markm

I think only from posters who want their inane comments published.

Yellow journalism!

Is that the best you can do?

If you wish dispute the facts or the conclusions, why don't you take the trouble to be a bit more erudite and point out the flaws in the OP's well researched and well reasoned post?

Kaengk's response is a typical response of a socialist that has his reasoning and argument taken away and cannot counter the posting. All socialists want to see suffering masses under the jackbooted government so that they have a cause to harp on about.

I know the Northern issan are not that poor and suffering, and are really no worse off than they have been in centuries. They will survive as they have always done. The issarn people are not like the starving in the hunger camps of Ethiopia.

The village my FIL lives could be called poor, but definitely not suffering at the hands of the government.

I wouldn't worry about it. Forums always have grumpy old men on it. TV has grumpy old moderators as well, but that's an entirely different kettle of fish.

Streetcowboy has it right. Humour is one of the most difficult things to communicate on a forum and people nearly always misinterpret what you were talking about.

Don't worry about it. Get your message across and if the GOM in here start complaining, just ignore them. if they overstep the mark, I'm sure the moderators will give them a slap on the wrist.

Yeah i had a shitload of trouble at airports when they retouched mine a little to get rid of a couple of acne scars.

I can see why. the photo doesn't conform to passport standards. You should be looking square on at the camera and not smiling.

I think passport photo retouching is quite common in Thailand and other Asian countries where image is everything. The Thai authorities don't seem to care as long as the passport/ID photo bears some resemblance to its owner. My wife's original passport and thai ID card were from the same airbrushed photos. AFAIR, she said that the photo shop didn't just smooth the wrinkles in her face, but gave her a suit as well in the photo! Looking at it, I think they just cut her face off the original photo and pasted it onto someone else's hair and body!

When she got her digitised photo taken at the BKK passport office for her next passport, did she ever complain about how she looked. She was all for "losing" her passport and getting another one. (same with Thai ID cards, now that they take your picture as part of the process).

I keep telling her it doesn't matter, but still get the earache about it every time the passports come out. It was bad enough trying to get the "right" photo to send off with her UK passport application! I had to set up a photo studio at home and take literally hundreds pictures of her head and shoulders trying to get her to conform to the UK passport photo guidelines when she wanted different - took all day.

Women, never satisfied. Must be the worst subjects to take portrait photos of.

It's easier for us guys, we just get the pic taken and be done with it.

Nice clean washrooms on the basement floor. A very pleasant experience when you need to do #2.

Of course it would be. You wouldn't expect hi-sos to slum it for the bathroom breaks would you?

However, the washrooms in Central World leaves a lot to be desired. last time I needed to do a #2 there a couple of years ago, there was no bog paper. In any of the stalls. Either the attendant was neglecting his/her duties or I was just plain unlucky to pick the one toilet that had just run out at the wrong time.

Luckily the missus gave me some tissue paper beforehand "just in case".

Been there a few times. It's full of (very) overpriced stuff. Most shoppers bypass it and go to Central World Plaza instead. Only the hi-hi-sos go shopping in Gaysorn. If you're having a boring afternoon and in the area. watch the people who do shop there and compare them to those who shop in Central World.

The only times myself & the missus entered it was to go from the BTS skywalk from Phloen Chit station and down to the 1st floor to cross the bridge to get to Central World. Even that's not neccessary now since they connected the skywalk directly to Central World a couple of years ago

It does have a food court of a sort, on the lowest floor, but I would expect you'd pay through the nose for a coffee and bun there.

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Leave it to the other egg heads to work out how I got to the answer. I won't spoil everyone's fun.

Or maybe they wanted you to organize everything, including hiring the car, getting it decorated and hiring the dancers?

You didn't say if they wanted you in the parade as the sacrificial goat to their local diety, or for you to organize the whole shebang out of your pocket for them.

Missed a category in the top 20 categories - "Doesn't bother me - can't hear it" and it's variants.

Me? I'm deaf and wouldn't hear WW3 if it started. I presume others can be dead to the world in the mornings after the previous night's bender.

It'll be the thin edge of the wedge. US Security ignorance knows no boundaries and eventually all airports will have to adopt it. The US Security guidelines are all about reducing the potential risks, never mind civil rights, human rights or personal privacy rights.

Colour me racist if you want, but what’ll eventually happen is that any traveller that comes from a Islamic country known to have extremist activities will get photographed and logged onto a central database and if those persons will fly onto other countries they’ll be red-flagged as persons of special interest. This central database will eventually be deployed to cover land and sea ports to trap any potential terrorists from sneaking in that way. This database will get tied into the Immigration and customs systems so the monitoring and detection is automatic.

There will eventually be 2 secret tiers of security no one is supposed to know about, one for those that don’t fit the profile of an Muslim nut-job intending to cause murder and mayhem somewhere, and a far more intrusive security (penetrative body scan) for those that seem to fit the terrorist nut-job profile or are flagged as “person of special interest”. To keep the plebs from realising that there are 2 levels of counter-terrorism security deployed, there will be random smattering of those who don’t fit the profile going through the more intrusive security just for the amusement of the security goons.

There will eventually be a secret informant system put in place in college and university campuses around the world to report on suspicious gatherings of Muslim students, this data will then get fed into the central database and if one of those students who attended suspicious gatherings start travelling out of the country anywhere, they get flagged and singled out for monitoring. If a named student flies out to a red-flagged country, that student becomes permanently red-flagged as a person of special interest whether or not the trip is innocent.

Won’t be perfect until every living person on this blue ball in space is on that central database.

Thai logic? Must be the biggest oxymoron ever!

..had a queen sized bed..but the (thai) wife loves to snuggle, with a long pillow between us, so I end up on the edge of the bed, hovering on the brink ( of insanity )..almost falling on the floor..meanwhile there is about 3 feet of empty bed space to her left..that I occasionally gazed at wistfully.. ..so I get a King sized bed..and now she uses TWO long pillows..snuggles close, and although there is a little more room, I'm STILL almost at the edge of the bed, and there is about 4 feet of empty space to the left of her..that I occasionaly gaze at longingly.. signed: edgy

I feel your pain I sleep at the edge of the bed too. At the beginning I thought she liked my place better, so I gave her my place and moved to hers. Still sleeping on the edge

Brothers, we should have a support group.

I think the consensus here is that "you must be f***ing joking". If Thailand has any sense, they would look at alternatives first.

It's all agreed that there would be many problems among the Thai labour force in building the blooming thing, never mind running it. Didn't know about the reactor that they already have, but then it's not a commercial nuke reactor and this maintained by scientists who know how to work with nuclear tech in a controlled laboratory environment.

This nuke was built back in the ‘70s when America had a lot of clout and investment in Thailand due to the Vietnam war. Nowadays, thanks to Thaksin and Co.’s xenophobic attitudes, the current Thai government have lots of rules in place that actively prevent the encouragement of any foreign ownership/management of any such project. The best that would happen with such a project is that there would be a few falang experts acting as paid consultants working with the aforementioned Thai scientists to a Thai boss bankrolled by a few dodgy politicians. The reactor & buildings will be built to Thai standards as best as they can do given Thai expertise (Government rules say that falangs cannot work as construction labour thus won’t be able to get the all-important WP to go ahead and build it). The falang consultants wouldn’t be told of any problems occurring and would effectively be treated like mushrooms (to save Thai face). Politicans with an agenda would overrule the Thai boss who would overrule the Thai scientists on anything. Any Thai scientist with a conscience will whistleblow the whole sorry mess to the international press which then annoys the politicians as they’ve now lost face and the Thai scientist will end up cleaning public lavatories for the rest of his career.

The International Nuclear body wouldn’t be able to certify it with absolute confidence and several years or decades of quibbling will be spent with the politicians blaming the aforementioned mushrooms for bad consultancy advice (just to save Thai face). Eventually, after trillions of baht spent on it, the whole thing never goes live and is quietly mothballed when the politicians get retired. Either that, or the Thai’s will tell the international authorities to go swivel on it while they go ahead and fire it up.

If you want to know, look at what happened to Suvarnabhumi airport and when the FAA refused to certify it until a list of things a bog roll long had been fixed and after the Thai government threatened to go ahead anyway without their approval. Several years *after* finally being approved for international use, it *still* has some operational and building maintenance problems, just that it’s not going to go boom in a bad way.

I shudder to think of having a commercial nuke power station with a few "teething problems" in the system while the rods are glowing blue.

I agree on your view of nuclear technology, but there's just one small problem....

Thai mentality regards safety and the entire issue of not admitting there could be a problem as it's perceived as "loss of face".

The Thai government would not have the highly skilled nuclear workers from overseas maintaining the stations and keeping it running safely, but entrusting the operation to a Thai boss who will hire anyone he can get as cheaply as possible. The Thai people will consider it *their* project, and it'll be run *their* way without falang interference once they've had a few meetings with the falang experts to devise the inital concept.

The government won't know or care about the way the nuclear power stations are built and run, only that's it's a project that raises their social standing among their peers until things go boom in a very bad way and by then, it'll be too late.

I've been following this thread for a while, however onenut's latest reaction has now shown the old biddies which buttons they can press to make him do his nut.

He's won the first round on points. They will just quietly bide their time, then at the wrong moment, they'll try and set him off again with appropiate witnesses which will then make life very uncomfortable for onenut's family.

I think all he can do is to prey to the gods that the old biddies just get bored playing the game, but I think he'll be posting here again about their latest wheeze to wind him up.

Yep, JJ's arrested...

Guess his FIL not gonna be able to help him much now.

Nothing'll come of it. It's just d*ck waving by a self-important minor beancounter who doesn't know any better than to p*ss in someone elses' department and legisaltion for a few inches of newspaper columns. Give it a few days and this'll go away quietly when he realises just how stupid his attempt at creating a soundbite is.

Just like any politician (elected or otherwise) anywhere else in the world.

Just goes to show that politicans are the same the world over and Thailand is no exception. Once elected, they just don't seem to care how stupid they can come across when trying for an ill thought-out soundbite to keep themselves in the spotlight.

Khun Pitchet seems to be just a minor goverment beancounter sidlined into an obscure quango. He knows full well the implications of trying to downgrade any internationally agreed airport security guidelines. My guess is that some tourist p**sed him off somehow and he wants to make it inconvenient for foreigners to come to Thailand and shift any blame for the upcoming fiasco onto the carriers or the TSA while being the "good guy" for "recognising" that the current security measures are "too intrusive and unneccessary" for visitors to the LOS.

Personally, I'm just waiting for the TSA to make it mandatory that, until they've perfected the new full body x-ray scanner and it's installed at all international airports, all air passengers should remove all clothing upon arrival at the airport and travel naked and without any carry-on luggage so that airport security can see that they have nothing to hide. Like to see how politicans handle that since most of them have have something to hide.

Anyone else get a certian song running through their head after reading this?

...... and the very next day the cat came back...

Not very Thai related is it? Haven't noticed any Thai airlines crashing in the past month that could be related to it.

Mentioning Iran could provoke a religious/cultral flamewar in this topic if the mods don't keep a check on it.

I think all this talk of allowing citizens dual nationality will start to become moot in the next decade or so - It's highly likely each country will impose rules that you can only enter a country on the passport you left on (i.e. Stamped out on departure by the origination immigration & stamped in by the destination immigration). Leaving on one passport & entering on another will be verboten and woe beside you if you do that.

The whole point of holding dual nationality is to hold 2 passports which gets around immigration & visa issues. Great for us, but not for the "gods" who are trying to track and monitor all the millions of travellers around the globe. The thai govermit will like that as it can look forward to all the overstay "fines" it can levy on all the farangs wives when they come over to visit their family for months on end on their foreign passports.

No prizes as to the country who is the main force behind wanting each country's immigration forces to insist on the airline carriers feed them passenger details. (Hint: the very same country who greedy citizens caused the global credit crunch in the first place )

Luckily the government won't be around long enough for this nonsense to become law....will they??

There's still 11/12 months to go until a possible UK election. Enough time for them to steamroll new legislation through that will take the new goverment years & ££££ of taxpayers money to undo

This is a typical political knee-jerk reaction to a problem without really addressing it or the cause.... Won't stop 'em, if they have no trouser pockets, they'll use shirt pockets or other innovative ways of stashing a few paper notes about their person.

Pocketless trousers won't happen in Thailand in a million years where you have systematic bribe taking, you'd have to remove the pockets from all employees from the MD down