Trying To Make Sense Of Today's Headlines

Headline 1

Thai tax authorities have seized assets worth about $34.2 million from family members of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, an official said Thursday. The assets, seized for unpaid taxes, were in the form of stocks, land, and bank accounts, said Assets Examination Committee spokesman Sak Kosaengrueng. [via Examiner.com]

Headline 2

The People Power Party (PPP) extended its lead in the final week of the Post Poll, an Internet survey of voters' views for the Dec 23 election. The PPP obtained altogether 52.05 per cent while the Democrat party scored 40.74 per cent. [via Bangkok Post]

Ed. If the Thaksin Shinawatra backed People Power Party (PPP) win as expected in 8 days time why are the Thai Tax Authorities seizing Shinawatra family assets now. It will all be refunded with interest by PPP and there will no doubt be sweeping changes in personnel at the Tax Authority. It just doesn't make sense unless the current incumbents know the PPP will lose the election. Maybe Gypsy Rose Lee is better than I realised. Either that or the people counting the votes were educated in Thailand......

Sierra Tangos

• The new bar at the corner of LK Metro and Soi Buakhao will be named Club BLU and should open by mid January 08. The ground floor will be a coyote dance club, the 1st floor a lounge with 2 ST rooms. The 2nd and 3rd floor will be guest rooms. On the roof will be sunbeds and an outside shower. Cant wait for it to open. Come on Patrick, crack the whip...... Why am I so keen? Well I reckon Patrick has a little black book of telephone numbers for top tottie and whenever he starts a bar, he has a team of stunners in from day 1.

• Pattaya Police were on the streets on Friday night to enforce national regulations relating to an alcohol ban during the first phase of voting for the General Election. Venues are not permitted to sell alcoholic beverages until Sunday night at midnight and any venue found to be flouting these regulations are subject to a possible 60 day closure notice. We joined the Police as they toured the city. Walking Street was very quiet with the majority of indoor bars deciding not to open. Many beer bars were open but were selling only soft drinks. Police did find some bars selling beer and spirits and the owners of the bars were arrested and taken to the Police Station for questioning and further action. Bar owners have been left confused as to whether they are allowed to open or not over the weekend, assuming they sell only soft drinks. There were reports of some Go-Go Bars being shut down by Police despite them selling only soft drinks, whereas other bars were allowed to remain open after Police checked them and found that no alcohol was beings served. The confusion is likely to continue over the weekend as holidaymaker's and bar owners come to terms with the alcohol ban. [via Pattaya City News]

Ed. From what I've read on the various Pattaya forums today it looks like Go Go's and Soi 6 are closed for the weekend.

• Insomnia Gentleman's Club, Soi Diamond has introduced Happy Hour from 8.30pm to 10.00pm when all drinks will be 55Baht. LD's not included and VIP discount cards invalid during Happy Hour.

• Dutchman Robert Dahan, 44, was arrested in Pattaya Friday evening for allegedly forging the signature of his Thai ex-wife so that he could reclaim Bt60 million worth of assets. His lawyer, Promporn Nualkanok, 46, was also arrested at her law firm on the same day. Dahan's ex-wife, Nonglak Charoensuk, 31, filed complaints with the court that he forged her signatures when he filed for divorce and the forgery allowed him to unfairly retrieve Bt60 million worth of assets from her in the middle of this year. [via The Nation]

Ed. We should have a whip round for this guy for doing what we'd all like to do when getting the shaft from an ex.

• Thai rice exports will exceed 9 million tonnes this year, bolstered by high world demand and shortages among its main rivals Vietnam and India. Rice exports will earn the country $3.3 billion.

• Are you addicted to FaceBook? Or maybe you’re more addicted to the “News Feed” that constantly bombards you with useless tidbits of information about all of your friends, like who just became friends, who added pictures to their profile, which applications people installed, etc, etc.?

  If you enjoy that, you probably would really enjoy knowing what your friends are doing across other social web sites, such as which pictures they post to Flickr or which articles they submit to Digg or even their latest Twitters! If you want to truly track your friends and their online activities, you need something that can monitor many social web sites at once.

  And that’s where Spokeo can help you out! It’s basically a “News Feed” for all of your friends online activity from more than 30 social web sites, including Last.fm, Digg, StumbleUpon, Flickr, Bebo, Twitter, Yelp, YouTube, and more! So next time a friend post a video on YouTube or writes a review on Yelp, you’ll know about it! Pretty neat.

  Once you sign up, you can start tracking friends SUPER easily by having Spokeo import your contacts from Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo mail. The best thing about the service is that you don’t have to do anything manually, like typing in names of people or sites to monitor, it’s all automated and presented to you like a blog feed.

  Your friends do not have to be on Spokeo in order for you to get updates either and the scary thing is that they won’t even know you are monitoring them! It feels kind of like spying, until you think about and realize that all of this information is publicly available anyway, Spokeo has just created a service to help manage it all in one place.

  

  Spokeo does not have any kind of social networking features, such as profiles, messaging, it’s simply an information finder and aggregator. The only problem you might come across is if you have LOTS of friends and they do LOTS of stuff online, your feed may be enormous with tons of twitters, etc, etc. Also, Spokeo adds everyone in your contact list to it’s system automatically, so you have to manually delete the people you don’t want to track.

  However, the really nice thing is that it’s broken down into separate feeds for each contact, that way if you’re really interested in only a few people, you can quickly see their activity and not have to sift through the useless activity of other people.

  Overall, it’s a pretty cool way to find and keep track of what’s going on with your friends across all major social sites. If you’ve used a feed reader before like Google Reader, you’ll feel right at home. Enjoy! [via Online Tech Tips]

• Cristco For Christmas by the Wet Spots

  

• Lucy Pinder's Christmas Big Boob Spectacular....

• Can't beat a good work out....
  

More of that Japanese Girl in the Gym - Watch more free videos

• Blonde Mortician - A man who just died is delivered to a local mortuary wearing an ex pensive, expertly tailored black suit. The female blonde mortician asks the deceased's wife how she would like the body dressed. She points out that the man does look good in the black suit he is already wearing. The widow, however, says that she always thought her husband looked his best in blue, and that she wants him in a blue suit. She gives the blonde mortician a blank check and says, "I don't care what it costs, but please have my husband in a blue suit for the viewing." The woman returns the next day for the wake. To her delight, she finds her husband dressed in a gorgeous blue suit with a subtle chalk stripe; the suit fits him perfectly. She says to the mortician, "Whatever this cost, I'm very satisfied. You did an excellent job and I'm very grateful. How much did you spend?" To her astonishment, the blonde mortician pr esents her with the blank check. "There's no charge," she says. "No, really, I must compensate you for the cost of that exquisite blue suit!" she says. "Honestly, ma'am," the blonde says, "it cost nothing. You see, a deceased gentleman of about your husband's size was brought in shortly after you left yesterday, and he was wearing an attractive blue suit. I asked his wife if she minded him going to his grave wearing a black suit instead, and she said it made no difference as long as he looked nice." "So I just switched the heads." [via Fondles, Pattaya-Live]

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