billd766

Inow read the topic title and who started it before I open a topic. If I am not interested in either, I simply move on to the next topic.

Agreed. However as I am responding to your post, you brought it up and not me. So what are your alternative plans and options?

Yes

I do, every day.

And your qualifications are what? If YOU are so smart. so clever, knows everything in the world that there is to know about national and international finance, why are YOU not the Chancellor? You seem to have no idea about spelling or punctuation but knock both men and women who have spent many years working in finance. IMHO the Labour party and Rachel Reeves have dome more damage to the UK economy in 6 months, than the Tories with all their PM's and Chancellors did in 14 years. You have not even come up with any alternative plans or options.

What a pity that you failed to mention the respect got for meddling in Thai politics once again. I really hope for Thailand's sake that there will be no more illegal military coups led by generals who truly believe that they know better than the voters. I have another (but forlorn hope) that in the event of yet another military coup that all the officers involved in the coup are punished and that the generals leading the coup are publicly executed for treason against the state and the freely elected government. Now that would be a first.

Who in turn should keep his nose out of others countries business and concern himself with his adopted countries business. AFAICS he, nor his business, is welcomed in the UK or the EU. Being rich does NOT automatically allow you the right to interfere. As my Mum used to tell me, some people have more money than sense.

IIRC when a farang (or in this case a Brit dies), the death should be reported to the police. The widow has to return the UK passport to the UK Embassy. From this I think that the UK Embassy reports it to the FCO in the UK who most probably in turn inform the DWP, who should in turn cancel the pension payments. The UK Embassy should know more and if you contact them, please could you post their answer, presuming that they bother to respond to your request.

What a pity that they don't use it in cases like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Thailand#:~:text=The most recent execution occurred,by means of lethal injection. The most recent execution occurred on 18 June 2018, when the death sentence of a 26-year-old man guilty of robbery resulting in death was carried out. This was the first execution in nine years and the man was the country's seventh person to be executed by means of lethal injection. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/06/thailand-countrys-first-execution-since-2009-a-deplorable-move/ Responding to the news that Thailand executed a 26-year-old man for aggravated murder on 18 June, in the country’s first execution since August 2009, Katherine Gerson, Amnesty International’s Thailand Campaigner, said: “This is a deplorable violation of the right to life. Thailand is reneging on its own commitment to move towards the abolition of the death penalty, and is putting itself out of step with the current global shift away from capital punishment. “There is no evidence that the death penalty has any unique deterrent effect, so the Thai authorities’ hope that this move will reduce crime is deeply misguided. The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment and provides no quick-fixes to problems the authorities want to confront. It seems odd to me that Amnesty is on the side of the criminal yet does not seem to be interested in the victim. Also in the main photo the protestors are all wearing masks, presumably to hide their identity.

You are one person. What will you do, if you ever find out? How will it affect your life? Most of the rest of the world doesn't know, and cares even less.

Who cares what QAnon says anyway?

Perhaps in @mdr224's world there are men and women who are like that. However, the real world is not the same as that.

What a brilliant idea. Blaming the victim. Who would ever have thought of that?

better still. jail the boyfriend for a minimum of 10 years and see how many of his "influential politician friends" support him.

Perhaps if the snare poachers were ever caught, they should be put in their own snares and left in the area where tigers roam. A sort of poetic justice.

What a pity that neither the USA nor Israel are members of the ICC. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/09/politics/house-icc-sanctions-bill-israel/index.html#:~:text=The ICC does not have,its actions in the conflict. The ICC does not have its own enforcement mechanism and has relied on countries’ support for arrests. Israel, like the United States, is not a member of the ICC and has challenged the court’s jurisdiction over its actions in the conflict. Neither country seems to have as many friends and/or allies as they used to have and they never will again, as long as in Israel's case, Netanyahu and his murderous war cabinet are in power. In the case of the USA the Jewish lobbyists need to be removed from influencing the US government. Sadly for the world this is unlikely ever to happen. This is MY personal opinion only. Anybody is more than welcome to disagree.

An interesting thought. If Trump cannot buy Greenland and invades Greenland then an an attack on ANY NATO country is an attack on all NATO countries and is to be repelled by all NATO countries. I suspect when NATO was set up nobody thought about one NATO member attacking another NATO country. As the USA is still a NATO member (at least at the moment) I wonder what the NATO troops will do. At the very least they can kick all the US bases out of their respective countries, but will they retaliate against the US mainland? Also if the US tries to annex Greenland, I wonder what the US troops would do if they are ordered to attack that country? As an additional item, I wonder what the US based troops would do if they are ordered to attack Panama?

According to Forbes 2024, the Shinawatra family are not even in the top 10 billionaires in Thailand. https://www.forbes.com/lists/thailand-billionaires/ Why are you not complaining about the greed of the much richer families, the richest of which is worth 17 or 18 times richer than Thaksin?

If the number calling me is not recognised by my mobile, it flashes red and warns me that it is an unknown number and be careful in answering it. It also allows me to delete the call and block it. Fortunately I haven't had one for a couple of months now.

So prove him wrong.

You keep repeating the same old jargon. Of course if you actually provided any proof, some people may even believe you. You do have that proof, don't you?

Perhaps the generals have low friends in high places. Perhaps the unspoken and unwritten agreement between the generals is blocking both sides. I really have no idea and I think that very few other people know for certain either.

That won't stop people being ignored though. AFAICS ignoring a poster generally, at least to me, means that I don't see any of their posts, unless somebody else responds to that poster. Generally I get a notice that I have ignored that poster, but gives me the option of reading that particular post or taking the poster off my ignore list, plus something else. What I have been doing in the last few weeks, even before I read the posts, is checking who the OP is and what the topic is. Many times before I have opened the post to find that I have no interest in the topic or the responses, so I then dump the topic and move on to something else.

Snipped from your post. Is the decline in this forum a result of: 1 - changes in ownership? 2 - changes in the character of expats in Thailand? 3 - changes in Western culture that are merely reflected here? IMHO I think that it is 1 and 2 with 3 as an outsider. So why are so many on this forum spending so much time trying to pollute a perfectly suitable channel like this? Unless ... unless ... unless they are paid or otherwise compensated to ruin it? IMO there are posters on the forum with nothing better to do so threads are opened just for the sake of something to do. There are only a limited number of topics that can be discussed, after which they get repeated ad nauseum I don't think that anybody is paid or compensated to ruin the forum but I think that the last2 owners see it as a money making machine judging by the number of ads that seem to be posted. I don't know anybody who actually buys things that are advertised. I also think that advertisers are given the latest number of posters rather than the actual number of regular posters, which is probably not the same thing/ People quit or die off and TBH I think that it would be nice to know how many people do post regularly against the overall head count.

Perhaps he has low friends in high places.