this week, all times for 5th and 6th June were gone by 1000 am. There is only 10 times remaining for 12th June all other days and times available that week as of today.

Between 1968 and 1970 Ford UK had four industrial disputes while BMC had 58. This has been attributed to the fact that Ford workers were salaried employers and BMC workers were paid piece rate. Management's policy was, if you need more money increase your output. This led to the situation of what we used to call the Friday cars. Everyone would go hell for leather assembling cars and parts to either increase their output or meet their weekly target. I was on the door fitting line and there was no way I was going to spend 20 minutes trying to get a door pressed from a worn out press to fit reasonably. As long as it opened and shut that was good enough for me.

The far right Tory MP splinter group has been christened "The National Conservative Party" This has already been abbreviated to "The Nat C Party".

I have just finished reading an article from a Brit who has sunk his live savings in to a 5 rai farm in Thailand. Nothing wrong with that you will say but as he did not want to get involved with officialdom he only took a 3 year rental agreement which he was assured would be renewed every time. He has just found out that the land has been sold to a property developer and he has to vacate in four weeks time at the end of his rental agreement. He is asking for advice on how he stands legally.

Logic says that if this has been around since 2019 and is an absolute game changer regarding property use/ownership there would be 150,000 posts discussing it on aseannow.

Posters on another forum are adamant that you can get a re entry permit for a SETV. Some claim if you re-enter before the expiry of the visa you will receive a further 60 day entry. Some say you are allowed to stay up until your original permission to stay date from your original entry. I have never heard of anyone doing this before. Today someone claims they got a re-entry permit on a visa on arrival (not VE) as they had to go to Malaysia for 3 days.

It goes from bad to worse. As of December 2023 due to an agreement signed between the UK and EU, electric cars are subject to local content tariffs. As EU produced electric cars sold in the UK meet the local content rules they can be sold in the UK tariff free. UK produced electric cars sold in the EU can not meet the local content rules, so will be subject to EU tariffs. Don't remember seeing that on the side of the bus. Local content rules revolve round the battery. The EU have 40 battery manufacturing plants the UK has none. It is speculated that 8 more Chinese electric car companies will begin selling, but not manufacturing, in the UK this year.

Interesting press release from January 2022. The Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS), provided by DERMALOG, has been in operation since May 2019. “Our new system has increased the rate of catching criminals at our borders tremendously," says Immigration Bureau chief Sompong Chingduang. The core of the ABIS solution for the Thailand Immigration Bureau is composed of fingerprint and facial recognition scanners that validates a traveller’s identification by their bio-metric data. The new system in Thailand takes only 0.1 seconds to identify a person through the entire database by fingerprint and face. It claims to be the world's fastest multi-bio-metric systems for so-called one-to-many matching. To date, the ABIS has already checked about 49 million travellers, and the Thai Immigration Bureau identified more than 4,300 blacklisted persons and about 127,000 people who had violated visa regulations. In addition, 3,166 persons had been arrested for fraud attempts, detected by the bio-metric system.

Just before the Brexit vote I remember watching a staunch brexiteer stating that if the vote is leave one of the casualties will be the UK car manufacturing industry. Last year Nissan announced that unless the UK government gave them a per car produced subsidy they would cease UK production. ( it was reported in the German press that they will definitely close) Nissan output was 500,000 per year pre brexit last year 250,000. Yesterday it was announced the the company that owns the Vauxhall brand are considering withdrawing all car production in the UK. Main reason given is that pre brexit UK car type approval was valid throughout the EU. Now a UK produced car with, for example, German type approval can only be sold in Germany, not the whole of the EU. As we lost our car production the knock on effect was that we lost our component industry. When your business model rely's on just in time delivery and the bulk of your components come from the EU a hold up at Dover will be a major disaster.