nigelforbes

The publicity is not a good thing but you can understand the underlying problem facing Imm., whether or not this is the right way to solve it is another matter. Lockdown changed much for many: many people who were visiting at the start of covid were allowed to stay for three years or more, using short term renewable visa's. Now that covid restrictions have been lifted, many of those people have decided they want to stay longer but aren't eligible for long stay visa's. Then there's the Chinese who seem notoriously poor at obtaining visa's. We have a Chinese neighbor who thinks that a visa is the lowest priority in his life and this guy has money and is eligible for a long stay visa, he always thinks he can buy his way out of everything.

I imagined SWW that I was debating with adults who would automatically be able to exclude pegged currencies from the debate, since this is a discussion about today, not about what happened over 25 years ago! That's why we're parting company.

"The pharmaceutical industry in India is currently valued at $50 bn. India is a major exporter of Pharmaceuticals, with over 200+ countries served by Indian pharma exports. India supplies over 50% of Africa's requirement for generics, ~40% of generic demand in the US and ~25% of all medicine in the UK ". https://www.investindia.gov.in/sector/pharmaceuticals#:~:text=The pharmaceutical industry in India is currently valued at %2450,all medicine in the UK .

Goodbye SWW

I suspected you may say some of those things which I will not debate with you. Suffice to say it is a statistical impossibility that forex rates on any given currency do not move during the course of a trading day and that the rates don't change. The opening post in the following link may help you understand FOREX better. The realty is that rates displayed on boards bear no relationship to rates that are offered to the public at the point of sale. It is physically impossible for banks or booths to display accurate or even near accurate rates on boards or anywhere else, until such time as a transaction is initiated.

They would fold very quickly, almost certainly and wai several times in the process.

That's a good theory but it's not really part of the FOREX picture. The problem is, banks have deliveries and collections of notes and paper work on a daily basis so any foreign currency acquired by a branch becomes part of the scheduled collection, ergo, there is no additional cost to those branches. The idea that rates are better in high traffic areas is also not sound, if anything, rates are higher, eg the airports. The SPOT rate is the spot rate, that is determined by the FOREX system and that is a number that is outside the control of banks and currency exchange agents. The add on or spread is the markup that the bank or agent charges as profit and that is variable, although it is highly unlikely to be too variable since the cost to perform the transaction in Nakon Nowhere is the same as in Bangkok. Banks/exchange agents have to remain competitive within their sphere of business or territory, you rarely see banks and exchange booths located close to each other for various reasons, both are in different markets and have different cost sensitivities. Banks compete with banks and exchange companies compete with exchange companies, the two don't compete with each other.

That statement suggest you understand very little about Thailand, perhaps you think it is OK to apply your home country conventions here! What the law says is not the be all end all of things here, as far as Thai society is concerned, in part that's why the BiB behave the way they do. Ignoring Thai social conventions will give you problems that your western logic wont help you get out of.

That's about right.

There is the legal view and then there is popular public convention, it is unhelpful for a farang in Thailand to challenge public convention. If you want to be a jail house lawyer and point out what the law really says, why not go do that in your own country and not here where your view is neither wanted nor respected.

I've gone cashless, it's easy, actually I've gone without money altogether....OK I'm broke, that's what it is, happy now.

You must be fun at a party.

The bigger vehicle has the right of way, everywhere, every time.

It's obvious, they both contain the letters "a", "i", "r" and "n".

I would be suspicious of the idea that it's caused by rats when there are so many other other things available for rats to eat, in an open area. We have a klong running through our gardens so we sometimes have problems with rats in the attic when the wire mesh blocks fall out of the downspouts (which drain into the klong). But we've never ever had rat damage anywhere else and there are two vehicles parked nearby.

Are you sure that's caused by a rodent? If the rat were trapped inside the car I could understand it chewing cables. But the car is outside and the cables are in the open, it seems very odd, I could never have imagined that.

We pay University dorm. accommodation fees for my wife's niece, plus we support her with living expenses every month. Are these costs tax deductible on a Thai tax return? (the Revenue site says only approved educational costs are allowed but I don't see where these are defined) Thanks

I "self insured" for over 20 years and it worked out well financially. Now I'm 73 and the immigration rule changes a couple of years ago scared me so I decided to buy some HI. The best I could find was CIGNA which costs 120k per year but has a 35 mill. cap. I also have a high deductible of a couple of hundred thou. which is OK with me because I only want to use it for catastrophic medical events and visa purposes if necessary. Expensive? Sure. One good point is that it comes with 2 mill accidental death benefit which takes some of the sting out of the cost.

Pollocks.

Is that Jackson, Dupri or O'neal!

The issue was the rate of unemployment, about which you said, "unemployment data are obviously untrustworthy". My reply above was in response to your comments, not to the new deflection you've just managed to weasel in. I mean really PH, you're all over left field trying to win points at any cost. I think I'll have to leave you alone for a while, until you develop debate skills rather than points scoring skills.

https://www.iban.com/glossary Interesting....this might be settlement related, ie, how the interbank transfer is settled between the banks. Or it more probably has to do with Thai systems and the field lengths which wouldn't allow IBAN field length.

Not necessarily. The Romanian bank would need to be a member of SWIFT AND have a SWIFT relationship with the Thai bank. If it doesn't have the former, there are no SWIFT options. If it doesn't have the latter, it can use a correspondent bank (CB) to make the SWIFT transfer, as long the CB has the SWIFT relationship.

We've had four shots of a variety of vaccines, plus we had covid this month. People tell us they can see the protective glow of our immune system from a hundred yards and that covid viruses shrivel up and decompose at fifty feet. Needless to say, we're also done with vaccines for the moment, until the next strain begins to evade and dominate. I'm in my 70's.

I was joking of course. I totally agree with your sentiment and can only hope for the same as you.