Eleftheros

Can you imagine how painful it is for a person to have to admit to themselves that the politicians in their governments don't care a fig for their health, well-being, freedom or livelihood, and regard them as disposable numbers on a spreadsheet? It's not a comfortable realization, and I am not surprised that people are slow to accept it.

"WHO Praises Thailand’s Strength in Handling COVID-19" A pity that nobody could possibly give the same praise to the WHO.

Indeed. That prize <deleted> Obama threatening the UK that it would go to "the back of the queue" for a free-trade agreement surely pushed many undecided people to vote for Brexit.

I really can't tell if that is meant as a joke, or not. Back to the UK's struggles, I think. Lockdowns, boondoggles like Test & Trace, letting dozens of oil refineries close without replacing them, reckless sanctions against Russia (rather than using them as a bargaining chip), a farcical mini-budget. All in the last 3 years. It is no wonder that the Bank of England is predicting the country will fall into its longest-ever recession, with unemployment set to double by 2025. Paying people not to work, shutting down refineries, and sanctioning other countries may feel good. But that doesn’t mean it can be done without disastrous consequences.

'Beloved' is not quite the word I would use. I would say rather that you would have to be reasonably sure of a company's ethical practices before you force people to use its products or suffer punishment, especially for products in a health context.

Oh, it isn't, at all. My main point was, and is, that the UK government is so inept that the lives of the citizens would probably be better if Prayut and his gang were in charge. The remark about Big Pharma was an aside, expressing surprise that people are willing to swallow anything that Big Pharma shovels in their direction while at the same time excoriating Big Oil for its predatory practices, when the two conglomerates are essentially identical. If I'd thought that this self-evident truth would make people so defensive, I wouldn't have posted it.

Earth, where every government has unquestionably assumed that Big Pharma is being honest and transparent about the efficiency of its vaccines, and on the basis that they are providing a wonderful benefit to humanity with these vaccines, has pressured everyone to submit to receiving their products. Special fawning praise was reserved for AstraZeneca which gave its vaccines away at cost.

Just ask the UK government for 20 million pounds in start-up funding, then.

Because the UK is doing them worse, that is, without any competence, character, responsibility, or sense of reality. In passing, it strikes me as odd that so many people pour bile onto 'Big Pollution' (and Big Tobacco and Big Armaments) for their lies and influence peddling, yet seem to regard Big Pharma as a noble benefactor of humanity with impeccable ethics.

Yes, that's always how it goes, with the rider that the UK government only seems to invest millions of pounds of taxpayer money in those that fail and ignores (or even bans) those that succeed, whichever political party is in place. Add in the ruinous Climate Change Levy, Feed-In Tariffs, Green Gas Levy, Contracts for Difference, Renewables Obligation and the rest, and it's a wonder that the UK isn't doing worse than it is....

It sank without trace, so to speak. It proved to be another nice-sounding scheme which failed to work in practice, the hallmark of the vast majority of Green fantasy projects. The narrative then shifted to the unproven "tidal stream power", which will probably go the same way. Unsurprisingly, the UK government is now throwing millions of pounds into backing this notion. I would be delighted if they could make these ideas work, but the track record is very discouraging. Of course, the one proven technology the UK could use to alleviate its energy problems -- fracking -- is the only one the government has ruled out. It was the first thing that the new PM did on assuming office.

A Nigerian acquaintance of mine, who wanted investment to transport a trunk box full of cash, used to refer to them as the Costumes and Bothers Authority. Looks like he was more right than it seemed at the time.

That is hardly a recommendation. Most UK government analyses seem to have been lifted straight from the Toytown Book of Rubbish, as a cursory glance at the ruinous policies over the last 3 years demonstrates. Plus, solar power plants have to happen at large scale in order to prop up the UK's idiotic Net Zero plan. They are hardly going to produce a government analysis which opposes solar power.

Generally I see supporters of wind and solar completely ignore the infrastructure issue and claim that solar and wind energy is "free" to produce, which is far from being the case. The dumber activists also claim that these forms of energy provide "energy independence", ignoring the fact that the infrastructure has to be purchased from overseas sources, which at the moment, largely means China. Unfortunately, the UK government seems to support these lunatic ideas, and has a child-like faith that the country can achieve 'Net Zero' with minimal cost and disruption.

Part of the attraction of Thailand is that the authorities are so incompetent. After watching the heavy-handed suppression of people in the West over the past 3 years, it's comforting to live in a place where the government generally can't decide exactly what regulations it wants to impose, and even if it does, has essentially no way of enforcing them due to the completely useless nature of the Thai police. It's freedom through incompetence - not ideal, but after watching the horrors of the Covid train wreck enacted in so-called "developed" countries, the necessarily laissez-faire life in Thailand feels way better.

Even worse than China's ongoing domination of rare earth production is the damaging naivety of the Green activist types with their imbecile notion that wind energy and solar are magically "free" forever. There is no such thing as free energy and the quicker the Green types understand that, the sooner they will have something relevant to say about energy transition instead of them endlessly repeating their slogans which amounts to nothing more substantial than "Hello clouds, hello sky!". The UK government's absurd adoption of Green fantasy energy policies is making the country's economic problems worse than they need be while doing nothing whatever to "save the planet", as they would have us believe.

Or blocks the export of rare raw minerals such as neodymium, germanium, gallium, cobalt and others which are crucial to the manufacture of wind turbines, storage batteries and solar panels. The market for these materials is largely controlled by China, which is as much foreign interference as you could ask for.

It was the political reaction to the pandemic that "upended almost every aspect of life." Conflating the virus itself, with the measures taken supposedly to quell it, is simply a get-out clause for the people responsible for the train wreck we are now in, and who are now asking for "amnesty".

Because the UK Parliament is a care home for nonentities, whose only defining characteristic is that they are inadequate, obsequious poltroons.

There are several, usually informal, reasons. Some bus lines have both air-conditioned and open-air buses plying the route, which may be of different colours. Some may even have different sizes (and prices). For example, the 71 route (Ekkamai - Ramkhamhaeng) has half-size orange buses at 10 baht per ride, and full-size red ones at 8 baht per ride. It's also possible that very old buses have different color schemes from simply old buses on some route. You can check bus route and the vehicles used on them at http://www.bmta.co.th/en/bus-lines I won't say that the buses are the best way to get around the city, though they are the most interesting.

Yes, there are plenty of dead from Covid. But fortunately policies changed as time went by. Never before, for example, have we so jealously guarded the health of the elderly by forcing them to die alone.

There are plenty of people who are medically unable to take certain vaccines due to allergy issues - for the mRNA vaccines, there are plenty of people who are allergic to either polyethylene glycol, phosphocholine or trimethamine. They are at risk of anaphylactic shock, which is potentially fatal.

They don't have their figures straight. The Ministry of Tourism and Sports officially reported 1,309,115 foreign arrivals in September, so a 3.1 million figure for October would be a more than 120% increase. Like everything in Thailand, this can be explained: Either the Transport Ministry is hopelessly wrong, or the MOTS is hopelessly wrong, or both of them are hopelessly wrong.

This seems to be a total non-story in reality, but a huge one in political consciousness. There was a 15-minute segment on Thai primetime TV last night titled "Ready or not? Thailand plans foreign ownership of land." As if some foreigner were about to spend 40m baht to buy a rai of land in Khon Kaen and push a couple of Isaan rice farmers off their land. I would imagine that the areas of Thailand where such a purchase makes sense would be limited to dense urban areas where cashed-up foreigners might compete with cashed-up Thais. The symbolism is what counts, I suppose.

My stance is completely pro-science. It is against The Science(TM), that is, politically motivated 'science' which does not permit any questioning as to its methods or conclusions.