Gaccha

I'm not really sure this should be categorised as a "crisis", but instead is the new norm.

Europe, with the UK, has been in a sustained relative decline to the United States. In 2008 Europe was larger than United States and today United States is 1/3 larger than Europe, around six trillion dollars.

All the indicators suggest this will continue. Europe simply cannot compete. It's only hope of fairly cheap energy was Russia, and we can see will be presumably gone for years. Without that energy, German manufacturing will move to the United States as it has been doing. Terminal decline is the new norm.

In the meantime, the UK working classes will suffer to an unusually heavy extent. One of the major aims of the EU was to take power from the ruling classes of the individual countries and regionalize it. It also had a very intense social regulatory programme to make the working classes lives better.

Even when in EU, the UK ruling elite ensured that the UK opted out of these regulations, pushing zero contract hours. The idea today continues in plans to make the UK the Singapore of Europe. In fact this today is really the UK's only hope. But there's a lack of bravery in the government to commit to it. It is also largely a fantasy since for it to happen you need an extremely educated population and the UK has a famously poorly educated population for a developed country, below the small but highly regarded elite strata.

The British working class are also notoriously troublesome (the image in Victorian paintings of the gin-soaked masses rings true even today) while Singapore relies on an extremely docile populous.

I see nothing but pain and suffering. The population will increasingly vote far right. Criminality will increase. Wealthy foreigners will exit, as they have been doing for the last 5 years. The UK will fade into irrelevancy. And the growing populations of Africa, owing to climate change, will gradually but inevitably take over.

I haven't used them except very occasionally since the expansion of the metro services. But I was always amazed that they stuck to the same routes despite all the alternative transport networks growing around them. It just didn't make sense as they were following the route patterns for a city that no longer existed.

The App ('ViaBus') with all the positions via GPS of most of the buses on most of the bus routes hugely enhances the experience. We've gone from having no idea where buses go or how frequent, to knowing the exact location of the buses in real time.

I'm sure it'll be a long time for all the routes to use a card for payment.

1 minute ago, NextG said:

Actually the deposit ATM idea is the best if you know her account number.

I've never used the ATM for depositing despite living here for years and having had accounts with 4 different banks at different times.

It doesn't require any identification? I suppose the bank gets its photo.

33 minutes ago, digbeth said:

if's you making  a deposit in person, they'd have to look back at cctv footage to find the time you made it, dig to the copies of your ID that they had made, the bank won't do it without valid reason like she suspect she's being scammed by being sent money?

This sounds good. I'll go ahead and do it.

36 minutes ago, NextG said:

Get them to send the 25k and you can reimburse them. 

She will simply pay the money back to them or compel them to tell her my name. She will feel the guilt to repay if she can find a way to do it.

4 minutes ago, Trippy said:

They just have you write your name and phone # on the receipt.

Is that info added to the records of the deposit or just kept by the bank for itself?

4 minutes ago, NanLaew said:

Her maternal grandmother was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia

That's surprising because schizophrenia, when it is inherited (50% of cases), is almost always through the paternal lineage (90%).

A Thai friend needs to get some surgery, but she doesn't have the money. I want to gift her the money but I never want her to feel any obligation to pay it back. She has a heart of gold and will want to pay it back.

I think surgery will probably cost around 25,000 baht.

Can I simply deposit cash into her account by going to her bank? I can obtain her bank details because she has shared them with a mutual friend to sort out a lunch payment.

So my concern is for it to be anonymous to her. I'm wondering if by paying by cash I can achieve that, or do banks here require the sender's name to be on the deposit? 

The problem I can imagine is with legislation on money laundering, but I don't care about the bank knowing who deposited, just the receiver. 

1 hour ago, bigt3116 said:

Non-B is a visa and therefore can not be cancelled

Every law firm website I have looked at describes it as a cancellation. What are you suggesting is occurring and what word is suitable?

2 hours ago, fdimike said:

It looks like a moving walkway to me rather than an escalator

It's described by the airport as a travelator.

20 hours ago, ballpoint said:

Cancel the work permit and immediately go to immigration for a retirement extension

Must be on the same day?

What exactly happens on your passport on that day you cancel the work permit and go to immigration?

(That period is a time of anxiety because you can easily be forced to leave the country if things are screwed up)

On 2/13/2023 at 9:13 AM, MRToMRT said:

its the same Thai sweatshop that makes them all for the "tailor" fronts anyway.

Not true, but certainly true for almost all of them.

My one, who is a closely guarded secret, can be seen stitching the suits and shirts together when he has no customers.

He is, of course, nowhere near Sukhumvit Road. And I don't want his prices to triple when some out-of-towners from Thaivisa turn up.

I had this exact problem about 4 years ago. I had to open an account in the KrungThai bank. And then withdraw the money from the ATM of that bank. I actually forgot until your post that I even had this account.

But since then I have simply received the rebates directly from my employer. I have no idea how they sorted it out. 

I still have the bank card sitting in my work drawer.

This is genuinely difficult to pull off in one day. 

I tend to walk out of an extension to stay at chengwatana immigration at some time around 7:00 p.m.. They keep going long after the doors are shut. That effectively makes it impossible for me to get the multiple reentry on the same day.

Partly I might be to blame as I tend to turn up at around midday when the crowds have reduced. It's possible, although I have never attempted it, that if I turned up at the crack of dawn, and then constantly got new queue tickets for the re-entry until it eventually coincides with completing the extension of permission to stay then it could be pulled off.

I did do something similar with the 90 days notification. I had to repeatedly get a new 90 days ticket as I kept missing my spot because I was stuck at the extension of stay counter. The extension of stay for my visa typically takes around 5 to 7 hours (this drops to 4 hours with an appointment), though my understanding is the retirement visa and other such visas can be done much more quickly than my one.

5 minutes ago, KannikaP said:

What do you mean, easier than kilos?

No. In relation to human weight,  it is better than using Pounds. Just as Feet and Inches is better than simply using Inches for a person's height. And just as we don't use nanoseconds to describe the speed of a car.

38 minutes ago, gargamon said:

What's a stone? Some sort of metric measurement? 

It has always baffled me that despite Americans using the Imperial measurement system, they don't know Stones as it is such a handy unit for describing human weight. But it seems to have been introduced from Britain and never reached America.

45 minutes ago, Bell1234 said:

It basically paid for itself

All research suggests that you put on almost all of the weight that you have taken off. Usually what happens is that users get bored of having no desire to eat, or dislike the blandness of food when taking it (which is a common side effect). So the key right now is to start to develop habits so that eating is not your main hobby.

The USB are far more likely to corrupt than SD or SSD.

I have had several USB sticks corrupt on me, but by using freely available software I was always able to recover the contents.

You might have to test several recovery software products to find one that works in that particular situation. The last time I used them I used some German software that was only in German, but it did work.

10 minutes ago, dddave said:

Don't be surprised if you start receiving some low value CODs you never ordered

I think you might have nailed it.

Also, when you make the order you reveal your name, your address and your desire for a certain purchase. This might be used by selling on the information.

I have used Lazada for years and I never use COD and I've never have had any serious problems. There are some major advantages in paying in advance.

For example, if I get sent the wrong items, at the moment of leaving the item at the parcel office to return to the seller, Lazada instantly gives me a refund, not even giving the seller the opportunity to agree or appeal. Lazada sent a message to me saying they want to refund quickly because I was a loyal customer.

I can only presume that I receive a rating which must be very high and so Lazada takes feedback from me seriously.

If you follow the rules, you win.

29 minutes ago, Lacessit said:

I would have shelled out many multiples of that cost if I had bought insurance every time I traveled.

I find that travel insurance, which when it is restricted to health issues, is ridiculously cheap. So I have always figured they will have to be incredibly stingy towards any claimants.

Breaking News

As with my last reply the news sites have not yet said anything about this.

Zipmex has applied again for an extension to prevent any action by creditors. Don't get excited.

The plan in place to wind up the Zipmex Asia operation continues. They are in the late stages of a sale of Zipmex Thailand, which looks like it will be sold for peanuts. This is in line with my expectations as the brand has no value now.

The creditors of the lockup facility have their money in Zipmex Asia and so their focus will be its winding up. There are a huge number of ifs and buts in the affidavit of the CEO. But it looks like the creditors will gain around 5% return of the debt in the company.

For most of them this will be received within three or four months of the winding up. For those with credit of greater than $2,000 (a very small percentage of the 68,000 creditors), they will have to wait an estimated 3 or 4 years.

The only imaginable way that the situation dramatically improves is if Babel Finance actually are able to start paying back their debts. This is practically inconceivable.

(I've written this by skimming several affidavits submitted to the Singapore court. And then I have written this by memory. So do not rely on it)

7 hours ago, Lacessit said:

I'd say there was a lack of good faith

That is a reasonable claim to make, but there is no such doctrine in law for the insurance company to match the requirements placed on the insuree.

2 hours ago, Lacessit said:

I believe there is a "good faith" clause in most insurance policies

The doctrine of utmost good faith is about the disclosures at the point of the agreement, not over disputes when an event arises.

The doctrine requires that the prospective insured (insuree) provides all relevant information that it could be imagined the reasonable insurer would want to know.

A lot of insured people think that the agreement is solid if they kept things quiet. But with this doctrine, the insurance company can go back to the original moment of signing and void the agreement.

This is not that situation.