PeterRS

Now, just a moment! Where did I say all of that? Fact is I did not! I did say the victims were guilty precisely because they knew they were being smuggled into England. Of course they didn't manage to "choose their manner of passport", as you rather pointlessly say, for the very simple reason there was no possibility any of them could get a UK passport! They and their families knew they were not going legally. They and their families knew the risks involved. They also knew from previous smuggled persons that there was a chance they would end up in a bad way - perhaps in parts of Europe being basically slaves in factories or worse, and then even dead. After all, others before them had died. They WERE complicit in that they knew they were trying to get to the UK illegally. Would anyone in their right mind expect to pay up to $40,000 to get into the UK legally? Of course not, and they knew it. Didn't you read Mimi Vu's comment in my earlier post? Did you read the judge's point made in his summation re the illegality of their actions? This from abc news -about the illegal routes from Vietnam to the UK. "The so-called VIP route costs more -- ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 -- but is supposedly safer and takes less time to complete. VIP route migrants often go to China where they pick up recycled passports from traffickers before flying to Russia and then into Western Europe. But they will only be able to get so far as France or Belgium, despite assurances from traffickers, according to the 2019 research project by Anti-Slavery International, Every Child Protected Against Trafficking and Pacific Links Foundation." These would be the actions of those who KNEW they were travelling legally? No one can believe that. I was desperately sad when I read the fate of these poor Vietnamese young people. I have fiends in Vietnam and we had quite a few conversations about it. But to suggest the dead assumed they were taking a legal route in the UK is, frankly, pie in the sky! If you knowingly break the law, you are guilty. When breaking the law, ignorance of that law is also no excuse - and I thought you might actually know that. https://abcnews.go.com/International/6000-mile-journey-scores-vietnamese-migrants-smuggled-trafficked/story?id=67318722

Babylon is dead, sad to say.

There was a long op-ed article in Friday's Bangkok Post that contains as damning an indictment of the government's actions in this time of covid 19 as I think I have read for any other government and any other crisis in the Kingdom for several decades. It was written by Professor Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a director of the Institue of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Political Science. He earned a PhD from the London School of Economics in with a top dissertation prize in 2002. Headed "Is there a jab cover-up in Thailand?", I make no apologies for quoting it in full - with some passages which i have marked in bold. It has become common knowledge that Thailand's national vaccine plan is inadequate, full of loopholes, flip-flopping and even worse, and might not be enough to deal with the fluid threat and devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic effectively. But vaccine mismanagement no longer appears to be the root cause of Thailand's Covid-19 trials and tribulations. There are three potentially related processes in motion that underpin Thailand's inadequate vaccine rollout. If all three are found to be at work, their profound and explosive implications and consequences will likely lead to an unprecedented political cataclysm. First, at a minimum, Thailand's vaccine plan has been a policy blunder. After one full year of grappling with virus outbreaks and infections from early 2020, Thailand ended up with just two vaccines, the British-Swedish AstraZeneca and the China-made Sinovac. Myriad criticisms have been levelled at the Prayut Chan-o-cha government's decision to procure AstraZeneca in an exclusive licensing deal with local manufacturer, Siam Bioscience. The policy blunder here is that AstraZeneca was set out late last year to be the country's primary vaccine. Betting on AstraZeneca as the main strategic vaccine, the authorities demurred from pursuing other well-known vaccines that neighbouring countries also had including Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna -- both US-made vaccines that subsequent clinical research showed as having more efficacy in dealing with virus mutations. When Siam Bioscience -- as the licensed manufacturer of AstraZeneca -- fell behind in delivering the previously agreed amount, the government did not provide the public with a clear answer about why and on finding a new substitute. Sinovac -- a China-made vaccine -- suddenly became the substitute until so much of it, 14.5 million doses to date, was purchased and sent from China that it has turned out to be Thailand's primary vaccine. Much has gone wrong within the realm of policy shortcomings. The lack of AstraZeneca, which is perceived as superior in efficacy to Sinovac, left people feeling short-changed. Criteria for accessing both vaccines at different stages were subjective and decided in executive session rather than on objectives based on older age groups, frontline professionals, and vulnerable workers, as is practised in more advanced and fairer countries. Apart from supply shortages, rollout has been slow and uneven. Access through internet applications, such as Mor Prom and Thai Ruam Jai, has been problematic and haphazard. When Sinopharm became the third vaccine that was suddenly purchased by the Chulabhorn Royal Academy (CRA) and delivered for local jabs at personal cost, the deal resulted in two-tier treatment with reports of some securing free jabs and others having to fork out 1,000 baht per shot. As public outrage intensified, the Prayut-led cabinet finally relented and approved a proposal to buy 20 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, and agreed to import an unspecified amount of Moderna on a commercial basis. People then started to question the government's shoddy vaccine strategy. If these two globally popular US-made vaccines are worthy of purchase and import now, why did the government waste precious time by not stocking them earlier. At the cabinet meeting, another lot of 10.9 million Sinovac doses worth 6.1 billion baht was ordered, even though its relatively lower efficacy is shrouded in doubt. Many other policy-related questions abound with few answers to meet them. Such a complete policy failure and breakdown is enough to undermine the government's stability. This is why the calls for Prime Minister Prayut's resignation are becoming louder. The second set of question marks involve the possibility that perhaps there is more than meets the eye in Thailand's vaccine procurement. The Sinovac vaccine is produced by China-based Sinovac Biotech; it has been reported by foreign media including the Washington Post, that its CEO bribed China's drug regulator for Sars and swine flu vaccine approval back in 2003-2006. The company, nevertheless, became a rising star for investment in biotech. Hong Kong-listed Sino Biopharmaceutical, with CP Pharmaceutical Group as a shareholder, invested $515 million, giving it a 15% stake in Sinovac Life Sciences, the unit in charge of the Sinovac vaccine. When Sinovac's efficacy is being questioned in Chile, Indonesia and elsewhere, where Sinovac-immunised people have contracted Covid variants, why has the Prayut cabinet kept ordering more and more of this Chinese vaccine instead of pursuing superior doses elsewhere? How come the Government Pharmaceutical Organization (GPO), whose board members are associated with the Bhumjaithai Party under Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, seem hellbent on importing this vaccine, while seemingly being reluctant when it comes to procurement of the US-made vaccines that are reported to have more efficacy? Could it be that American companies are regulated by their country's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act? These are valid questions when the Prayut government has gambled the country's public health on limited choices and is reluctant to acquire better alternatives. Finally, as Thailand's Covid death toll rises steadily towards 3,000 and more people suffer untold hardships, the government's sordid policy and gross incompetence alone warrant its riddance. But if there is fishy business involved, the possibility of criminal lawsuits must come into the picture. Are people dying and succumbing to the virus because of policy shenanigans? To be sure, Thailand is not alone in suffering from the multiple crises of virus, variants, and vaccines. Other countries that did well last year in virus containment, such as South Korea and Taiwan, have also seen case spikes in recent weeks. But few countries are encountering Thailand's combination of doubtful policy, government mismanagement, and accused conflicts of interest, at the expense of public health and economic well-being. Thailand no longer has a free and open space for the investigative journalism needed to reveal what's behind these vaccine suspicions and irregularities. Opposition politicians are doing some of it but much more muckraking is imperative. The vaccine saga looks like a "vaccine-gate", full of questions with few answers so far. The more we know, the more we realise what we don't know and need to know. Getting to the bottom of Thailand's vaccine crisis as the virus situation goes from bad to worse will likely compound the political rumblings seen and heard last year, confirming this country is indeed overdue for fundamental reforms. https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/2145731/is-there-a-jab-cover-up-in-thailand-

Whyever not? At the Vietnamese end, everyone knew what they were doing was illegal. When a return air ticket to the UK would have cost not more than around $800, you believe those poor victims and their families did not know they were being smuggled illegally? Of course they knew. That is why they were prepared to pay the Vietnamese snakeheads huge sums "between $10,000 and $40,000". Who pays that kind of money to travel legally? As the judge said in his summing up - "Justice Sweeney added: 'The willingness of the victims to try and enter the country illegally provides no excuse for what happened to them.'" Here is an explanation from the Vietnamese end by an anti-slavery expert based there. "Mimi Vu, an independent anti-trafficking and slavery expert based in Vietnam, said the smuggling of people from Vietnam to the UK continued in the months after the tragedy. 'The prices just went up,' she said, basing her observations on interviews conducted with Vietnamese migrants in northern France earlier this year. 'It didn’t dampen people’s enthusiasm for leaving. People tended to view this as an anomaly. They saw the people who died as just very unlucky. Smugglers’ marketing tactics changed and they told people they needed to pay more to guarantee the safest passage.' "She had little expectation that the trial would do much to stem the continued smuggling of large numbers of people from Vietnam to the UK. 'It’s like cutting off a fingernail, when to really address the problem we need to cut off the heads, which are sitting in Prague, Berlin, Moscow, and other European cities where the ethnic Vietnamese organised crime groups that direct the smuggling and trafficking trade are based,' she said." https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-essex-55765213 https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/dec/21/essex-lorry-deaths-vietnamese-trafficking-victims-died-uk-has-anything-changed

I suppose if they are seen to be investigating those who completely bungled the arrest (I wonder how much all that cost Boss's family - I'll bet vastly more than the pittance they paid to the murdered officer's widow), some of the public may be conned into thinking they are still investigating Boss. Remember this: ""Do not worry that the case will end up with leniency simply because it involves a wealthy family," police commissioner Anuchai Lekbamroong told Thai radio news programme 100.5FM That was quoted on 4 September 2012. Lies from beginning to end.

My earlier post was less concerned with statistics than with examples of how something like a sandbox scheme frequently does not work. The clear example is Melbourne and other quarantine hotels in Australia. Melbourne was first with supposedly a fail safe system. It wasn't and the virus got back out to the general community. This was a result of guards working across various hotels rather than being restricted to one and mingling with quarantined travellers. Several state governments have acknowledged that airborne transmission may have been possible with the virus likely picked up in narrow hotel corridors. It is thought that one case occurred when two people in rooms across a corridor from each other opened their doors to collect their meals at the same time. Without masks, the virus could have been transmitted from one to another. Then there are the Taiwan cases which were brought into a country that had had no cases for around 255 days by pilots and airline staff. One had flown back from New York with a bad cough and not feeling 100% fit. He infected others in the flight crew. By this stage the Taiwan government hd made the sort of mistake we are more used to here in Thailand. Quarantine for pilots had been reduced from around 10 days to 5 and then 3. One pilot then skipped from the airport quarantine hotel so he could go out on the town with his girl friend. These pilots were from EVA airlines and ended up with massive fines and being fired. But still the lesson was not learned and a few weeks later China Airlines was grounded for two weeks after its staff also brought the virus in to the country. Now the Taiwanese are having to put up with restrictions they did not experience last year. Worse, they are having problems getting vaccines. I do not believe the sandbox will work for long even with tourists who have been vaccinated and passed a covid test poor to departure and on arrival. I hope I am wrong. Time will tell.

This thread is all getting rather ridiculous. We all agree that the chain of tragic links started with snakeheads in Vietnam. Criminals were involved all along the way with the final group being the ones who ferried them in sealed container lorries. Everyone was guilty of something, including the victims who knew precisely what they were doing and very sadly paid the ultimate price. The fact is if we look around the world, citizens of many countries, especially in Africa and Central and South America, many of whom live in miserable conditions, are desperate for a better life. They see gold at the end of a criminal highway in countries which are usually near the top of the passport list. In most cases, those who help them are criminals in one way or another. Let's just leave it at that.

I'm sorry but here I have to disagree again. Who were the true criminals? The snakeheads in Vietnam, surely. Without them those poor young people who were murdered - for that is how I see their deaths - would still be in their Vietnamese villages. Those who were found guilty in the UK were merely the poor bastards at the end of a very long trail of criminals. I do not in the slightest defend their actions, but without the originating criminals in so many countries, the drivers of the lorries would not have human cargo to transport. That is not redirecting blame. It is merely apportioning it in the correct way.

I fail to understand the logic here. Inbound tourists to the sandbox have presumably paid quite handsomely for the trip. They have to show reams of paperwork including proof of vaccination and a test within 72 hours of departure. Given all that, one passenger arrived positive. So if you are in a group and just one is positive, all of you are f--ked. It may not be a problem for Phuket residents but it sure is a huge blow to potential holidaymakers. But this is not the only gap in the sandbox. If you are found to test positive, you are not given a second test to check if the first was false positive. Also, one sandbox arrival avoided the hotel and went to stay with his Thai wife and son. The hotel reported him when he did not turn up and the police then apprehended him. Another, an 84- year old with Alzheimers, was found to have left the hotel without his cellphone. He was apprehended in a supermarket. The chances of these two men testing positive is probably infinitesimal. But we know from the example of Melbourne and other cities that hotel quarantine is absolutely no guarantee that someone with the virus will not result in a local spike in cases. https://loyaltylobby.com/2021/07/07/phuket-sandbox-tourist-tests-positive-for-cov19-entire-tour-group-moved-to-quarantine-hotel/

This was a ghastly tragedy. Sorry Reader, but of course their objective whilst in that truck was precisely to smuggle themselves into the UK. Their families had all paid snakeheads in Vietnam vast sums for the precise purpose of smuggling them on a long and extremely hazardous journey to Europe. For those who make it, they often end up working for slave wages always in fear they will be discovered and deported back. But those earnigs are more than they can make in Vietnam and they can send money back home to give their families a better life. "As dangerous as the last leg of the migrant journey to Britain often is, those petrifying hours in a trailer are sometimes only a sliver of months if not years of harsh treatment — first at the hands of organized trafficking gangs, and then under imperious bosses at nail salons and cannabis factories in Britain. But still they come, an estimated 18,000 Vietnamese paying smugglers for the journey to Europe every year at prices between 8,000 and 40,000 pounds, around $10,000 to $50,000. "In Britain, where Brexit has discouraged the flow of labor from Eastern Europe, migrants see a country thirsty for low-wage workers, paying easily five times what they could earn at home and free of the onerous identity checks that make other European countries inhospitable. "Vietnamese smugglers, for the most part, get their clients across to France and the Netherlands, where other gangs, often Kurdish and Albanian, or, as in the recent case, apparently Irish or Northern Irish, finish the job." https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/01/world/europe/vietnamese-migrants-europe.html

I think (not sure) position on the rankings is partly due to reciprocal agreements between countries. I suspect quite a lot of western and other countries have concerns about young Thais wanting to remain beyond the length of their visas - especially possible bar girls and others working in the sex business.

Although covid has created travel difficulties for many, in an ideal world the Henley Passport Index which has been monitoring the most travel friendly passports since 2006 has announced its list for 2021. As before, Japan heads the list. 1. Japan (193 destinations) 2. Singapore (192) 3. Germany, South Korea (191) 4. Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain (190) 5. Austria, Denmark (189) 6. France, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden (188) 7. Belgium, New Zealand, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States (187) 8. Czech Republic, Greece, Malta, Norway (186) 9. Australia, Canada (185) 10. Hungary (184) Henley & Partner's list is one of several indexes created by financial firms to rank global passports according to the access they provide to their citizens. The Henley Passport Index is based on data provided by the International Air Transport Authority (IATA) and covers 199 passports and 227 travel destinations. It is updated in real time throughout the year, as and when visa policy changes come into effect. At the bottom fo the list is North Korea, but surprisingly to me it is accepted by 39 destinations. I wonder which ones. https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/henley-index-world-best-passport-2021/index.html From 2022 UK citizens will require an ETIAS waiver before visiting EU countries (European Travel Information and Authorisation System). This is much easier to obtain than a visa, but presumably the UK will fall quite a few notches down the list next year.

Let's never forget that it is the heir to this fortune who mowed down and murdered the traffic policeman in 2012 and has evaded justice through legal and many illegal means since then. See post #5 here -

I am not sure how common the Delta variant is in Thailand yet. The false sense of security that enveloped the country last year, especially the government, resulted in it taking its eye well and truly off the ball. I think this cannot be stated enough. There was no pressure to accelerate vaccine production, there was no testing at the largest fish market and its thousands of legal and illegal migrants, there was lax border control allowing the virus to enter in rich scum avoiding quarantine and opening up the country for Songkran against all available medical opinion were all a collective form of madness. It's unlikely Thailand could have avoided some form of third wave. But with countries like Taiwan and Thailand with excellent records in 2020 now suffering because of sheer stupidity on behalf of those making decisions, it is now the public in both countries suffering. Interestingly, Taiwanese are flocking to book package tours to Guam. There vaccines are available for anyone and the first shot is given in hotels the day following arrival. Visitors can also choose which vaccine they prefer. There is no quarantine provided travellers have a negative covid test within 72 hours of departure. https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/taiwan-guam-vaccination-travel-intl-hnk/index.html

This is basically the third in the occasional series I wrote for a friend's blog a few years ago. The first two are found in the Experiences of Asia (Gay-Related) to While Away These Difficult Times thread under Gay Asia. This is much more general. It was also written at the start of 2017. I have looked at updating it, but sorry to say that involves too much work. So if you can think back to 2017, this will all make more sense and may make for an interesting short read. Change has Improved Some Gay Men’s Lives, but not Others Change affects us all throughout our lives – partners, friends, where we live, the fashions we wear, our hobbies, passions. You name it, for most of us life is a never-ceasing process of change. Almost frighteningly, it seems to gets faster as we grow older. I used to think life would slow down once I passed 50. Not a bit of it. Time moves forward with almost frightening speed. So much to do and less time to achieve it. As we start yet another year, as yet another line appears on our faces and a centimetre to our waists – oh, I just hate you gym bunnies! – take a moment to think of the changes that have occurred over the last 50 years. Since 1967 men have walked on the moon and the rich have travelled supersonic on Concorde. China had recently entered into a disastrous Cultural Revolution. Yet in 1967 it joined the nuclear club by testing its first nuclear bomb and would emerge as the world’s second largest economy. Thankfully the constant fear of a world-ending nuclear war was slowly to come to an end with the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union two decades later. In 1967 the average cost of a new house in the USA was $14,250 and in the UK £3,700. The US-led War in Vietnam had escalated into a maelstrom of horrific proportions drawing Cambodia and Laos into its theatre of operations before pulling out, leaving Cambodia in a political vacuum and the resultant unimaginable genocide of the Khmer Rouge. On a lighter note, in 1967 The Beatles issued the iconic album “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”. Muhammad Ali was stripped of his World Heavyweight boxing title for refusing conscription into the US Army and Elvis married Priscilla. The world’s first heart transplant took place in South Africa, the first ATM machine appeared (in London) and Israel won the Six-Day War. The price was heavy, though. A barrel of oil that year cost US$1.50. Soon the world economy entered a tailspin as the Arab producers’ oil cartel OPEC increased the price by almost 500% in 1974 and a further 280% in 1979. A prisoner for 27 of his 95 years, Nelson Mandela became the world’s conscience and a beacon of hope for peaceful change. Vladimir Putin, the former KGB agent of whom President George W. Bush famously declared, “I looked the man in the eye . . . I was able to get a sense of his soul!” proved that Bush’s eye for character was as flawed as his decision to invade Iraq on false pretences. Putin was soon to show his real hand only too clearly. In 1967 Jim Thomson, founder of the Thai Silk Company still bearing his name and strongly rumoured to have been one of Bangkok's closet gays of the time, vanished without trace walking in the forest in Malaysia. US Navy pilot John McCain was shot down over North Vietnam. Actor Julia Roberts and CNN’s gay anchor Anderson Cooper were born. Another gay man, Beatles manager Brian Epstein, committed suicide. Advances in technology soon vastly improved most lives. Fax machines, scanners, CDs, mobile phones once the size of a brick and now so small they slip easily into pockets, digital cameras and recording, smart TVs, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook . . . What advances are 2017 likely to bring? All the while in what is called the developed world our lives as gay men are very different compared to 50 years ago. In the USA, President Eisenhower had issued an Executive Order in 1953 barring gay men and women from all federal jobs, quickly followed by many state governments. The FBI intensified its surveillance programme against known and suspected homosexuals. It was not until the Stonewall Riots of 1969 that gay men in the USA really began to organise. Then just as countless millions around the world were tentatively celebrating their freedom from the closet, a sword appeared threatening to strike all down with a new and unexplainable disease given the acronym AIDS. Those who lived through that first decade of the incurable disease will never forget the fear that gnawed at gay communities and preyed on our minds whenever we had sex with another man. Would we be the next victims? Many of us wept as we lost friends and friends of friends. But we marvelled at the love and compassion shown by lovers and carers as they helped make the end of life as comfortable as possible. Whatever the tragedies, there is surely no doubt that AIDS made most of the understanding world aware that gay people were everywhere, not just closeted in little ghettos. And perhaps the silver lining of the crisis is that this knowledge eventually led more and more to understand why gay people are no different from them – except we like to have sex with and be partnered with members of our own sex. Many – but far from all – were moved by books and movies which began to explore the subject of AIDS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYJYW_9mFVg Clip from “Philadelphia” (1993) with Tom Hanks as the AIDS patient 1967 was bittersweet in a matter of law. England and Wales finally struck from the statue book the out-dated Victorian law criminalising homosexual behaviour. Sadly, before it retreated from its Empire, the United Kingdom had singularly failed to strike out parallel laws in former colonies. Vikram Seth, the gay author of the marvellous novel “A Suitable Boy”, recently said, “You find homosexuality in the Kama Sutra . . . in the Hindu tradition, the Muslim tradition, the syncretic tradition . . . there has never been intolerance of this kind.” Indeed, half of the world’s countries that criminalize homosexuality today do so precisely because they cling to Victorian Britain’s idea of morality. And in ten nations, including former colonies, the punishment for being gay is death. So, as we celebrate the arrival of gay marriage in several countries including, I believe, soon in Taiwan, as we celebrate all the advances that have been made over the last 50 years for the gay community as much as for the world community, we must remember that for far too many of the peoples on our planet, not much has really changed. Today Taiwan is the one beacon of light that hopefully will lead the way to greater LGBT acceptance. This ad was recently seen on the Taipei MRT stations. For those for whom progress has largely passed them by, perhaps the French express it best in the saying, “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.” Usually said in a spirit of resigned acknowledgement, “the more things change, the more they remain the same” is sadly too true for too many. Let us hope that more and more positive changes will eventually come, and that “plus ça change” will be uttered less in 2017.

Fees of just 1,000 baht a day? There was a thread somewhere on one of the chat rooms in recent months about gay videos made in Thailand some years ago when payments reached, I think, around 20,000 baht. covid must be affecting the gay vdo business very badly.

Chinese groups falling foul of the censors for whatever reason no longer have to depend on this one app. There seems to be no news about similar blocking on the other mega social networking site weibo which has half a billion users in China. Besides, new apps spring up with unsurprisingly regularity given the size of the country. Here is info on a dozen. https://nealschaffer.com/top-12-new-social-media-china/ My take on this after talking with a friend in Shanghai is that the government is seeking to rein in Tencent, the owner of WeChat, only partly because this app has many members outside China. Tencent had a market value of US$500 billion in 2018. It has purchased major holdings in more than 30 worldwide companies. Its tentacles cover technology, entertainment, gaming, medicine, on-line payments etc. The recent action follows Tencent's blocking of TikTok videos. IN 2019 the government ordered Tencent to improve the rules of WeChat. This is perhaps somewhat similar to its recent reining in of another mega company, Alibaba. Why the LGBT community should have been specifically targeted is worrisome but my friend says he has seen no other recent action of the government against the community.

I wonder how many forum members use the apps for commercial hook ups and how many just to meet interested guys who want to have some easy fun without payment (apart perhaps from transport money). The impression I have is that Pattaya is almost exclusively gay for pay on the apps whereas in Bangkok there seem to be quite a few guys, especially students, who do not see it as a financial transaction.

I think we must add to that list two vital elements that are only partially implied: total ineptitude of the government and endemic corruption. If the numbers are really much higher than are being reported, opening up of the country is surely going to be a long way away.

Probably illustrates that I had my mind on other things when that slipped through

I had to have a friend take me to a gay sauna to overcome my shyness. But once experienced, I just wanted more and for 25 years or so I enjoyed many experiences in a sauna environment. If I could knock those years and more off my age, I expect I would be similarly keen. And I see no reason why younger guys today would not have a similar desire. You can be shy in the anonymous environment of a sauna, You cannot be shy meeting someone from the apps. Then of course, your only worry might be bumping into someone you would not want to see. A good friend was once in a small sauna when the door to a cubicle opened and his boss emerged. Their eyes locked whereupon the boss quickly slammed the door shut and locked it. As a married man with two kids, he must have been rather terrified. Realising the situation, my friend wrote a quick note and slipped it under the cubicle door. Basically he just wrote, "Please do not worry. We are both in the same boat. Our secret will be safe from others."

With all respect, the horrors of racism were indeed born out of the centuries old 'tradition' of slavery. Not to diminish it in any way whatever, though, I do suggest that making war on a country is a totally different issue. This is especially true when you know so little about the country you have decided to make war on. We know that the excuse for going to war in Vietnam - the Tonkin incident - was a manufactured lie. McNamara's book In Retrospect sums up what followed as a result of that lie. "We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation . . . Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong." I wonder how the families of the more than 3 million killed in those USA adventures felt when they read that, an admission from the man who basically directed much of that war, the Secretary for Defence. And what of those massacred in Laos and Cambodia, wars that were illegal in that Congress had not given the President approval to make war in those countries? Go further back in time. The USA was one of the most anti-colonial governments anywhere. Yet it permitted the hated French to return to take over its Indo Chinese colonies without any suggestion that it might eventually withdraw. Had first Roosevelt and later Truman paid any heed whatever to the various letters received from Ho Chi Minh, they would have realised that Ho was a nationalist and he wanted his country back from the French. Had Truman put pressure on France, that country was in no position to resist. It could have said its farewells to India-China and likely there would have been no wars in Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia. Russia and China only became involved thereby making the region a Cold War issue after 1950. Would they have become involved if Vietnam had become an independent nation in 1947 with assistance to build the country from the USA, that country of which Vietnam had been an active ally in World War 2? The problem with war is that too many governments resort to it on the basis of assumptions and vastly insufficient knowledge. The USA had hardly any South East Asian specialists in Washington after World War 2. It had hardly any Arabic speakers prior to the invasion of Iraq. The British had too little knowledge when it decided to invade Egypt in the 1950s to take back the Sex Canal. It suffered an ignominious defeat. So lies formed the basis of actions.

I perfectly understand the 'niceties' here. But if as we were informed the government signed a contract for 10 million doses monthly, citizens of Thailand should be informed why contracts were subsequently signed to permit 40% or 50% of Thailand's amount to be sent overseas. Seems to me that's a government issue. If anyone can point to a media story that this was not a government decision, then I'll take the hint and shut up on the matter.

After living 20 years in Thailand and with no residence in the UK, having to spend six months in the UK each year to gain £15 or so extra per week doesn't make much sense to me, unfortunately.

That is a fair point. But it assumes a person knows he will retire abroad when he leaves the UK. I left the UK at a youngish age and fully expected to return. After all, I was only on a 3-year contract. I did not know when I departed that I would be offered two contract extensions. I did not know that other opportunities would open up for me in Asia when I was expecting to return to the UK. When I left I investigated what I could. I knew I would have to continue paying the full NI premiums to maintain a right to a full pension and arranged to do so. Similarly I knew that would enable me to have access to the National Health Service whenever I wished. i did not change the rules - governments did and then failed to notify me. I do not believe it is incumbent on any UK citizen working overseas to check on the rules every year. The government was well aware of my address from my NI file. It could easily have sent a circular to all citizens working overseas advising them of changes. The UK government did nothing.