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MicroB
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3 hours ago, Billybaroo said:
That is a big no if you mean to bring in cannabis from another country into Thailand. Especially, from the US. While cannabis make be legal in one state to transport into other states or over borders is a violation of Federal law.
And yet the majority of cannabis sold in Thailand is US grown
Why is US-grown cannabis cheaper than Thai cannabis? Labour costs must be higher, then there are transportation costs. I can't imagine the growers with licences, such as Ultra Health, Mammoth Farms, Palo Verde Center, Copperstate Farms, Cresco labs etc, will want to get involved with shadey practices involving fruit imports, hollowed furniture. Companies like Aurora and Cronos are publicly listed, and such activities are really bad for ESG, and make shareholders unhappy. Probably organised crime, who's business is not just cannabis, wanting to defend market share by deliberately undercutting legitimate businesses, and running "businesses" in a way that most will find intolerable (low labour costs due to use of illegal immigrants, slave labour, illegal cultivation on land you don't own, construction and operation of grow houses without heed of safety law).
My understanding is that the Thai decriminalisation was primarily intended to help poor Thai farmers with an alternative cash crop, which is laudable, rather than a moral stance regarding the use of narcotics, but instead, these farmers, doing the right thing, are finding themselves in competition with essentially foreign criminal gangs, who, due to regulation of their industries in the US locking them out, are looking for alternative markets to dump unregulated cannabis. Regulation in the US has not created a free for all, but instead created cartels who were able to obtain state licences. If you don't have a state licence to grow the stuff, you are still a criminal, and now your rivals have the forces of government on their side to drive you out of business.
And it gets even seedier. Much of the illegitimate cannabis production in the US, which is being dumped in Thailand, is financed by Chinese Triads;
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/21/illicit-cannabis-china-00086125
Regulation has given a veneer of respectability to criminality. The buyers of cannabis in Thailand looking for US grown stuff are probably confusing that with legitimate cannabis, when in fact its probably grown by people involved with snakeheads, money laundry, extortion etc.
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On 5/7/2024 at 5:56 AM, Skipalongcassidy said:
BLOCKING is the newest liberal left 'SAFE PLACE'
Funnily enought I am a card carrying member of the Conservative and Unionist Party..
I take it you are a Septic Tank.
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10 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:
The documented death or injury numbers from COVID vaccines are tiny compared to the documented vast numbers of lives saved and illnesses avoided from COVID.
When governments approve a medical treatment or vaccine, I don't think they ever say there will be no side effects. What they say, and what is required for approval, is that the benefits significantly outweigh the risks, as was the case here.
Its a wasted discussion now. People are set in their beliefs.
Jonas Salk invented the first Polio vaccine. It took 20 years of research, kickstarted by Roosevelt. The vaccine arrived after 40 years of a Polio epidemic that lead to summer shutdowns of beaches, swimming pools and schools. Roosevelt, a Polio survivor, did not live to see the Salk vaccine. Eisenhower did, and Ike literally cried when he awarded Salk with the Cogressional Medal.
What is less remembered is that first Salk vaccine was a disaster. There was nothing wrong with the vaccine, which used a formaldehyde inactivated polio virus (viruses was still a novel concept, having only been discovered in the 1930s). Back then, there were no clinical trials. 3 companies were contracted by the US government to scale up production of Dr Salk's vaccine, and get it into the arms of American kids. One of those companies though didn't know how to make formaldehyde. Consequently, 200,000 does went out with live virus.
As a result, the FDA was created, because the government realised it wasn't enough to invent a new medicine, you also needed to know how to make it.
The mistake though didn't stop parents getting their kids vaccinated. The Polio vaccination campaign is the second most successful vaccination programme in history.
In the 1860s, people in Leicester rioted over the smallpox vaccine. They didn't want it. The Labour party campaigned to get rid of the vaccine act, and the formation of the NHS brought an end to it, followed by a catastrophic collapse in smallpox vaccination rates in the UK. In 1962, smallpox broke out in Bradford. People were soon queueing for it.
Some attitudes change, some do not.
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19 hours ago, Bday Prang said:
what exactly does "partially" vaccinated actually mean?
Partial vaccination means the same as for any other vaccine; failure to complete the prescribed dosages. The number of dosages depends on the vaccine. The term is synonymous with "incomplete vaccination".
For instance, if you have the HBV vaccine, which typically uses a recombinant antigen produced in yeast cells or hamster ovarian cells, you need 3 vaccinations before you can be considered fully vaccinated. The HBV vaccine gives 80% effectiveness against the risk of developing hepatitis. Conversely, the whooping cough vaccine (Pertussis) is considered non-sterilising, ie it does not stop infection, nor prevent spread, but it does mitigate the illness.
The problem is the term "sterilizing vaccine"; a vaccine that prevents infection. Its a biological myth, because its based on how a disease is measured. The usual measure of the efficacy of a vaccine is the prevention of illness, and the disappearance of cases. In most cases, disease is determined by symptoms. But its actually impossible to demonstrate infection never occurred.
The measles vaccine is held up as a highly effective vaccine; it virtually eliminates measles in kids. But, when vaccination levels falls, there is a resurgence in cases. The vaccine, it turns out, doesn't prevent infection events. It prevents kids developing measles (rash), but if you start testing for the measles virus, its still circulating among those kids.
The paradigm for infection detection is increasingly molecular. In 2020, it was PCR. In the next pandemic, it will be CRISPR, with 1-2 orders of magnitude increase in sensitivity and specificity. The myth created by Danish physician Peter Ludvig Panum when he assessed the effectiveness of measles vaccination in the Faroes, in the 1840s, which he observed to be perfectly effective, will be eroded.
The lay public, in general, do not understand how vaccines work. Why would they, its not a topic they paid much attention to at school.
The HPV vaccine is near enough perfect in preventing cervical cancer in women. Its probably the most effective vaccine known.
The Rabies vaccine, at most, provides 2 years protection, but more typically 6 months protection. One wouldn't quibble though about efficacy after being bitten by a rabid dog, like I was (and I had the early recombinant version into the belly).
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7 hours ago, susanlea said:
There is no emergency. Population increased by 2bn since 2000 and world hunger fell so people can see the climate talk as a scam which it is. Warming helps humans as cold kills far more people and crops. Anyone with an education above 6th grade can work out it is scam that has been on repeat since the early 2000s. We knewBlo last century carbon dioxide was a greenhouse gas but all the add on scaremongering is pure scam.
Blocked Susan lea for not reading.
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7 hours ago, impulse said:I am cautiously optimistic that scientists over the next 70 years will come up with plant strains that will tolerate any changes in conditions and use all that extra plant food in the atmosphere to increase yields. Even in Thailand.
Generally, the same people skeptical of climate change/climate emergency/global warming, are also the same people resisting geneticslly engineered crops, and who generally push against scientists, to the extent some want scientists to be incarcerated.
The ability of plants to photosynthesize (take oxidized cardon in CO2, and convert it to reduced carbon in sugars) is dependant on access to phosphate, nitrogen and a few metals, to manufacture the enzymes needed to fixate CO2.
Major threat to rice yields in SEA is seawater contamination of fields. So work is being done on salt-resistant rice, which also makes them more resistant to drought. But genetic manipulation of strains can lead to domination of viable strains by a small number of countries. The Beijing Genomics Institute is easily the largest gene sequencing organisation in the world, and they were part of the Human Genome Project. After that was completed, they switched their focus to studying the rice genome. Likely, China holds the knowledge and knowhow in improving crop yields.
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46 minutes ago, MangoKorat said:
'Why does the UK government have to do anything about? Because its fair? Out of pity?'
Clearly because its fair.
Nothing you have said from thereon in makes any sense whatsoever - just a load of gobbledygook. You have not offered one single justification as to why a pensioner that chooses to live abroad should not receive pension increases.
The plain and simple fact is that someone who is on basic state pension living in the UK costs the country much more than someone who has retired abroad. There is no justification at all for them to each be given a different amount of pension. I really can't understand why you can't see that.
What difference does it make to the UK government where they live? Neither group make contributions any longer and as I've pointed out, pensioners living abroad cost the UK government far less as they don't get medical treatment.
To be able to claim full state pension, a person has to have paid contributions for 30 years. A lot of people left school at 16 and currently are entitled to their pension at 66. The chances are that they have therefore, worked and paid NI contributions for 49 years (they currently stop at 65). However, for various reasons they, especially females, may not have paid in every year. So, there will be cases where a pensioner who has retired abroad may have paid in for 49 years and is no longer be entitled to any increases whereas his counterpart remaining in the UK may have only paid in for 30 years and receives every increase.
I am not retired yet but I've already cost the NHS quite a lot due to cancer and mini strokes. I am now on medication for the rest of my life and I guess the cost is £50 per month. When I leave the UK on retirement, that cost will end and I'll have to pay it myself. A hell of a lot of the pensioners I know are on some form of medication. For the first 40 years or so of my life I hardly ever visited a doctor but its a lot more frequent now - and don't forget, the population is aging. They should bloody well pay us to leave - not refuse pension increases.
Another thing you fail to be aware of is that many basic pensioners in the UK qualify for housing benefit, council tax benefit, winter fuel payments, etc. etc. My own mother lived rent free for about 20 years and was then looked after at the expense of the country in a care home for another 15 years or so until she died. Had she left the UK, the country would not have been paying for that and there are literally THOUSANDS like her.
If you had multiple TIAs and strokes, at least you won't be drawing pension for that long. My dad got through 10 extra years after a TIA, and that likely triggered the Alzheimers he had for the last 5 years.
So you think its ok to transfer the health burdens from a country like the UK to a country like Thailand.
You ask what difference does it make to the UK government where they live? And then states the reason. Saves money, and they don't even have to give you more money.
I'm aware of all the other stuff you referred to. And its 35 qualifying years, not 30 years that you confidently stated, to get a full pension.
It seems given the numbers of pensioners living overseas on reduced pensions, the UK doesn't need to incentivise anyone to leave the UK. Your mum lived rent free, but people like me paid for that. her time in the home and getting benefits off the State was also facilitated by all those pensioners living it up in Spain, Greece, Canada, USA, Australia. Thailand. And then the country voted to ruin the lives of those pensioners through an act of national suicide called Brexit. Don't worry, in a few years time, there won't be a UK to pay out pensions.
Even on a full pension, your mum would have failed to meet Thailand's retirement visa requirements of a minimum income of 65,000 baht per month. How on earth do you think the government can fund a 50% increase in the State Pension in order to retire to Thailand. So she could not have left the UK (to go to Thailand). Certainly not the EU.
I'm not justifying the government's position. Just saying why they will never change that position, and its pointless people campaigning for it. There was a Petition, that got widespread coverage in the national press:
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/lifestyle/money/frozen-state-pension-payments-petition-32165447
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/642749
It attracted 5,352 signatures before it ran out of time. I thought there were half a million affected, and you were all going to sign this.. The simple truth is no one cares. More people signed a petition to raise the motorway limit to 100ph, to increase funding for deaf athletes, to take action to support the DRC, to bring back Kung Fu into GCSES.
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13 hours ago, nong38 said:
I believe is was in 1955 when few people ever went abroad let alone retired there! That fits with the 70 years mentioned, all political parties do not seem to want to change the situation and it comes for extension every year in February I think it is.
£10 poms. Through the fifties and sixties, about 200-300,000 people emigrated from the UK per year.
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9 hours ago, jwest10 said:
NOTHING DONE AGAIN AND AGAIN GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR AND THEY WANT US DEAD ASAP SO NOTHING IS NEW THERE THEN 650 OF THE VERMIN AND SCUM
Why would UK residents, except family, care what happens to Expats. You made your choices, eyes wide open. Only if Bona Vacantia was involved, would the treasury benefit from your passing.
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8 hours ago, FruitPudding said:
Suppose they left 40 years ago then hit their pension age, would they be started on the pension rate from 40 years ago?
So, they left the UK aged 25 years. You must pay NI for 10 years to get any pension. Most of those expats will not have paid enough NI to get any pension (you get 1 year credited in 6th form, zero NI credits in higher education, so those with any professional qualification would not get anything). 80% of UK expats have a degree, and among the pensioner population, you will likely see an elevated representation of graduates, compared to the UK domiciled population.
If you had paid in for 10 years, and 40 years later, in 2024, retired, your pension would be £63.20 per week. That's also how much you would get if you returned home, though you'll subsequently benefit from inflationary increases. You will also be able to access Pension Credit if in the UK, to bring your income up.
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1 hour ago, proton said:
USA but not Canada is an odd one, there was a very old expat woman in Canada getting about 9 quid a week some years ago, must be dead now. About enough to get a bit of bread and milk,
You really believe she was living on £9 a week in the US? Expats in the USA get their pension uprated every year. Someone receiving £9 per week didn't work in the UK for many years.
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29 minutes ago, MangoKorat said:
Complete twoddle!
If you stay in the UK they have to pay out the full state pension. If you have no private pension you remain under the tax threshold. So a pensioner living in Thailand on today's full state pension would not pay tax nor would the same pensioner living in the UK.
Both groups, provided they have no other income DO NOT PAY UK TAXES.
Furthermore, pensioners living abroad don't cost the UK thousands of pounds each year in medication, hospital costs and doctor's appointments. The UK government should give people who choose to retire abroad more money, not less.
'Their isn't the money to pay for overseas pensioners' my ar5e, they'd have to pay it if you remained in the UK so what's the damned difference?
Why does the UK government have to do anything about? Because its fair? Out of pity?
320,000 pensioners in the UK, out of about 13 million, exist on a State pension. 66% of UK pensioners pay tax.
What percentage of expatriate pensioners only have a State Pension? Vanishingly small I suspect.
Right now, you are saving them money apparently (an interesting position; I don't use the NHS much. Should I get a rebate for the money saved? I've never been in prison either, so I should get a refund there. Not been on the dole, so some more money back. Maybe I don't own a car, more money I am owed etc etc). So why should they change anything? While expats who have been out of the UK for more than 15 years cannot vote, of the numbers that can, a pitifully small number bother to register. It peaked in the run up to the Brexit vote, then has declined since. Generally Expatriates don't want to exercise their right to vote.
If you want your full pension, its pretty simple. Go back home. Otherwise, this is a life choice you made, that you knew about when you retired, and what pensioners have known about since 1955. Its a policy they effectively supported in all those elections they voted in before they retired.
What would you say to UK voters, who have no intention to retire overseas, or who can only dream about retiring to some beach, why they should vote to improve your lot? When apparently all that money that you gave up because of a life choice, could be used, for instance, to establish a National Social Service (proper residential care that doesn't involve emptying someone's estate) (because you believe there is a magic pot of cash).
I suspect if UK pensioners decided to stop emigrating, and all expatriate pensioners were repatriated, then the entire system will collapse; both pensions, the NHS and Adult Social Services.
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6 hours ago, NoshowJones said:
"There isn't the money to pay for overseas pensioners". Really!! There seems to be enough to pay for all these immigrants, legal and illegal, MP's "expenses" etc,etc,etc.
Then move back to the UK. Then you will get your pension. All 500,000 of you. Test the system. The system was built on the assumption, essentially, of the £10 Pom. That a substantial portion of British workers would leave the UK for elsewhere, effectively subsidising the home market.
The UK government claims illegal immigration costs $3 billion. Other sources dispute that, with some evidence.
Parliamentary expenses are £140 million
The cost of treating smoking related disease to the NHS is about $3 billion. Scrap treatment of a self inflicted illness, and you have your savings to boost pensions. Being humane, the government will offer free morphine to those with lung disease to help them on their way.
This is the natural absurdity when you conflate the DWP budget with other budgets. There isn't a pool of money to dip into. There is only HMG's ability to borrow money. So they would have to borrow more money, to spend on mostly well to do pensioners living in sunny climes. Or borrow the same money, , and ebut redistribute the moneys differently. So your example of illegal immigration; the natural conclusion is for the Home Office to scrap its illegal immigration budget, which would include getting rid of the UK Border Force (we never had it before), cutting back on Royal Navy patrols, having a policy of non-intervention of foreign beggers on the streets of the UK, and stopping intervention in the black market sweat shops, as it costs too much. Therefore the cost of illegal immigration goes away.
And the quote was from 1994, if you bothered to look at it. Maybe there is something about government finances that you know that has radically changed. If so, please share, rather than keeping it to yourself.
Willian Hague in July 1994 said:QuoteThe principal difficulty in extending the payment of pension upratings abroad is the cost, as my hon. Friend anticipated. This year, the Government will spend some £800 million on pension payments to beneficiaries who live outside the United Kingdom. I know that my hon. Friend is only too well aware of the huge size of the social security budget and the need to ensure that it is sustainable and affordable in the future.
If all pensioners overseas were to be paid at the same level as pensioners in this country, that figure of £800 million would rise to about £1,030 million—an increase of nearly 30 per cent. or £230 million. That figure is no longer an estimate, in that it is based on the actual count of 85 per cent. of the pensioners overseas and what their entitlements would be. It is a huge amount of money and would have to be found from the existing social security budget paid to people who are resident in this country. The House knows that there are many worthwhile claims on that budget; we cannot meet them all at once.
The only circumstances in which overseas pensions are not frozen are where the pensioner is in the European Economic Area or where we have a reciprocal agreement with another country which provides specifically for upratings. We have some 30 such agreements, including those with member states of the European Economic Area, although most of the latter were in existence before our accession to the European Community. The costs of making any further agreements are a very important consideration, as I am sure my hon. Friend will recognise.
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11 minutes ago, transam said:
You just wasted a lot of time writing a load of nonsense...........🤣
No waste of my time, Burt Reynolds-wannabe.
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2 hours ago, nauseus said:Hague is full of it. Most penioners in the UK don't pay tax either. There is always the money - we still have our own bank.
Fake news. In 2010, 50% of UK pensioners pay tax. Now about 66% of you lot in the UK pay tax. Pensions are taxable income. People just make up cobblers to suit their own prejudices.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/11/23/pensioners-paying-more-income-tax/
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50 minutes ago, Rampant Rabbit said:
and who mostly never use the NHS saving the UK millions, its an absolute farce,
And its possible, without having made no contributions in tax and national insurance, to return to the UK after a working career outside of it, and receive full benefit of that NHS.
Todays taxes are to pay for today's healthcare, not tomorrow's.
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46 minutes ago, Ralf001 said:What year did the frozen pension policy come into effect ?
In 1946, there was the first uplift, which wasn't paid out to pensioners outside of Great Britain. The National Insurance Act 1946 contained a general disqualification for payment of benefits absent from Great Britain, together with power for regulations to remove the disqualification. Upratings, of which there were three between July 1948 and July 1955, were not payable to persons not resident in Great Britain. The formal policy was made in 1955. Subsequent regulations providing for pension increases have continued to have the same effect. Between 1948 and 1955, the UK entered into reciprocal agreements with France, Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, which provided for payment of retirement pension in the countries concerned. Upratings were paid. Pensions were also payable, by a special arrangement, in Ireland but were not uprated until 1966. Until 1973, recipricol arrangements were made with 30 countries to allow pension increases. This stopped in 1981. In July 1995, there was a parliamentary debate on the Pension Bill amendments for upratings to be paid, defeated by large majorities.
In theory, all UK pensioners could go home, and their pensions increased to the current rate.
William Hague pointed out that todays NI contributions pays for today's pensioner, not your future pension. So arguments about paying into a system for future entitlement falls fat on its face. There isn't the money to pay for overseas pensioners, who mostly don't vote, who mostly don't pay taxes, to have their pension increased.
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On 4/20/2024 at 9:30 AM, Misty said:
So where are British going instead?
The most recent data is to 2022:
If you consider Britons traveling to APAC as a market (ie. the choice isn't between Thailand and Benidorm this year), then before the pandemic, about 8-9% of Britons going on holiday/visiting Asia were picking Thailand. In 2021, that dipped to 3%, and it looks like India benefited from that (though India travel will be a mix of holidays, a lot of family visits and business reconnections) and in 2022, it went back up to 8%. If I strip out India and Pakistan, then in 2022, Thailand attracted 18% of British visitors to APAC, compared to 13-15% prepandemic. Non-HK China has collapsed; 16% before pandemic and 3% in 2022; 14% in 2021. Other Asia (Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam etc) went from 34% to 48-51%, and that seems to be at the expense of China, and, to a lesser degree, Japan and Hong Kong.
Countries in this selection are
Hong Kong (China) Other China India Japan Pakistan Sri Lanka Thailand Other Asia Australia New Zealand But if I consider a wider range of destinations, then a slight different story. Comparing % share in 2022 to 2019, only the following countries have increased their share. The dominating feature, except for Brazil, is the Package Holiday. Destinations more associated with more independant travel, which is basically Asia, have lost out. I suspect there is a combination of cost; the destinations closer to the UK will be cheaper, but also, post COVID, security, ie having the support of a Tui, Virgin etc to not strand you at an airport etc.. Its more complex that that, because you also have to get into spend, nights stayed etc, which is all in that data source.
One take away is that Thailand has to work hard to get the Tour Operators to fill up flights, charters. Something that might be distorting is hotel vacancies; has Thailand become a place where there are more people living out of a Hotel room?
The biggest losers, in terms of the holiday share, are USA, Cyprus, France, Ireland, China, Japan, and Other Asia (Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia etc) Thailand is down 0.2%, but Sri Lanka, which has more package tours, is down 0.1%. Interestingly, USA is down 0.8%, Canada is down 0.12%. I put that down to Florida (Disney) being too expensive. The £:$ during that period wasn't too bad.
Greece Portugal Spain Turkey Egypt Morocco Barbados Jamaica Other Caribbean Brazil Mexico Fly/cruise (stay onboard)
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On 4/11/2024 at 2:15 PM, El Matador said:
Well with Trump as potential de facto leader of this mega-alliance I don't see how things could go wrong...
Trump has said he wants to take the US out of NATO. He actually can't, but he can stop cooperation. Article 5 isn't mandatory.
p-ed
MOD briefings are baking in a Trump win as worse case. I think that is unlikely, but we have to assume that the US over the next few years will be ineffectual as a friend because of political paralysis brought about by the pro-Russian faction of the GOP.
As for this article; SCMP, which propagandises for Chinese soft power, picked up a Business Insider article, which is borderline clickbait, which picked up a Bloomberg Op-Ed writted by a retired SACEUR who last served over 10 years ago. These days he's paid to write about stuff.
There is already a high degree of formalised cooperation between Japan and N ATO, through MOUs. There is no need for formal treaties, and it would be of no surprise that NATO is looking for global partners.
Incidently, NATO members don't necessarily bring military capabilities. The Baltic States have no significant military. But they offer strategic capabiltiies.
If NATO is expanded, then Article 6 might need to be addressed. Most people are generally aware of Article 5, Article 4 less so. Article 6 defined NATO's area of operations, where Article 5 can be invoked, based on latitude. It was written in to make sure NATO wasn't fighting Britain and France's post-colonial wars.It has been suggested that changes to Article 6 can facilitate Georgia and Ukraine's membership (both have border disputes, but Article 6 can be rewritten to exclude the areas defined by the border disputes). Hence, Article 5 was not invoked in 1982 when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands. Technically, a strike on Pearl harbour is not an Article 5 moment.
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On 4/7/2024 at 4:23 AM, kiwikeith said:
That story still to come, also how he got money??
Maybe a stolen identity, who knows, overstayed 27 years but still had money, love to know more about this story.
Lived in plain sight and a prominant member of the local expat community, renewed UK passport under fake name, and a nice motor yacht. Failing health and ran out of money. There is a lot of information about him out there. I'll not give him any more publicity. He can rot.
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17 minutes ago, OJAS said:Richard Burrows, 80, was arrested on Thursday after flying back to the UK from Thailand, nearly three decades after a warrant was issued for his arrest.
So it looks like we may well have the PNR data list for the flight in question to thank for this vile individual finally receiving his long-overdue comeuppance.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/passenger-name-record-data/passenger-name-record-data
Or maybe he gave himself up because he is dying and wants the NHS, via the Prison Service, to look after him. Might even end up having a chocolate overdose like Rolf Harris had inside HMP Stafford.
A trial is needed first.
Obviously a fake UK passport on the list will throw a massive red flag.
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9 hours ago, Expat Tom said:
Kindly show me the peer reviewed major medical studies from world famous medical institutions that show that paper or cloth masks filer anything other than dust......I won't hold my breath.
Some reading material for you (all peer reviewed)
Lima MMS, Cavalcante FML, Macêdo TS, Galindo Neto NM, Caetano JÁ, Barros LM. Cloth face masks to prevent Covid-19 and other respiratory infections. Rev Lat Am Enfermagem. 2020;28:e3353. doi: 10.1590/1518-8345.4537.3353. Epub 2020 Aug 10. PMID: 32785565; PMCID: PMC7417132.
Jain M, Kim ST, Xu C, Li H, Rose G. Efficacy and Use of Cloth Masks: A Scoping Review. Cureus. 2020 Sep 13;12(9):e10423. doi: 10.7759/cureus.10423. PMID: 33062538; PMCID: PMC7553716.Collard MK, Vaz A, Irving H, Khan MF, Mullis D, Brady D, Nolan K, Cahill R. Reusable cloth masks in operating theatre. Br J Surg. 2023 Sep 6;110(10):1260-1263. doi: 10.1093/bjs/znad104. PMID: 37119205.Jefferson T, Del Mar CB, Dooley L, Ferroni E, Al-Ansary LA, Bawazeer GA, van Driel ML, Jones MA, Thorning S, Beller EM, Clark J, Hoffmann TC, Glasziou PP, Conly JM. Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2020 Nov 20;11(11):CD006207. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub5. Update in: Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2023 Jan 30;1:CD006207. PMID: 33215698; PMCID: PMC8094623.MacIntyre CR, Seale H, Dung TC, Hien NT, Nga PT, Chughtai AA, Rahman B, Dwyer DE, Wang Q. A cluster randomised trial of cloth masks compared with medical masks in healthcare workers. BMJ Open. 2015 Apr 22;5(4):e006577. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2014-006577. PMID: 25903751; PMCID: PMC4420971.Shimasaki N, Okaue A, Kikuno R, Shinohara K. Comparison of the Filter Efficiency of Medical Nonwoven Fabrics against Three Different Microbe Aerosols. Biocontrol Sci. 2018;23(2):61-69. doi: 10.4265/bio.23.61. PMID: 29910210.If you understand how a car air filter works, then you will have some understanding how medical filters work.Firstly, medical air filters do not work like a sieve; ie filtering materials based on a size cutoff. Given a virus is 0.02um, you would likely suffocate with such a mask. But you do know HEPA filters work, don't you.Car air filters and medical air filter work off a similar principle; that the direction of brownian motion on a small particle can be disrupted by electrostatic charge.Bacteria and viruses tend to be negatively charged, due to the presence of things like teichoic acids. That makes them quite sticky when it comes to a positively charged surface. Plain cotton is neutral. Dyed cotton is weakly positive (thats how you get cotton to take up dye). Woven cotton fibers are quite evenly distributed, in a mesh. That means the chances of of a small particle coming close to these surfaces is less than a randomly woven material. The chances of a particle coming into close proximity to a charged fiber might be increased with a double layer of cotton, ideally with the second layer at 45 degrees to the first.The problem with cotton is when it becomes wet, it becomes negatively charged, so it doesn't work well.Now bring in the car air filter. Most people will know the standard air filter is usually made of paper, a randomly woven cellulose material, and assume it will sufficiently filter particles of a certain size that might harm your engine. Some might also know these filters can be quite restrictive to air flow, and cause loss of power. So an upgrade might be to use a cotton filter from someone like K&N. Ah, but you can't just fit a K&N dry. It has to be oiled first. The oil, lightly applied to the cotton, gives a decently charged surface to capture most of those dust particles, without impinging air flow. But K&Ns don't work in very dusty environments, where the average particle size, instead of being 3-5um, is more like 100um, where the particles have sufficient mass not to be affected by the charged oilm and just pass by.Which is where the medical masks come in; they are generally not made from paper, but from spun polypropylene, polyurethane, polyacrylonitrile, polystyrene, polycarbonate, polyethylene, or polyester. These material are quite strongly positively charged (like nylon trousers), and also they are water resistant; water is not going to change that inherant property. N95 masks are not rated to remove 95% of viruses, but 95% of a standardised mix of particles.Whether cloth masks "work" depends on the policy objective; what is your definition of the measure having worked. Clearly there is a hierarchy of masks, with homemade masks at the bottom, and fully sealed hepa filtered active air units at the top.The effect of masks in controlling transmission is additive. The more masks worn, the greater the knock down. Two individual with N95 masks face each other. One exhales. 5% of the viral particles he has exhaled escape. Assuming the other person gets the full brunt of the other person's breath, he gets 0.25% of the particles breathed out, which is better than the 5% he would have been exposed to without a mask. For a surgeon, thats probably enough, given all the other measures put in place to reduce nosocomial infection.Now you have to consider the infectious dose (ID50); the number of bacteria or virons required to cause illness or death in 50% of participants. Generally this is lower for threat agents that are delivered direct to the blood rather than inaled. The body has its own measures, to knockdown the inhaled dose, such as saliva, cilia and the like. So that also contributes to the perceived efficacy of a mas material. ie the efficacy will vary depending on how well the threat agent does against the body's own defences. eg. anthrax spores are bullet proof, and negotiating the body's primary defences is super easy, barely an inconvenience.The ID50 of most viruses is usually around 1000; so 1000 of these have to get through before they will probably give you problems. But ID50 is an average; for some people, its much lower, for others, its much higher. The Amerithrax attacks following 911 highlighted that, when anthrax laced letters were sent through the US post. No one in the postal service got sick, despite exposure, but the recipiants did.So that relates to the policy objective. Are you hoping to eliminate all infections through a cloth mask policy? No, because it will likely fail. A manufactured cotton mask, at best, has 25% efficiency, will reduce risk to another mask wearer by 44% and that is probably not enough to eliminate risk of infection to all. But it will reduce the risk of infection to some.Is the policy objective to reduce hospital admissions? Yes it will work, but the problem is the limited efficacy of the mask is impacted greatly by how it is worn, and the design. Plus there is a time factor; even if correctly worn, the performance degrades over time. How well it works is largely down to the etiology of the virus. Even before COVID-19, it was known that flu would affect people in different ways, with some being very seriously affected. A test was being developed to identify specific biomarkers associated with high risk. The risk of COVID-19 becoming serious was not simply a case of cardiovascular health, weight and immunorobustness, because there were exceptions. The fit young person developing issues. The 95 year old lung cancer with one lung being barely affected (yes, this was a case). Those comorbidities might also be the result of genetic traits.Is the policy objective to be a nudge factor alongside other control measures? I believe it did. Masks were a reminder that you should do something, as simple as keeping a distance, no coughing in someone's face etc.If you want good studies on population use of masks, hospital studies are not them. That's because hospital studies are concerned about the efficacy of masks among a very niche part of the population; sick, hospitalised people. And the masks are not operating in isolation, they are part of a layered approach to infection control.The best studies are those prepared for the military, and these are mostly restricted. There are some in the public domain:This is not a comment on the proposed policy/prank, but a reaction to "paper masks don't work".-
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5 hours ago, George FmplesdaCosteedback said:
You need 25 years for a full pension. Higher education does not take 20 years. Working overseas is a life choice. The NHS is free for British citizens (and just about anyone these days). Benefits are the same, but it isn't much if you have blown everything else on self indulgence.
So you acknowledge that a Briton living overseas can return to the UK and sponge off the State despite never paying a penning in tax of NI?
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9 hours ago, sambum said:
You have a bad habit of misquoting people to suit your agenda:-
"Once again, no time frame, so meaningless statement and the previous correspondant claimed to have lived in a "city" in the North West of England, while ranting on about kids being kidnapped (ignoring that the most notorious case that happened when he was a kid), heroin (while saying taking pills was totally fine, and elsewhere, supporting cocaine usage), moaning about having his religion being changed"
"Once again, no time frame,..." who else on this part of the thread didn't quote a time frame?
"Claimed to have lived in a "city" in the North West of England" Once again pure speculation on your part that someone is making false claims.
"...ranting on about kids being kidnapped....." Who said anything about kids "being kidnapped"?
"....heroin (while saying taking pills was totally fine, and elsewhere, supporting cocaine usage)"
YOU were the one who mentioned heroin, and I didn't say I supported cocaine usage - I said that cocaine could be injected or snorted, and at no time did I say that I supported either.
"....moaning about having his religion being changed"
Once again, pure conjecture on your part - I never mentioned ANYTHING about having my religion changed.
Misquotes from start to finish - you don't even qualify for a "Sad" emoticon!
Ok, obviously someone took over your account, because you never said any of these things:
QuoteI grew up in an era when (in my city at least) there were no brown or black or yellow faces.
QuoteI lived in the far North West of England
(Large scale immigration started 3 generations ago, so it is reasonable to ask for some sort of context tom a statement like "I had never seen a non-white person before when I was a child". There are some parts of the UK where I might think that would be a reasonable statement at a certain point in time. But as you intimate, you came of age in the 1960s, having been completely oblivious to the concept of a yellow/brown/black face, despite living in one of the Northern cities, except in the pages of your geography text books (grammar school?), then in your early 20s, become an avid listener of Enoch Powell, while at the same time being a habitual drug user in order to get by in some sort of musical entourage, I would naturally raise my eyebrows at that statement (whether any of it was true, that in fact, you were an ultra right wing hippy, and an admirer of Powell, when in fact, as you approach the end of your life, you have turned into your dad (who probably didn't like the idea of children taking drugs).
QuoteI could go out and play alone in my street without fear of abduction or interference
(where I come from, "abduction" is kidnapping. It was a presumption on my part that you were describing yourself as a child. My mistake, you were describing yourself as an adult playing on the street without fear of "interferance" (rape)). If a child, pretty sad, that you had to play alone, no friends to play with. Hence later on turning to drugs to get on in life. Its a pretty strange to say, I suspect you are referring to the Rochdale case, something a lot of your ilk are obsessed with.
Quotedrugs were something you got from the doctor when you were ill
Quotehelped along by a few pills along the way, and later on, a bit of "Wacky Baccy
(You need to check your account credentials. Because someone else pretending to be you in a post admitted to being a cocaine user, as well as LSD. That same person though said they drew a line at "smack". Some one admitting to taking illicit oral narcotics, illegal hallucinogens, cannabis and cocaine I would suspect of having a drug problem and being used to coming into contact with organised crime (the drug dealers)). I don't know any criminals, you did, because how else did you purchase your drugs. Not from Boots.
Quotethen try to change the religion of my country into the religion of the country they were desperately trying to escape from
(My mistake, I didn't know you were a member of a sect/cult, and not part of the Established Church).
When you hijack a thread, be prepared to be taken to task with the statements that you make.
Cannabis Shops to Close by April 1, 2025: Thai PM Orders Drug Rescheduling
in Thailand News
Posted
A seperate issue. Much of that methamphetamine is produced on an industrial scale by the UWSA in Myanmar; Wa State is effectively a narco-state, with a dodgy relationship with the Tatmadaw, in what is a full blown civil war, as well as funding from China. The cannabis policy has not worked because it has facilitated the entry of foreign criminal gangs into Thailand, primarily from the US. To make it work, and to address the methamphetamine problems, requires a combination of much tougher border security along with regional cooperation and interdiction. Look how well that's worked between Mexico and the US. Its ruinously expensive, and appears to have made little dent. Parts of Mexico have become ungovernable as a result of interdiction policies.
A libertarian approach might be to open the Thai agricultural sector to foreign investment. Have the legitimate producers in the US, with their sacks of cash, buy Thai farms and land. That is fraught with problems, both about changes in Thai land ownership law, and the potential impacts on food production.
Thailand can't really do anything to influence what is happening in Myanmar, nor China. But it can close down cannabis shops.
Otherwise, it has to think about how it can support Thai farmers, and drive out foreign competition.