stratocaster

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.

The condo opposite me in Bangkok still has 6 brand new units available from the initial release in 2017 at 2017 prices.

Thai REIC have announced the vacant land price index for first quarter of 2023. Inner Bangkok has seen a 13.2% increase from first quarter 2022. Land prices in the Bangkok suburbs have risen by between 25% and 65% due to low base starting prices from the same period. Future development will concentrate on the suburbs due to reduced land costs.

The Thai REIC have just announced their building cost index for the first quarter of 2023. The costs are based on a two story detached house with 160 sq. mts. including VAT but excluding all land costs, labour costs and taxes. Overall costs are up 3.5% after being flat for the whole of 2022. Sanitary ware prices increased 13.2%, wood increased by 13% and tiles are up by 10%. All other rises were less than 10%. Rebar and concrete were up by 7% and 4.3% respectively. Using the base line house, concrete accounts for 4.4% and rebar is 5.8% of total construction costs.

Thai property developers publish a monthly index on prices. I have no idea how the figures are calculated but in 2000 the index for Bangkok condos was 52, last month it was 63. Figures are published in a Thai business paper. Another handy site is below. https://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Asia/Thailand/Price-History

The first thing you need to understand is the appointment system for KL. The appointment system works 14 days in advance so if you had logged in yesterday the only day available was the 16 May. If you login today the only day available is the 17 May. If you check on Saturday or Sunday the available day will be the first Monday after 14 days. That is why there are never any times available by 0600 on Monday. Tuesday times are normally gone by 0800 There are only 6 times available. To get your passport back requires 4 working days and must be pre booked, only two times per day available. To get your passport back the same week requires applying on a Monday or Tuesday. Applying on a Wednesday will get your passport returned on the following Tuesday afternoon due to the weekend plus 4 working days. From this you can see why there are normally application slots available on Wed. Thurs and Friday. There have been numerous reports that they are strictly following the visa guidelines as below. 1. Original Passport with at least 6-month validity and 2 blank visa pages 2. A completed visa application form with a passport size photo 3. A copy of passport (ID page) 4. A copy of reservation/confirmation of transport tickets to and from Thailand 5. The applicant’s bank statement or bank book showing the account’s name and number, balance and history of transactions for the last 3 months 6. Proof of payment for accommodation for the whole period of stay in Thailand (the receipt must state the tax payer number of the relevant hotel/accommodation)

Would be interested in knowing what car you want to export from Thailand.

After a gap of 7 years the thing that staggered me in my home town was the number of pubs that have disappeared. Pubs that in my youth I queued outside for 30 minutes in the freezing rain to gain access are now ethnic restaurants and takeaways. There is even a Persian restaurant.

According to a visa run company to which uses Savannakhet for SETV the consulate have changed their policy very recently regarding issuing visas. Basically if you have Covid, ed, volunteer or long border run history in your passport you will be refused a SETV. They now have a disclaimer that no refunds are given for visa refusal. I can confirm that a couple of months ago I met with a visa runner refused for the 90 days in 180 days "rule".

My friend in the UK has just imported a car from Japan to the UK. Shipping cost with insurance was 4,400 pounds, port to port and Ro-Ro.

You have posted a link to a commercial website that clearly states and I quote. "However, as you read this article, most, if not all will be closed due to the ongoing COVID 19 pandemic and subsequent travel restrictions." "Another thing to mention is that the days of the “border bounce”, i.e. just going across the border and coming almost immediately to obtain a new visa-exempt entry are well and truly over. Once a very common and easy practice, now the Thai immigration officials see this as an abuse of the visa rules and will almost certainly refuse entry".

If it's for an internal wall why not go for a vinyl wrap. Available in brick, stone, tile and wood effect. The expensive ones look pretty good. If you get bored with it you can peel it off.

If you check the KL embassy website there is a notice at the top of the page that visa applications need 14 days notice. Going to the appointment page and all days before and after are greyed out apart from the day 14 days ahead which Is the 3rd May. Clicking on that date brings up the message. "No free slots available for the moment for the selected date. Also please note that advanced appointment period of each service is limited as follows - Visa, Legalisation: 14 days in advance. Thai ID, Passport: 60 days in advance."

Who would have believed it. "At the time the Ford Capri RS3100 was launched the cards were stacked against it being a marketing success as the new MK2 Capri was waiting in the wings, there was an oil crisis and it was very expensive at nearly £2,500, the car proved very difficult to sell, this led to 50 cars being exported to Australia in June/July 1974. There were also 22 cars registered by Ford for the use of their Area Sales Managers to try and push sales most of the time at heavily discounted prices". One of the Australian cars has been imported back to the UK. Year of manufacture 1974, 40083 genuine mileage, a snip at 53,999 pounds. There is also a one owner car registered to the Ford Motor Company for sale. Price on Application.

To give the OP an idea of how the columns are incorporated to the floor plan design. The small boxes with the cross inside.

Basically what you have designed is a Thai standard 3 bed one story house. the difference is most houses have all the bedrooms and one bathroom along the right side and the living area on the left side with a toilet and hard standing at rear for a kitchen. The right hand bathroom normally has a door from each side bedroom to make it two en suit bedrooms. The size would be 10 meters wide and 16 meters long. Span width is 4x2x4 meters. Your house as sketched has from the rear of the wardrobe to the rear wall is 12 meters assuming 2 meter bathroom 4 meter bedroom and 2 meter wardrobe. This 12 meter span would require 2 columns sticking up from the floor in the living area assuming using the 4x4 meter system. If you make the bathroom 4meters the bedroom 6 meters then you could lose one column. Or as someone said move a bedroom from right side to left side. You can build any size rooms and span widths that your heart desires but remember that the two factors involved are builders skill level and cost constrains. To build a beam and post frame from 4x4 modules is 30% cheaper than using 5x4 modules. My last house had a column-less living room 15meters by 20 meters spanned using a cantilevered steel system. It did not cost an arm and a leg, it cost two arms and two legs.

Out of curiosity I looked at the countries where the UK state pension annual rises are given. I wonder why The Philippines is on the list but Canada, Australia and New Zealand are not.

If you are building using the normal Thai style of the concrete column and beam construction you have omitted where your columns will be situated, which dictates internal plan. For cheapness and ease of construction most Thai builders construct on a 4 meters by 4 meters grid. Length wise at 20 meters is easy that's 4 internal posts span. Width wise at 14 meters is awkward. Do you go for 2 x 7 meter span (which would have the row of columns right in the center of the house) or two 4 meter spans and one 6 meter. Or 3 x 4.6 m spans. Or are you going to choose a different construction method that eliminates internal columns altogether. Then you have to figure what roof material you use as that dictates the load the walls have to take if columns omitted.