rabcbroon

Why do some threads related to an english footblal club or a computer programme run and run. Yet important issues raised like British passport changes or soveriegnty issues are closed - considered not Thai related.

was opened in general topics dont know how it got to Isan section

NO

Man of words

<H2 sizset="36" sizcache="41">Daniel Hannan</H2>

Daniel Hannan is a writer and journalist, and has been Conservative MEP for South East England since 1999. He speaks French and Spanish and loves Europe, but believes that the EU is making its constituent nations poorer, less democratic and less free.

At midnight last night, the United Kingdom ceased to be a sovereign state

By Daniel Hannan Politics Last updated: December 1st, 2009

244 Comments Comment on this article

We woke up in a different country today. Alright, it doesn’t look very different. The trees still seem black against the winter sun; the motorways continue to jam inexplicably; commuters carry on avoiding eye contact. But Britain is no longer a sovereign nation. At midnight last night, we ceased to be an independent state, bound by international treaties to other independent states, and became instead a subordinate unit within a European state.

Yes, a European state. Take a quick dekko at the definition set out in Article One of the1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; ( a defined territory; © government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.”

Until yesterday, the EU qualified on grounds (a), ( and ©. Now it has ticked the final box. Under the Lisbon Treaty, which came into force today, it acquires “legal personality”, which gives it the right to sign accords and treat with other states. Nor is this right simply theoretical: the EU now has a foreign minister, a diplomatic corps (the European External Action Service) and 160 overseas embassies.

Until yesterday, the EU could not annex additional policy areas without a new treaty, which needed to be ratified by all its constituent nations. Now, it has the so-called “passerelle” clause, or self-amending mechanism. Parliament, in other words, no longer has the final say on extensions of EU jurisdiction. The EU derives its authority, not from its 27 members, but from its own foundational texts.

Until yesterday, Britain could simply walk out of the EU by abrogating the Treaty of Rome and repealing the 1972 European Communities Act. Henceforth, it will have to go through the secession procedure laid down in Lisbon. In other words – in the minds of Euro-lawyers, at any rate, if not of British constitutionalists – the EU gets to settle the terms on which its members are allowed to leave. Formal sovereignty has been shifted from the national capitals to Brussels.

It is appalling, demeaning, disgraceful that such a thing should have been done without popular consent, and in the absence of the referendum that all three parties had promised. “There’s no point in crying over spilt milk,” you might say. True. But there is every point in mopping it up.

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Very good rabc, do you realise that there is life, real life, outside your front door?

phazey, how does leaving room for the RFID chip mean we are in the nanny state even if we're not?

Thai Visa and the cyber world are my only true worlds now. Anyway it is dangerous out there - just read Thai Visa forum and you will see that

Excuse me just a moment as i have to order some groceries - online ofcourse

Ithink my UK passport is great value, even though its just a diddy little 32 pager.

Personally I agree, the people who complain about the cost of a passport that lasts ten years are like those who spend 600 quid flying to Thailand then moan about paying ten Baht on a Pattaya song taew.

I must admit I never checked the number of usable pages in my 48 pager, have just done so, but I can only assume that the same number of redundant pages exist in the standard 32 page job.

Still we'll soon see passports go the way of 45 RPM records, we will travel the world with an implant in our right fore arm or a quick glance in a pair of binoculars at immigration. Then the whingers will be out complaining it's all a BIG CONSPIRACY by big brother to track us and scan our brains to neutralise any radical thinking.

Oh I forgot the traditionalists who will be moaning because they prefer a printed document to remind them when their visa is up.

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Britain on the brink of financial armageddon?

By James Palumbo

Last updated at 11:07 PM on 27th November 2009

• Comments (118)
  
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He's one of our top entrepreneurs who recently put all his investments into cash. The reason: He believes Britain faces bankruptcy. You may disagree with his bleak analysis but you can't afford NOT to read it

A year ago, the world reacted with astonishment as Iceland technically went bust. It seemed inconceivable that a modern democratic nation could have such parlous finances that only an emergency $6billion bail-out from the International Monetary Fund enabled its economy to keep functioning.

This week, we witnessed a similar crisis in the Middle East but on a far, far more dangerous scale, as Dubai effectively defaulted on £48billion of loans.

Unless its more prudent and oil-rich neighbour, Abu Dhabi, launches a rescue plan then Dubai - once a gilded monument to financial success - will effectively be insolvent.

Facing doomsday? London's Canary Wharf. Britain has been hardest hit by the credit crunch

Which leads us to a haunting question: as the country in the world hardest hit by the credit crunch, with gross domestic product (GDP) projected to decline by almost five per cent in 2009, could Britain be next?

Let's think the unthinkable for a moment. These are the facts.

Even before the financial crisis, the British Government spent roughly £30billion more per year than it earned in tax revenues. This money, of course, had to be borrowed from international investors.

Today, the Government needs up to £200billion a year for at least the next three years in order to meet its spending commitments. But the Government's estimates invariably understate its true need, and they have to be continually revised upwards.

Before the crunch, total government debt stood at roughly 40 per cent of GDP. It is now around 60 per cent of GDP, but is projected to soar close to 100 per cent in the next few years. But again, that is not the full story.

More...

• UK banks and jobs at risk from Dubai domino effect
  
• Brash, flash and built on a mind-boggling scale, it was a monument to vanity and greed ... now Dubai is sinking under £48bn debts
  

Treasury estimates of the size of the national debt ignore so-called 'off balance sheet commitments', such as Private Finance Initiatives (effectively, hospitals and schools built with money loaned by the private sector) as well as the massive unfunded government pension liability.

There may be other, hidden, liabilities. After this week's shocking revelation of secret loans of £62billion made by the Bank of England to the Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS at the height of the credit crunch, who knows how many other skeletons remain in the Treasury's closet?

It is wise to assume that the true size of Britain's debts could be much bigger than we all think.

Yet politicians of both parties can't acknowledge this. Why? Because any dispassionate analysis would spell only one thing - we need massive spending cuts and tax rises to avoid heading the way of Iceland and Dubai.

Crisis: A car abandoned by its foreign owner at a luxury development in Dubai

The news is potentially so bad that politicians simply don't want the general public to know what's going on.

Given the scale of the crisis, what then do they propose? New Labour is non-committal, suggesting that cuts will be prudent, thoughtful and spare people's worst pain. The Conservatives have targeted around £7billion of spending cuts, but these won't happen immediately and are nothing like enough to rebalance the nation's books.

Besides, one minute the Tories are preaching 'austerity', warning that savage cuts are needed, the next David Cameron is telling the City that 'our strategy has to be for growth, both now and in the long term'.

Such posturing, flip-flopping and vague promises are truly worrying. For, make no mistake, we could be teetering on the brink of a truly epic national crisis - one that makes the financial hardship of the past 18 months seem like a mere inconvenience.

For the past few years, Hollywood disaster movies have shown the world under attack by aliens or being destroyed by global warming. We have all thrilled to images of the White House being taken out by a giant laser beam or Big Ben frozen in an Ice Age snow drift.

Politicians don't want the public to know what's going on

A disaster movie involving countries going bust doesn't quite have the same dramatic appeal, but it would be every bit as deadly as a tsunami hitting London - and we have precious little left to defend us.

We've already had one big shock to Britain's financial system as many of our best-known banks teetered on the brink. The Treasury spent hundreds of billions of taxpayers' pounds trying to steady the ship. The financial cupboard is now bare. So what could cause the second wave of the disaster?

In three words - a sterling crisis. So far, containment of the crisis has focused on rescuing the banks and pumping more money into the system through the crazy Zimbabwe-esque expedient of 'quantitative easing' - effectively flooding the banking system with more cash.

This has cost hundreds of billions of pounds, all of which needs to be repaid if we are to avoid rampant inflation. That means borrowing more money from the international money markets.

But there is a problem. Until recently it was unthinkable that a sovereign nation couldn't service its debts. And yet this is exactly what's just happened with Dubai.

Alistair Darling helped conceal £62bn of emergency loans to UK banks

If international lenders begin to doubt the creditworthiness of UK plc, they will downgrade our credit rating and dramatically increase the rates of interest they charge. UK banks will have to follow suit to match these rates, putting unsustainable pressure on our struggling economy.

Thousands of businesses already hit by the recession will go bust. Trapped by soaring unemployment and welfare benefits, the Government will have to borrow more. And so the vicious debt cycle will continue to spiral down towards national insolvency - and, potentially, social anarchy.

Why won't our politicians get a grip?

The seeds of a possible future disaster were sown during the Blair years. Blair inherited a strong, stable economy which had been responsibly managed by his Conservative predecessors with acceptable levels of government debt.

He played his first term in office with textbook good sense; it was a continuation of Conservative policy to all extents and purposes, with debt kept at record lows. After that, perhaps because the Opposition was so weak, Blair and his Chancellor let rip.

The massive spending by New Labour on public services during its last two terms was a good idea in principle but a disaster in practice. This was because Blair was not a 'details' type of person.

As with the invasion of Iraq, he took wide-ranging decisions on economic planning based on little more than a broad vision, no doubt wishing to feel the hand of history upon his shoulder. Instead of the money being carefully managed, with every penny accounted for as with a household budget, it was sprayed about indiscriminately like a fire hose out of control.

As a result, the Conservatives accuse the Government of 'not fixing the roof while the sun was shining'. But the problem is they didn't suggest it at the time. Politics had became so centrist that for the Tories to suggest restraint at a time of economic prosperity would have been electoral suicide.

We are now reaping the harvest of that short-sighted conformism.

Yet even now, no one in power dares speak the truth.

Christmas is only four weeks away; people don't want to hear bad news. Our politicians also don't want to be the ones to deliver it (bad news equals lost votes). But unfortunately, as Dubai's predicament now shows, we've got to stop thinking that it couldn't happen to us and start having an urgent national debate if we are to have any hope of staving off disaster.

The Conservatives are odds-on to win the forthcoming General Election, to be held probably in May or June. There is a view they will not announce the full range of spending cuts they intend to make until it is safely won.

Once in office they can claim the situation is far worse than they envisaged and start swinging the axe. But do we want a party that surfs into office on a wave of optimism, only then to reveal its true character later? This is hardly the stuff of greatness.

The unfortunate reality is what we see with the Conservatives is probably what we will get; decent enough chaps but no Margaret Thatcher or Winston Churchill to save us in our time of need. An even worse result would be a hung Parliament and the ensuing political paralysis which would almost certainly cause a sterling collapse.

It is understandable that no one wants to talk the language of crisis. Spending cuts and tax rises are not popular concepts. Perhaps it is just a fact of human nature that it is only possible to begin the debate when the scale of the crisis is beyond question. But history teaches us that such obfuscation only worsens the pain in the long run.

Present times are alarmingly like 1939, when the nations didn't want to accept the prospect of a war, or - if they did - liked to feel it would be over quickly.

Even our then Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, delayed, entering futile peace negotiations and refusing to accept reality. It took a great man, possibly the greatest Englishman of all time, to save the nation.

What if the great danger in our lifetime is not a military but an economic war? Who then has the moral courage to take the tough but necessary action?

James Palumbo is a former City banker and founder of Ministry of Sound, the largest independent record label in the world, which had a turnover of £80million last year.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1231563/Is-Britain-brink-financial-armageddon.html#ixzz0YRGzbwGp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=429xoDtqS-A...player_embedded

My posts are in no way an attempt to make light of this global fraud. My educational background is simply representative of the masses whom have been recently informed of this fraud. The scam has been exposed and your feeble cry of 'peer Review' means little.

According to your opinion only those who have been indoctrinated with this false science should have an opinion. (Peer review blah blah blah).

Please take a few minutes to watch the video and just see how many times 'Peer review' is blurted out.

Well, you've ducked the question of education, but posted a link to FOX News. The problem being that even the management of FOX news has said that the programming that appears in prime time is opinion journalism, not news. The Ruppert Murdock method of journalism is to key up a story in one segment, then follow up in subsequent segments with the "news" that such-and-such is being discussed, ramping the volume with each cycle. Do you and other viewers of such programming have opinions – sure, but are they reasonable? Can it affect votes? - sure. Will poor science fix whatever is happening to the environment? - not one iota.

IMO "Peer Review" is important because if you want to understand the workings of a complex issue, it is generally best to seek help from those who've made that field of knowledge significant enough to study the complexities, and also to learn the tools (concepts, equations, etc. ) to give an accurate assessment.

If you truly don't value peer reviews, then you'd have no issue in asking any cobbler to fix your new car, or seeking medical advice from an accountant to evaluate why you've been vomiting for several days- with a fever. Such behavior would be absurd, but comparable to what you are saying here.

About the segment you linked to, I watched it fully. Senator Inhofe is recognized as a leading advocate of the big business agenda. Cavuto seeks ratings by editing for controversy while following the FOX agenda. Ed Begley at least was honest enough to say "wait till the facts are in" as to the emails in question.

Again, have you watched either of the two video links I posted? Do you really have room to hear other ideas? For brevity on the "Crash Course" try going quickly to chapter 18, but ideally take the whole course.

Fox new may well be 'opinion journalism'. However, they are very quick to ridicule and undermine anyone that does not hold their dogma.

I must say it is the first time i have suggested Fox as a source of information to enforce an opinion. Fox is a medium of the profane for the profane and i would normally treat their reporting as such. In this case i find them to be of use as most Fox viewers hold many views alien to my beliefs and this speaks to them.

This has nothing to do with saving the earth and, as the climategate scandal has illustrated, nothing to do with the real science – but everything to do with a relatively small clique of globalists running roughshod over humanity itself in pursuit of their malthusian control freak agenda

It seems that a lot of you guys/gals are either conspiracy theorists or have something to hide. However, it is worth looking at the registration form and the blurb that goes with it. In the first place, the FCO admits in the disclaimer that it may well release your details from the form in accordance with the data protection act if they see a 'legal' need to do so, police, tax etc, so those with something to hide should certainly be wary of registering. Secondly, the 14 page registration form is indeed not entirely relevant to expats: P1 - personal and passport info; P2 other info; Pp 3-7 Travelling Family Info; p8 Travelling/Living Info, in which your destination and arrival and departure dates are "required fields! This would seem that if you fill out the form on line you won't get past this one. p9 Travel Insurance details; Pp 10 - 12 Emergency contact details; P 13 Blank; p 14 Employment and address.

On balance, if one has been living here for some years and has already registered with the British Embassy, this new Locate form will serve only to complicate matters in my view. What is needed is a form for travellers and another for expats; not rocket science surely?

So what is a conspiracy theorist. Oh, yes it is someone who believes that goverments conspire to do things - how silly! When have those in power ever conspired agianst the best interests of the people. Now let me think ....... Nope!

After striving to raise the level of discussion on this thread by providing some measurements and links to relevant scientific debate, it is disheartening to see the subsequent posts return immediately to 1) leading the debate by looking to see how this is playing out politically in Australia, and 2) what a journalist has to say about localized weather conditions, which though scattered have little bearing on the global mean temperature.

Since I was asked about my educational background, I'd like to do the same for rabcbroon, whose posts seem most determined to turn the discussion into merely a source of entertainment/ humor: What is your educational and career background? … and if it is scientific in nature, why are you highlighting Ian Pilmer's book as significant, when it was NOT peer reviewed prior to publication? By the way, did you review either video in my last post? Human population growth and consumer economics are not on sustainable tracks.

In support of my questions I am adding a link and a quote as posing valid challenges to the credibility of Prof. Ian Pilmer: taken from http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/04/23/ian-...aven-and-earth/

"Ian's book contains over 2,000 references to the scientific literature, although the most cited journal by far is Energy and Environment. What the unsuspecting reader might not realise, however, is that a large number of the scientists he cites in footnotes would agree with the mainstream consensus — just a casual look turns up names like Broeker, Alley, Barnosky, Rampino, Lambeck, Royer, Berner, etc. (even Brook, heh, heh). It's all about the context, and Ian is not averse to implicit extrapolation…

Here are some notes on the numerous figures contained in the book

Fig 1 — Contrasts actual yearly temperatures to mean model projections (not individual, variable, simulation runs) — and doesn't include the data beyond the low point in January 2008. This is comparing apples and orange (illustrating a complete lack of understanding of stochastic modeling) and it's trimming to boot (elsewhere in the book, data up to early 2009 is included, so why not here?). Edit: Apparently this figure, originally created by John Christy, is scooting around the net.

Fig 8 — No citation, I have no idea where this weird temperature reconstruction of the last few thousand years comes from (it purports to show a systematic decline in temperature), but it isn't from the science literature.

Fig 11 — The lower figure is not Europe, as claimed, it is central England (see section "Central England is not the world!" in link).

Fig 15 — Sunspots and temp correlation — this is the UNCORRECTED version of the Friis-Christensen and Lassen study with mathematical errors retained (for that link, see section entitled "Temperature matches solar activity exactly!"). See also this BoM rebuttal. Was the corrected version rather too inconvenient?

He makes an argument at one point that volcanoes could be the cause of rising CO₂ (rather strangely, after trying to convince the audience that CO₂ doesn't change climate — one wonders why he then bothers about volcanoes, since this trace gas is apparently unimportant anyway). He's claimed this before, but doesn't seem to want to listen to the facts." … with many more citations, leading to…

"—————————————

Update: Tim Lambert continues the page-by-page debunking here: The science is missing from Ian Plimer's "Heaven and Earth"

—————————————

The launch ended with a statement of conviction from the master of ceremonies that this book will become a classic, alongside the other great works of modern science. Well, it may well be held up as an example for the future. An example of just how deluded and misrepresentative the psuedo-sceptical war against science really was in the first decade of the 21st century."

… leading to a great deal of mostly relevant comments pro and con regarding AGW.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=429xoDtqS-A...player_embedded

My posts are in no way an attempt to make light of this global fraud. My educational background is simply representative of the masses whom have been recently informed of this fraud. The scam has been exposed and your feeble cry of 'peer Review' means little.

According to your opinion only those who have been indoctrinated with this false science should have an opinion. (Peer review blah blah blah).

Please take a few minutes to watch the video and just see how many times 'Peer review' is blurted out.

More like another Big Brother move by the British Government. They can stick their LOCATE service where the sun doesn't shine.

I use it, there again I have nothing to hide...

It is not new, it has been a round for a year or so.

Yes, I've been registered for a good couple of years... if you've got nothing to hide, so what?

The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first. — Thomas Jefferson

If you dont have anything to hide ,whats the problem .

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. — Thomas Jefferson

If you dont have anything to hide ,whats the problem .

privacyprof writes "One of the most common responses of those unconcerned about government surveillance or privacy invasions is 'I've got nothing to hide.' According to the 'nothing to hide' argument, there is no threat to privacy unless the government uncovers unlawful activity, in which case a person has no legitimate justification to claim that it remain private. The 'nothing to hide' argument is quite prevalent. Is there a way to respond to this argument that would really register with people in the general public? In a short essay, 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy, Professor Daniel Solove takes on the 'nothing to hide' argument and exposes its faulty underpinnings." At the base of the fallacy, as Bruce Schneier has noted, is the "faulty premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong."

Does not seem like a bad idea to me. If I were run over by a taxi in Bangkok, it might be nice to be able to have the embassy contact my next of kin rapidly. Works the other way too. I'm not paranoid, the government has everything they need on me anyway. I'm not British but if I was traveling and had an easy way to do the registration as is suggested here, why not? For those of you hiding out in Thailand, from ex-wives or the taxman I suggest you skip the registration process. Why all the drama over something that really is not a bad idea.

Yes not a bad idea: Stalin, Mao, Pot, Hitler would have been great advocates of such a system.

PS remember that many governments are effectively proven criminals, liars, cheats and murderers. The more information they have helps them do their job much easier!

I haven't seen one reply suggesting this is the first step towards compulsory implantation of tracking microchips. ThaiVisa is becoming tame nowadays.

Having seen the British government's record in relation to data protection over the past year I shall be giving this a wide berth.

glad to be of assistance

Hollywood director and documentary film maker Aaron Russo has gone in-depth on the astounding admissions of Nick Rockefeller, who personally told him that the elite's ultimate goal was to create a microchipped population and that the war on terror was a hoax, Rockefeller having predicted an "event" that would trigger the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan eleven months before 9/11.

Rockefeller also told Russo that his family's foundation had created and bankrolled the women's liberation movement in order to destroy the family and that population reduction was a fundamental aim of the global elite.

Russo is perhaps best known for producing Trading Places starring Eddie Murphy but was more recently in the spotlight for his exposé of the criminal run for profit federal reserve system, the documentary America From Freedom to Fascism.

from Playmobil - get them conditioned for the future

Trusting these buffoons in government with personal data is not good. I recall an instance a few years back when Tony Blair was doing his farewell tour prior to leaving his post to Brown. He was visiting a school and stopped to chat with some kids who were working on a computer. He asked: 'what are you doing here' ? - they replied, 'we are updating our school website' 'oh, i see' said Blair ' What is a website'

I kid you not

yes the government cares and worrys about us all

UK.gov hoovers up data on five-year-olds

What I did on my holidays, and all the other days

By John Ozimek

The government obsession with collecting data has now extended to five-year-olds, as local Community Health Services get ready to arm-twist parents into revealing the most intimate details of their own and their child’s personal, behavioural and eating habits.

The questionnaire – or "School Entry Wellbeing Review" – is a four-page tick-box opus, at present being piloted in Lincolnshire, requiring parents to supply over 100 different data points about their own and their offspring’s health. Previously, parents received a "Health Record" on the birth of a child, which contained around eight questions which needed to be answered when that child started school.

The Review asks parents to indicate whether their child "often lies or cheats": whether they steal or bully; and how often they eat red meat, takeaway meals or fizzy drinks.

However, the interrogation is not limited to intimate details of a child’s health. Parents responding to the survey are asked to provide details about their health and their partner’s health, whether they or their partner are in paid employment, and even to own up to whether or not their child is upset when they (the parent) returns to a room.

Completing the review is, according to a spokeswoman for Lincolnshire Community Health Services (CHS) "entirely the choice of the parent". However, the letter accompanying the review states: "Please complete the enclosed questionaire …and return it to school in the envelope provided within the next 7 days."

There is no indication on the letter of a parent’s right to opt out, and parents we have spoken with have expressed fears that failure to fill out this questionnaire might mean their child’s access to health services would be diminshed.

One went so far as to say that she found the entire exercise terrifying: given the way in which social services were nowadays so quick to intervene in children’s lives, she felt that merely objecting to this questionnaire might lead to her and her child being placed on some sort of risk register.

Ginny Blackoe, Head of Family and Healthy Lifestyle Services, confirmed that children would not be excluded from the School Nursing service on the basis of non-completion of the health needs assessment. She went on: "On reflection I agree that this should have been clearer in the letter accompanying the questionnaire and I will ensure that this is actioned by the Lead for School Nursing."

She also explained that as part of Lincolnshire’s softly-softly consensual approach to data gathering, this initial communication will be followed up with a reminder and then a third letter and a potential home visit from the School Nursing team.

El Reg put a number of specific questions both to Lincolnshire Community Health Services and to the Department of Health. We asked whether this process was lawful. We also asked whether not mentioning a parental right to opt out was a very convenient omission – and whether the process as a whole might be considered intimidatory.

Lincolnshire CHS were adamant that the process did not breach any laws on Data Protection. A spokeswoman said: "The questionnaire does not contravene the Data Protection Act." They further added that the data would only be provided in anonymised form to third parties.

However, they were not prepared to engage in discussion of how this review fitted with DPA requirements that data be "obtained fairly" and that collection be "adequate for purpose" and "not excessive". Nor have they responded on the specific issue around their right to collect data on third parties - partners of parents filling in the form.

most probably you don't have to register with your true name, passport number etc - it's more o tool of communication between consulate and citizens. The last year, during airports occupations, some countries were able to lift people up from thailand, because they had mobile numbers or @ addresses to tourists stuck in here.

something similar might be coming up again

When ever you may be deluded into thinking that the british government would consider doing something with good or positive intentions toward its citizens - then breath deeply and say i am deluded i am deluded

looks like it's a usuful tool for travelling/staying not only to thailand, but anywhere in the world.

but the timing of this campaign says, that something unpredictable migh be happening in thailand shortly

all part of the service

Please tell me that the picture you've used is a mock-up and not a real Playmobile toy set. If is really is something that is sold to children, we are seeing some very blatant indoctrination. "OK kiddies, let's all accept a police state with no more freedom or privacy."

sorry but this is infact a real toy

something for the wife

looks like it's a usuful tool for travelling/staying not only to thailand, but anywhere in the world.

but the timing of this campaign says, that something unpredictable migh be happening in thailand shortly

all part of the service

Oh, how considerate of these nice people in government

The standard 10 year british passport has only half the pages of the standard Thai 5 year pssport. They are obviously taking the p*ss