This is a blog only
In the spirit of ‘well just fancy that’ comes the news that some of us poor Brits living over here in Thailand are panicking a bit because those who distribute social security payments back home are blocking payments to people essentially living overseas.
So step-forward the Pattaya Brits who find that even a half-good disability pension will cover an apartment, a few beers and a few girls a week in this charming resort though with the drop of the British pound some may have to reduce the quality of service.
Anyway now despite the chippies, greasy breakfasts, mushy peas, warm beer, urinating in the street, football, drunken punch ups, pub quiz nights, drag acts, and having a ‘gaff’, these ‘geezers’ are coming to the realisation that yes, they are in fact in the overseas category.
So now we have to wait and see how they wriggle out of it. Some I gather are already perfecting disguises like this chap here on the right.
A hundred or so Brits have been writing into the local website ‘PattayaSecrets.com’ seeking more information and offering comment after a rumours started that (1) Customs and Revenue and (2) The Department of Work and Pensions, were opening up offices in the resort.
What a diabolical liberty!
Some of the posters are making known exactly what they feel about people who ‘grass them up’.
PattayaSecrets.com is not shy about being a site for ‘mongers’; in the local parlance, people who habitually seek sex with prostitutes.
The site even has a section for trip reports where punters rate the sexual abilities of individual Thai ‘bar girls’ and post pictures of their ‘purchases’. I’d much rather like to see a site where the girls rate their punters.
One poster ‘Kwarmsuk’ writes: “Why the f**k should I pay for some scrounging f**ker who is living in Thailand when I work like f**k and pay taxes to keep them. I personally know at least 4 or 5 guys claiming sickness benefit from the UK living in Pattaya and they seem to visit bars, and monger with Thai girls ok”. (A little editing was essential here)
Even Soi 7, the site-owner, enters the fray in his case to extol the benefits of disability payments:” I tore a tendon in my wrist years ago. The doctor said no work for a month. I applied for and got disability payments and went straight to Las Vegas and spent the time enjoying myself. Could not see a thing wrong with that”
Well I guess he could still handle a game of Blackjack or Pontoon and pull a one armed bandit. But, I guess, there’s some things he could not do with his remaining workable wrist which could result in clinical depression.
A poster cutely called ‘Gobbler’ wrote: “It is wrong to claim benefits while living abroad, especially those whoring in Thailand. There is a free grass telephone line if you know anyone doing this despicable practice”
But he was quickly put down by ‘johnniec63’ who wrote: “People like you make me f….g puke!”
(There’s a lot of f…g! on this site by the way)
One poster thinks he has found his way around social security sleuths: “Fly to Belfast, then go to Dublin by bus. No checkpoint or visa check on border. Then buy flight ticket from Dublin to Thailand that way, the UK government will think you are still in the UK!”
Crafty blighter. The British authorities will never work that one out, especially when his ATM card reveals a location next to the ‘Gobble and Go’ bar. Well actually he’s a bit short on knowledge about how much the authorities do know about ticketing.
Disability pension can be over 180 quid (to use the vernacular) a week sterling, a junior executive salary in Thailand, two to three times the salary of a bus driver and about the same as say a foreign sub-editor on the Bangkok Post English language newspaper, which is quite a lot if you don’t even know what country Copenhagen is the capital of.
Of course there are disabilities which I suppose could warrant a sojourn to Pattaya, though I am not entirely convinced that it is a cure for ‘clinical depression’ as some people seem to have been on the cure for years.
Actually I know one of these chaps from a bar in Bangkok. He flies to Thailand at least three times a year. The last time he arrived he told me just how cheap he was able to get his latest consignment of ‘Kamagra’.
Perhaps he gets in on prescription. I can’t look at him with a straight face.
But as one who pays taxes in both the UK and Thailand and sees the National Health Service struggling to cope, partially because we have to pay all these fraudulent claims, I would have no problems reporting genuine frauds.
Great blog, Andrew… Had me in stitches! Maybe I should claim some benefits now from blighty. Oops, forgot… I left a long while back and am no longer resident. A great description of your oft-seen Pattaya resident. It’s funny because after living here for a while we need reminding how unlike anywhere else this place is even when it all starts to seem all to normal!
“with the drop of the British pound some may have to reduce the quality of service.”
your not implying that that the more you pay, the better the service, are you?
Cheap Charlie: Beach Road is getting busy I hear
I see no problem with someone who is on genuine disability choosing to live somewhere that their money will go further and they can enjoy their life.
Bogus claimants deserve to be outed, however.
I agree Combover
The Uk government argument is that if they paid disability benefits overseas the money would be spent overseas and not in the uk. Clearly that is not the true reason. Because if it were they would have to change their reasoning about state pensions in course of payment.
They are just looking at ways to screw.
There should be no discrimination based on place of residence.
Yes. It would seem a bit unfair to someone with a genuine disability not to be able to live in the place of his choice.
Pattaya does however have an unfortunate reputation for its resident community of skivers, fraudsters and low lives, though of course I would not wish to tar everyone with the same brush.
I remember the scene in the Godfather where Michael is getting suited up to take out the police commissioner and Virgil ‘The Turk’ Sollozzo… Michael was told, “This kinda thing happens every now and then… its like a cleansing.
Well, maybe the economic climate might just cleanse Pattaya of some mongers.
Good article.
I do not have a problem with people on a disability pension living in Thailand. A manual worker who injures their back cannot work, whether it be in England, Australia or whatever. So why not be in Thailand if they can. Partly to blame is the authorities themselves. If they kept a tighter control, more frequent medicals etc and pensions stopped if medicals not supplied this situation would not be a problem and you would only have people living overseas with medically documented permanent disabilities.
I know a gigolo who has claimed a benefit due to his now sexually dysfunctional organ which will not even rise to the occasion with a Vit V pill.
He claimed that Pattaya was the only place on earth he could go to in order to continue to make a living as getting an erection with western women is impossible as they just do not make him rise to the occasion any longer……or shorter for that matter.
A disability pension is granted to somebody who cannot work for whatever reason and incidentally is not that easy to acquire: the form has around 400 questions and I believe you may be required to undergo a medical in some cases. As to where somebody chooses to live, what does that matter. Live in Britain and you will be face with enormous debt or vastly inflated gas, electricity and transport costs, not to mention that dammned council tax along cuts in public services.
Yet the self-serving ‘pigs’ of the city still give themselves their obscene bonuses and inflated pay rises so it is rather rich to criticise others for going where they can afford to live even. Try thinking before opening your mouth.
Perhaps you are unaware of the widespread cases of the abuse of the social security system and disability allowances.
I was rather hoping that everyone who receives a disability pension would undergo a medical test, not just some - otherwise 400 questions only means 400 opportunities to lie.
The obscene payements made to bankers is not an issue here.
Take your choice, it seems to be British society with all the benefits and bills, or cheaper Thai society without the British benefits - unless you can make yourself available to prove you still satisfy the criteria for benefits. I would not pay if you did not do so.
Stop whinging about paying taxes. You have the govt the people voted for.
PS. This blog is a little bit tongue in cheek you know.
Wake up will you? You are not simply awarded a disability pension based solely on 400 questions, you have to get a letter from a doctor which should be obvious. The obscene payments made to bankers is was for comparison, since they are bigger spongers than anybody else. British society with all the benefits? Try finding a dentist that will do NHS work. Try living on benefit when you are single male - which you are of course oblivious to. I am not whinging about paying taxes my point is they are way too high - a point you have conveniently ignored. As for the government ‘we voted for’ we don’t have a lot of say in what they do.
At the very least, benefits should be adjusted to reflect the lower cost of living in other countries.
Benefits should not be used to finance long-term absence from Britain, especially to holiday resorts and tourist destinations such as Pattaya to engage in drinking, the procurement of prostitutes and other ‘activities’.
Those are the rewards that should come with hard work and effort, not at the expense of the taxpayer and some self imposed and misguided sense of entitlement.
PAUL:I’m assuming everybody has to get a letter from their doctor first. If you check above you will see I have no problem with genuine claimants. In a nutshell what are the 400 questions?
ps: I can assure you I am no friend of the bankers, having been their victim many times. But your comments are a bit pythonesque as ‘What did the Romans ever do for us?”