DraytonBoy

Flew into Bordeaux from Crete in October and EVERYONE'S passport was checked Schengen or not. chessie, you can still check-in at the airport or on-line up to four hours before your flight (with Ryanair anyway).

The French are obsessed with anything American but it's got nothing to do with the UK.

Not sure about the teacher comment ALBF, wife taught in a secondary school before coming here and the abuse and threats she received was shocking with a total lack of support from the school who told her 'it's just the way it is'.

I think they're now a mix of the two, they all work and have French partners so rarely speak English unless they're at home. Crunch time will be when they get married and have kids, that will be when they'll have to lose what's left of their Englishness.

Question for Norman, why do you want to feel French? Although I've been living and working here for years I consider myself to be English and always will.

I think ET and ALBF are both right. The French system allows for on the job training whereas the UK encourages work (of any kind) from a very young age. Back in the 70's I worked from the age of 10 doing paperounds, not sure you could do that now though.

My youngest daughter came out with an interesting comment last night to prove that she's now French, she worked 50 hours last week which she said was ridiculous - "no one else works more than 35 hours a week!". She's obviously forgotten that I used to do 60 hours a week in the UK.

The contract for designing and producing UK passports is up for renewal in 2019 and the value of said contract is around £490 millon and lasts for a period of 11 years (ish). It wouldn't matter what the colour was, the cost would still be the same. This announcement is a just a load of rollocks and doesn't deserve the media hype it's getting, more relevant is how useful the actual passport is after Brexit, something of course no one will know for another year or so.

There is an employment crisis in Poland and the government is using Brexit to try and tempt Poles working in the UK to return home. I wonder what people will talk about once Brexit has happened?

DPD is actually owned by a subsidiary of La Poste.

I think it's wrong to start such a thread before anyone knows what happened. A bit of research shows that France has a dreadful record of deaths/injuries at level crossings, this year alone 30 people have been killed on crossings (even before yesterday's tragedy) so ignoring the fact that the latest deaths involved a school there is clearly a problem, I was also very surprised to learn that nearly 20% of level crossings here have no barrier.

More public spending is needed for essential services in the UK, whilst budgets have been increased in line with inflation no account has been made of the leap in the population. Bringing back the railways etc into public ownership on the other hand is mad and will not lead to an instant improvement.

To be fair flights have been cancelled in Holland, Belgium and Germany today because of the snow.

As with most things these days it all boils down to funding - Tories - just enough to keep services functioning. Labour - happy to spend billions more as long as no one asks where the money comes from. Taxes need to go up rather than increased borrowing IMO.

Surely the NHS is there to provide 'free at point of entry' healthcare for everyone. If it does that by outsourcing some of the care to private companies without affecting the quality of the care is it really that important an issue? Funding of the NHS is a completely different matter though.

Not quite sure what you mean Theiere, those killed in the church were just as innocent as those who died at a the concert in Las Vegas.

Doesn't really matter how he died as he would been executed anyway. I despair at the complete waste of innocent lives yet again and cannot believe that no-one seems to want to do anything about it.

MT was never a person to be reasoned with (think poll tax) which was a major character flaw and eventually did for her. Many of her ideas were right for the country at the time but she always seemed to go too far (IMO), for example instead of just reforming the trade unions she wanted to destroy them. I hope Macron succeeds as France needs change but I fear that the public simply won't accept what is needed and the country will just stumble on as others in the EU progress.

Eldest daughter's boyfriend qualified as a doctor last month and is awaiting his internship placement but he is not interested in being a GP and wants to work in a large hospital, his location preferences are Guadeloupe, Martinique or Bordeaux (where he lives now). His reasons for not wanting to be a GP are pay, type of patient and total lack of career progression.

We ditched our landline last month and now get anything up to 15Mb/s using Bouygues Telecom's 4G box (33E per month).

We usually split our shop between Lidl and Leclerc who are only 200m apart, thinking about it we are quite spoilt with four supermarkets and Noz all within 10 - 15 mins of home.

Friends of ours here rent out a house near Kendal using an managing agent and they lose 50% of the rental income in fees etc BUT the season is 52 weeks long which I doubt is not the same in France. They previously let their French house which at best was rented for 10/12 weeks. The biggest problem I can see (and others have alluded to it) is the initial cost of purchasing the house, oh and don't forget tax returns in both countries.

I take it you also saw and agree with John McDonnell's comments where he accused previous governments of being complicite in the murder of those that died in the Grenfell Tower fire?

So lets get this right, we've been running a business here since 2007 but could still be forced to apply for a work/residency permit? Does that also mean our kids who work here will have to do the same?

@andyh4, as someone who pays into social security here why would my nationality be an issue after Brexit?