Drumbuie

11 hours ago, Robert Paulson said:

Teaching kids is the most important job we have. I can’t believe people leave it to other people. I mean that’s just insane who knows who this person could be. I think you’re just making excuses rearrange your life so you can teach your kids. And you seriously have got to be kidding me you don’t think you can out teach a teacher who is dealing with 30 kids at once and you are one on one? I find it insane one parent needs to get with it and teach their kids in all families, if not both parents. 

In international schools, the teacher pupil ratio isn't 1:30,: in my granddaughter's class it's about 1:5 and that's without including the excellent Thai teaching assistants. 

In her school the aim is not to ape the traditions of the snobby, repressive private schools of the UK and the USA. Every time family are invited to visit the school, I am impressed by how happy and confident the children are, and how proud they are of the work they're doing, how well they're socialised. 

Thee is no way any parent could replicate that nurturing and stimulating environment on their own. 

50 minutes ago, Robbie2618 said:

I would gather that most expats that have incomes outside of Thailand are not working for a company that's going to report the income to the Thai taxing authority and if your earning wages outside of Thailand then you would very likely have a non-Thai bank account. The only income the Thai authorities would know about is what's in your local bank account that you show on visa renewal. 

Like many, I have two Thai bank accounts. One for my retirement extension 800k, the other for daily spending. Tasking Immigration with assessing total Thai income is not going to work, they'd all have to be retrained. 

But what *might* happen is that supplying a copy of a filed Thai tax return becomes part of the conditions for granting a retirement visa extension. 

But nobody knows yet. So this article appears only to be a crude way of drumming up trade for accountants in Thailand. 

Wait till the osteoporosis kicks in as well. I simply don't understand why women want to do this to themselves or why anyone with a conscience would encourage and abet them 

Oh,wait . .is there a lot of money in it for somebody? A pharmaceutical company, for example? 

Defence Chiefs of Staff have already rubbished this idea and said it's simply an electoral ploy. Without extra funding for defence (the Tories have cut the Defence Budget in real terms while wasting money on eg Rwanda and #HS2) the last thing the Forces need is an influx of disgruntled, untrained 18 year olds, and you can quite see their point.

Conscripts need uniforms, housing, equipment. There isn't any. They don't even have enough for troops on active duty. No wonder the Chiefs of Staff are fuming. 

14 years ago the UK was still anm respected actor on the international stage. Now it's a pitiable wreck of a country run by clowns who've feathered their own and their chums' nests at the expense of everyone else, where the seas and rivers are full of sewage ( and so is the Parliament). 

#NeverVoteTory

34 minutes ago, watchcat said:

 

No money for the rent, but mobile phones all around.

A phone is pretty well essential in today's world - how else can you get and keep a job ?

My maid had a second hand cheap Chinese phone that cost a few hundred baht; her child dropped it, it broke, and without it she was lost. So I bought her a new cheap Chinese phone and it was still less than 3000 baht. 

3 hours ago, theblether said:

Here we go again. Another chance for the nutter brigade who haven't lived in the UK for decades to start ranting. Let me annoy you - 

 

20% of British pensioners are millionaires. NHS free, education, free, university - free in Scotland, limited fees in England. Prescriptions, free in Scotland, Bus passes, free. 

 

8.5% increase in the UK pension. Re NHS - contrary to the drivel you read - I was referred to the hospital for an ECG a week past Thursday and had the scan on Monday - two business days. 

 

My gas and electric bill for the last quarter - £330. The most expensive in my family was a millionaires seven-bedroom house, £1100. Supermarkets are cheaper than Thailand. Fruit is bizarrely cheaper. Meat is higher quality and cheap 200 baht a kilo for chicken breast. 

 

£2.10 a pint in my local bar. 

 

Where are we more expensive? Rent and petrol mainly. Rent isn't an issue if you own your house, just as we have been encouraged to do for the past 50 years. Street food us cheaper, but every UK town has an all you can eat buffet these days for a tenner. 

 

Have at it with your growling. And this family is in for a shock when they see the reality of school fees etc in Thailand. 

 

The Telegraph article from which you're quoting the "25% of pensioners are millionaires" factoid is somewhat misleading. 25% of over 65s ( remember the pension age is moving upwards as fast as the Tories can manage) live in a household whose *combined wealth* - including the house - is over £1 million. But a 3 bed semi in the London suburbs now costs over a million quid, so that's not surprising.

In poorer areas of the UK the average life expectancy is less than 60 years. 

As for a pint costing £2.10 - what are you drinking? Milk?? 

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/distributionofindividualtotalwealthbycharacteristicingreatbritain/april2018tomarch2020

3 hours ago, retarius said:

Immigration is great......when the immigrants assimilate into the culture of the hosting nation and start to share the ethnicity.

Sadly, too many Muslims, Afghans, East Europeans, Pakistanis and Africans don't come to Britain to assimilate....they come to stay totally separate from the host nation, not even learning the language. They come determined to maintain their own way of living and ethnicity and demand that the host nation change its laws to accommodate them.

I'm sure there is no one of my age who was living in Britain at the time, who doesn't remember the howls of protest and demands for special privileges from the Sikh community when Britain introduced the helmet law. Sorry, don't come to a host nation and demand they change the laws for you. This is an example of the deeper issue of non-integration of certain groups. 

Europe is flooded with 'victims' at the moment all seeking special treatment (privilege) for their group. My attitude is that by all means come to Britain but integrate and learn the language. No illegals arriving on boats thank you. No fake asylum seekers. No benefits until you have had a job and paid in for two years. I would add, no single men/. Any single  male fleeing a war, should be sent back to fight for his country. 

I'm assuming you speak fluent Thai and are completely assimilated into Thai culture? 🤣

7 hours ago, BigBruv said:

Great news.  A lot of Thais will marry a farang for a couple of years to get their golden ticket to the promised land - then dump the mug who brought them over.  I know one who is a nice enough person but is divorced and on benefits with 2 kids who sleep all the time - UK has enough problems of its own with freeloaders so this rule change is most welcome.

 

Yours is different: I know, I know but the exception proves the rule.

What provincial narrow-minded nonsense.

In the UK more than half of all taxpayers earn less than £20k a year ( and thanks to the skyrocketing cost of living have no savings at all) and the *average* salary is less than this threshold.

So the majority of British citizens are now unable to marry anyone without a British passport  and bring them home to live. 

Not just Thais. *Anyone*. Including former Commonwealth citizens. It's a needlessly cruel, vindictive policy, a further diminution of citizens' rights, and we should  all sign that petition now. 

39 minutes ago, hotchilli said:

The mosquitoes will love that...

So will all the various forms of local wildlife that eat mosquitoes and their larvae. 

Not only am I a woman, I'm the mother of three sons, and stepmother of another. Having seen them all through adolescence, including sharing a school run with another family with three boys, I'm injured to the kind of chat that is widespread in these forums. 

Although I must confess to being slightly surprised that so many fifty-plus year olds' conversation is eerily similar to that of a carful of hormonal, Lynx-drenched teen boys. .

And another Bella Caledonia quote.

"As former *Conservative* MSP Adam Tomkins, writes in the Herald: “Under the Hate Crime Act, the threshold of criminal liability is not that a victim feels offended (a subjective test), but that a reasonable person would consider the perpetrator’s action or speech to be threatening or abusive (an objective test).”

He continues: “Asserting that sex is a biological fact or that it is not changed just by virtue of the gender by which someone chooses to identify is not and never can be a hate crime under this legislation.”

* My emphasis. For the hard of reading.

There is an absolute tsunami of misinformation at the moment in the UK media, especially in the mainstream which is, of course, majority extreme right wing, and it's important to remember that when this is aimed at Scotland, it's because according to some recent polls, there is actually a danger that the SNP could equal or even outnumber the Tories in Westminster after the next election.

So the misinformation machine in Tufton Street has gone into overdrive and all its apparatchiks like Andrew Neil are
frothing away at maximum speed.

Always ask yourself, cui bono? Who benefits? And you can rest assured, it's not the ordinary people (who in Scotland have done increasingly better than their English counterparts since the SNP took over in 2007).