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Posts posted by korkenzieher
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3 hours ago, giddyup said:
It's designed to force expats to actually prove they can meet the financial criteria instead of signing a possibly fraudulent stat dec.
Could be part of it - but really what do they care as long as you are not being supported, or needing support, or working illegally? The 800k is a safety-net deposit in reality.
Actually, I think what is happening is that slowly but surely we are heading towards retirement visas being issued on a remittance basis only. In other words, you will have to show on an ongoing basis that you are transferring that money into the country. Whether *you* feel it is necessary or not. And it smells like government has become desperate to shore up its foreign currency reserves to me. IMO an increasing number of people will take this as a sign to leave, whether they are financially secure or not. You are being *told* what you have to spend!
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20 hours ago, sweatalot said:What about defamation law? - it would be appropriate
Um. Not sure how. Now if there is a defacation law; Maybe. 555
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LOL - I actually used the Daily Mail just to check and see if my (erm....) re-routing software was working properly. Guess I'll just have to find another bad-boy for my confirmation run.
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What is unacceptable in the B. Embassy action, is that if they knew from May, then they should have announced it with sufficient lead time so that those who need to change things would have time to do so.
Anyone applying after the cut-off date for embassy letters, doesn't have enough time to 'season' a deposit. There's a window from basically 12 December until 90 days after the original announcement -well into January, even if you act today - where it is not possible to cover yourself.
That, in my opinion is disgraceful from BE.
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14 minutes ago, dick dasterdly said:
But the Brit. Embassy always required PROOF of income to accompany the application for the proof of income letter! And of course, they charged for the service.
Would they really let down all the Brits. using the proof of income route, by refusing to issue the required certification in future??!
That's not quite correct. The Embassy issued letters *certifying* that they had seen evidence of income as presented, to the tune of... It was never proof, and they never claimed it as such - even if you felt the documents you supplied constituted proof.
What appears to have happened, according to UK.gov, is that the Thai authorities had asked the embassy to *verify*, individually, that that income was, in fact, real. The issue being - unstated - that remittances to Thailand don't reflect the claims of income being made. The embassy has responded by saying that it cannot verify the information - as it has no resources to do so, requiring as it would, confirmations from potentially thousands of financial institutions around the globe, and has elected to stop issuing the letters instead. This leaves the seasoned deposit route as the only viable option.
Something similar happened a few years back to Australians in the north, because their Embassy letters were in effect just a witnessed self-certification. As far as I am aware, there was no follow through on that, when it was suggested that perhaps a remittance basis only would be accepted going forward.
The British Embassy has changed how it supports British Citizens - the Australian Embassy did not. I am not sure that they had a lot of choice in the matter, but it seems they didn't do an awful lot to help.
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Except for the piece about jet-skis, I would think this is little more than an advertising piece, written in the first person by a copy writer who has been well briefed by the Tourist Police. Important as much for what he doesn't mention, as does, and aimed squarely at moderating tourist behaviour - with little to say about life here other than 'trust me, I'm an expat'.
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She will be swamped with legal council and translators there's not going to be any of the usual back-room deals on offer, and that may come as something of an eye-opener to him. He has zero jurisdiction. This really ought to be handled by the Thai Embassy in London. Big Egg on Joke face moment coming up, methinks.
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1 hour ago, thaibeachlovers said:Here it's basically boring.
Got that.
Where? If you are drawing a comparison against Thailand, it would help me at least to know where against....
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We demand the evidence to support your claim that a crime we say cannot have happened, might have actually happened, so we can bury it. And if you do not come back and risk being killed off for being an inconvenience, rather like happened to your predecessors then we will ban you from coming back anyway. What? The risk of being killed is why you fled after the local police ignored you? Well then, case closed. Nothing to see here. Move on............
Certainly a big joke.
Of course the risk that a slightly more credible force might decide to test the evidence against the DNA from the previous crime - now I suspect that has someone worried.
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On 8/31/2018 at 9:16 AM, HarrySeaman said:
Actually those box wines such as Mont Clair were (are?) "fruit wines", meaning that they are real wine that has been cut with fruit juice. This was done to lower the alcohol content and reduce the taxes.
Drink box wine and you just might be getting your grape juice.
That's not correct. Reduce taxes, yes, but not cutting with fruit juice. Wine boxes were described as alcoholic fruit juice, to get around the differential tax rates specific to bottled wine. The reason (cheap) wine went up so much is because that loophole was closed at the same time as the new tax rates were applied - so the jump in price reflects the normalisation of boxed product to the rates for bottled product, plus the new tax levels on wine per se. Certain brands even had secondary paper sleeves wrapped around the standard printed carton, to use the appropriate wording implying that they were not 'wine'. Are you seriously trying to suggest that the Mont Clair wine in boxes was not the same stuff as in bottles?
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Mont Clair re-appeared on the shelves in Tesco, Hua Hin, about a month ago. A new 3 litre box for 1120 baht, has replaced the old 4 litre 800 baht box. So a price hike from 200 bht a litre to 373 baht a litre. A price hike of just about 87%.
Since then, because sales have been sooooooooo brisk at the new price (55555), the price has been dropped to 1009 baht (odd kind of number), a mere 68% hike over the old price. Wine was never cheap here, but here it seems is a obvious lesson in slaughtering the golden goose. Stick to grape juice!
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2 hours ago, BigA said:
I dispute this, there is a huge number of Chines tourists at the night market and malls around Hua Hin such as Bluport.
Huge? There are not huge numbers of *anything* hanging around BluPort.
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As far as I recall, the UK determines the 'big' bike based on the power output, rather than raw CC. At the moment it translates to roughly 650CC, but can be any size in theory. Again, if memory serves, 11kW is the output limit - but that could have changed. 650 would still be way too big for Thailand IMHO, and 400CC seems about right to me - the larger Centaur (which is a bit underpowered for a modern 400CC) probably ought not to qualify for a different licence to the 250 / 200 CC models, IMO.
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Spent several weeks back in Yorkshire over the summer, and fish and chips was of the order of £5. £7 for large. One of the things I see in the UK is the cost of eating out, and drinking has risen significantly. I think the problem here, largely, is the council / business rates, coupled with more home entertainment options. Fewer people go out to eat so it gets more expensive. Similar to Thailand in a way: business is down, so put up the prices - but the problem largely is the cost of doing business, rather than profiteering. Market stalls (many of whom now think they are entitled to be premium priced 'farmers' markets, are now so far ahead of supermarkets, that it isn't funny. But supermarket pricing is very cheap. There's a whole bunch of things - not just bread, cheese, wine - that I think the UK now is much cheaper. Thailand has gone up, and the exchange rate particularly to the pound has had a bad effect on disposable incomes for expats - but it makes the UK look pretty cheap, even if prices there have risen too.
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30 minutes ago, SheungWan said:
Yes, well, good luck with that balderdash.
Try some logic next time, otherwise I won't even bother to read your tripe.
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13 minutes ago, BEngBKK said:
I coruption common in UK, since they allowed her to stay ????
I think you will find that the UK values the fact that a democracy was rudely interrupted by a military Junta much more highly, than what that Junta thinks of the people it supplanted.
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For all the Brit bashers, has it not become obvious yet, that the fall in the pound has happened since the Chequers document went public? In other words Markets are fearful of a *compromise* solution - rather than a clean break and a free trade pact with the US and WTO rules elsewhere. When DT mentioned the pact, the pound and UK markets surged.
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14 minutes ago, tso310 said:
Can you imagine the scenes at the airport if she, never mind her brother, arrived back. The international spotlight would well and truly be on the junta especially how they controlled the enthusiastic response should would get. It suits the junta well that they are being ignored.
It hasn't proved sufficient disincentive in the back, to those sufficiently motivated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Benigno_Aquino_Jr.
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It's quite remarkable how often this happens - not just in Thailand, but around the world. Someone discovers something - a place, a scene, a lifestyle. Once eclectic, it becomes mainstream. Then officialdom moves in to sanitise it for 'their esteemed guests', completely oblivious to why it became a 'thing' in the first place. Then stare on confused as the crowd moves on to the next big thing, leaving little but dust and the disillusioned in their wake.
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If I exceed them, I fall off. Self evidently then, I know them well enough to stay inside the performance envelope, regardless of the numbers.
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Perhaps I could - but it will be in Hua Hin, not Silom. 60 baht for a large Leo in food plaza; 80 baht in a Thai beer garden. Quite sufficient. 'Old Fartsack's Crafty Ale' can go swing at £8 a pint.
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9 hours ago, ukrules said:
Are the buildings just sitting there empty ?
I dont live in Bangkok any more, I remember going to 'The Londoner' for food occasionally and one day it closed down.
I heard rumours about massive rent increases. That would explain any empty buildings, they increase the rent so much that it's not viable to run a business there any more.
Price increases is my opinion. Was there last year, 'bout this time. Asking 350 baht for a pint of 'Craft Beer' in some places. Little in the way of reasonable prices for food or drink, from what I could see. Paid over 600 baht for street food someplace around soi 18. Area basically deserted after about 6pm because the Thai cannot afford to stay there after work. If rents have spiked too, well, it still boils down to people having to buy your stuff in order to pay the rent, whatever the level. You would have to drag me back, to be honest.
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16 minutes ago, brain150 said:
Canola oil is unhealthy just like ANY vegetable oil is !
The science is pretty clear on this.
It's just that it's so much cheaper to produce and as such a goldmine for the food industry.
You need to be careful with "Yet all over the net it says its good"
The net is full of BS and fake science. It's actually one big propaganda platform.
I also don't understand your concern about "cholesterol" ... or why does your liver produce such an enormous amount of it ?
"The Mayo Clinic" is a very bad source for information on health - they make profits from sick people, not from healthy ones.
Canola stands for Canadian Oil Low Acid, and is the most widespread GM product, alongside sweetcorn. The Low Acid cultivar was developed because Rapeseed oil contained approx 10% Erucic acid, which is a neuro-toxin. Rapeseed was never intended to be for human consumption. At 2% Erucic acid (Canola) it is considered safe for humans, BUT initially the cause of BSE (mad cow disease) was suspected to be rapeseed pulp used in cattle feed (and that is direct from the editors of the Veterinary Review, circa 1987) before people were finally forced to accept Richard Lacey's 'rogue protein' explanation.
Personally, I won't touch the stuff. And in my opinion (and it IS only my opinion), we are heading for a health crisis *simply* because of the instability of many PUFA's in the human diet.
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The time worn beauty of engaging the mouth, before the brain has been put in gear.
Create a climate of fear of the unknown, amongst the uneducated (because WE are SCIENTISTS!), and then watch panic sweep the affected industries when people make entirely predictable choices out of fear. Here we go again...
Hua Hin retirement renewal this week - report
in Thai Visas, Residency, and Work Permits
Posted
So, my pension letter came through in time. Thank-you, British Embassy...
Went up to Hua Hin immigration, which for a Monday in November, was spectacularly quiet and it took longer to do the payment than actually process the papers. In and out in a flash. Two things worthy of note.
The Officer chatted with another to ask if they were still accepting these (the pension letter) from Britain, and was told 'we stop at the start of January' (no specific date). So I said 'one month then' indicating that I had understood them - and got a sort of nervous smile back. So, Immigration is fully aware of the ending of the service, which you might expect to be the case anyway. But I was still given the full calendar year, which might be expected, but was still something of a relief.
The other thing, is that as he was checking the papers I just kept saying 'same, nothing change'; and then he said' still same Thai girlfriend', which shocked me to some extent. My Gf has accompanied me there on just one occasion - for my first retiree visa being issued - she has never spoken to them, and she never offered them her name. Yet they are aware of our social circumstances to at least some degree. I'm not sure that that is entirely appropriate, and it makes me wonder what other information is collated on us behind the scenes.