korkenzieher

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!

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.

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.

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'.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...