RickBradford

And what 'conspiracy' would that be?

Read your own posts!

No, you read them, and show me where I use the word 'conspiracy'.

You are the one who is suggesting conspiracies, so I ask again: exactly what conspiracy is it you are talking about?

There was a big discussion yesterday on Offsiders as to what Big Ange is trying to achieve, and what can be expected.

The questions raised were: is he really trying to use the 2014 World Cup finals simply as part of his rebuilding program? Is that the right approach? Would Australia have a better chance getting out of this horrible group if he had kept the veteran players in the squad?

The final scenario was: given the strength of the opposition, it's not unreasonable to see Australia return with a record of Played 3, Lost 3, Goals For 0, Goals Against 10.

Would that result damage the standing of Australian soccer, whether among fans, management, media, sponsors, or even the players themselves?

All the best to Big Ange and the players.

A Thai press survey shows that Thais will cheer for Brazil (27.7%), Spain (16.9%), and England (16.5%).

But they think that likely winners are Brazil (41.4%), Spain (18.9%) and Germany (16.3%).

Of course, what Thai viewers think is less likely to be accurate than the views of the vast array of barnyard animals and other creatures around the globe which are predicting matches - sheep, chickens, pandas, octopuses, Gary Lineker, elephants, lemurs and camels.

Apparently, in Japan, the sports TV channel has co-opted a macaque monkey which chooses between two potatoes, and whichever one it chooses releases a mechanism which rips the bikini off the appropriately team-clad female model. (This information has not been checked to be 100% accurate).

Thanks, Umbanda, that was very helpful.

I have a dish plus the ordinary PSI box with 200 channels of Asian game shows & TV shopping ( ) so swapping it for a bit of football will be excellent.

I expect a Brazil-Argentina final.

It's becoming a habit!

The last World Cup here, and Euro 2012 was a complete norse-up here -- they are going to show it free, no they're not, yes they are but only for people with ordinary (ie non-dish) aerials.

Some possibilities:

1) General Prayut, with his eye for a populist gesture, orders RS to distribute the feed free to all the Thai free-to-air channels. Sorted.

2) Internet. Try wiziwig.tv (free), thai expat tv (cheap) or Sports365 (equally cheap). Feed it into TV via HDMI cable. Extra benefit is English commentary (or with wiziwig, Arabic or Russian).

There is also the RS option for TV, but it's a bit unclear what they are offering -- does HD mean you have to have a special TV, does the RS box work with existing dishes, how the whole subscription thing works.

4) Sleep the nights away, and watch the goals on Channel 3's sports show at 8.45am.

Oh, and the England team have arrived in Brazil after holding the mighty Ecuador to a draw...

The Thai press say he was initially struck by the taxi, causing him to be thrown into the path of the bus and killed.

The police have prepared a charge of homicide by negligent driving on the taxi driver, who has said that the supporting pillars for the Skytrain meant that he could not see the man starting to cross the road in time to avoid him.

And what 'conspiracy' would that be?

To arisaje, yes, familiar with that crash, I suppose something similar to that could happen, but I'm doubtful. As to auto-pilot and navigation systems, they can be programed to fly several legs, turn at waypoints, and maintain altitudes, etc. so yes, they can do quite a lot until the aircraft fuel is depleted.

The only similar commercial accident would be the Helios Airways crash in 2005. Once the normal contact with ATC was lost, fighter planes were sent up and were able to see that things were not going well in the cockpit.

If something similar had been done with regard to MH370, we might be much closer to knowing what happened.

Right at the end of the video, I think you can see one of the concrete posts cartwheeling (far side of the plane), suggesting that the plane wheels hit the wire and pulled out the post.

The pilot has already admitted to f**king up the landing. But who would sleep in such a place? And why would anyone go about videoing landings at this airstrip? Germans have weird ideas about holidays, it seems ...........

He also mentioned a possibility of providing an affordable internet service and creating a ‘Thailand Social Network’ for all Thais.

​Care to elaborate on that ?

Well, I will.

This is a typical response to things that are beyond the reach of those-who-like-to-control -- usually governments, but sometimes parents as well.

A few years ago, the Singapore government, alarmed at the youth of the country skateboarding all over the city in high-spirited fashion, spent a great deal of cash on an Official Government-Sanctioned Youth Skateboard Park in a nice safe location.

Guess how many kids went there.

The whole point about Line and other similar apps (and skateboarding, perhaps) is precisely that they challenge and circumvent the dull old conventional ways. They grow organically, or not at all.

A 'Thailand Social Network' would be a grand failure, the online equivalent of 'dad dancing'.

Any skidmarks?

Not on the outside.....

A good King, and a respectable person.

I wish him and Queen Sofia, Long and Healthy life.

Do you not think that his unrelenting fondness for the finer things in life was a bit in bad taste while his country has been suffering so badly?

From Wikipedia:

He became King on 22 November 1975, two days after Franco's death, the first reigning monarch since 1931. Soon after enthronement, Juan Carlos introduced reforms to dismantle the Francoist regime and begin the Spanish transition to democracy. This led to the approval of the Spanish Constitution of 1978 in a referendum, which established a constitutional monarchy. Juan Carlos also played a major role in stopping the 1981 coup attempt.

This is what I read RuamRudy, as about his private life......he is not the first or the last........

"The conservation group WWF in Spain has removed King Juan Carlos as its honorary president for going on an elephant hunting trip in Botswana."

From: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18942736

being honorary president of the WWF and going to hunt elephants...what kind of mind would do that?

They appointed him for their own reasons, such as to gain official kudos -- it's not like the King went to WWF and begged to be appointed as their honorary president. He would have accepted it along with dozens of other similar appointments. WWF gains much more from having a king as 'honorary president' than he does from the association.

Having said that, if elephant culls are necessary, then perhaps using them as tourist occasions is a bit tacky. Still, it helps to pay the bills.

No real need to worry.

Things are being looked after by an NGO called the International Centre for Sports Security (ICSS), whose mission statement runs:

“The essence of sport – integrity of competition and a safe, secure environment in which to watch and play – is precious. At the heart of the ICSS is the belief that we have a responsibility to protect this for present and future generations.

It is based in, er Doha, Qatar.

Funny that he was promoted by Thaksin's unphotogenic cousin from being lowly consul-general is a small country to be ambassador to London, one of the most important positions in the Foreign Ministry.

Ambassador in London is hardly one of the most important positions....

Its the hub of shopping, well judging by the amount of Asian faces I spotted yesterday in Harrods.

I hope you made sure they didn't steal anything.

Too bad he had no one to look up to as all his dad could teach him was the art of ass kissing.

The lamest troll remark of the week -- and the most transparent -- possibly even of the year.

He speaks more good sense than the rest of his family put together.

Actually, it's just the opposite... Why do you suppose he's a 60 yr old prince...?

Because his dear old mum hasn't died yet...?

A 'climate official' (whatever that is) makes a philosophical statement.

He is not making a philosophical statement, he is offering a policy prescription.

Mostly, this will involve taking money from poor people in rich countries and giving it to rich people in poor countries. And he explicitly states that this has nothing to do with the environment:

"But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. If this happens, on a per capita basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of money will flow there. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole."

I should have been more specific about his title; he is the co-chair of working group III (Mitigation of Climate Change) at the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); he is therefore one of the main arbiters of what policies are adopted worldwide regarding climate change.

The Green/Left's War on CO2 is having predictable consequences -- the trashing of the environment.

After between 4,000 and 12,000 people died as a direct result of London's 1952 'Great Smog', the British Government passed the Clean Air Act (1956) which rapidly improved air quality in the city.

More recently, this positive trend has been reversed due to the upsurge in the use of diesel engines. Why? Because the self-appointed elites were told that diesel engines emit less of the demon CO2 than petrol engines, blindly ignoring the fact that they emit far more dangerous particulate matter such as NOx.

"Successive governments knew more than 10 years ago that diesel was producing all these harmful pollutants, but they myopically plowed on with their CO2 agenda,” said Simon Birkett, founder of Clean Air in London, a nonprofit group. “It’s been a catastrophe for air pollution, and that’s not too strong a word. It’s a public-health catastrophe.

In fact, London's air quality has now degenerated so badly that it is worse than Beijing's, Bloomberg News reports.

But, it's all in a 'good' cause, eh?

As UN climate official Ottmar Edenhofer said: "One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy."

Indeed. In fact, it's almost the opposite.

^^

The map is slightly wrong, or maybe out of date.

I gather that China is now trying to claim that little island (Natuna, look down at the bottom left, actually a bunch of small islands) and its territorial waters. Coincidentally, the area is full of natural gas deposits.........

They will continue to bully until they get a bloody nose; after all, they've been doing it for thousands of years, as Vietnamese history books readily attest.

The Prince is the product of several hundred years of enthusiastic inbreeding between selected royal personages across Europe, and concentrated in the person of Christian IX of Denmark, who is rightly dubbed 'the father-in-law' of European royalty.

His utterances should be seen in that light; he's not always wrong, but by the same token, a blind pig finds an acorn occasionally.

Melbourne has just has a record run of days OVER 20 degrees - I think it is 15 days - and it is winter in a few days. Reports like this are coming in from all over the world and yet people like you are still in denial.

Lake Superior has just posted a record amount of residual ice for this time of year - and it is summer in a few days. Reports etc etc blah blah all over world blah denial blah blah. The rest of the Great Lakes are in the same state

The Green/Left regards its own opinions as fact, and everybody else's facts as opinions.

As one commentator put it:

What these election results symbolise is the depth of disgust felt across Britain and through continental Europe at the remoteness, incompetence, complacency and dispiriting saminess of the political class (and its amen corner in the mainstream media, in the corporations, in the bureaucracy and the judiciary).

Unfortunately, it is all to no effect. The European Parliament is just a talking shop. It has no power and no say, it doesn't make any laws; those are made by the unelected and unaccountable European Commission.

....or in terms of "liberal-left ideologues" what happened in Greece

Syriza, who won the election in Greece, are about as far from "liberal-left ideologues" as you can get. They are unapologetic hard-line left-wing -- the name translates as Coalition of the Radical Left, and hate Brussels much more violently than fellows like Nigel Farage or Kristian Thulesen Dahl.