OldgitTom

Going back to the Remembrance service. The Provincial Governor will be the guest of honour. The service will now be on Armistice day itself (Tuesday 11th November) starting at 1045. Details are on the ubonhash website.

This years 'event' will prove to be on a whole new level.

You can get Poppies prior to the day from the N-Joy and the Wrong Way.

Thanks Boyscout; according to the latest organizers' meeting. the Ubon Remembrance this year will cover 3 events, all at Tung Sri Muang Park, central Ubon, 1045.

09-11-08 - Remembrance for Thai Resistance fighters.

10-11-08 - 'Thank You Ubon', remembering all those local Thais who saved so many Allied prisoners.

11-11-08 - Remembrance of war dead. Altho poppies, etc. give a British Commonwealth impression, it's for all.

Fullwhenempty:

right on, except ‘Jewish’ banks are rather Rothschilds behind their various banking fronts.

Pigneguy:

truly great post on the Great Banking Scam, congratulations.

So, here we are: unless we have buried gold bricks, we face losing house, job, savings &/or pensions. Even if the current bailouts work, that will only incur more debt, so making the next financial crash even bigger.

Frozen methane gas in the Arctic is defrosting. This is the beginning of runaway global warming – The End.

If the first two don’t get us, my paper today forecasts that the earth’s resources will run out by 2050 (& now for the sports results - - - - ).

Our present political system has failed us spectacularly. It is rotten & incompetent from top to bottom (dynamic young Barack is proving as effective as a limp dick in a knocking shop). Either we replace it with a real democratic system – a revolution – or as Tom Lehrer used to sing, “We’ll all go together when we go”.

Nature is hard but fair. Species too dumb to adapt to change go extinct.

drayon

I do feel the need to correct the point made stating that banks have control to print money. To clarify ONLY the Federal Reserve Bank has the legal right to print money not any "Banks".

Technically correct Drayon, but the Fed is owned by a cabal of private bankers – possibly the sweetest & most lucrative racket in the world. The Bank of England is a similar racket, tho there it is called a British tradition.

Don’t like the anti-Jewish tone of some posters. Nor have I ever found any credible evidence of a global ‘Jewish plot’. Bankers are the same bandits whether Chinese, WASP or Arab. Most Jews are ordinary, decent people (& smarter than most). The likes of the Rothschilds are a miniscule fraction. Outside the ‘family’, few people could even guess the extent of Big R’s power & wealth. Secrecy! Omerta! Notice how the media only mention them to fawn or praise? Ya godda showa da respect!

Also posters, do not live in delusions of our govs doing this, that, or the other to rein in the banks. They & multinationals own most pols – bar a few honest & brave individuals. These few miss out on the pork-barrel opportunities - a tight, circular sytem. For every $100 of bribes from the big fats cats, they get back $1000 in government favors, contracts & subsidies, so they can be even more generous with OUR money to the turkeys who misrepresent us.

But watch China. The balance of power there is held by the Red Army. If Big R et al have been spreading their geld amongst the boys in uniform, we Westerners may be seeing our days of privilege ending. Is this why the USA is being run into the ground? Fantasy? I hope so.

Please ignore the Pepsi versus Coke Party flim-flam of the US elections. Ignore sloppy talk about greed & stupidity. The financial crisis is real, but its cause is the UNCONTROLLED working of capitalist economics, in particular, the deficit banking scam.

Under (unconstitutional, illegal) Federal Reserve banking robbery, banks have the exclusive right to print paper money. It gets to you/us as loans. Government is financed by borrowing money from banks, & it’s paid back by taxes, or more borrowing.

It is quite brutally simple: all monies in circulation are bank borrowings. Let’s make it easy to grasp. Let’s say for every $100 borrowed, $110 must be paid back to banks after one year. That’s the problem, you see? There is never enough money in circulation for population or government to get completely out of debt.

Every year, govs must borrow more money to cover running expenses. It is NOT a problem of govs spending too much. It is a practical impossibility for taxation levels to cover borrowings. If the national debt disappeared, banks would lend out no money, & therefore there would be no money in circulation – an economic disaster.

By the same inescapable arithmetic, an economic slump happens when consolidated borrowings rise beyond the point when they cannot be paid back – as is happening now. The gov can ‘save’ collapsing financial structures by ‘loaning’ money. But that ‘money’ is another IOU that the taxpayer must carry. It is only backed by gov borrowings from other banks, which are more bits of printed paper - a cure that feeds the disease!

Get the picture? I hope so, because if it’s over-simplified, you will not see this kind of basic explanation from media economists. Their job is to throw bulldust in the public’s eyes.

The only long-term solution is for gov to take back the monopoly right to print & issue money. AND, for capitalism to be brought firmly under the control of a truly democratic system, so it is the servant of the people, not its master. And that will take a revolution, like the one that established the USA.

Don’t fancy it? Things are going to get a lot rougher. If you prefer to go on suffering, bleating, & singing “Happy Days Are Here Again” (a great hit of 1929), that’s your choice. When the national debt is big enough, they own you, your children, & maybe great-great-grandchildren. These will be in bonded debt-slavery to a handfull of parasitic, aristocratic mafia banking families.

Bergen,

Is this the place run by the buddhist society from Ratchathani Asoke, who also have a large veggie restaurant (big open wooden building) in the Chinesese part of Ubon - near the privat Ubonrak Thonburi hospital?

Don't know but could be - formats seem similar. I occasionally get in the nice cake/coffee bar part of the Ubon veggie place, but avoid the restaurant & shop. Last time I went there, they were not very polite. Mai pen rai; as said, the Warin place has notices in English, so apparently welcomes Foreign Devils.

For Western food in Ubon -

Wrong Way Restaurant (good bread, real toast & cholesterol breakfasts) - town center.

American Steak Restaurant (aka Grandpa's Place in Thai) - turn right just before civil airport entry gates, left, then follow sign on right.

Moon Noi Garden Restaurant (ask someone) - the last two fish 'n fries I had there were the best my old gnashers met in Ubon.

Laithong Hotel gets good reports, but they threw out Old git Tom for smoking his pipe, so no personal recco. Enjoy.

Bergen,

there is a rather good veggie restaurant/store in Warinchamrab (next to Ubon). Details if anyone other than me & the local monks is interested.

I'm interested as the mrs. is a part time vegetarian .........so details por favore

There is a very large market in Warin town center, with roads on 4 sides. Circle the market till you see a big, ornate water tower. Face it, & just to the right, tucked away in a corner, hidden behind a tree, is the veggie buffet-eatery, with store attached. Strange for Warin, it has signs in English outside.

Recommended, the veggie sausages, spicey & not. Even a Viking cannibal might like them!

Bdenner,

Can't see where the problem lies. PS. When did Tops close? I bought Lamb there about 3 months ago?

Ubon TOPS closed around 2004. The problem lies with the numerous drunken, stoned, geriatric & immature farts on this site. We talk of Ubon, not Udon (as Bergen reminds us). Please tune your ear-trumpet ("No. this isn't your son, it's the embalmer"). And the last time I looked, Ban Dung was in Indonesia.

Words cannot express how happy I am that so many smug gits at spots around the globe are not suffering from cheese choice deficiencies. That makes me so, so happy, my nipples explode in ecstasy.

Feffejonsson,

good luck in attempting to enter the milk products field. But you will need a bit more than one (hired!) cow. The farangs I know who tried it ended up broke. Let's just say 'certain interests' did not approve. I believe there is a Swedish dairy project somewhere south of Ubon. The cows there are raised in aircon hangars. What do they do with the product? Dunno, maybe export it to smug gits in Ban Dung?

Whatever, there is a rather good veggie restaurant/store in Warinchamrab (next to Ubon). Details if anyone other than me & the local monks is interested.

When you know the world is a madhouse, many things become clearer.

Dotcom,

Sorry, either this site or my connection is playing me up. Wanted to add; you sound confused, lad. Maybe go upcountry for a nice rest? Untreated, BKK Fatigue can develop into full-blown rabies.

We don't have cheese in Bangkok either. The 2 pictures below from Central Chidlom yest. Food Hall which is merely another name for TOPS. Enjoy.

Dotcom.,

I cannot follow your thought processes. The topic is lack of cheese choices (etc.) in Ubon, whence TOPS has been long chased by Tesco, Macro, Big C, etc. , as explained in a much earlier post.

Chidlom is on Ploenchit, BKK, yes? So what exactly are you trying to say?

You guys are right - Thai's do eat the living heck out of pizza & fried chicken.

I find it humorus the <deleted> that are so rabid against USA fast food.

Dotcom,

I don't think we are 'rabid', altho you seem to have an attack of verbal rabies (wake up at the back there moderator, & note '<deleted>'). Wipe the foam from your clashing jaws & reconsider.

Hamburgers came from Germany, pizza from Pizzonia, deep fat from Greece, & French fries from UK. Many hate to see kids ruining their health & teeth on this filth-food, that's all.

Kids & adults often like what is bad for them, so oldies try to protect juniors. But popular? I once took a poor Thai family to the burger joint. Before, they were hot for this stuff, I think because they had seen so much TV advertizing, but never tried it. When they did, they weren't grinning, & nobody ate much – a waste of my money & seigneural benevolence.

And fast food cheap? Not in my book. Pizza for 4, is about 800 Baht locally. Few outside the affluent middleclass can afford it. That's why it has glamor appeal. Like upmarket coffee bars, it's chic & fashionable, & shows you got plenty of conkers.

As for George Bush II, you are entitled to your choice of junk presidents, but please try to stay on topic. Unless there are plans to recycle him in burgers?

Pab,

thanks to your tip, I connected to Tesco customer suggestions online service. They even replied by phone as well as email. Nice PR, but will let you know if the customer choice actually improves.

Mai pen rai; Wrong Way café Ubon supplied me with a fresh, chewy loaf of bread & a chunk of Stilton (ex-BKK) today. When my gnashers are dancing, suddenly it’s spring, everyone is young & in love, even Old git Tom.

NotNew2You,

‘Well to start, Tesco UK bought out the Thai half of "Tesco-Lotus" years ago so it is an entirely UK owned brand/store now.’

That doesn’t surprise me. Tesco stores in UK did not impress either – an ambience of slimy PR, arrogance & greed.

I already covered the commercial angle. To repeat briefly, retail marketers know minority appeal items drag in valued punters, those with more cash than time. They then do the rest of their bulk shopping on site. That’s why in Thai they run expensive bakeries of limited appeal. And I live in Ubon, not Udon. Please read before leaping. OK?

Check your arithmetic. Your putative ‘1/10 of 1 percent of the market for fresh and packaged food products in Ubon’ hardly amounts to a significant financial outlay for Tesco. You self-contradict: it is not therefore ‘a bunch of expensive cheese’, is it? By your argument, for Tesco it’s a fart in a hurricane.

Are you correct?

‘99.9% of the locals wouldn't want it, couldn't afford to buy it if they did, most likely can't digest it (most Asians being lactose intolerant), and ending up throwing the lot of it out when it rots!’

Please read posts before replying. As I said, the decent cheddar disappears as fast as it is put on sale. So who is snapping it up? Tesco also seems quite complacent about displaying ample quantities of Europe’s poorest quality cheese brands (Laughing Cow, Kraft, etc.). It’s <deleted> quality-wise (as I said), but expensive price-wise. Maybe there is a cunning commercial connection there?

But you are part-correct. Some of this cheese does indeed go mouldy, but before it reaches the shelves. I love it!! It tastes much better – pity I don’t have a cellar/cave to get the same results. But this suggests a refrigeration/storage deficiency – so slack management, as I suggested.

If most Thais are lactose intolerant, I am very sad so many drink milk. It’s heavily advertized & promoted as a ‘health’ drink. Milk gives me gut trouble (but not cheese). It’s actually a junk food. Most of it is water. The remainder is mostly animal fat globules in suspension. Yerk! Give it to the cat, not your poor kids.

Fortunately,I like Thai food,but must admit the choice of farang food in the mentioned Supermarkets is very poor and unreliable.

When I can be bothered to cook,let the ingredients come from Bangkok;a farang meal,once in a while,appeals to many of my friends,and,of course,all of our children.

This said,I believe there is an international conspiracy to sell in Thailand only western junkfood,in the market and the restaurant-chains!

Thanks; yes, Tesco sells the same filthy junk cheese brands in UK, but alongside quality alternatives. Why no choice here (Ubon)?

I would email Tesco, but their website has no customer feedback address, unless anyone has it?

In a similar vein, I advise scotch lovers to avoid very expensive labels. The bottles & the labels are identical to what you see in Scotland itself, but the stuff inside is NOT.

A wealthy Thai scotch connoisseur confirmed this. He buys his abroad - avoiding a farang scam.

Of course, if you mix in lemonade or coke, any hooch will do. I can recommend Thai Regency brand. Altho Regency is actually brandy, it's rattling good taste & value.

NotNew2You:

What else would they sell in THAILAND...a country that if full of THAI people if you haven't noticed already ohmy.gif ...who actually like to eat THAI food!

Humm...someone moves to Thailand...and then moves out into the "sticks" in Thailand...and then complains there isn't a branch of Sainsbury down the road!

Get a f*ckin grip dude. The lack of "our" food is a major reason very few foreigners chose to live in Issan if they can help it.

Oh dear, another of those ever-angy flamers. If you had bothered to read/comprehend what I wrote, I focussed on Tesco-Lotus management, not Thailand or Isaan in general. Particularly, why so little choice? Tesco is a half-half international/Thai operation. Catering to minority tastes should be no problem. In the case of topping up cheese shelves, for them it is only a matter of tickling the computer keys. If this farang item is so unpopular amongst Thais, why does reasonable-quality cheddar disappear almost as fast as it appears?

Please, YOU get a grip. Cowabunga, ‘dude’!

Vision:

The more Farang food we get here the more attractive this place will be to the absurd farangs that move to Thailand yet insist that every bit of food, decor and cluture that surrounds them be from what they are used to? Why move to a forign country if you only like what you have at home? Stay in your home country and save all the hassle.

See above remarks. Your logic is flawed. Wrong: many farangs come here precisely because they love Thai cuisine (my brother does). Wearily, God forbid ‘every bit’ of the Thai environment becomes the same as everywhere else. The bit I criticize is Tesco’s lack of choice. I like it here. Please don’t generalise me with attitudes I reject & did not mention.

Hansnl:

Indeed, the shops are getting low on Farang food. Why? Because shops tend to cater for MOST people, and they prefer the part of that people that make the articles in the shop sell very fast.

Wrong: supermarket retailing is almost a science. The big hitters do not stock stuff of minority appeal for nothing. E.g., both Tops & Tesco support (expensive) in-house bakeries & sell quite good farang-style bread. This appeals to few Thais. BUT, the few who do come for it will also do their week’s/month’s shopping at the same time. They tend to be the Western-influenced, affluent middle-class professionals who like sugar-free bread, & have more money than time to shop. Make sense?

It should make sense to Tesco management, since about 90% of the stuff on their shelves is also hawked by the 4 other supermarkets in town, plus numerous lesser outlets.

Irrelevant to what I wrote, but as others have weighed in, I also deplore the foisting of Western junkfood on Thailand. I hate it. But, I also shudder at the excess sugar & fat in popular Thai foods. Let’s not flog ourselves to death on non-controversies.

I go for tinned, because that is most convenient for ME, my choice, & I can’t cook. I eat out at Thai restaurants, & love some of the nosh. The last time I ate Lao, I fired tracer-bullets, & couldn’t taste anything next day. Lao food is about the worst in the world. I occasionally need to get my my farang teeth round some ‘real’ grub.

As said, Tesco has no fundamental or commercial reasons for not supplying my wants, apart from crap/inert management. Its profits internationally are enormous. Locally, who knows? Old git Tom

UBON & THE FARANG FOOD FAMINE: OR, TESCO-LAND, WHERE SUGAR IS KING & CUSTOMERS ARE PEASANTS.

We used to have a ‘Tops’ food store in Ubon. It was great. Farang-type foods were available. Then, Tesco-Lotus, Big C & Macro set up superstores & put Tops out of business – a very sad day.

First, we can forget Big C. It only sells Thai-style foodstuffs.

Macro much the same, but it did sell large, catering-sized lumps of New Zealand cheddar cheese. These were indifferent quality, but eatable. They started off at 700 Baht for a pair – good value. That rose to 800 B for one, then to 1,200 B, at which point we lost interest (greedy bastards).

Having got rid of Tops, Tesco first went well, then gradually started eliminating farang foods.

First gripe, purt-near everything comes tasting of sugar. Thais prefer this mankyflavor? Fine, but what about choice for those who don’t, or who worry about fat kids, rotten teeth, diabetes & heart disease?

Tinned potatoes disappeared.

Tinned anchovies have never appeared.

Except for tuna (heavens be praised), all other tinned fish seems to come withtomato sauce or curry; oh, & lashings of sugar, of course. Lovers of Thaicuisine can choose amongst numerous brands of sardines with tomato. Just sardines, preferably w/out double helpings of sugar? Mai mi.

Findus fish fingers disappeared, replaced by a Thai version that smelled & tastedlike processed arsehol_e of octopus (with sugar). Even our dogs turned their noses up. Complaints to Tesco management fell on Isaan ears.

Reasonable quality cheeses such as New Zealand cheddar must sell well, because the relevant shelf sections are usually empty. Enquiries to staff elicit the reflex ‘mai mi’.

Shelves carry plenty of Kraft & Laughing Cow cheeses. That’s because

most farangs avoid them. They are the rock-bottom end of the quality

scale, utter <deleted>, expensive at any price.

All tinned fruit comes in ‘syrup’. Is that plus sugar?

The vegetarian sausage range used to be very good. Now, with extra sugar, it all tastes disgusting.

Note to Tesco: if your senior managers can’t do better than this, they need

their butts kicked till their teeth loosen – if they have any left after feasting

on their sugar-laden junk foods. Then hire some ex-Robinson/Tops

staff. Old git Tom

Airlines (except for a very few) are mostly run by charlatans. It makes sense to have an airline for status or money laundering.

And where be a more fitting place for such an airline than Thailand, a country long run by charlatans for the sole purpose of laundering money?

Chaiyo!

As compared to what country, Chaiyo? The land that allowed the massive fraud & robbery of Enron, & the 'dodgy' accounting company that abetted it?

Or what about the system of institutionalized theft the West calls 'banking'. Banks print money, then lend it out against assets the do not have. For this, they charge we mugs a percentage. When we can't pay back, they lend us (including our governments) more paper at compounding interest charges. When the debts as a whole reach towards un-pay-back-ability, the pack of cards collapses - look around you.

Then (this is a killer), 'our' governments bail out the banks & put the charge on our tax bill! Old git Tom

There has been the usual Freeakmason slander of Joseph Kennedy. Sometimes it is Freeaks who slander him directly, sometimes it is embittered people who think they know things without doing proper research.

There was only one entry in which a Joseph Kennedy bought whiskey. That was from the Hague company in Canada. In their files the name "Joseph" appears beside the word "kennedy". Both names are common amongst the Irish, so it coulld have been anybody.

I repeat that he was the president of a bank, and made money from shares. Then he anticipated the Wall Street Crash and sold his shares in time.

It was a Freeakmason SLANDER that he was a bootlegger. However, Bush is indeed a Skull-and-Bones Freeak.

With money and time on his hands, he decided to enter politics. We are not talking Mafia, because the Mafia are tiny compared with the Freeakmasons. Joseph Kennedy was against the Freeaks, who had taken all the food out of Ireland at the time of the potato blight. His view - a correct one - was that the British government was as bad as Hitler. His view was that America should stay out of the Second World War, and it did until Pearl Harbor. Joseph Kennedy therefore saved many American lives.

His son was betrayed by Freeak doctors for twenty-one years. His disease began when he was nine, and he only got a correct diagnosis when he was thirty. After that, he was in treatment which saved his life. All other "doctors" had been Freeak fakes.

"We are opposed throughout the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means to expand its sphere of influence", he said when he was four months in office (April 1961).

Then he set about clearing the Freeak advisors from the White House. He brought in fourteen honest university professors as advisors. The Freeaks were losing power, so they killed him.

Freeaks are terrorists who belive that ALL EVIL IS GOOD.

If you start chasing away investors by "bubble babble" and inflated talk of inflation, the Freeaks who control the press agencies will gladly spread the panic for you until your economy really collapses.

Every word of panic sends millions of Dollars of investment abroad.

Have faith in your nation, and call off the panic that this misguided minister started.

Charles Douglas Wehner

Mr Wehner,

really, this is off-topic, but Joseph Kennedy was a Mafia bootlegger. That’s how he made his pile. It was/is common knowledge. Of course there are no records – or else he would have been arrested. As I tried to indicate, the gangster Mafia was NEVER an exclusively Italian organization.

Joe was one of the smarter mafiosi. He knew when to cash in, get out, & go legit. Dumbos like Capone never learned the finer points.

Like the rest of the bootlegging fraternity, Joe Kennedy had been bribing police, judges & pols for years. The next step was to go into politics himself & cut out the middlemen. Still, he was dumb enough to favor ‘isolationism’ – keep America out of WWII. People smarter & richer than him knew the big money would come from war. Roosevelt fronted this Aristocratic Mafia faction. So Roosevelt got rid of him by sending him as ambassador to Britain.

In Britain, Joe Kennedy still got up to mischief. His embassy cipher clark, Tyler Kent, was intercepting secret cables between Winston Churchill & Roosevelt. A British MP took Kent’s information, & forwarded it to – guess where? Brit spooks arrested Kent, but Kennedy was merely recalled to Washington. There, Roosevelt told him the facts of mafia life, & Joe slunk off. All documented – so Google it.

As for ‘Freakmasons’, you obviously refer to Freemasons. Like the gangster Mafia, just another exclusive, parasitic minority, but as such, often with secondary positive functions. The real powermongers, the Aristocratic Mafia (AM), play them like fish. The AM owns the international banks. These control the UK & USA.

As you half understand, when JFK looked likely to mess with the high AM’s rackets, they had him assassinated.

Don’t obsess on the Freemasons. High mafiosi are just as likely to be Knights of Malta or Columbus, or in those Euro ‘Cadet’ societies. Follow the money - to the real Ueberschweine – the banks. OGT

When the politicians are leading the nation into talking down the Baht, the best thing to do is to PANIC.

Joseph Kennedy was the president of an American bank. He invested in shares. Then he heard all the talk about a "bubble", and ANTICIPATED the Wall Street Crash. He panicked first, and got his money out in time.

There followed the great depression. Nobody had any jobs.

However, to be rich it is not sufficient to have money. Others have to be poor. If everybody is rich, they will demand huge sums for their services. This lowers the value of the currency. If you are rich and they are poor, you can stretch out the money, and get huge amounts of service from others.

Joseph Kennedy had made himself into the richest Irish-American.

I recommend to all that you prevail upon your politicians to call off the "poor-mouthing", and the "bubble babble". If they don't listen, you should panic.

Charles Douglas Wehner

Dear Charles,

Joseph Kennedy was a Mafia bootlegger, a gangster. Kennedy was Irish. Another very successful Mafioso was a Welsh guy called Griffiths. Never heard of him? Quelle surprise!

Joe Kennedy was so successful a gangster, he was able to go legitimate, respectable. In other words, he had earned so much money he was able to join what I call the Aristocratic Mafia - that is a tiny minority of unimaginable wealth & power. These Mafiosi operate from the great banks. They own our world.

They engineered the 1929 Wall Street Crash. Then they bought gilt-edged for pennies in the dollar. To realize the potential of those assets in the resulting Great Depression, they financed Adolf Hitler & WWII. Result, a BOOM in the strategic industries they had bought.

Fantastic nonsense? Ah, so most people believe. That is why the magnificently malignant minority gets away with it, time & time again.

Please folks, stop blaming the little sharks of Thailand, the Bangkok Bandits. There are much bigger fish out there waiting to snap them up.

George Bush II & the Aristocratic Mafia use robbery with violence to steal the oil of Iraq. They then engineer the oil panic to push prices thru the roof. The Aristocratic Mafia owns the mass media. As long as you schmucks swallow their fairy stories about economics & politics, the big cruising sharks continue to get away with mass murder & extortion. Old git Tom

Were there is adversity there is opportunity. Any advice on the property market from the "armchair economists".

From what i understand the property bubble needs to burst and the Baht depreciate for real opportunities to arise for foriegn investors. Is there any pitfalls for investing in such a climate?

Not yet time for the bubble to burst but 'coming soon'. Sit back and wait, in a while you might be able to get anything from a nice property, Mercedes, a plane and even a factory for small cash.

And please, some of you guys, not only blame the oil prices for that!! It's just an additional factor, the next crisis is due for a long time, now it's just happening a bit faster.

Yo,

nuggets of wisdom here & there, as mostly folks make the common error of confusing morality with economics. Not your fault, economists are not paid to spread the real secrets – otherwise we’d all be rich, or maybe hanging bankers from the lamp posts along Wall & Threadneedle Street?

Watching the media economists is like seeing a witchdoctor dance around waving a stick with a monkey’s skull on the end. Lesson one, everything is inflationary (Taboo!) except profits. When the rich are making even more money, ‘the economy’ is healthy.

Actually, ballooning profits are inflationary – sooner or later, not enough outlets for sound investments – hence ‘bubble’ schemes (Taboo! Taboo!). Alas, they are only called ‘bubble’ schemes if they collapse, otherwise they are sound get-richer-quicker wheezes.

Us common folk are blamed for inflation. The witchdoctors cunningly conflate personal debt with the inherent indebtedness of the deficit banking system. I.e., capitalism entails inflation like drinking entails intoxication.

All money is debt. Banks have a monopoly to issue money. It enters the merry-go-round as loans to us. To simplify, let’s imagine for every $100 loaned out, we have to pay back with interest $110. So there is never enough money circulating in the economy to clear all debts. That’s why we have to go running around, rarely to make ends meet. That’s why ‘the economy’ always needs more bank loans to keep running.

So the debts to banks are always compounding, mounting, until ‘confidence’ fails – the big boys fear they won’t get their pounds of flesh – so the recessions-cum-depressions.

When your kindly governments borrow money from the banks to re-inflate, they increase the national debt. In effect, your children & grandchildren are sold into debt slavery to solve the banks’ problems.

Small nations like Thailand can do relatively little against the effects of this global scam, only join in, & try to fend off the big sharks. Answer? Govs. only to issue money, & a social wage to one & all. The social wage would at least guarantee everyone had the real income to exist.

That’s the answer. Wouldn’t work, don’t like? No skin off my nose. Enjoy the entropy while you can. Old git Tom

The solution to this (good) question was, sell the new planes to finance-companies, who then only lease them to their operators, the budget-airlines. When the airline folds, the plane is quickly repossessed, all ready to paint the new lessee's name on the side, and off it flies again.

Short-term, a cunning plan, Ricardo. But road transport in UK went that way years back. At first the leasing companies made a packet, then the profit margins went as more & more leasers appeared. There's no substitute for (people-friendly) planning.

The problem is more complex, when it comes to costly fixed-assets, such as railway networks, as they're harder to repossess & relocate.

When it comes to publicly-owned assets (whatever that means), economists always moan about costs, never exult in their blessings. The rail systems (Thai & UK) were free gifts from the past. The only costs were upkeep & modernization. Those costs are a fraction of the mountains of gold bricks sunk into road building - a bottomless pit that has globally failed to solve tansport problems - rather, added to them as cornbeef tins on castors clog the cities.

But think of the corruption-benefits, to the commissioning politicians & civil-servants, involved in building it !

Corruption is always with us, a parasitic loss. Planning aims to minimise induced, systemic inefficiencies. The sticking point is the control the parasites have over the system. Plus ca change - Bangkok Bandits in Thailand, Aristocratic Mafia in UK/US. Old git Tom

Posters make many very good points, but it seems increasingly to me the ‘economics’ arguments are used to screen dirty politics made by fat pigs round their financial troughs. Word on the street is, the bus/coach/road lobby is very generous with its pol friends – so there will be no second rail lines – a ‘political’ decision dragged up in the fair garments of economics. No, the money IS there.

This is a global problem. Thirty years back, LA & New York planners knew the road transport solution was non-viable. Yet, rail line closures went ahead. The low incomes suffered worst.

When the UK sold off its railways, a guy we shall call the Laughing Hippie took a slice of a main north-south rail route. When a coach service competed, he bought in, & the two services ‘competed’ in raising fares in harmony. Cozy, eh? Result, more & more of the low income, carless sectors are excluded from travel.

Economics arguments exclude human values. Coaches? Road building is financed by taxation. Efficient if you discount fuel wastage, the impossibility of eliminating localized road congestion, pollution, & human life. Last year, my friend lost his wife, one of several women dead from a minibus crash. Where to log that cost, Mr Economist? How do you factor in all those overweight kids whose parents are afraid to let them loose to cycle & play in streets made lethal by traffic?

And budget airlines? The fares war is destroying airlines world-wide. How can aircraft manufacturers continue to invest billions in new designs if their customers cannot be sure they will be in business in five years time?

Transport needs national & international PLANNING, not hog-economics. Old git Tom

The English have seen this before and the results are far from pretty.

Arrr matey! 'n I cud tell a tale or two (but won't). Briefly; Brit trains are/were a bloody shambles, & horribly expensive, to add insult to many real accident injuries.

Under the monetarist-globalist-Thatcherite-Reaganite-Friedman-screw-you-poor-people philosophy, Britain's rail network was cut up, sold off, buggered around, then the resulting mess was handed back for gov. to sort out. It's sad that Thailand is following down this dismal road.

Private enterprise (hogs in clover) buys, cashes in the real estate & assets, then sells to some mickey mouse outfit to mismanage. Hey, who gives a s- - t about passengers? Let them use private jets. MM outfit can't make a viable buck, so whines for taxpayer subsidies or bail-out.

Contrast union-dominated, socialistic, un-privately-enterprised France. They've had a high-speed rail system for years. It was built regardless of protest & expense. It's comfy, safe, efficient & incredibly fast. It has boosted regional development. In the age of rocketing jet fuel prices, it's economically & eco-friendly. Vive la France!

You gotta have a national-cum-international transport uber-plan plus investment for this sort of thing. That means kicking the <deleted> of all the fat pigs crowding the profits trough - as unlikely in LOS as in UK or USA. Vive la France gauche! Old git Tom

Or do I need a better modem?

I think you need to purchase an integrated ADSL Modem+4-port Ethernet Router to replace your BiPAC Modem. I am not sure that you can configure your BiPAC 7000A Modem to forward ports, which results in the best torrent performence. You can get decent performance, occasionally, without forwarding ports.

Almost all Routers have the ability to be configured for "port forwarding".

Note that many ISPs are limiting P2P traffic, even those in Japan, Korea and the U.S.A., where Comcast has been taking some heat on this subject lately.

Thanks chaps. Will look up a router.

Sorry, I actually use uTorrent, tried eMule briefly.

uTorrent now says 'Port forwarded', but down & up speeds still 50% of what they used to be, about 1 month back. It seems the limitation is being imposed by the server. Hey-ho, at least I can cease fiddling around with it.

But Korea limiting P2P? I thought everyone there had 40 MB broadband? Old git Tom

My set-up is, XP SP2, TT&T adsl ISP, Bipac 7000A USB modem, Comodo Firewall.

Downloading stuff with eTorrent was good, now slow. I checked my connection speed. This is about 100kbs on upload, 1000 kbs on d/load. That should produce about 40kBs upload max on eTorrent. It did, but is now reduced to 10-15 kBs. So, downloading is below 10 kBs/sec. & way below on average - SLOW.

I used the 'Lylord' fix for the Msoft. XP bottleneck: no improvement.

Using eTorrent's checks, it reports 'Port not forwarded'. Ranging all over the web, I tried to find how to forward a port. No luck; most sites refer me to 'portforward.com'. This advises using my IP address in a browser to find the solution to the issue. No: my address is 192 . 168 . 0 . 1. Into the browser window & 'enter', that just puts me onto a webpage full of sites with unhelpful stuff. The Billion/Astra site is just as useless.

Fiddling with the UPnP (Plug & Play) & firewall settings makes naff-all difference.

In case the prob. was eTorrent-related, I tried the alternative eMule program. This refused to even start - unable to open assigned ports.

Is this a Cunning Plan by the ISP to cut down server traffic? Or do I need a better modem?

Any half-way polite &/or helpful suggestions received with thanks. No geekspeak please. Just tell me what buttons to push? Thanks, Old git Tom

'GBSWALES' got it most right. I taught here & elsewhere for some time, now retired. Many mistakenly link qualifications to teacher quality.

If you are a native speaker, you are already an expert - unless you are a complete ignoramus with an impenetrable regional accent, that is.

TEFL, BA, etc., only begin to pay off towards & into higher education level. These jobs are few & far between. Mostly, it's "How many legs does the donkey have?" Down at that level is where the bulk of the jobs are, & personal qualities are more important.

I had all the bits of paper, legal, but many utterly unqualified types were far better teachers than me ("I" for the pedants).

The Thai Min. of Ed. has to respond to the teacher's union, which gets annoyed at farangs' higher pay. You can see their viewpoint.

Thailand did have a sound plan for English education post-WWII. Postgrad students were sent to the West & came back highly competent. Sadly, the economic boom happened, & most of the generation that should have trained Thailand's English teachers was seduced by the high-pay business sector. It takes a generation & heaps of money to turn round an education system - hence the attempts at various bureaucratic fixes.

The pay in Thailand is poor, but Thai life & culture are lovely. No like, want more money? Try other countries. I did, & was very glad to get back to LOS.