Dr B

If you can maintain your attention span enough to read to near the end of the OP, you will find that the report is about those released undedr the old, Tory, scheme, as Keir Starmer's scheme has not even started yet.

It's actullay a small rat. They couldn't get any mice!

It is not actually a crane, it is a piling rig fitted with a hydraulic diaphragm walling grab. There has been a failure of the working platform, which maybe was never provided in order to save cost.

Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra has voiced concerns over the severe flooding that has wreaked havoc in Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai, with a death toll currently at 6. Reports from the Office of the National Water Resources (ONWR) pinpointed heavy rainfall as the primary cause, Brilliant! The highly experienced and knowledgeable Prime Minister "has voiced concerns over the severe flooding". Remarkably, "the ONWR (has) pinpointed heavy rainfall as the primary cause." I wonder how long a committee meeting it tok to work that one out? Good to know the country is in safe hands.

I assume that the photograph of automatic control gates within the Main Passenger Terminal with an article about " a new Customs Service Centre ... Covering over 4,872 square metres" is a clear indication that Puntid has absolutely no idea what she is writing about. Great journalism Thaiger.

You might find that, if you arrived on your Australian passport, then that is what you will need to leave on. Your UK passport will not show that you entered Thailand.

That should mean there were at least three.

I am surprised that noone has noted that there is no mention of how many red shirt supporters gathered to celebrate, other than "Sompoch and 'others'". That should ean there were at least three.

If it requires soical media to teach you that, you must be a VERY slow learner.

If you check the Vanautu website, as one example, a passport is available for an "investment" of $130,000, or CNY 950,000. If he billboard offers them for CNY 70,000, are you sure that they are legal?

As pointed out by the earlier post, Vanuatu passports are available but they require an "investment" of $130,000 for an individual. That is nearly CNY 950,000, a lot more than 70,000. To my simple mind that would suggest that these are not genuine Vanuatu passports. She is seen holding two passports, and at least one of them appears to be a male. Wouldn't it be worth Immigration Department checking if they are genuine or not. If she refuses to disclose the identity of whoever asked her to place the advert, then she must take the punishment that would have been meted out to such a person, becasue she becomes solely responsible.

I have watched both videos over several times, and read the baht bus driver's report. What seems to me strange is that nobody has suggested that the deceased passenger was actually trying to get onto a moving vehicle, not getting off at all. He was always facing in the direction the vehicle was travelling, and seems to be trying to step up onto the back step and grtab the handrail, but sadly missed. There is no indication whatever that the vehicle had stopped as if to pick up a passenger at any stage. I know that the police reports say that he was getting off, but that is not what the videos show.

There is quite a lot of confusion here. I do not believe there is a thing such as an "Acadmeic Title of Professor". Professor is a position, and one ceases to be a professor when one resigns or retires from that posiiton, unless elevtaed to Emeritus Professor or Professor Emeritus, which can be retained. On the otherhand Doctor, as in one who holds a Doctorate and not a physician or General Practitioner, is a title, just like the one that I hold, and that does not disappear on retirement or resignation. I held a position as an Adjunct Associate Professor for 6 years, but am not allowed to use that position anymore.

Yes they use steel froms in two pieces bolted together. Readily available for rent. We live in Krabi and it is easy to spot the yards with the steel forms stacked up. main problem is that the locals do not vibrate the concrete, although small electic vibrators are available for < Bt 3,000.

If you want to have a suspended floor without a vapour proof barrier that is, of course, fine but the void between the ground and the underside of the floor should be ventilated, just as it was with all timber floors. If it is not ventilated (just a few opening on all sides for the air to blow through), then it will become damp, the underside of the suspended floor will become damp, and that dampness will come through into the house eventually.

All good. Are you familiar with "capillary action". This is based on surface tension, which is what makes your wine climb up the inside of the glass. If you have a small glass tube, called a capillary tube, the suface tension will pull water up the inside above the level of the water surface. Now if you have sand in the ground, you may have a "water table" say 2 m down. That is the level at which the water sits, but above this is a capillary zone, where some of the water gets drawn up by surface tension becasue of the very small gaps between the sand grains. Now if you cast a slab on ground, that will stop the soil from being exposed to the air and the water from evaporating. As a result you will get a dome of damp ground under the house, which will probably reach the underside of the slab. If you don't have a proper vapour proof barrier, then the damp will migrate through the concrete, up the walls a certain distance, and then evaporate. That will leave behind the minerals in the water (efflorescence), and nasty white staining which makes the paint peel off. All of the row of 26 houses opposite ours have that problem, as well as most other houses with ground bearing slabs. Thais see concrete used as walls, with the rain running down the outside, so think that concrete is waterproof. Not true. It is low permeability but not water proof, and it needs to be vapour proof. It is very hard to get a good vapour proof barrier here as there are no fittings for the necessary penetrations. In the end I used a surface waterproof membrane applied in two coats over the top of the slab for the enclosed ground flor rooms. Compacting the soil with a tamper is a good idea. We compacted the crusher run under our slab. Having done that and made it good and dense, you want to get the concrete slab supported by that compacted soil, but I very often see Thais putting down a layer of loose sand in between. I even see this on highway slabs. I have no idea why. It makes no sense to place a layer of loose sand between compacted soil and good concrete. Be careful with the water cement ratio of the concrete. More water means weaker concrete, but they love to add more water because it makes it flow more easily. That is where the vibrator comes in. Once they get the hang of it they will love it! Good luck

Sorry "reinfod" should have been "reinforced"

1 I have no idea what you mean by "put crushed stone underneath the concrete to draw moisture" in relation to piers. By piers do you mean piles or columns? Any load bearing concrete should be in contact with the stiff or dense soil or rock which is going to support it. 2 If the structure has horizontally poured reinfod concrete beams that is perfectly normal. 3 Unfortunately the vast majority of Thai builders do not understand the concept of vapour proof barriers, and think that concrete is waterproof so that is OK. The fact is that moisture will then rise through the concrete allowing the water to evaporate at the surface, leading to efflorescence. This can be seen all over the place in walls and columns just above the slab. I even have a video of concrete being poured onto a polythene sheet, not adequately lapped with any adjacent sheet, and placed on top of the steel mesh! 4 Again not sure what you mean by a "plate tamper". I am familiar with vibrating plates for compacting fill, which we have used here, and with poker vibrators for compacting concrete. These are also available here for less than Bt 3,000, but are very rarely used. I have one, and once the builders saw what it did they loved it, and even used it to vibrate the concrete in the kitchen units! When concrete is not vibrated it leaves air voids (honeycomb concrete), which they just patch over with mortar. This will allow the rebar to easily rust in the high humidity conditions, all hidden away from view. Hope that helps.

Reading must really be a struggle for you, but if you look carefully at the 3 letter word at the beginning of the sponsor's name, you might get a clue as to where the colour comes from, and it certainly wasn't Chonlath.

Maybe it is you who is out of date! "West Mercia Police, formerly the West Mercia Constabulary, is the territorial police force responsible for policing the counties of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire in England."

In addition, I believe that you will find that any statute of limitations runs from the time when you have known, or ought to have known, about the offence. My reading of the new charges is that they have only recently become known to the police.

To build a Land Bridge will require a massive investment, such as the $1 trillion that has been quoted in the OP. Investors will seek to get a return on their investment, which will presumably be in fees used to transit the Land Bridge, as with the Suez and Panama Canals. Those fees will need to be paid, not by Governments or investors, but by the companies shipping containers between China, Japan and South Korea, and countries to the West of Singapore. Now try to do some simple maths, using data which I believe can be found on-line, on typical ship sizes, numbers of containers, times to unload ships, times to load onto trains, times for trains to transit from coast to coast, times to unload from trains, times to load onto ships, daily cost of ship transport, number of days saved by not sailing via the Straits of Malacca, and the cost of using the Land Bridge. If that still seems like "a good idea" then maybe there will be some investors, but I doubt it. Remember that Thai politicians do not take their cut from the ongoing proceeds, they want it all up front, so when the Land Bridge is built but noone is using it they have taken their money and run.

It doesn't take much to realise that every one of the propoals involves new capital expenditure. That is all that any of the officials are interested in, so that they get their percentage. Most of the things suggested by posters above do not require investment, but action by officials, which would cost very little, but seem to be impossible without a paradigm shift in attitude.

The Minister doesn't know, and doesn't care. All any Thai Minister wants is to have a big slab of money to spend, like Baht 1 Billion. He knows he will get at least 15% of that, just for agreeing to award a contract to somebody, and Baht 150 million is still quite a lot of pocket money.

Unfortunately, the WEF seems to have relied upon an article in the Bangkok Post, which originated from AFP. Their quoted sources include someone from Greenpeace, a "climate expert" from Chulalongkorn University, and someone from the Bangkok Drainage Department. No-one who really understands the problems or the engineering. They do not even understand what happens when you fill in khlongs, or other low lying areas for building. As someone who has designed and constructed foundations for 50 years, including high rise buildings in Bangkok, there is no way that the weight of the buildings is causing measurable settlement. Most of the on-going surface settlement is due to past water extraction, and is loswing down as the water extraction has drastically reduced.