2012

-Exclusive to Guardian readers only though, where a plethora of penile amputations in Thailand has all got something to do with schadenfreude- zzzzzzz! Flying Sporran’s Weekend Diary- Sometimes I love the Guardian – or Manchester Guardian as I prefer to call it. I have written for it many times, more so in the distant past […]

Just when the tourism woes of the Thai province of Krabi seemed to have died down, the video ‘Evil Man in Krabi’ having been put to the back of most people’s minds, another blow comes from the Sun.  Britain’s biggest selling daily has run a story about a machete attack on a young British couple there. Actually […]

  -The Football Fund, Financial Advisors, and Newspaper Ethics- Football Fund CEO now runs dry cleaners – And client who lost US$60,000 to Bangkok ‘financial advisor’ blamed for having ‘smallmanitus’ Remember ‘The Football Fund’? This was a financial fund set up to make loads of cash out of football and launched with a spectacular fanfare in […]

ESSEX DECORATOR DISPUTED BILL EVENING STANDARD (Paul Ayling with mother Anita) A 48-year-old Briton has died in hospital in Britain after over a year on life support after being attacked in a Thai beach resort. Paul Ayling, from Thorpe Bay, Essex, had been attacked in Hua Hin, 140 miles south of Bangkok . The British […]

‘Aw haud yer whisht –  an gie us yon bottle ae ‘Blaand’. If there’s one thing Scots can do its to distill a good whisky, and beer too if you like Belhaven’s.  But there has been a new development in my homeland which is causing me concern – and its going to be stacked on the shelves […]

Today I am taking the unusual step of publishing a report by Human Rights Watch on what’s happening to the Rohingya in Burma (Myanmar) without any comment. I am very concerned. Genocide may be too harsh a term to use, or it it? But ASEAN is hardly raising a voice – nor apparently is Aung […]

A remarkable Brit who received two major awards for ‘outstanding airmanship’ was killed when his micro light aircraft plunged into the Gulf of Thailand at the weekend. Tom Grieve, 57, died in the Pattaya Memorial Hospital from chest injuries after desperate attempts to revive him failed. A passenger in his micro light,  Patrick Esser, 31, from Dorset, received […]

Flying Sporran’s Weekend Diary Had a good day this week. It was visa day, not normally something I look forward to. But this was an especially cheerful day. Got down to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to pick up my letters of accreditation. The woman at reception was especially sweet and so was the woman […]

Police are trying to establish the identify of a foreign male whose body was found strapped to a pole in a river in North East Thailand. The body was dressed only in underpants and looked to be the subject of a ritual killing. The male in his 20s or 30s had a tattoo across his […]

TAKE THE HIGH ROAD IF YOU MEET THIS MAN ALONG THE WAY.  If you give him cash he might just say ‘I’m skint’- A Flying Sporran Property Report- This is David Alan McDonald. He is a property developer, and man about town in Hua Hin, Thailand, and has no money. At least that’s the stock answer […]