BeastOfBodmin

For some reason the forum software doesn't want to quote your quotes. I will improvise... Then all the mooted replacement candidates have the same, wrong, ideas? Or is the UK in an economic situation that the Government cannot solve, irrespective the "solution" to the UK's economic problems? Methinks Rawnsley thinks only in terms of politics (how things are made to look) and not in terms of reality.

If there are any reading this thread with a fact-checker mindset: https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/GBR#ataglance The growth figure was updated from the previous 1.5% forecast, which is still in the spreadsheet mentioned below: You can download the CPI data from here, but you have to update the 1.5% to 1.6% yourself. https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/PCPIPCH@WEO/OEMDC/GBR You can download real GDP growth data from here: https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDP_RPCH@WEO/OEMDC/GBR I combined the two spreadsheets and updated the IMF GDP projection from 1.5% to 1.6% I got a headache trying to find the Gilt price data so I gave up. I'm not sure if the numbers for 2024 are still projections (likely) or not. It's also difficult to know how much responsibility/ credit a government can take for inflation or GDP. I assume it's not known what the actual 2024 numbers are and the 2025 numbers are a projection. Note also the IMF predict essentially straight lines. It would be interesting to see how accurate their previous forecasts were. Labour have been in power for about half of the year. I conclude it's too early to see from IMF data what effect Labour have had on the UK economy, whether good or bad. In any case, neo-classical macroeconomic forecasting is not what one would call an exact science.

Has Sir Starver said Reeves has "his full support", or similar, yet? When he does, we'll know her goose is cooked, or her lettuce wilted. Mod Edit: removed deliberate misspelling of Keir

Could be. I just wanted to point out the tax calculator and the tax tables.

Exactly. One deducts the taxes paid in Country A from the due taxes in Country B. The reminder is the tax bill. Problem is that the Thai tax system has a relatively low tax threshold versus "The West", and you quickly hit the highest tax bracket. Thai Tax Calculation I am effectively retired here, though I draw no pensions as yet. The below is the result of THB 83,000 per month (~ 1mm p.a.), spouse does not work, one child in education, no other deductions at all. I would have to cough up THB 64,000 i.e. 6.4% in income tax before deducting taxes already paid in Country A. I assume you have to be working in Thailand to contribute to RMF, SSF & ESG, even though they want to tax as income monies that may not be income?

Goldilocks IMO. If you are too wealthy, they will be tied up in court for years, same as anywhere else in the world.

I expect they first need to work out how to use the blue piping in the build.

It's always 20 years away. What's Thai for "Chernobyl"?

I found this: Soil Temperature

My lot tend to say "More tea, Vicar?", but it's the same thing. Tangentially there's Quentin Taranteatime: "Shall I be motherf@cker?"

Russia invaded Ukraine 2022.02.24, no? It was still under Biden's watch.

What struck me is the thread was started, not to discuss the affected Californians, but to cast Trump in a bad light.

I don't get the "glass houses" reference, unless you think because I insult one politician it means I side with some random politicians of your choice. It's more accurate to assume as a first approximation all politicians are vile, venal and mendacious scum. Starmer's a born liar. Truss (good luck with that court case) was worse than a wet lettuce and as for Ol' BJ, he's a born liar too, but more out of the gutter press mould.

"Trump" is English slang for "fart". As for the smell of Musk, this might be short-lived. Trump has no problem firing people.

How about today, by comparison?

Moved here permanently in April 2024. Drinking and cooking water was provided by those large water cooler bottles for I believe THB 10 each. At the far end of the garden we have a deep well that pumps up to 2 x 2000L bottles on a 9m tower. Brushed teeth using well water. For some reason the auto-fill function was not in use, needing a twice daily walk to the water tower to press the Big Red Button to start the pump to fill the bottles, and another trip to turn off the button. Despite Thais' fear of things electric, my family were surprisingly relaxed about standing in a waterfall of water raining down from the overflowing bottles so as to be able to press the BRB again. Drinking water was transferred to reused water bottles/ pop bottles and stored in the fridge. Well water is very hard. Every couple of months the bum guns and shower heads needed to be cleaned in vinegar or citric acid solution. Everything was quickly coated in scale and soap scum: taps, porcelain sinks, toilet bowls, glass shower screens. Every time we made changes to the blue piping, it seemed to cause a pulse of extra scale to get into the house, sometimes including bits of vegetation (due to some other decision taken without my knowledge to not put the tops on the 2000L water bottles on the top of the water tower) that would clog up spray heads with stuff impervious to vinegar and citric acid. Goodness knows what was happening inside the shower heater elements. Painting the bridge: Initial solutions were to replace the cheap(est money can buy) plastic, sealed bum guns with some brushed steel ones, from Thaiwatsadu, which can be dismantled and clean. Kept two spares fully cleaned and serviced so that I could do a phased maintenance cycle over the course of a week. De-calcing floor and wall tiles, glass, sink & toilet bowls and metal tap fittings was a lot of work. Installing an inline pump to improve the pressure from our 9m well was getting closer to the top of the list of home improvements. When its time came I insisted we incorporate a water filter system as part of the same job, suspecting that if it wasn't done now, the way the inline pump job was done might make it more difficult/ expensive to retrofit a water system later. My wife grumbled a bit but to her credit she found a small business that would install a system in the next week or so. There were some teething problems, but in the end I am happy with the result. The equipment was installed in a small outhouse built for that purpose. We re-enabled the autofill at the well head. I think it goes something like this: Water is pumped from the bottles at the tower to a holding tank in the outhouse. Something is injected to deal with some/ all of the water hardness. This water is pumped through a two-stage RO system into another bottle that now contains clean, soft, potable water. The inline pump does its job of supplying the house. First time in ~40 years I have had soft water from the taps wherever I was living. We can drink the water from the taps (though we still offer guests unopened commercial bottled water). We still fill those 750ml plastic bottles and store them in the fridge. We don't have to do the water cooler bottle run any more. No scale in the water at all. Lather for shaving is foamy and my razor rinses clean. We use less soap for laundry, dishes and body. Our shower heating elements will last longer. The bum guns, chrome and porcelain have remained clean for months now. I expect the payback time of this system versus the THB 10 water cooler bottles is a decade or two ;), but I think it was worth it.

I would be interested to know more about these low risk/ high income Thai income funds. My SO thinks cash in the bank is "safe" (despite the constant robbery of inflation and withholding tax on interest payments) and her aversion to making automatic bill payments due to fears of being ripped off. It might be worth it to start something up here along those lines. I do live in Thailand. I no longer have to report taxes from my previous country of tax residence. I will submit my last tax return for year 2024, but I will only be taxed up until June 30th as that is the day I officially left - I am waiting for annual pay slips from my previous employer that are issued at year end. I still have assets there. I report/ ed the fiat-equivalent balances of my accounts at year end and for a while I reported the interest gains (because interest and dividends are usually taxed there) until I learned that these payments were not subject to interest withholding tax in my case. There is no capital gains tax for such gains, but the balances can attract a wealth tax. Furthermore, if your personal trading activities (probably as applied to traditional brokerages) satisfy certain criteria (apparently loosely applied, and never applied to me), your gains may be taxed as income. For years I was submitting screenshots of web pages as proof of crypto assets due to the regulatory grey areas surrounding crypto. At the moment I believe only funds remitted to Thailand are possibly considered as taxable income. Fair enough. I also understand that they might change the rules again to go after world-wide income. At this point I might consider a Thai DTV, assuming I could set up something that was legally considered as employment, and do a "Visa run" every 180 days.

They may even lose money by running this "revenue raising" operation.

Bitcoin vs Gold USD vs Gold I own gold, silver and bitcoin. None of them to get rich quick. All of them as a partial hedge against governments' mismanagement/ mendacity. None of them are going to zero (I only became certain about that wrt BTC a few years ago). At the moment I choose gold over the others. BTC might "make more mathematical sense", but that's not enough to guarantee that gold won't be a part of any large scale currency revaluation/ dollar devaluation. Gold because of its 5000 year track record as money, on and off. It's not a good hedge against inflation if you compare it to a given CPI (even the manipulated official CPIs that are produced at the national level). While the BRICS might eventually use XRP somehow, it doesn't explain why China and Russia (and lately many other countries) are now building up their reserves of the "pet rock"/ "barbarous relic". Silver because of the current gold:silver ratio. Bitcoin because it has performed very well over the last 10-15 years and solves a lot of problems at the individual level. It is private, cryptographically secure money. It is a form of financial disintermediation. It isn't going to be made illegal (this has been tried a few times but it hasn't caught on) and I don't think it's going to zero. Hell, Trump might order the U.S.A. to buy a million of them (that is about 5% of all the ones mined so far).

Any Vitamix blender (not cheap!). Not sure about large, intact bones. But be careful not to run them too long or the temperature sensor will cut out. That is scary the first few times, but they recover if you leave it alone for an hour or so. My wife burned out a hand blender and a small food processor trying to puree pork to make Thai style sausage. So we plumped for a Vitamix which can handle this.

I am very sensitive to paying the money changers more than I need to. Consequently I have been using Wise (nee Transferwise) for years. Previously I used CurrencyFair. Before that I used xe.com. I have used Revolut on occasion. As far as I know, Wise is the cheapest. Revolut are close, but in practice I found once that I got hit for a fixed bank charge on the Thai side (THB 300 or something [I told you I was sensitive to rates and charges]). Wise don't have this overhead. I suppose Wise have a THB account that they can transfer to internally somehow, else a deal with the target bank. In any case, do your due diligence and try all the services I mentioned as they will usually tell you total charges on their web sites without having to sign up. If you are nervous, use the in-app or website help to ask and they'll respond in good time. I once recommended a friend use them to transfer the profits from his house-sale out of Switzerland to Scotland. It was a six figure sum, so it made sense to ask in advance how to make it go smoothly and to understand any "unusual" charges or roadblocks he might encounter. Just my THB 0.02 🙂

Apparently several minorities, if the slurs are correct, depending on the state.

50.7% of votes cast is hardly a mandate. I am not a USA citizen, so please forgive me for asking: is it unusual for the winning party to simultaneously get majorities in Congress, House and governors? Don't the House and Congress often reverse in the next elections (in this case 2027?), presumably due to lack of performance/ lies told during the election race?

Journos are supposed to be balanced and impartial.

Is it possible to cross-post to this thread?