Best of British

[pharvey]

I thought you were lacking a front garden DM?

[dtaai-maai]

Oh that's cruel... really cruel!!

[pharvey]

...... Guilty - Overly excited after a Lions win... (sorry Pete)!!

[pharvey]

In tribute to Sean Lock who has sadly passed away with cancer, aged just 58 - RIP
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-58254859

[sateeb]

Bloody hell. Just finished watching 21 seasons of 8 out of 10 cats does countdown. Sean Lock was brilliant. Did notice that he was missing for the last two shows but had no idea he was ill. A very heartfelt RIP.

[pharvey]

Just to add a couple....
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You can't write tears Jimmy....

[Dannie Boy]

I’m sure this should be in another thread, I just wasn’t sure which one so will leave it to the Mods to move as appropriate, however I recommend you open this enlightening link and read it - I found it fascinating!!

[Mod Edit] Links to rival sites are not permitted.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[handdrummer]

I’m sure this should be in another thread, I just wasn’t sure which one so will leave it to the Mods to move as appropriate, however I recommend you open this enlightening link and read it - I found it fascinating!!

[Mod Edit] Links to rival sites are not permitted.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Which sites are "rival sites" and how do they qualify for that list and why would they be considered a competitor?

[Dannie Boy]

I’m sure this should be in another thread, I just wasn’t sure which one so will leave it to the Mods to move as appropriate, however I recommend you open this enlightening link and read it - I found it fascinating!!

[Mod Edit] Links to rival sites are not permitted.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I hadn’t realised that aseannow was a rival site - for me it was just an article that I found quite fascinating so thought I’d share it with forum readers as an escape from everything Covid related - am I allowed to copy and paste the article without reference to where it came from?

[sateeb]

This rival sites spat goes back years. I found the source quite by accident.

Please copy and paste the article if you can. Can but try

[Dannie Boy]

Ok here goes - it was never the intention to break any rules, just to share what I considered to be an interesting and something funny article - quite long as well (said the Actress to the Bishop)!!


I make no excuse for harking back to happier days this week. Dwelling on the mess that Thailand finds itself in - along with record death tolls - is quite frankly “doing my head in” as us Brits are wont to say.
 
I was reminded of those better days by a story about Thailand upgrading its rail networks to international standards in which I managed to slip the expression “Mind The Gap” into the headline.
 
The phrase is well known as an announcement at stations on the London Underground - something Londoners call the Tube not the Subway. They never did make the platforms - or maybe the trains - the right size meaning passengers need a leap of faith to get on or off!
 
This reminded me of many visits to England with not one but two Thai wives. (Not together I might add, there isn’t enough of a gap in my mind to countenance that!).
 
Full of pride and hope in 1983 I went with my first wife and nine month old daughter. Mrs R1 had managed to get a visa at the British Embassy in Bangkok despite a consular officer - with a German accent no less - who seemed determined to suggest she was a prostitute and keep her out. Kind of like a Fraulein Ian Foot (the masterful creation of David Walliams in Come Fly With Me).
 
It takes a monumental effort each week NOT to go on the “Ask the Consular Team at the British Embassy” thread and be rude. 
 
I digress. 
 
We had a memorable time in the London suburbs that gave Mrs R1 a greater passion for Fish and Chips than love for her husband. Thereafter we went almost every year with the children until she let me take them by myself as a fear of flying took hold. Either that or she was glad of the rest. 
 
The trips - invariably in July and August for six weeks - gave my first brood a love for England that exceeds my own. They are Anglophiles - my son was in the army cadets in Harrogate and is a right “northerner” living in Liverpool, while my daughter is a financial consultant in the city living in Covent Garden.
 
In 2010 I went with my second Thai wife for the first of three trips in consecutive years. She’d only visited Sri Lanka and Penang before so Blighty was a major step. 
 
She loved it and this week I asked her what she remembered most. 
 
She shared my passion for horse racing and loved our trips to Ascot, Brighton, Lingfield, and the jewel in the racecourse crown, Goodwood where we saw the legendary Frankel. And, as a good Thai, she recalled being legally allowed to bet and all the money she won on Frankie Dettori who became a mutual hero.
 
She recalled the long walks in pleasant weather that permitted them, to places like Harrods, free museums and Buckingham Palace! (I’d never been there before - funny how sometimes it takes a visit to educate you  about your home city!).
 
Food was top of her list, of course. The pork with that crackling so hard to get in Thailand and the salad lunches from the Turkish shop - brie for a pittance and plump, red tomatoes with a taste she’d never experienced. (I kept quiet that they taste better in France).
 
And a bit of a surprise - Fray and Bentos cook-in-the-can steak and kidney puddings.
 
“And not like 200 baht in Villa,” I chipped in. “Only a pound in England.”
 
“99 pen,” she corrected me with her frank frugality. My, how she enjoyed those trips to the cut-price stores in the high street. Similarly she had to be dragged home screaming from the boot fairs where there was always one more bargain to take back to Thailand!
 
The cleanliness was also something she remarked upon and those cute “Rose Cottage” front gardens not hidden behind walls and tall gates. 
 
She felt very welcomed by my relatives and reminded me how emotional she was when we tramped through the woods and visited my father’s home where I was born and he had died some years earlier. 
 
She appreciated my two sisters though as a deeply family oriented Thai she could never understand how for fifty years after a petty disagreement they had not said one word to each other, despite living just a couple of miles apart. 
 
“Thais don’t do that,” she said, conveniently forgetting how for many years she didn’t speak to her own sister. 
 
Two highlights stayed with her. The beautiful countryside during our stays with friends in the Scottish borders of Berwick and the joyful occasion when the Olympic torch passed the end of my sister’s little Beckenham street in 2012. 
 
That and the squeezy tube of Golden Syrup that she bought back for her mum in Loei, of course!
 
Just one regret - not being able to see the tennis at Wimbledon. June was always term time for me.
 
Neither of my wives wanted to live in England full time, which was a bonus for this Thailand lover who was also glad to get back home to Bangkok. 
 
I try not to compare where I was born with Thailand too much - at least outside of this column - as it is largely futile.
 
But those holidays during long summer evenings in the fading sun remain the joys of a lifetime and hopefully can be repeated again once this damn pandemic is over.
 
Every day this week on (deleted) there seemed to be new and unwelcome records, more than 300 dead on Wednesday and Thursday. The usual suspects banged on about “Fake News” then supplied plenty of their own.
 
Rooster laid into Prayuth in a story about his moral philosophy about Thai education. He’s handed out a few thousand baht as though that would help parents struggling to cope with the mess that he and his cronies have largely created. 
 
And it was good to see (deleted) taking a firm stance against the PM in the story about him being slapped down by the court decision rejecting his scary news gagging order. This referred to a disgraceful tale of a couple left begging for a bed at Phrakhanong police station; hospitals had told them there was no room at the inn.
 
One story in particular summed up the utter mess that is Thailand’s vaccine procurement - presided over by Uncle Too and his health minister Anutin - namely going cap in hand to Bhutan for 150,000 doses. 
 
Both these clowns have sought to have amnesty for the decisions of doctors. Actually it’s designed to get them off the hook if push ever comes to shove.
 
“Shove Him Out” is what the protesters on the streets of Krung Thep continued to press for. Two people were shot but the police at Din Daeng said they only used rubber bullets not live rounds and they couldn’t have done it because there was something in the way.
 
Reference the  Book of RTP Excuses, Section 465, subsection 2.1, I think.
 
The RTP admitted Wednesday they were using more rubber bullets, extra tear gas and lashings of water cannon to try and maintain order. 
 
Bungling plod were shown in all their ineptitude in Pranburi where a Maj-Gen in a helicopter forgot about downdraft and demolished a whole bunch of shops and stalls as he arrived on a junket with his lackeys. 
 
In tourism news, Chiang Mai joined Pattaya in delaying their reopening while the Kasikorn research center said that 150,000 foreign visitors would be the best Thailand could expect until the end of the year. 
 
Maybe minister Pipat and the TAT’s Yutthasak could go to the bank for a bit of what teachers call INSET training.
 
Also in Pattaya, a Russian was robbed of a 20K gold necklace. I don’t mean to be mean but without such a story for so long it felt almost comforting!
 
In vaccination news one media outlet reported how many foreigners had been jabbed so far with Brits, French and Americans just making the top ten.
 
Many expats on the forum seem to have a great deal of difficulty understanding how many migrants there are in Thailand from Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. 
 
Do they really believe that the men and women who fill up their PCX’s  on gas station forecourts the length and breadth of the nation and say a cheery “khop khun khrap” to them in Thai, are actually Thai?
 
The thread also featured many who claimed that they always get the wrong change and Thais can’t count. I’ve always found that more of a problem in England…..if you can get to the front of the queue where some pensioner is complaining about their arthritis or the lack of scratch cards.
 
In Carnage Capers news there was an extraordinary picture of a young man who had woken up to find that he had driven his vehicle into a six wheel truck and killed his three female companions. He was hugging one of their lifeless bodies. 
 
In crime news you may have missed, a pregnant woman was killed in Nakhon Sri Thammarat, a nutter tooled up with a shotgun and handgun was chased in Udon Thani and a female gold shop robber in Rayong fled in a car with the loot before crashing into some flowerpots and continuing her getaway on the motorcycle of a person who came to her assistance. 
 
Polls also reared their ugly heads. Super Poll contained such nonsensical suggestions that my editor wisely deleted certain parts. 
 
Suan Dusit polls are a tad better but their findings also need to be treated as much with a pinch of salt as a whole pack of Saxa. 
 
Fortunately there was some light relief with a story about the “big bust” of a Thai and his Chinese sidekick who imported sex toys. Aforesaid editor couldn’t fully stomach Rooster’s Viz routine on the tale but at least some of the “innuendo” made it through and gave the forum faithful a few laughs. 
 
Just hours before Mrs R was due to get her Astra Zenaca jab, and having booked months ago, it was cancelled. Yes, folks it's not just expats and not just those outside the capital who are having problems.  
 
Despite the shortages, the  government has claimed their “mix and match” Sinovac and AZ regime is working. 
 
Maybe it is….at least that would be one regime that is.
 
Finally, no attempt to round up the news this week would be complete without mentioning Afghanistan. 
 
How proud I was in 2010 when my son aged 16 announced that he wanted to join the British army and go and help that wonderful country. Due to recurring injury it never came to pass and looking back at the last seven days that may have saved him from the emotional turmoil of many veterans who did their best to help a noble people.
 
I’m not taking sides - this is a multi-faceted subject. But for this columnist there have been highly charged and mixed emotions. 
 
I would draw my readers’ attention to two remarkable speeches from both ends of the spectrum, both sides of the pond as it were. 
 
President Joe Biden’s speech was perhaps the most powerful by a US president this century. Veteran and MP Tom Tugendhat’s impassioned speech in the House of Commons presented a very different standpoint. 
 
Spare a thought for Afghanistan. 

[sateeb]

[Thailightzone]

Why are other forums, such as Asianow, 'rival' forums?

If I go read content from there does this forum loose advertising income, loose sponsorship, loose face? Does this forum fear I will be enticed by a better product or better group of people?

If I link to The Nation will I be reprimanded because only the The Bangkok Post is approved?

Does this forum have a published list of officially approved forums & media I am allowed to refer to; and who is the Grand Poobah that makes these censorship decisions?

Rival forum, what a load of tosh. Sounds like something 10yo kids come up with in the playground.







Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

[handdrummer]

Why are other forums, such as Asianow, 'rival' forums?

If I go read content from there does this forum loose advertising income, loose sponsorship, loose face? Does this forum fear I will be enticed by a better product or better group of people?

If I link to The Nation will I be reprimanded because only the The Bangkok Post is approved?

Does this forum have a published list of officially approved forums & media I am allowed to refer to; and who is the Grand Poobah that makes these censorship decisions?

Rival forum, what a load of tosh. Sounds like something 10yo kids come up with in the playground.







Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

[Lev]

Why are other forums, such as Asianow, 'rival' forums?

Aseannow is a rebranded Thaivisa. Many years ago, that forum introduced a policy to block links to what they termed 'rival forums'. We have simply reciprocated their policy over the years in the interest of fairness, it is nothing new.

Hope that explains things. If you are unhappy with this explanation, feel free to contact this 'Grand Poobah' by PM in compliance with the rules of this forum.