Drumbuie

Indeed, Thai language has many Sanskrit roots and the alphabet is derived from the South Indian Pallava alphabet. Unfortunately European history is taught as though nothing happening outside Europe matters and until Europeans arrived the rest of the world was living in mud huts. In reality, the Chinese were millennia ahead. Trading along the Silk Road brought many of their improvements to the West - their extensive hydrological knowledge, for example ( 4,000 years ago, they managed to tame the Yellow and Yangtze rivers to prevent disastrous flooding) and their inventions of paper and gunpowder.

In my youth, this happened because Barclays were funding apartheid in South Africa . Now it's genocide in Palestine.

Brexit was NOT the " democratic will of the people". It was a rushed, miscalculated attempt by David Cameron to outflank his extremist right wingers. It was not voted for by a majority of the electorate. There was no White Paper explaining what people were voting for. It was a shambles. I agree that this is not the Britain my parents fought for. They fought for democracy and the rule of law ( my father's words). They fought for freedom from fear of the knock on the door in the small hours ( my mother's words). Instead we have creeping fascism, curuption, cronyism, politicians blatantly lying and getting away with it, attempts to undermine the judiciary, one law for the rich and a country that is happily complicit in war crimes as long as one of the ruling party's donors is making money out of it. Thankful my parents did not live long enough to see this.

Absorption of orally ingested substances begins in the mouth, particularly the underside of the tongue.

Methinks your girlfriend needs to change him for someone with a heart.

Meanwhile, leaving Joseph Goebbels to spew his hatemongering in the Telegraph, we return to the real world of 2024 where, without foreign workers, the UK can't function: https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/02/uk-care-agencies-accused-of-exploiting-foreign-workers-caught-in-debt-traps

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.

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

The British Women's Group runs a second hand book stall upstairs in the Royal Oak, Sukhumvit 33/1; the proceeds are donated to selected good causes in Thailand.

There is a distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Many thousands of Israelis are on the streets regularly protesting against the actions of their own government - are they anti-Semitic? Some Israeli government ministers have even had their fill of Netanyahu's actions - are they anti-Semitic?

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.

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

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

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

The short answer is : make a will in Thailand dealing with the disposal of all your assets in Thailand. Regarding the wording and legality of that will, anyone living in Thailand can get free legal advice on this and any other subject from the Office of International Peoples' Rights Protection, www.humanrights.ago.go.th Tel:0-2142-1532 E-mail:humanrightsa[at]go.go.th They can also give you advice on drawing up a Power of Attorney (which everyone ought to do) in case of incapacitation. For your assets in another country, make a separate will according to the rules that apply in that country, although it doesn't have to be made in that country. Incidentally, for your Thai estate, a handwritten*, signed and dated will without witnesses is valid, unlike most other countries. * by the testator, the person whose will it is, not by another person.

Low blood sugar levels can lead to tiredness and/or irritability. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/low-blood-sugar-hypoglycaemia/

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.

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

Did you see a bear or a Bactrian camel while you were in Russia or Mongolia? Does that mean there are no bears or Bactrian camels in Russia or Mongolia? Always beware of generalising from personal experience. There are over 2.3 million motorcycles in Russia so that's about 1.6% of the population. But it's still over two million motorcyclists, in a country which makes its own motorcycles as well as importing them https://siberianlight.org/russian-motorcycles/ ...and it's a country which has a lot of motorcycle clubs, some of which are like Hell's Angels with international chapters, eg the Night Wolves who have featured in the news fighting in Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Wolves I knew absolutely nothing about Russian motorcycles before you made that sweeping generalisation and it's been fascinating spending a few minutes finding out. You should try it sometime.

In the winter much of Russia is usually cold and icy. In the spring it thaws, in summer much of Russia is warm ( by European standards: 20C +) and dry. The autumn can be frosty at night but real winter doesn't usually start till November. You know you can find this sort of stuff out on the internet and save yourself embarrassment?

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. .

A scholarly analysis of "EastEnders" [a long running soap opera in the UK, for those lucky enough never to have seen it] showed that on average characters were shown having an alcoholic drink every 30 seconds. That, combined with the last few decades of Radio 1 shows in which presenters gloried in the previous night's excesses, has helped to normalise the over-consumption of alcohol in the UK. Before then, being visibly drunk was a source of shame. And rightly so.

There are separate totals for the UK and England - which rather undermines the reliability of this chart.