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When you apply there is a minimum number of days spent outside the country in the previous 3 or 5 years to qualify, and you make a declaration that it is your intention to live permanently in the UK, but they can't really enforce that.

Apply for citizenship if you have indefinite leave to remain or 'settled status': After you’ve applied - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) On that page it says that you'll usually get a decision within 6 months. When my wife applied many years ago (on the basis of long residence, it was before she married me) the application got shunted into a siding for some reason and it took several enquiries over a year and a complaint to get some movement. We never found out what the problem was. I'm sure that was an exception rather than the rule.

That's a common feeling in many of my dreams - I've gone somewhere, by car or on the bus, don't find what I went to see/do and then can't find the way back. A variation is desperation to check in or board a flight. I get lost in a maze of corridors, go through a door and find myself out in the street or in a field.

I guess you're aware of TeatimeTV: TeatimeTV - UK TV for expats, worldwide This shows a lot of the free-to air channels in the UK and allows catch-up of more than a week. However the coverage is mostly highlights such as Match of the Day on BBC, but some European and International games are shown in full, so you can go to the previous day to watch them. I've almost given up on footy now. The Premier League is an over-hyped utter circus.

HMRC assume that you get the annual increases in the State Retirement Pension even if the DWP know that you are living in Thailand and don't pay the increases. You have to check your tax assessment carefully every year. There was a thread about this not so long ago, a few people discovered that they had been overpaying tax for years. Joined-up government it isn't.

How do you interpret this? - "Self Assessment goes digital from April 2026. All landlords and self-employed people earning above £50,000 will need to have compatible software in place by this date." Is it only those earning 50K+ p.a., whether landlords or self-employed, or all landlords together with only those self-employed earning over 50K? I think it could have been worded better. Either way it won't bother me. Like you I am an "accidental landlord" having rented out the house I used to live in. Over 14 years it's worked out ok, and the accumulated income (which I've never spent) is my health insurance here. But a combination of increasingly restrictive legislation against landlords and a desire to save my beneficiaries the bother of getting rid of it when I pop off in a year or two have caused the decision to sell the place when the tenants leave next year. I have an instant access account paying 4.5% at the moment so I stand to make just as much from the proceeds as I do from rent after the agents and their rapacious maintenance contractors have taken their slice.

Thank goodness that by this time next year I will no longer be a landlord.

This is very strange. When my wife renewed her UK passport in 2017, it was most definitely a requirement that all passports held by the applicant must be submitted, and the names in the passports must be the same. At the time her UK passport showed, same as your wife's, our married name. Ignoring the instruction in the guidance notes that the foreign passport name should be changed to the UK one, we changed her UK name by deedpoll to her Thai family name to match the Thai passport, and submitted that with the application. It went through, no bother. I posted on Thaivisa about this at the time. However, when I accessed the online instructions for an application from Thailand to support my previous statement, neither the application form nor the guidance notes make any mention of a requirement for matching names, although both passports (or copies thereof in our case) must be submitted. See this link:- Overseas British passport applications – Apply for a passport – GOV.UK It looks as though the matching names requirement has been dropped, so I withdraw my previous statement. The OP may be reassured by the advice on that same page that renewal passports are now supplied within 4 weeks.

Make an appointment to go there. Download the form and complete it before you go. Copy of every page of your passport to be submitted with the form, your passport is handed back to you, return with it when notified that the replacement is available for collection. P.S. If your wife is dual national, copies of both passports must be declared and submitted, name in passports must be the same.

Copies of reusable items, good idea. For Rayong Office the multiple pictures wheeze wouldn't work, because they come round to visit. My pal does marriage extensions, and my missis is the "friendly neighbour", we go round for the visit every year. The process on the day seems very laid back and only takes a few minutes. The pile of paperwork seems a bit of a workup compared with my retirement extension, and a second trip to the office is required to pick up the passport with the new extension, but the less stringent financial requirement is certainly a factor for some.

When you arrived at Suvarnabhumi I assume you had to present your new passport for endorsement by an Immigration Officer there, where they have the technology to scan and verify a passport. I don't think provincial offices have the technology or the training to do this, hence the requirement for the embassy letter to assure them that the document presented wasn't bought on the Kao San Road.

Good question, but I bet that, as with everything else, it depends where you are reporting. I didn't bother cancelling the "pending" report which remained unapproved on day 90 and went to the office (Rayong), got the slip for next reporting, no problem. Later the same day my phone pinged, and there was my online approval, with a different next reporting date. I used the online date next time round, no problem. Make of that what you will.

It should do, the legislation has already been passed, but I wonder how efficient local authorities will be in implementing it. I'm coming up to 14 years away, so am still in the system, and don't expect to have much of a problem. Perhaps you won't, as you were previously registered, but how it will work out for people who have been out for a long time remains to be seen. I haven't read the legislation, but I remember seeing something about them wanting to take tougher measures against voting fraud, so I don't know if that will make it harder to get registered, or for postal voting. My son does my vote by post. Most commentators are still talking about an election next autumn. If anyone wants to be registered I would advise finding out about it and applying before the summer.

The only practical way to vote from here (and I suspect almost anywhere else from overseas) is to appoint a proxy. If you have a family member or a friend whom you trust to vote as you wish that works ok. My son does it for me. Once set up, renewal is a simple exchange of emails every year, at least that's the way it works with my local authority.

I'm not sure that there is a "rush" to EV's in Thailand. On my middle-class moo ban of approaching 200 houses I see about 6 or 7 EVs buzzing round which have all appeared in the last year or so. If I changed my car I would seriously think about a small EV but as long as my 3-litre turbodiesel is performing well I can't justify the change financially, even though I have a 3kw solar system on the roof, because we do relatively little mileage these days. I recently watched a video of a chap driving from Greater Manchester to the South Coast in an EV, and he had a really frustrating time finding somewhere to get a charge. It's clear that in the UK the infrastructure and capacity are inadequate. What would be adequate in a populous country like Thailand is anybody's guess. Simple maths suggests that if all cars were electric and it takes at least 30 minutes to get a recharge as opposed to 5 mins for a fuel refill, then in busy places such as motorways and main roads then 6 times the number of charging points as opposed to fuel pumps would be required. My mind started to boggle the other day as I tried to follow one of these threads about registering on all the apps and booking at charging points in Thailand and the charge cutting off after 50-minutes. Perhaps it was poorly explained, but it seemed quite complicated, and I can't imagine the average Thai driver wanting to bother very much. I don't think I do either.

That seems very excessive. Perhaps we're not comparing like for like but from memory I paid around 30k baht to get an umbilical hernia fixed at the Bangkok Rayong Hospital about 5 years ago. That was with local anaesthetic.

For anyone who wants to try and get their head round it, here it is:- CARSON AND OTHERS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM (coe.int)

In fact all those reciprocal agreements go back several decades. As part of the argument put to the ECHR, Blair's lawyers argued that pension increases can only be paid in countries with which the UK has 'reciprocal agreements', and that to extend increases outside these arrangements would negate their ability to conclude other such agreements in the future. However, that argument is utterly threadbare, given that the government announced well over twenty years ago its intention not to make any further reciprocal agreements. But the ECHR bought it anyway. Quite why the British Government needs an agreement with another country to pay us whatever they decide is beyond me. We are victims of a totally anachronistic system, but it has been that way long before any of us decided to retire to the affected countries. The collective votes even of all 500,000 are spread potentially across 650 constituencies, so we have no real clout and our compatriots in Blighty don't care about us. A few thousand votes on yet another petition won't change anything.

You mean payslips or a P60 Who knows what would be acceptable, who would require it, and whether they would demand some verification, which doubtless the Consulate will be unwilling to provide - as they already profess their inability to verify sources of income for immigration purposes?

It's difficult to provide any rational explanation as they don't seem able to themselves. Whenever they are challenged in an interview they just start raving about "the climate crisis".

In 2011 I had a work permit for a year. Thank goodness I kept a copy. It doesn't show an expiry date. It's good to know that a K-Bank transfer is an easy process if I need it.

Well, as long as they don't do the same as the last time there were forecasts of a rice shortage during Yinglak's time in power, and they bought up huge quantities at a guaranteed inflated price. In the event there was no real shortage and Thailand lost its position as the world's leading rice exporter to other countries such as Vietnam.

Or some of them got so bored with pretending to "work from home" that they decided to actually turn up to the office.

I inferred from your subsequent post that Labour in power might be more sympathetic to our cause. It was the Blair government that fought for the status quo tooth and nail all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, so I don't expect Starmer to view us as a priority. Perhaps we agree that at any time, these petitions are worse than useless.

If you imagine a Labour Government will do anything about this, dream on.