ericbj

A friend of mine had one of those. The company went bankrupt. He had to come out of retirement and return to work. Addendum: My mistake in reading 'public' as 'private'. But this may be of interest: https://www.cedarhousefinancial.co.uk/uk-state-pension-low-rank/

No, it did not happen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor in some other places, such as Libya, or Vietnam. Wars have been sold to the public - even before the days of Edward Bernays - on the basis of altruistic motives. But follow the money. Qui bono ? My suspicion is that western investments in China discourage effective support for the N.U.G. Verbal criticism and shadow boxing with China and its satelite state are all that can be expected. China and Russia, two permanent members of the U.N.S.C., are supportive of Min Aung Hlaing's military regime. There was less polarisation into two power-blocs when western nations, led by the U.S., intervened in the Middle East.

Many girls in the prostitution "industry" are not Thais but are poorly educated girls from rural areas of neighbouring countries such as Burma. They are offered legitimate jobs that do not exist. Instead they are kidnapped, serially raped, and then sold into prostitution by the traffickers. In some cases they are even sold by relatives - knowingly or without knowledge of the fate that awaits them - to the traffickers. Girls from the northern reaches of Burma, e.g. Kachinland, are likely to end up in forced marriages to Chinese peasant farmers.

The TAT predicts what will happen and their goal. Where do they state how they will achieve their goal ? I.e. their business plan ? There is a minimal degree of certainty in any predictions at present. For we are living in the biggest global "bubble economy" of all time, and no-one can predict when the bubble will burst. All one can do is try to prepare, by "thinking outside the box" and keeping options open.

The doctor is over-simplifying. Alcohol, such as a tot of rhum, expands the blood vessels close to the skin, producing a feeling of warmth. By doing so it acts against the body's natural contraction of these blood vessels under cold conditions, to limit heat-loss and hence reduce the risk of death from exposure. If you fear dying of hypothermia here in Thailand (perhaps when sleeping under the stars in the hills west of Fang?) refrain from partaking of strong alcohol.

I had an interesting experience nineteen years ago when the headmaster of a Thai government school asked me to take the senior class for English lessons once a day. This was on a wholly informal and voluntary basis, in a large village in a fairly remote rural area. On my first day, I walked across the playing-field to be met by one of the three English teachers, a middle-aged woman. The encounter was extremely embarrassing for us both, as she addressed me in what she clearly believed was English, but of which I understood not a word. After several days with the class, trying unsuccessfully to get them to loosen up and to become at least a little bit responsive, I moved the class from the school to the nearby house where I was helping exiled Burmese to improve their English, in most cases undoubtedly with a view to settling in a third country. In the new location the pupils, aged about 16, began to relax and chat amongst themselves, ignoring what I was trying to communicate. My Burmese colleagues tried to shut them up, but I asked them not to intervene. I was getting results, even if not what I wanted. How I hated that class ! However, relatively suddenly they began to take an interest. The six boys lounging on chairs at the back would occasionally start talking amongst themselves. But then the girls, six of them sitting in front on the floor, would turn around and tell them to shut up. At the end of each class the pupils would leave all laughing and chatting excitedly. My Burmese friends commented on how happy they seemed. Small wonder they showed no interest in learning English when taught by teachers with no practical knowledge of the language, with the aid of turgid textbooks containing faulty English. The experiment was so successful that the headmaster asked me to take two further classes, which I declined to do ; but then accepted his request to help the English teachers improve their English. But the latter clearly could not bear the loss of face this would entail. On the two occasions I was due to meet with them they never turned up. Perhaps one of my advantages with students was that I have never been a professional teacher ; and although having done some study of T.E.F.L. through correspondence, used very little of what I learnt, and for the most part ignored the material provided by the Volunteer Program, which seemed boring. Instead, teaching through students reading aloud stories that interested them (they were given a choice) and yet presented some degree of challenge ; and while they were given some grammar exercises to attempt as homework, the accent was more on learning by ear. Thais and Burmese, children and adults, are capable of making rapid progress in learning English if given the means and the motivation.

Educating the population to return to more traditional diets, and give up eating synthetic-chemical-laden industrial "food", is the way to go… Raising taxes is just an easy cop out, giving governments more money to squander And besides, most of the table-salt sold these days is not real salt. It has been "purified" by removing all but the sodium chloride (with a bit of iodine then added back), to sell the rest to other industrialists. Sea-salt (when uncontaminated with micro-plastic particles) contains a balanced mixture of trace elements very close to that of blood serum. If in doubt, check out the historical uses of "Quinton Water", once upon a time very successfully used in place of blood for transfusions. You cannot do that with isotonic saline. Just as governments promote Big Pharma and AgriBusiness, so also they encourage the market for <deleted> food. And just as an after-thought, why does the government not organise the testing of cooking oils used by street-vendors ? According to what I have learnt from more than one source, expanded polystyrene is sometimes dissolved in the hot oil. It causes batter, such as in 'roti', to retain its crispness. Traces of unpolymerised styrene present are toxic.

Where is the medical research showing a CAUSATIVE RELATIONSHIP between drinking a glass of wine with your dinner and falling ill with Covid ? In Australia it has been demonstrated that when ice-cream consumption rises there are more shark attacks. But still no ban on ice-cream.

Positive action is preferable to positive noises.

Economy-wreckers are damaging the country.

It depends which country you are in, as you probably realise. Go west and see the difference.

Correct ! It is not true. These are the first four search-results from DuckDuckGo : https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/10/27/thailands-beautiful-mauser/ https://ammoterra.com/gun-from-thailand https://carbinesforcollectors.com/thaipage1.html https://armamentresearch.com/royal-thai-army-acquires-domestically-produced-mod963-self-loading-rifles/

It is important to know which "charitable foundations" - and THEIR funders - fund or otherwise support Mahidol University Medical School and its attached public hospital. This is in order to guage the degree of independence of the research.

I believe you were well informed. The guest-house where I used to stay in Thewet for many years when arriving in, or departing from, Bangkok increased the room-fee steeply not long after a new owner acquired the property. She explained to me that she had to do this to make ends meet. Because fewer tourists were coming. On my next visit, I, a patron for perhaps fifteen years, was unable to book-in. Because "I am only accepting group-tours." On my succeeding trip to Bangkok the guest-house was gone. Closed down. A pity. It was a nice place. Simple, clean, friendly, favoured by French people. Where one sometimes bumped into people one knew. Convenient for the ferryboats. And with an excellent, cheap restaurant close at hand.

If only the decision-makers would charge 1,000 baht they’d exclude the πολλοι - hoi polloi - myself included, and could have the place entirely to themselves. Personally I never did much like the Khao San Road. But there were some useful places in the neighbourhood ; and my favourite, simple, friendly, family-owned hotel not far away.

True. Some of them went to the same prep school in England as myself in the 1950s, and one of them later became governor of Bangkok. And in 1967 on my way by train from Bangkok to Singapore, I travelled between Haadyai and KL in the company of a Thai army general and his son. He was taking his son to school in Kuala Lumpur.

Maybe the Thai education authorities should study education in Finland : https://leverageedu.com/blog/finland-education-system/

Fine if you never leave your rural backwater. But if you wish, as I do, to go occasionaly to the big smoke for a check-up by one's preferred dentists, see an excellent traditional-medcine doctor, visit favourite restaurants, stay in cheap and homely private hotels and guest houses, go window-shopping, and have a break just mixing with the crowds, there may not be so much choice without the tourists.

I wonder if their earnings are included in Thailand"s GDP figures ? The U.K. now includes in its GDP the earnings (but how arrived at?) of prostitution and crime. All part of a growing concern by politicians in power to make falling GDP look better than it is. Government statisticians manipulate the CPI figures in the opposite direction. By - for example - substitution of a cheaper food for a more expensive one, judged to be "equivalent". In the U.S. and France they do the same sort of thing, but the British are a step ahead of them on this.

Looking at the proposal to entice foreigners to settle on the basis of a business scheme, the government might do well to commission some market research to determine the potential clientèle, what they are looking for, and how to tap into the market. This might be a better start than merely trying out preconceived ideas, one after another. And so money well spent. But whatever conditions are decided for future foreign settlers, those already settled here, some for decades, should not be subjected to radically new conditions than those that brought them here in the first place. Stability and continuity creates confidence in the Kingdom. Somewhere in one of the two books by Philip Wylie (on establishing a business in Thailand and on owning a property in Thailand) he writes "Never invest in Thailand what you cannot afford to lose." The authorities should seek to create a situation that counters this viewpoint.

Could this help to kill his business : https://myskunkworks.net/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=74 ?

In that case it will need to be beer made from organic grains. Almost all conventionally grown grain crops, whether cereal or beans,, are treated with glyphosate shortly before harvest. Why? - Because the plant dies and while doing so all the grains ripen together, increasing yield and permitting easier threshing. And, added bonus, the weed-free soil is left ready for planting the next crop. Note also that "organic" in Thailand (as in China) does not denote a reasonable absence of synthetic agricultural chemicals. Several years ago there was an article, probably in 'The Bangkok Post', maybe 'The Nation', about two Thai consumer organisations that sent samples of crops from conventional and "organic" sources to the U.K. for analysis. The results were shocking: conventional agriculture, horrendously high rates; "organic" agriculture, high, but less so. Note to those who think you can wash off agricultural chemicals. Nowadays they are designed not to be washed off, but to enter the crop where rain will have no effect: so-called systemic pesticides and fungicides. When a farmer converts from conventional agriculture to organic, the poisons in the soil do not simply disappear overnight. In biodynamic agriculture (at least in the U.K.) the farmer must have converted at least seven years previously before he can call his produce biodynamic. Modern varieties are designed for yield. Very successfully so. Yield of weight (thanks partially to high uptake of irrigation water, at the expense of nutrient density). In many cases they cannot be grown without artificial fertilisers. And they are more susceptible to insect pests and diseases. With tconsequences that are obvious. And one has not even touched upon the destruction of the life of the soil, which resides in the organisms and micro-organisms that dwell therein.. Nor upon spaced crop rotations, the laying fallow of fields, and grazing by domestic animals, the role of trees in pumping micronutrients from the sub-soil, etc., etc. Organic farming cannot be practised by simply abstaining from the use of synthetic chemicals. Government and private institutions have an important role to play in educating both farmers, distributors, and consumers in the important role that the various forms of organic agriculture have to play in restoring public health, halting soil degradation, and reducing fossil fuel dependence.. And if large numbers of urban dwellers should find themselves permanently out of work in an ongoing economic crisis (which has yet to take shape) a return to rural, village based, life-styles may offer a partial solution.

Globalisation is coming to an end, it seems. The world is becoming increasingly regionalised. It makes sense for Thailand to pass important contracts with China, while making-believe they are on the other side. That was so in the days of confronting colonial expansion between Britain and France. And during the Second World War - brief, face-saving, military resistance, followed by alliance with Japan and joint occupation of the hitherto self-governing Shan States. Plus two resistance movements: a left-wing one backed by Britain and a right-wing one backed by the U.S. The latter subsequently seized power and the Premier had to flee. With results that are with us to this day.

I suspect that tourism is going to rise very slowly from present levels. But OPPORTUNITIES (not certainties) for gathering foreign exchange from farang - in the mid-term, when hopefully exiting the forthcoming depression - might be found by policies that intelligently encourage: - retiree settlement. Even those of modest means likely spend far more in a year than the average holiday tourist. - young independent nomad entrepreneurs. - tourists from the middle classes of India and China, especially once these countries are linked to Thailand by rail. There is one big black cloud on the horizon : the possible re-introduction of the foreign exchange controls that existed in my younger years (You could only take 50 GBP out of the Sterling Area)

"More than a year after the deadly COVID outbreak, the world is still waiting for consumers to fully return to their old spending habits. But a new study indicates that the pandemic may have changed some of us forever. "That prediction comes from a working paper by the European Central Bank, which gathered information from 7,750 households in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and The Netherlands. The data, collected after initial restrictions were first lifted in in July 2020, looked at spending across tourism, hospitality, services, retail and public transport."