Drumbuie

As usual , the truth is rather more complex than that. https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/marijuana-gateway-drug

I am currently in the UK visiting relatives and I can tell you that whatever that article says, the economy is NOT thriving post Brexit. Food is unbelievably expensive, most households are struggling to get by. My son who earns a very good salary says he can no longer save any of it due to mortgage interest increases and skyrocjeting fuel and food bills. Inflation is outstripping wage increases ( if any) and anyone who isn't a millionaire is finding life increasingly challenging. Brexit is a continuing disaster - hundreds of small businesses closing as they can't export to our nearest and biggest market due to the paperwork involved and the increased cost and duration of transport, others because they can't get workers from the EU any more. Meanwhile the number of immigrants has actually *increased* - so much for the much vaunted "controlling our borders" slogan.

I'd question how much less a scale corruption in the Met is than in Thailand. I suspect they're just more skilful at hiding it. The granting of liquor licences to restaurants and bars, for example, has been hugely lucrative for London police stations for decades. In 1980 or thereabouts I was lunching with a restaurant-owning chum when a bloke came through the door in a beautifully cut camel hair coat, diamond discreetly winking from his signet ring, Rolex on his wrist, and everyone started bowing and scraping to him. (The Pope himself could not have had a greater effect on the St Peter Square throng). "Who on earth is that?" I asked. "Shhhh" my host whispered, looking tense. When the door had closed on the departing eminence, he breathed out and added, " That's the Head of Licensing at H------ CID" - and all became clear.

My experience of Thai visas is limited but my experience of businesses and national organisations changing from paper-based records to computerised systems covers over four decades - and from my relatively brief exposure to it, it's clear that the immigration service in Thailand is finally making that transition. The times they are a-changing. It's not the Wild West (or East) any more. Get a proper visa.

I've only lived in Thailand since last year. Are these immigration swoops a regular thing or have Immigration stepped them up since they started switching from paper-based records to a computerised system which can be checked in seconds?

A long time ago, I had to wait on a trolley for an urgent operation and the kind attendant topped up the pre-op medication every time I complained of the pain. After the (entirely successful) operation, I had night sweats, extreme fatigue and my bones ached constantly, so I went to see my GP. He looked at my notes and said, " I'm not surprised". Then he explained that the pre-op stuff was almost pure morphine and what I was suffering was morphine withdrawal. Be prepared!

The answer is to make them elected by and accountable to local people. The first layer of government in Sweden is the kommun which is around 10,000 (rural) to 30,000 ( Stockholm etc). Small enough that you may meet a good percentage of them as you go about your daily life. Your kids may know their kids. Your parents may know theirs. You maybe went to school with them, or your cousin's did... it's small enough that you can't get away with things so easily. Small enough that it's not a huge responsibility. Small enough that it's a good training and a way of both you and the electors finding out if you'd make a good politician. The kommuns in a region share local taxes; they also share experience and best practice with each other; as do the regions. There are over 200 regions (for a population of under 10 million). So most of what a centralised government has to deal with is devolved and the national government only has to deal with national stuff. It's called a distributed network ( like the internet itself) and is considerably more resilient than a centralised top-down system. Very hard to mount a coup against a distributed network, too. It's not perfect, but it is on the whole better. Hope he succeeds. Changing systems is heartbreakingly hard work.

"The implementation of a new database played a crucial role in the success of this initiative" is perhaps the most significant sentence here.

https://sealevel.nasa.gov/ipcc-ar6-sea-level-projection-tool If you're really interested in the subject, this might be useful.

Sorry, I omitted that from the list of documents (as I thought it was a sine qua non)

I've eaten at the Londoner several times. The menu covers a lot of territory but includes British classics - proper Sunday roasts, shepherd's pie, fish and chips, steaks, mixed grill, bangers & mash, all day breakfast - as well as French, Italian, Thai, you name it, kids menu, vegan/vegetarian. Good food, well cooked and the staff are very welcoming. PS Save some room for the dessert menu.

Went for first Non O retirement visa extension at CW yesterday; in addition to bank book, copies of bank book, letter from bank, passport, copies of passport entries, photos, and TM7, I was asked for a signed copy of TM30 and signed copy of landlord's ID.

37.5% of the electorate and a very narrow majority of those who voted voted to Leave in a referendum that was sold to the House of Commons as "advisory" . There was no White Paper explaining what would happen. There was no proper discussion of the full consequences. So a narrow majority voted Leave without the slightest idea of what it entailed. Let me remind you that when the Scottish electorate voted for devolution in 1979, it was disallowed as it did not represent 40% of the electorate. Why was this not applicable to the UK electorate in a decision with far greater consequences?

What was there to implement? They had no plan. They spent the years between the referendum and Brexit running round like headless chickens, not bothering to gen up on how much the UK depended on the EU for both exports and imports of food, to mention just one vital commodity. Nor on how much documentation would be required by the EU for imports and exports once we ceased to be a member. They ignored the problem of the Good Friday Agreement (signalled loud and clear the day after the Referendum by both Fintan O'Toole in the Irish Times and Joyce MacMillan in The Scotsman, to name but two). They ignored the preparations for a possible pandemic recommended by their own committee in 2018. They ignored all the advice from the civil service. They continued to draw down higher salaries than 95% of UK taxpayers, plus ludicrously generous expenses, while complaining they weren't paid enough. They were only concerned with pleasing their donors and backers who wanted to evade the EU's crackdown on tax havens which might have negatively affected their excessive wealth. And for that, they threw away the best deal any EU member had - in Schengen but not in the Eurozone, in control of its own borders (yes, we were) and able to influence EU legislation because of its historic ties and reputation - the latter now completely trashed. But there are stilll people who believe against all the evidence that Nigel Farage (who ran off to get EU passports for his family the day after the referendum result) or Jacob Rees-Mogg (who moved his tax-efficient company to Dublin) do care a toss about anyone other than themselves.

Well, yes, they could - if their ex husband/partner had been thoughtful enough to make sure they could afford the air fare, and if they were in Helsinki, that would be easy. But they were in smallish towns in a foreign country where the language is even harder to learn than Thai, the winters are brutally long, dark and cold and the natives are notoriously taciturn. If they were well educated, resourceful and had a range of employable skills, they could have applied for more interesting and rewarding jobs in Finland - but if they were well-educated, resourceful with employable skills, they probably wouldn't have chosen to cohabit with/marry a Finn in the first place, would they?

No. The price rises have been caused by the Conservative government's continual mishandling of the economy and of Covid. A major factor in the increase in the cost of living is the increase in the cost of power. Some years before the Tories, lobbied by the (privatised) energy generation companies allowed the major natural gas storage facility in the North Sea to be run down in order to maximise profits. Thus when Russian natural gas supplies were cut off due to the war in Ukraine, and the stress on energy generation in the UK (gas power having replaced coal-fired) was exacerbated by a fire in the undersea pipeline from Europe, the lack of reserves hit supply, and thus prices, hard. Another factor in the increase in the cost of living is Brexit Brexit has increased the cost of importing food from the EU - prior to Brexit, the UK imported the vast majority of its fruit and veg from across the Channel, through the Port of Dover and exported much of its own produce as well. When we were in the EU, the trucks rolled on and off the ferries with no hindrance. Since Brexit, regulations have seen traffic jams stretching miles back along the motorway to Dover and sending most fresh produce eg live shellfish for the lucrative Spanish and French markets has had to cease, with many firms having to stop trading. Similarly florists can no longer import fresh flowers from their previous suppliers. Without EU workers, UK farmers were unable to bring in the harvest. It was all predicted and denounced as "Project Fear". But it wasn't. The mishandling of the Covid epidemic, the delay in lockdown so that the Cheltenham races could go ahead, the regular parties in Downing Street, the appalling waste of money on useless PPE bought from government cronies and donors, the handing out of £££ of Covid support by Rishi Sunak's Treasury to companies, including overseas companies, without even cursory checks, the debacle of his Eat Out To Help Out scheme... ..I could go on, but I'll spare you, and my blood pressure.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/air-passenger-duty-rates-from-1-april-2022-to-31-march-2023/air-passenger-duty-rates-from-1-april-2022-to-31-march-2023 Air passenger duty in the UK is included in the ticket price so mostly you don't notice it. But I don't recall any government asking whether we wanted it or not.. [oops, I see someone else has just pointed this out - but now you have the link so you can check for yourselves]

800,000 baht? Small beer. In the UK, bank employees are MUCH more daring.. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/hsbc-managers-jailed-900k-fraud-customers-accounts-b965646.html https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-manchester-50423633 Etc.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/05/covid-19-no-longer-global-health-emergency-world-health-organization Not an *emergency*, no, but "last week COVID-19 claimed a life every three minutes – and that’s just the deaths we know about.” Plus Long COVID is, unfortunately, real.

Goodness me. I suppose, having strolled through these forums for the last six months I should have not have expected the majority of comments on this to be anything other than an outpouring of misogyny and racism, but even so I am a tad surprised. Stop for one moment and pretend the writer was male; would you see this as narcissistic? Then imagine you're in your home country, the writer is a fellow citizen, and foreigners are muscling in on one of your home country's nascent industries and putting locals out if business. How would you feel then?

Maybe that is the case in India but it is in fact possible to detect cyanide post mortem at sub-lethal doses. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325875019_Forensic_Toxicological_Analysis_in_Cyanide_Poisoning_Two_Case_Reports

Deregulation of the UK energy market left millions of its citizens having to choose between heating and eating last winter. Prices for electricity in Thailand are much lower.

If you arrive on a tourist visa and then apply for a 90 day non O retirement visa in Thailand, health insurance is not at the moment compulsory - if you apply for the non O from outside Thailand it is.

Yes. There are all kinds of expats from all over the world in Thailand - working in businesses, banks, schools, digital nomads, etc , or retired - enjoying 'normal' lives with their families and friends.

I did a border bounce to Vietnam earlier this year and the immigration people at DMK were friendly and helpful. It doesn't hurt to dress nicely, arrive sober, and treat people who are doing a boring, repetitive job with respect.