PeterRS

The Philippines has always suffered from typhoons. I suspect well over 50% of those which originate in the Pacific hit the islands: some just a fleeting glance; many with devastating force and consequences for the people, especially those living in what most of us would describe as abject poverty. As soon as Ferdinand Marcos became President in 1965, corruption has been ever-present in The Philippines. The country is still controlled by a small number of fabulously wealthy families, much of that wealth accumulated over the decades as a result of corruption. In this century alone, no less than three Presidents have been jailed for corruption and misuse of pubic funds. One President was jailed for life, the immensely popular movie star Joseph Estrada. His successor was arrested twice. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was herself the daughter of a former President. Like Shinawatra in Thailand, she escaped jail by spending a considerable time in hospital allegedly with a life threatening illness. The (often assumed to be corrupt) Supreme Court finally acquitted her. One of her actions thereafter was to grant clemency to Estrada! Now another hugely popular figure prior to his election, as the immediate past President Rodrigo Duterte has not only been charged with offences within the country, he is the first to have been referred to the International Criminal Court. Has anything really changed? Now Marcos' son Bongbong is President and Duterte's daughter is Vice-President. Seemingy nothing! But the weather might! This year the monsoon rains have been particularly heavy. Finally gossip about previous efforts at controlling flooding is spreading everywhere. As one resident Crissa Tolentino states in a BBC article, "I feel betrayed. I work hard, I don't spend too much and taxes are deducted from my salary every month. Then I learn that billions in our taxes are being enjoyed by corrupt politicians." FInally peope are asking why the billiions and billions of Pesos allocated to flood relief have come to virtually nothing. 'Ghost' projects that never materialise. To counter public anger, Bongbong Marcos paid a highly embarrassing visit to a flood control dam paid for by public funds. Only the dam his officials wanted him to see does not exist! There is nothig there! His Economic Planning Minister later admitted that corruption claimed 70% of the funds allocated to flood control. A huge anti-corruption protest is already planned for Sunday, 21 September - the anniversary of the day in 1972 when then leader Ferdinand Marcos imposed martial law. His son, who is now president - Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr - is well aware of how far public anger can go. It was anti-corruption protests that drove his father from power in 1986, ending a decades-long dictatorship that embezzled billions from the state. WiIl this rally achieve anything? Well, in 1986 People Power finally drove the murdering kleptomaniac President Marcos into exile. Perhaps something will come of it - eventually. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czrp7xkd2gpo

I know nothing about Scottish water although I drink tap water when I'm there. As for the downsizing of his investment, I cannot agree with you at all, and I believe that that is an opinion with a very large majority. He never intended to build anything like that infrastructure. The climate in that part of Scotland could not fill anything like the number of hotel rooms and villa aparments. I know he resorted to very much underhand tactics to get some local residents to move who refused to do so. That was their right. I believe you would need a mini-Disneyland-type venuture to achive occupancy levels Trump promised. Look at other hotels in that area and how small they are.

20 years ago when Trump had decided he would build a links golf course north of the Scottish city of Aberdeen, he was going to do it come hell or high water. He promised the authorities US$1 bilion in investment that would include not only the course but a 450 room hotel 850 holiday villa apartments, 36 golf villas and 500 hundred houses for sale. Many hundreds of new jobs would be created. Alhough the local council threw out the appication on the grounds of potential environmental damage, Trump persuaded many politicians to overturn that decision given the economic benefits the course would bring. Apart from the hotel, none of the other investments materialised. In the latest set of accounts, the book value of the investments is US$45 million and there are just 81 employees. The courses (a second one was later added) have never shown a profit. But to the stink of corruption around the acquisition is now added the stink of sewage emanating from the site. The site has its own treatment plant for sewage before it is released back into the ground. Documents released by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency and an investigative journalist group show that contamination levels have breached regulations 14 times since 2019 including 4 times last year. "The agency categorised eight of the 14 incidents as “upper tier”, which it describes as “extreme events which have the potential to cause immediate and serious environmental harm” and can trigger enforcement action." Trump's comment? Well, who would have guessed? For a man who sues at every turn - Silence! https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-68069245 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/17/trump-golf-course-in-scotland-accused-of-breaching-sewage-limits

Probably too young anyway!

Just for interest I have noticed that in the last couple of months there has been a mini invasion of young Chinese groups on Stripchat.There are several featuring five young slim guys - too slim probably for most readers liking - who play childish little games and seem to chat with members of that site using microphones. Lots of asses to be seen but not much else unless I suppose you are a member and pay for private shows. Each guy has a number at the top of the page. There is also a duo who are slightly older, taller, equally slim but who have much more engaging personalities. It seems to me they have to be performers somewhere since they react very easily to each other and the camera, but no idea where. They certainly get hundreds of credits from members whenever I have seen them. I have the impression that the larger groups could come from the very few KTV bars dotted around Shanghai and perhaps other major cities where boys are frequently nude. On the other hand, I do not know if the visuals are from mainland China or Taiwan. I feel certain the performers are from the mainland, yet traditional Chinese is used in the captions.

I note among your wealth of trivia responding to others that you have not replied to my question. What forum rules?

He was one of the greats, part of a generation of American movie stars whom everyone knew and whose movies include some of the best-known. Can we ever forget Butch Cassiday and the Sundance Kid or The Sting? At a time when Trump is dragging US politics back into the gutter, we surely remember how Robert Redford inspired us along with Dustin Hoffman in the movie version of the classic Bernstein and Woodward's All The President's Men which showed how Nixon disgracefully also corrupted the system. Later in his career Redford spent more time as a director. His movies were perhaps less well known, although like All The President's Men, Quiz Show with the great British actor Paul Scofield illustarted how such popular American TV shows were rigged. Robert Redord: 1936 - 2025.

Many thanks

Since getting my first digital camera, I have taken many thousands of photos of all the places I have visited. I did not join any social media and so I just selected a few pics each time and sent them to family and a very few friends i knew would be interested. Emails though last a few weeks before being forgotten. So in 2018 I used one of the on-line pubishing sites and put together a hardback album of photographs from 35 cities, countries and continents along with a few descriptions and what I particularly liked about them. I had only 20 printed and sent these out as gifts. They seem to have proved of much greater interest to the recipients. About half the time I visit those who received them, the books are sitting on the coffee table!

@iendo - love to know where you found that ad. The advertiser should be outed.

What forum "rules"? It is your Board with its handful of posters that has banned political topics - but clearly you are too busy writing your own litany of lurid lies here on this Board that you forgot.

Yes, I realise that. I suppose much would depend on if his son returned home the after the shooting which i assume was the case. With the police and FBI officials clutching at endless straws, had he stayed away in hiding somewhere and before he was identified, I suppose he could perhaps have reached Mexico. That would assume he did not go home or phone his father. Why he did so beats me - unless he wanted to brag about it. He must have realised he was staring at the death penalty. It seems clearly to have been a pre-planned act of murder. It beats me why he did not also plan for a post-murder get-away scenario. Unless he wanted a martyr tag.

I agree. My reference to "silly" was the exchange of posts beween @unicorn and myself. Tit for tat exchanges on such a subject seem rather pointless.

Does any member know how to make a poll work? I assumed the moderator might have stepped in. As mentioned, I can get the poll going but when I try to load it I always get a message that it cannot be loaded!

So the gunman's father turned him in knowing that his son is liable to get the death penalty. I wonder why - and how many fathers would do the same rather then help their sons flee?

I am sure like many, I flip through youtube videos quite frequently. Usually I am looking for specific videos or specific content. Occasionally I come across something so special it virtually takes my breath away. I am a particular fan of voices, loving opera, musicals as well as some pop. Rarely, however, do I come across any artist who has the technique to combine all three. Perhaps once every five years or more. This week I have been literally blown away by a voice that is, to me, totally unique. Dimash is a young 31 year old singer from Kazakhstan, not a country particularly known worldwide for its vocal talents. This young man, though, is the exception, a totally extraordinary musician. He is first and foremost a singer with an incredible pure tone, but one with a range of nearly 6 octaves. For a male singer, a range of 2 to 2 1/2 octaves is about the average. Clearly he uses his head falsetto voice, but you cannot hear the break often noticed between the standard chest register and the falsetto register. He was trained in opera in Kazakhstan and has sung on stage with some of the classical greats including Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras and Andrea Bocelli. He is also a songwriter and likes to sing his own compositions. He speaks all of 12 languages. Internationally he became huge in Asia when he appeared in China on a Hunan television contest in 2018. He is now a superstar in many countries, especially China. He has many youtube videos with 2.85 million subscribers and "S.O.S" has 32 million views. Rather than just play one of his songs on its own, I'll start with a vdo of a regular pop music commentator who knew nothing about Dimash and who is hearing his voice for the first time. This vdo covers two songs. The first is "S.O.S" a French song written for a musical in the 1970s. As the commentator says, the rendition of "S.O.S." is "insane" A second song "Ave Maria" (not the well known version by Gluck) is also included. Just so you can hear "S.O.S." without commentary, it is included as a second vdo below. For anyone wanting to hear Dimash 'live', he is performing at Madison Square Garden in NYC on October 5.

I happened to notice this 6-month old vdo when I played the two excellent vdos posted above by @floridarob. It is I believe equally fitting and equally relevant - perhaps even more so. I especially like the line which gains the first major round of applause. The conservative commentator and journalist David Brooks' thought-provoking speech refers to a 1950s belief in the USA that "it's up to you to find your own truth, find your own values". In 1955 the journalist Walter Lipmann understood this was going to be a great problem. He said if what is right and wrong depends on what each individual feels, then we are outsde the bounds of civilisation. Brooks than adds, "without a moral order it's hard to have trust, it's hard to find your meaning in life, and so America - and I think Britain too - has become a sadder society. Rising mental health, rising suicide, 45% of high school students say that are persistently hopeless and despondent, since 2000 the number of Americans without close personal friends is up four-fold, since 2000 the number of Americans who say they are in the lowest happiness category is up by 50%. We've just become sadder." He then points the finger at Trump and his coven of educated elite. The key factor of the educated elite, he suggests, is that are not pro-conservative, they are anti-left. "They don't have a positive conservative vision of society. They just want to destroy the institutions that the left now dominates. And this means, in the first place, they are astoundingly incompetent . . . Pete Hegseth gave away our bargaining chips with Putin before we even had negotiations. Elon Musk has 25-year olds firing people who were controlling our nuclear codes . . . ". . . The educational elite destroyed the social fabric through inequality, we destroyed the moral fabric through privatising morality. and we destroyed the institutional fabric - what's happening right now." He then goes on to give his ideas on how to right the wrongs. It is an excellent really thought-provoking speech and I hope others will watch it.

As widely reported, on September 4 in its largest ever single raid, US ICE workers raided a Korean US$4.3 billion plant being constructed in the US State of Georgia. The plant was to make batteries crucial to car company Hyundai's plans to start making cars in the USA later this year. The plant would have created 8,500 jobs for Americans. After the South Korean Foreign Minister flew to Washington to seek assurances from Marco Rubio that none of the detained would be physically restrained, South Koreans are livid that photographs have appeared of the workers in handcuffs and shackles llike criminals. Seeing so many of their countrymen in chains was a reminder of olden times when Koreans were colonial subjects. Yesterday 317 Koreans finally returned home on a chartered Korean 747. The issue that prompted ICE to move against the Koreans is that whilst they all had visas, they were the wrong type of visa. This is a practice for South Koreans with specialist skills that has been going on for years without any complaints. Obtaining long term visas for South Koreans working on investment projects has long been an issue between both countries. Now a working party has been set up to examine the issuance of a new type of visa for specialist work similar to that undertaken by the Koreans. But how much South Korean investment will now find its way to the USA is under question, given the absolute fury among South Koreans. And this at a time when the USA is seeking foreign investment, especially from friendly countries and allies like South Korea. So Trump has shot himself in the foot - again! https://www.reuters.com/world/us/south-korean-workers-return-home-cheers-week-after-us-immigration-raid-2025-09-12/

It may surprise some but this practice of providing change with several 10 baht coins has been going on for a long time - 20 years in my estimation, if not longer. The folders always used to have a flap at the bottom right side into which 2 or more coins would be lodged, the hope being the customer would not notice. Always check change, especially if you are going to tip afterwards.

@Moses once again with his his customary blah, bah blah when it comes to Central Europe and the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine. Not worth the time to respond. In any case, @Moses has his own Board which has very few posters and even fewer subjects for discussion. Why does he not post there instead of boring readers here with his Russian propaganda?

This is a completely silly discussion, and if I played a part in it I apologise. Have it your own way. But for your interest I was top of my maths class at school LOL

To suggest it is "strange indeed" is putting it far too mildly. In this day and age to suggest that a law passed centuries ago by a new country should remain unchanged given massive changes in society is an outright abomination.

I have never had the faintest idea how Michelin stars are awarded other than their inspectors are anonymous - or so I am told. But then my understanding is they also limit the number of hostelries they visit in all countries. It would clearly be totally impossible to visit every restaurant. In the USA its own site states it visited 1,557 restaurants. It also states that the number in the UK was 1,062. And you are wrong in your list of cities. You are clearly unaware that inspectors also now visit restaurants in Atlanta and the state of Colorado. And perhaps ironicallywhen you add up the poulations of the 5 areas you listed and add in Atlanta and Colorado, you have within 1% the population of the UK. So while my total number was out, the US still has 50% more restaurants visited than the UK. But it certainly does not have 50% more Michelin starred restaurants! And you are again totally wrong. To suggest that the restaurants the inspectors visit in the UK are all serving non-British food is still nonsense. In the first 48 listed on the first UK page of the Michelin's own Guide, 6 serve "Traditional British" cuisine and 9 serve "Modern British" cuisine. Another 11 serve what is termed as "mdern cuisine" which includes cuisine from Britain and other countries. A total of 63 restaurants in the UK serving "Traditional British" food were awarded Michelin stars. And that blows a big hole in your suggestion that Michelin stars go only to restaurants serving other cuisines. Now compare that with the USA restaurants. 5 are listed as serving American cuisine and 6 Californian Cuisine. The UK has 220 Michelin starred restarants while the USA has 235. Your facts were a little more than slightly out!

To some, this will seem a somewhat petty reason to engage in a global conflict. But this involves NATO. All countries that signed up for NATO membership agree on Article 5. This is a core principle of NATO membership and it involves collective defence. It states quite simply “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area. At approx. 1:30 pm on 9 September, 19 Russian made kamikaze drones entered Polish airspace after being launched from the Russian Federation. At least four were shot down in Polish territory as a result of which four Polish airports had to be closed including the main one serving Warsaw. Wreckage of the remaining drones were stewn across the Polish countryside, smashing into homes and damaging cars. The Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has stated - "This situation brings us the closest we have been to open conflict since World War Two" The BBC reported this is the first time Russian drones have been downed over NATO territory since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Russia's defence ministry said there had been "no plans" to target facilities on Polish soil. What? No plans? Are their drones so incredibly inefficient that all 19 effectively misfired? Belarus, a close Russian ally, claimed the drones entered Polish airspace accidentally after their navigation systems were jammed. Poland is to the west of both Ukraine and Belarus. Why Russia would have fired kamikaze drones so close to Polish airspace is not known. https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c2enwk1l9e1t