humqdpf

USA has interests in Syria? Since when?

And Yemen? Even Lebanon is tenuous.

If we are talking economic interests, the USA will probably have potentially more in Iran, given the demand for student places at American universities from Iranian candidates is anything to go by.

9 hours ago, ChidlomDweller said:

The answer is not just about Thailand but a global phenomenon.  Why should digital work be free of national regulations or taxes?  What about programming?  Why not incude all intellectual work?  Rules should be the same for everyone.  The only reason why digital workers and internet companies get away with it has to do with the ease of evading taxes, more than the ethics of it.

 

I'm not a fan of this government, or any Thai government, but that's a separate point.  If you choose to live in a country and enjoy the public benefits like roads, an educated population, access to a police force when needed, etc., you ought to pay just like the next person.  I know those benefits are a shambles in Thailand, but it's the general principle: taxes are the cost of living in a civilized society.  If you choose to make a country your home, and you make your money in that country, you're on the hook to pay taxes as much as a local worker.

This is not a new issue. Anyone providing advice, consultancy or doing something creative is bound by tax rules. In most cases, the rules for individuals are concerned with residency and where you earned with tax agreements between countries that deal with double-taxation so that you cannot be taxed twice on the same income (unless you are from a country like the USA where you can be taxed twice).

So this idea that there are "digital nomads" out there who earn huge amounts of untaxed money while using wifi in some coffee shop is just a lot of bull. If they are earning a significant amount and it goes through a bank as it inevitably must, the bank will automatically report transfers above a certain amount to the local tax authority. In addition, in many jurisdictions banks have to hand over their customer's accounts for scrutiny to the tax man as a matter of course. Unless an individual is in a low tax or zero tax jurisdiction/haven (which Thailand definitely is not!) AND is not a resident in their own country AND their own country does not impose taxation on worldwide income, only then will they be able to work paying low or no tax.

Yes, there are digital companies out there who spend a king's randsom on advisors and lawyers so as to avoid paying tax and do so very successfully. But these avenues are not open to inviduals, especially individuals who are not billionaires with attendant very expensive tax accountants and lawyers. For the rest of us, it is just too easy for the tax authorities of this world to freeze our bank accounts and go after our assets if we try to evade tax on income.

When you get a say over their economic prospects and they think that you might be on their side and you have sufficient media and TV exposure so that they think they know and love you but have never met you, they will forgive you, you can get away with such age differences.

But also remember, he is seventy something and his wife is late forties, that means that the folks forgive him more than if there were the same age difference and he were a younger man - say in his mid fifties while his wife is 30. I don't know why this is but there is something about a woman being almost 50 and a man could be almost any age and nobody minds.

You should ask your relatives about the French president who is much younger than his wife - he is in his forties while she is in her 60s. She used to be his school teacher. Betcha they will have lots of fun over that . . . 

This is a non-news story. The planes were in international airspace. Anyone can use it. No violations, no flying too close etc. No news. 

Note that they only went for people who were of African appearance/origin. They must have trawled for hours at Soi 4 as I have never seen that many African people on Soi 4 during my walk throughs at any hour of the day or night. Or maybe they are including soi 3 and 5 along with the sub-sois but that is a separate area on the other side of Sukhumvit.

Although i would normally agree with the various criticisms on the patronage system operating in various sectors in Thailand, in this case i think that the case is somewhat trivial. There is the argument that the Public Prosecutor should not be wasting his time wandering around on his own looking for a place to eat. There is also the additional issue of him not being made an easy target for some defendant or connection to a defendant who wanted to take revenge for a decision to place charges.

I can just imagine a case where the prosecutor, in a strange town and prosecuting cases in public, being told by jobsworth cops that "sorry we are on duty and we cannot show you where you can safely have lunch.'

Some people have to enter houses wearing shoes because they cannot walk without shoes. They include people who have lost their big toe, people with other deformities and those with various forms of arthritis for which shoes provide support and a level of comfort that allows them to move.

8 hours ago, perthperson said:

If you can demonstrate - with bank statements or a Thai bank book that you are in receipt of a regular  adequate "income"  of say 65,000 Bht/month from overseas it matters not where that originates -------------

 

Whether to appeal or not is a personal decision. Remember that you are likely to remain in detention whilst any appeal is considered.

 

 

You can be sendiing the money to yourself from another bank account - all they need to see is the "income" in the form of a monthly amount.

6 hours ago, lopburi3 said:

Most doorbells are indeed wired 220v here - and the primary reason I have been using RF battery powered types since they became available.

Doorbells are wired to the mains electricity in many, perhaps most countries.

This should be labelled advertisement.

Returning to the land of Brexit? I hope you are not going there to improve your economic situation.

6 hours ago, Kerryd said:

My dad told me a story about seeing an old "homeless" man in downtown Vancouver back in the later '50s. He gave the guy a couple bucks and his friends started ribbing him about it. One guy told him, come back around 5 o'clock and watch around that corner. So dad did that. Across the street where he could see the corner and where the old guy liked to hang out. Sure enough, just around 5 o'clock the old gent comes up the street, turns the corner, goes partway down the block and into a parking garage. 

A couple minutes later he pulls out of the garage in a shiny new car, wearing a nice suit jacket and drives right past dad. It seems he was fairly well off, but bored and had nothing to do so he'd "dress down" and hang out on the streets downtown for something to do and managed to make a fair bit of coin doing it to ! (Dad says he spoke to him on another day and asked him about it.)

 

In the late '90s in Vancouver there was a lot of stuff in the news about all the "street kids" and "beggars" and "buskers" on the streets, many of whom were becoming quite aggressive and arrogant, standing beside people at ATMs expecting handouts, blocking entrances to 7-11s and other shops and doing things like stepping in front of people on the sidewalks to force them to stop or move around them, hoping that people would cough up some cash to avoid a confrontation.

The city had to pass an ordinance to stop people from doing some of the **** they were getting away with. They also put up coin "meters" where people could donate loose change which would go towards helping the homeless and "street kids" instead of handing it to them personally.

One of the big newspapers decided to do an "in depth" article and went around the city to places where this activity was a problem. It turns out, from their calculations, that the average street "busker/beggar/etc" was making around $120 per day ! Holey crapskies ! I was in the Army at the time as was making about $100 per day !! If I'd known someone with a dog I might have switched careers !

The paper also learned that a lot (meaning "most") of those "street kids" were not "street kids" at all, but kids from fairly wealthy families that would borrow the neighbour's dog and go sit on the street to beg for money (for the dog of course) until they got bored (or made enough to go party) they'd go back to their fancy homes, drop off the dog, change into their "good" clothes and go party. Apparently some of those "street kids" were there because they were trying to "hook up" with whatever run-away girls they met on the streets.

 

I'd say it's more likely to see real "homeless" people in places like Thailand. I used to see some really down and out people living in shanties, hovels and the remains of bombed out buildings around our camp in Kabul. I've also seen a lot of people doing really dirty, nasty jobs in order to try and make enough to eat. When I see some old guy (or woman) that looks to be well over 60, pushing a hand cart around and rummaging through the garbage looking for recyclables to scavenge and sell, I shake my head. 

Here they are, still trying to earn a living, while other people sit on their @@@es and expect people to give them money for doing nothing.

 

Like "elephant leg" guy. Or that foreign couple a friend photographed on the street in Bangkok a couple months ago (at least they were also trying to sell postcards they'd "acquired"). There've been more than a few cases of foreign beggars in Thailand over the years.

 

Me ? I'm trying to figure out how much it'd cost to join  the "push cart recycling mafia" for when I get a little older !

Now that you have reeled off the very few exceptions of people who are intentionally homeless or who refuse help, what are you going to say about the folks who are desperate not to be homeless and who form the vast majority of homeless people?

Let us know how your "experiment" works out, living without a shower, lacking money, being pushed around by everyone, getting taxed by thugs and threatened by cops who have apparently nothing better to do. You won't last an hour.

6 hours ago, xtrnuno41 said:

I know a guy , married then and they both absolutely didnt want a child.

He and she were both "helped" !! Amazingly enough they got a child !!

That is what is known among the cognoscenti as a "grudge pregnancy."

This is a pregnancy where someone else has it in for the husband.

The term the translator was searching for was tubectomy, also known as tubular ligation.

13 hours ago, darhut said:

You do realise he was probably undercover as a customer.

Ah, you've gone and spoilt it. Dave67 was imagining the Thai cops putting on black make-up and deadlocks wigs . . .

6 hours ago, stevenl said:

Well liked and classy or not, she can make a mistake.

But if you read the story it now appears that she did not make any mistake.

9 hours ago, shady86 said:

For me it's the ride height and easy of going in and coming out. I'm 1.8m and I find these just nice to get in and out and the seating height is just comfortable. Pickup SUVs are little to high for me. Interior space wise, I find crv have comparable space to a big saloon like camry

and accord. I've tried the latest everest and Fortuner and don't find them much more spacious then crv. The extra 2 seats at the back are not conformable at all.

 

It is a mixture of price, parking/manouverability and comfort. Due to a medical condition that bothers many older people, my days of crouching down to get into a saloon car where the roof inclines too much and I cannot get my head/neck around it are long over. An SUV overcomes that problem as I step up into the vehicle.

The larger size SUV is hard to park in urban areas - I have in mind the modern version of the Landcruiser. Besides the cost of my CX5 is less than half of what the cheapest Landcruiser costs.

Are you sure that she did not do this on purpose? Maybe she is paying you back for something . . . .?

But lets say that she just does not know about such matters. Does she know that if she does it again, it will happen in the same way again?

It is just that all the advice about the body work won't matter a damn if she does do it again!

8 hours ago, captspectre said:

by transgender I assume you are talking about "lady" boy.

Why assume? And would it matter anyway? It would still be a crime if the person was a "gentleman" girl (female to male trans) and just as nasty.

7 hours ago, silver sea said:

Yes I agree.

 

I saw the headline in the ThaiVisa email and only clicked on the link, because I was expecting to read a story about the English painter, John Constable, having made a previously unknown visit to Thailand.  So disappointed ?

And just for a moment I thought that this story was about art ( Constable, Old Master). Hmmmm

In the village where my grandparents lived, they used to have a solution to this kind of problem - something in the food for the dog, nothing painful, of course, but the dog just quietly and peacefully passed on to the happy hounding grounds in the sky.

Anything else is just cruel. The owners will just disown the dog or do nothing while  people and other dogs will get hurt and it will be soon a case of a child being killed or badly injured. Taking the dog to another location does not work. By the time a dog gets into this condition, it is usually impossible to control and train out of it.

8 hours ago, Somtamnication said:

The only leader who can stand up to Trump. 

I get the impression that she would like to tell Trump to behave himself, not to be grabbing anyone, no barging in the photo queues, no off-colour jokes and tone down the sexist and other nasty jibes.

6 hours ago, Stargrazer9889 said:

I am gad to see Obama spending ome of his own money to holiday since his retirement.

Obama spent enough of USAs money while in power,  that is for sure,  so did G.W Bush, these two

Presidents were not anybodys heroes. Certainly not mine.  Trump is still new , so let him spend several million flying around on those 2 special B747 jets, and America will go deeper in debt as well. Good  Luck

America..  Happy Summer!

Geezer

Of course you prefer if Obama had not gone for the so-called "quantitative easing" and other measures that cost tax-payers. I am sure you could live with the almost complete end to the American car industry (remember - they had to be bailed out), the collapse of the American banking system and a repeat of the 1930s depression with hunger marches, unemployment rates between 30 and 50% in places and deflation (deflation makes it impossible to grow).

Don't get me wrong - this would have had a big effect on the international economy but over time the world economy would have eventually recovered as those economies that did use quantitative easing would have managed to pull out of the depression cycle. But it would have left the USA in permanent depression, until they decided to do something about it, that is.

Remember that the bailing out began with President GW Bush!

15 hours ago, observer90210 said:

The culprits came from a close border, swam across and committed the crime - case closed.

 

More seriously, time to purchase some good CSI approved DNA investigation equipment and training, rather then spend billions the the US Made military crap...could save far more lives.

 

Maybe the European Union could wake up and walk down from it's throne in Bruxelles and ask Thailand for some clarifications?

 

In the meantime, girls, especially those travelling alone, should take extra caution and even avoid the area if possible....but that is IMHO... I'm sure the parents of this poor girl would think the same if they could travel back in time...

 

Deepest sympathy to her familiy and close ties.

 

Requiescant in pace©

If the European Union tried to do that, it would run into trouble with some or all of its members as individual countries reserve that right to themselves. This would be especially the case where there is already diplomatic representation in the country.

If you want someone to blame, you should look to each of the governments of the nationals who died there. It is they who have done nothing.

10 hours ago, ELVIS123456 said:

Sounds exactly right to me.  Many Expats on TV have bees n their bonnets - and think everything is about them.

 

Listen closely - foreign workers taking jobs from Thais threatens their lives - as in their living and family lives - they need work to live here - there is no unemployment payments - this aint your nanny state. 

 

Why they put that photo of some Russians with Visa issues is more about TV journalism.  But if it was meant to stir up the 'kittens' - it sure worked.

 

Well, it will be about expats if their employers don't keep their paperwork up to date. The expats will go to jail while the employers will just pay bribes, I mean fines.

Not even the more paranoid of governments about immigration (I have in mind the UK and the USA) have come up with the notion that foreigners working without work permits will "threaten lives and property" of locals. How exactly could this be possible unless they are referring to technicians lacking technical skills and know-how who fix things that go on fire or whatever - in that case, they should just enforce the rules on people doing such repairs or bring in better ones.