Drumbuie

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague It used to be part of the History syllabus because it led to the Thirty Years War ( which changed Europe forever) and, once read, is a word that is hard to forget.

My brother went to a very small primary school in the Scottish Highlands; one teacher, less than a dozen pupils. No curriculum in those days. They spent a lot of time gardening in the summer months while basically chatting about whatever they wanted to talk about ( no internet in those days, not much TV either). They all did extremely well at secondary school and apart from one, who had to start running the family farm, went on to university. But the idea that 'small is good' ( let alone 'smaller is better') is absolutely anathema to modern economists. Centralise and control is their motto.

Mistletoe and whine....

Would you like to share any examples, or evidence, you have for people with depression (with or withou inverted commas) being "often highly manipulative and vindictive, basically angry with everyone"?

The former leader of the free world ..

The problem is the Red Sea. To export to Europe in winter, it's the shortest and thus cheapest route. If Israel continues it's Palestinian genocide, the Houthis will continue to retaliate by firing on ships passing through the Red Sea. That is already slowing down Asian/European trade in both directions and thus reducing the number of containers available anywhere at any time*, because international trade/capitalism avoids having spare capacity - it's run by accountants not strategists. * Because a percentage are now stuck at one end of the Red Sea or the other.

Are you sure they aren't? There seems to be an increasingly steady stream of " caught overstayer(s) in the reports here as immigration gets to grips with the possibilities of using databases to cross check entry and exit data.

Drool Britannia ..

Nah. Nobody in Scotland is called ' Martin'.

Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. Everyone else generally takes a lunch break..

Careful, guys, you can easily OD on schadenfreude...you need to mix it with a little empathy.

Those legs belonged to a fellow human being, someone who died, probably unpleasantly, possibly violently.

No mention of the amount of particulates that come from car and lorry tyres. Recent research shows little difference in pollution between EVs and petrol/ diesel fuelled cars - turns out its the tread on the tyres wearing off grain by grain that does the real damage...

You've never been to the US, then where Immigration is legendarily unpleasant....or Sri Lanka. We arrived in Colombo yesterday, SL Airways cabin crew didn't hand put any landing cards like they used to and there were no signs in the airport mentioning them.but yes, you still need to fill one in. The queues, as a result, were interminable as each foreign visitor got to the front of the queue, was shouted at and sent off to fill one in.

My dad used to play the pipes and make us listen to pibroch for hours. Despite that I still love listening to pipe music of all kinds (so stfu, you barbarian Sassenachs....) In answer to the OPs question, there are regular pipe band practice sessions at the British Club in Bangkok, so you could email the address in this link and ask if he knows any pipers in Pattaya. https://www.britishclubbangkok.org/sports-n-activities/pipe-drum-band/

Looks like the sort of standard McMansion property developers love to build in the UK, crammed together as tightly as possible while still qualifying as "detached".

Look at the map of Israel when it was established after WW2, then look at it today's it has encroached again and again, with violence, into Palestinian territory. The IDF destroys the olive trees that the Palestinians depend on. A huge number of Israelis are as horrified by their government's behaviour as any one watching from beyond their borders - as one of them said to me in August, the trouble with our protesters is they're too well behaved. Hamas would not exist if Israel had behaved decently.

My oldest friends had three successful and highly rated restaurants in London; let me assure you that getting a star in the Michelin Guide involves reaching a very high standard, no matter where you are in the world. The inspectors take it very seriously indeed. It's one of the few things left. that just can't be bought.

AQI over swathes of Thailand, urban and rural, has been in the red for several days. Your natural nasal filters can't filter out the ultrafine particles that cause long term lung damage (which is why miners, flour millers, woodworkers, quarrymen, anyone working in dusty atmospheres used to die young of lung disease). Why wouldn't you wear a mask? Even if you think COVID is a hoax, 'flu isn't, nor is COPD.

I am SO tired of men who think women are just bodies whose duty it is to be sexually available 24 hrs a day, and that a 17 year old girl is fair game.

They are almost certainly doing this because your exit and entry date and time will now be added to your file in Immigration's database. Thailand's government has come late to the potential of national databases compared to (say) the UK and US, but they're catching up fast.

Both the mean (£19,800) and the average (£29,700) pretax income for taxpayers in the UK are below the arbitrary figure Cleverly has set. It's possible to support a spouse on these sums - outside London and the SE. And it's barely possible to support a spouse on £38, 700 in London and the SE where rents are sky high. This figure discriminates against the majority of UK citizens and is thus blatantly unfair as well as being unwise both strategically and electorally.

I had a problem with pine martens in the roof back home. They're legally protected and also they keep grey squirrels from displacing the red squirrels, so I didn't want to use traps Tried Chinese camphor balls and motion triggered lights to no effect. Someone said they didn't like noise so I left the radio upstairs on all day. Didn't work. But I listen to Radio 3. Retuned it to Radio 1 on full volume and left for 24 hrs. They never came back 😊 Then I fixed the loose soffit they were using for access, and cut back the climbing plants they were using to get to it. I had squirrels in the roof of my last house in Thailand but if I shouted F off at them and banged the ceiling, they obligingly f'd off.

I'm assuming you used the sarcasm font here.. but regarding the pandemic, compared to Johnson and Hancock in the UK he is indeed a saint.

Friend with experience of renting out flats in London said decorate and furnish it so you attract Japanese tenants, who'll leave it immaculate.