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What do people mean by biased when we talk about something like the state of the camps where the rioting took place?

The trouble about this topic is that there are facts involved but in the end there are opinions too. There are only so many toilets, for instance. Well, to some 5 toilets for 100 people would be luxury - for others it would be inhuman.

The job of the media is not only to report facts, but also to report how people are describing those facts - for instance, some people may say that "a riot occurred" while others might, for reasons of their own politics or opinions, say there was no riot but a mere fracas or some small incident.

Most of the time, the media is not present when these incidents occur. They have to in some way balance up the story by putting the opinions of opposing groups as that is all they have to go on. And this is a thankless job - everyone will blame you for not presenting the story from their viewpoint. But no one will accept that their viewpoint also contains bias too.

For instance, if you are Australilan and you heard that there were riots on some island containing migrants off the coast of Ireland, you might not care so much. But when the same story is reported about an island off Australia, you may indeed become more involved because you have more invested in the story whatever occurred and whoever was involved. ALL OF US ARE LIKE THIS! Once we have something invested in something to do with a story, we have an automatic bias. We only escape this natural bias when we don't care about a story. Of course we can do something about bias, by trying to step back and putting the hard questions to ourselves and trying to answer them honestly.

I am not British but I still think that the BBC are the most unbiased of news organisations on the planet. I have been in countries where the local population will not accept the self-serving utterances of their government but wait until the BBC report comes out before accepting the facts.

Of course the right-wing will call the BBC left-wing and of course the left wingers will call the BBC rightwing reactionaries. That is the hallmark of an organisation that strives at being unbiased.

Is the following policy left or right - the government has been subsidising wages of low paid workers. This has been taken by many as a "left wing" policy. But the fact is that this policy has a very right wing result, which is to drive down the wages that companies pay to lower skilled workers - an employer would be crazy to pay more because the government steps in when you pay less. This allows capitalist employers to earn higher profits. Therefore, the policy has had a right wing result.

Despite this outcome, you will still see the British Labour party fighting for so-called tax credits for low paid workers while Conservative party fighting to abolish them. I have not heard the BBC coming out in support of either policy.

Leftwing/rightwing have to do with the arrangement of the furniture in an early French parliament. Applying this to modern politics and economics often does not make sense.

Whether the hospital had fallen under Taliban control or not is completely irrelevant. Lets stick to the facts:

1. There had been no firing of bullets or shells from inside the hospital

2. Even if the USA military unit had believed that they were under threat from Taliban fighters in the hospital who had mysteriously held their fire until then, they did not need to have the aircraft pass over and back racking the buildings for an hour. They could have escaped with a few minutes of covering fire.

It begs the question as to whether it is policy to fire on any building that contains enemy combatants even if it will mean the large loss of innocent civilian lives.

Clearly the author does not understand what a "dire" public healthcare system is. Waiting is a feature of any system that is provided for free - try the NHS in Britain, for instance - and as some other contributors have pointed out, if there is little provision of local clinic or general practitioner as part of a free public system, it is no surprise that everyone with a twinge will go to the hospital and create needless congestion.

I work with hospitals in less developed countries where there is little or no equipment at times, where some of the clinical staff are seriously underqualified for what they are doing, where patients are lying on floors due to lack of beds etc. Compare the Thai public health service to that available in neighbouring countries (eg Laos and Cambodia) and tell me afterwards which one is dire! Or head to certain African countries - not all African public hospitals are in a bad state but many are terrible.

The Thai system may be inconvenient, burdened with delays, overworked doctors etc. But you can still get an Xray, diagnosis and a likely cure.

Shouldn't the U.S. government be funding the treatment?

A lesson from history:

Invariably, those who win wars generally do not pay for them, even in cases where they started them.

This also applies to the USA - although much money has been spent on finding MIAs in Vietnam, almost nothing has been spent on a) payments to the Vietnamese, whether relatives of the dead or the wounded on on either side (an estimated 3.8 million people died as a direct result of the war, of which 58,300 were US military personnel) nothing has been paid to those suffered in so many ways - remember that the 'Napalm Girl' was a civilian on the South Vietnam side (to the extent that it makes sense to talk about sides when it comes to children!) c) don't expect any compensation for the millions who died, were wounded or suffered greatly as a result of the war in Iraq (found because of weapons of mass destruction that did not exist

Once again follow the money

Why are E-cigarettes banned in Thailand ?

Why the big push to ban Shisha ?

Because, the Thai Tobacco Monopoly is either too stupid or too lazy to figure out a way to tax it, so the easiest course for our minders is to ban it

Are E-cigarettes really banned in Thailand? Ironically it was in Thailand where I bought my first E-cigarette package, must be about 10 years ago when they were completely unknown in Western countries.

Natures way of solving over population

It could also function as a way of increasing population as it frees up males from competing over women and they could be deployed over other tasks, such as adopting unwanted or orphaned babies, helping siblings/relatives in the raising of kids etc.

Remember that you don't need 1,000 men to get 1,000 women pregnant!

If you use an Android tv box then install the app Livetv!now you can watch all of the BBC channels along with itv,c4 etc live and it's a free app. You can also record shows for later. In my 8 years outside the UK I've never needed the use of a VPN.

It appears that you must have a a VPN installed or your ISP has one because NOW TV does not work outside the UK - see the complaint from NOW TV's own community discussion board below:

‎22-08-2015 17:27

Of all the professions in the world an ex sex worker choose to own a bar... as this is the best

the social welfare people can advise the girls to go for?

how long do you think before one of them get ' an offer she can't refuse' huh?

If the claim is that it is the first bar to be run by former sex workers, then it is plain wrong. I have encountered several bars (including bars where there are no bar-girls/GROs) in Thailand where the owner is a former bar girl.

If it is a bar where the female owner will go with customers, then that is also plain wrong too.

If the claim is that it is a bar run by a collective of actively operating sex workers, then it may well be a first.

I don't know whether Bill Cosby is guilty. All I know is that there are a large number of accusers and it would be interesting to have their accusations tested in court.

But before we all jump on the bandwagon, lets remember a certain Michael Jackson who was hounded as a child molester for years before being exonerated.

Go to a quality hospital. Depending on their system, go to a doctor and tell him/her your symptoms. Go to the various specialists and all the tests done (in a quality hospital that should take you a couple of days at most). This will tell you what is wrong with you.

The worst thing to do is to ask this forum. No matter how well-meaning and well qualified they are, any doctor would need to have the support of other specialists and actually see you in person. My only comment is that your symptoms are coherent with a number of conditions. Get tested.

'The Queen’s advisers told Parliament to strip Jeremy Corbyn of his “Right Honourable” status ...' Dear, oh dear; silly me. There was I thinking the people elected parliament to run the country, when, in fact, it's a bunch of unelected 'advisers' to an unelected head of state doing the running.

You may be right, and Jeremy Corbyn may be right about some things. BUT in order to change the things he doesn't like about the "Establishment", he needs to get elected.

The more he acts like the caricature in the Tory press already depicts him, the less likely he is to get elected.

His strategy surely must be to convince the voting sheeple that he is the moderate, competent centre left leader that they think they want.

His antics so far are just playing into the Tory hands....ie he is unelectable.

There was a time when everyone, myself included, would have agreed with your assessment of Corbyn's chances of election without demur. To do otherwise would be to appear to have departed from one's senses.

But something has changed in the meantime. Even though I am not a supporter of his policies, Corbyn comes across as someone who has held on to his principles and opinions for decades, including when they were far from the prevailing view of the Labour party. He has energised a whole group of people who before either did not vote or voted for marginal parties, such as the Greens or Liberal Democrats.

Although I am a wholeheartedly convinced that only a free-enterprise system can generate wealth sufficient for a modern state, at the same time there has been a weird change in the economics of the UK, where real estate in London sucks out a huge amount of the wealth of the country. Vast numbers of young Londoners cannot afford to get on any property ladder that would allow for the starting of a family. Large numbers of people are now on wages that have not kept up with living standards and keep them far away from the property ladder and from participating in the growth of the economy.

That is what gives Corbyn his constituency - if you add that relatively small constituency to the section of the population who vote Labour whoever leads it for traditional reasons, there is a good chance that we could see Corbyn as PM one day.

But cutting back to the Privy Council issues, these play into the hands of Corbyn. It give him headlines and once again demonstrates his integrity, as if that needed to be demonstrated. it also highlights the strange issues that countries like Britain have with their "establishment," with unaccountable folks who have huge amounts of power like the Privy Council. How can the UK turn to Thailand and tell them to reform when anti-democratic forces get to play in the UK as well?

They never ACTUALLY wonder WHY these animals are SO weirdly deformed!!!!

Millions of buffalos are born normal each year and no one takes any notice. You get one deformed buffalo and suddenly it is on the front page of Thai Visa.

• I took out travel insurance with covermore, and when i did need to claim i realized it didnt cover anything you really need to read the fine print, never use covermore

There aren't many that will cover things you might actually need.

Actually there is health insurance that will cover your bills. You can pay more for top international insurance or you can buy Thai medical insurance which I have heard is more than adequate

The writers of news are just getting worse and worse.

Recalling an ambassador is only in the gift of the ambassadors home country.

An ambassador may be invited (or if you need to, summoned) to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the host country.

Very unusually, an ambassador may be asked to leave by the host country. But that is not recalling!

Usually, when relations between countries get really bad, the ambassador's own country will recall him before it gets to being asked to leave the country.

It can be A profitable life.I knew of girls that were n the business during the Vietnam war at Udonthani.They invested their money

And today they are living quite well.

But I do believe most of them live for the moment and end up self destructing.

Pals who I know living in Issan tell me that 30 years ago the nicest house in any town/village was always the one belonging to the doctor.

Nowadays, the nicest house often belongs to a lady under 40 years old who spent time in Bangkok or Pattaya doing some unspecified business.

The biggest evil that bar girls face are gambling and yaba. They can very easily avoid going with some nasty guy - I even remember being in a bar where the girls would not go with some European guy because he did not wash. Many of the younger ones are much more health conscious - they don't knock down the alcohol all the time. And after some time, they will often settle down with some old guy.

But gambling and yaba create debts and bad decisions and at the end of some years as a bar girl they have nothing to show for it.

Millions of Americans probably don't even know where Syria is !!

Why would that make any difference? Americans watch the news where people from the Middle East are throwing poop at the police and shouting ala something F you. They know Obama wants those poop throwing people to come to America.

Refugees Chant “Alxxxxx,” “<deleted> You,” Attack Citizens, Throw Feces you can google it.

I realize you all want to bash those uneducated Americans but in 2014 more Americans traveled abroad than the total population of the UK. http://www.ibtimes.com/americans-traveled-abroad-record-numbers-2014-1826816

• Europe: 11.9 million American visitors
• Caribbean: 7.2 million American visitors
• Asia: 4.5 million American visitors
• Central America: 2.7 million American visitors
• Middle East: 1.8 million American visitors
• South America: 1.8 million American visitors
• Oceania: 601,000 American visitors
• Africa: 358,000 American visitors

And according to 2013 figures, 64% of American citizens have never been abroad.

The past summer, 58% of UK citizens travelled abroad.

Proportionally, the number of students from EU countries who study abroad is huge. It is now an expected part of the curriculum for all students, not just the wealthy few.

The sad fact is that huge numbers of USA citizens have never experienced what it is like to be surrounded by people who do not speak your language and do not share your culture. For the rest of the Western countries, this is a normal experience.

I think that we should set up a special international category for those politicians who do not allow refuge to people who are fleeing torture and killing - put those politicians on an international no-entry list. Yes, you can fly to Scotland but we won't let you in to view your investment, Donald - after all, we cannot have folks coming in to invest in the country and then not carrying out what they said they would do, can we Donald?

All you armchair smart arse critics start educating

yourselves by viewing youtube film on the subject

or reading more as well, the face of Europe will

change and friction will arise once these people

(mainly young men) start competing for non

existent jobs, go to Berlin, Frankfurt or any

other city and play the spot the German game or

i can say Paris or London, then say oh send them

to Australia, (bloody idiots) most of the place is a

desert, uninhabitable, no rainfall, spring ground

water is so salty it can't be used,, get your facts

right before posting smart remarks with funny

smileys, they are not funny, they are stupid.

Actually at least some EU countries are facing future labour shortages - the worst future labour shortage of the lot will be Germany, estimated to be in excess of 800,000.

By labour shortage I mean the demographic time bomb whereby as the population ages there will not be enough people of working age to keep the retirees in pensions.

All successful world cities are going to be full of "foreigners." World-class successful cities do a lot of trade and create a high demand for expertise from around the world. This was true of the first city, the city of Ur, part of the Sumerian civilisation that flourished in Mesopotamia - that city and its neighbours held a lot of foreigners too.

The city of Rome was full of foreigners too. That was part of what made it great. Same with New York today, and London and Berlin too.

Nothing every stays the same. Otherwise it remains static. The most successful country in the world is USA - a country made up of immigrants.

That's it. You never know what can set off an argument or "unpeace" in any country or location. I am no longer going to share my views on microbiology, phonetics or indeed nano particles with anyone ever again.

Like you I used to worry like hell over which version of Windows to get, what kind of antivirus software would work with what kind of other software on the computer, whether that or anything else would clash with some other aspect of software etc. I went through quite a few laptops over the years, at least one every 2 to 3 years. I had kept using Windows because I was concerned that certain MS products would not work well on a Mac.

And then I got sense and made the change to a Mac - I have two, one extremely light one for travel and one large screen laptop for home use. Never a problem. Blue screen? Nada. Software clash? never! Worrying about updating my antivirus software? nope. Well worth the extra money and in my opinion they last longer and you save money and stress in the longer term.

Only one concern is that the Mac keyboard is not sealed in - if you spill something onto the keyboard, it will go through. I was able to have that fixed locally the one and only time it occurred. Since then I use a transparent keyboard cover - you cannot tell that it is there but it stops any liquid going through.

Saudi and Israel are funding ISIS to fight Assad in Syria. This is a smokescreen

If I understand you correctly, that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the State of Israel are funding ISIS, that indeed would be most interesting. But do you have any real evidence for that.

Yes, it could be the case that elements in Saudi Arabia might have funded fundamentalist groups in the past and some may still do. And it is indeed ironic if ISIS/Daesh are now coming back to bite back at Saudi Arabia.

But for the State of Israel to fund a dangerous bunch like ISIS who would be totally motivated to destroy Israel would be equivalent to writing the longest suicide letter in history.

Lets get the facts straight - ISIS is self funding through its taxing system and selling oil and other items on the international black market. They have also managed to gain a lot of armaments through waging war and taking over arms dumps of their enemies. They don't need money from anyone, let alone from their sworn enemies.

Not cowardice, the driver probably had no idea who he hit. Who was at fault, we don't know.

Many times at the scene of an accident it is very dangerous for the driver who survived to stay.

He left his vehicle, which is 99.99% registered to his name and the officers will see him at his house.

This is true for all nations, the safety of the surviving driver.

What a load of crap you have written , it is an offence to leave the scene of an accident no matter where in the world you live and looking at the position of the vehicle it is clear to see it is on the wrong side of the road, by the way it was reported that the deceased and bike were some 40 meters from the stationary vehicle which shows the force the deceased must have been hit by. I have lived on Samui for many years this sort of incident is getting more common it is no longer a safe place on Samui roads but no one seems to do anything about it R.I.P to the deceased and condolences to his family I hope they find the person who was driving the vehicle to leave the accident in my view is an act of cowardice

With the greatest of respect, in some countries it is normal to leave the scene of an accident as soon as possible and no one would take legal action against you if you did. In all countries where I have lived, it is perfectly legal and advisable to leave the scene of an accident when you need urgent medical attention. Another is if you have reason to be concerned for your personal safety. In one African country I know, you should leave the scene of an accident even if you were only the passenger in a vehicle for your personal safety. In some countries, you are advised as a foreigner not to stop at the scene of an accident as it will be assumed that you were in some way involved.

We know nothing about the circumstances of this accident other than it involved a truck and a motorbike driven by the now dead Italian.

I was in a hotel recently and the maid came in to clean while i was on the computer. I quickly exhited the room and made sure stayed away untill she was finished and left.

I don't know what your paranoia is based on - I have yet to hear about a Cambodian maid falsely accusing anyone of rape let alone a foreigner. In this case, the accuser was a foreign female.

Another thread deserving of privileges of doctor/patient confidentiality.

I used to be interested in psychology and psychotherapy until I met a therapist who told me that the neuroses and mental bullshit of his patients used to bore him to tears. A bit like this thread, actually.

If good old Catholic Ireland can vote in gay marriage, then I am sure that the Aussie public can do the same.