Harnser

Had they actually elected JK Rowling as their "person" of the year according to the results of their online poll, they would probably have lost half their readership - which tells you a lot about their readers! The Grauniad always trumpets that it is a defender of democracy - as long as they get the result they want!

It must be time for your medication - what is it you take for an over-active imagination? ?

I fully appreciate what you say in that any charges seem to be made at random - on a whim - despite the reams of regulations that apply to imports. But the IOSS works - I was a guinea pig for the first IOSS shipment in January which went wrong and the supplier reimbursed me for my costs. It went wrong because DHL whom they ship with, and who are the handling agent, got it wrong.

Goods entering france from outside the EU are subject to VAT plus any duty that may be payable, plus a handlng charge by whoever handles it - even if VAT has been paid in the country of origin. The only way to avoid this is to buy from a business in the UK that is registered for the IOSS scheme or for example an alternative Royal Mail scheme. https://www.royalmail.com/business/international/guide/delivered-duties-paid-ioss Both Amazon and Ebay use the IOSS scheme. ( IOSS = Import one stop shop) I use a supplier in the UK that has registered for the IOSS scheme which means that if the invoice value is €150 or less, (not including delivery or UK vat), it will be imported into france vat and tax free. I pay the vat to the supplier at the UK rate of 20% and it gets delivered to france without any tax, duty, or handling charges. The vat collected by the supplier at the point of sale gets paid into the EU IOSS scheme by the supplier.

A very nice lady delivered our old 'uns gift parcel today, it contained the usual chocs, a nice bottle of red and the usual jars of pates. One was a pâté de poisson of dorade ( unusual I thought!) the second one was I thought at a casual glance, Austrian pate - Hmmm- Austrian pate? In France? Yes- "autriche" is austria - I looked it up to confirm my memory. But "autruche" is ostrich - Ostrich pate? - Tastes just like chicken? An easy mistaka to maka!

I haven't built a model plane for ****y years but if you want a wander down memory lane - https://www.jetex.org/index.php

Noooo - that's sodium chlorate. Very effective explosive mixture rammed into a 12 inch length of bike frame tube flatten the ends and drill a small hole for jetex fuse - light it and run like hell - So they tell me!? In those days out in the country nobody took a blind bit of notice of the loud bang!

Yes - it should be CaCl 2 for the chemists out there!

For our gravel drives we recently have used calcium chloride. It's the white crystals in the dehumidifier packs and can be bought in bulk. Totally harmless to us and pets and animals it's used as a food additive in canned veggies, cheese, beer etc and it doesn't build up in the soil. When the dehumidifier pack crystals have dissolved in the water they attract from the atmosphere, the resulting water in the bottom of the container is a concentrated solution of CaCl which burns weeds and grass brown in 24 -48 hours and prevents them growing again for a time, three months we find or until rain washes it away. You can dissolve the crystals in water in a watering can but beware the water will get hot ( put crystals into the water and stir with a stick- not water into the crystals) and just water it on with a sprinkler bar. You need 2 x one kg packs in a watering can. Don't wear leather work gloves to handle it, it shrinks the leather. It's called chlorure de calcium in French. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_chloride

We find that the easiest low-cost method of getting sterling into euros and transferring to a french bank is to have the sterling payment paid into a UK bank account and then use Wise (It was called Transferwise ) to change the sterling to euros paid into your french bank account for which there is a small charge and you get a very good rate. The last transfer we did was scary fast, by the time we accessed our CA account it had landed, and there is never any fee to pay it in to the account.

Presumably the spammers have to have registered as a member to be able to spam? Just suspend registering new membership for a month - they'll go somewhere else. Or require a minimum of three or maybe five sensible posts before they are confirmed as members - other forums do this, and don't have huge problems with spam. I'm not talking about french forums here, all sorts of car, engineering and motorcycle forums in the USA do this..

Assuming you employ crafts people/ artisans I would investigate the possibility of selling the company to the people that currently work for you. I vaguely remember that there was some sort of financing scheme for this.

Assuming that there would be a vote or referendum in each EU country on this, would France vote as it did on the referendum on the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, held on 29 May 2005 to decide whether France should ratify the proposed Constitution of the European Union? France was the first country to reject it with a resounding no vote with 55% rejecting the proposal on a turnout of 69%.

it's apparent that there has been an overspill of detritus from forums that have shut down or binned forum trolls who have joined other forums in order to be unpleasant, disruptive and cause trouble. Perhaps there should be a common register of IP adresses of troublemakers that all forums could access to stop the worst of them?

Trying to cut to the basics of the personal motivation of the aforementioned candidates here. Macron - a purely personal ego trip to achieve a second term before swanning off to be the president of the EU. MLP - A difficult one to fathom - It could be just the continuation and tradition of the Le Pen family business with her. Or she wants to be the first female president? Maybe she has realised that the Le Pen name carries too much baggage to be elected as president but would settle for PM in a Zemmour government? Zemmour - Possibly he sees it as his duty as a jew and a frenchman - a job that needs doing maybe? Or to prove that he can outwit the establishment?

Zemmour is polling at 18 - 19% , Macron is at 24% Le Pen at 15%. The director of Harris polling in France said that he has never seen a little known candidate as Zemmour was, advance so quickly in the polls. I'm getting the impression that MLP is maybe losing her taste for presidential politics, and might she consider withdrawing from the first round in favour of Zemmour? If that comes to pass, Macron is toast And MLP could be his prime minister. How do you like them apples? Zemmour is very intelligent and should not be underestimated, he might just outmanoeuvre the french establishment and their poodle media. An example of Zemmour's thinking and presentation was when he was addressing a rally and he said that of course the establishment machine will have the election all sewn up - but all it takes is a grain of sand in that machine to bring it to a grinding halt. The crowd roared and applauded, shouting "you are the grain of sand". He replied to the crowd saying "No - you are the grain of sand" Rapturous applause. He's working a very old reliable sales technique there. YOU we i

"The EV vehicle to grid will also provide much needed battery capacity going foreward and the UK grid has already given details of how this will work" Have the UK grid given any details of the rate of payment to EV vehicle owners for providing this refuge from reality for the the UK government?

Do you have any idea of the impracticality of using battery storage to prop up renewable energy sources? "The 300-megawatt facility is one of four giant lithium-ion storage projects that Pacific Gas and Electric, California’s largest utility, asked the California Public Utilities Commission to approve in late June. Collectively, they would add enough storage capacity to the grid to supply about 2,700 homes for a month (or to store about .0009 percent of the electricity the state uses each year). https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/07/27/141282/the-25-trillion-reason-we-cant-rely-on-batteries-to-clean-up-the-grid/ (0.0009 percent is nine ten thousandths of one percent) To power the state completely by batteries you would need 111111 times that battery capacity. And if the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow, for how long will the charge in the batteries last? California dreaming!

The contamination could have come from banknotes. "Forensic scientists have said that around 80% of all British banknotes contain traces of drugs. A 1999 study found even higher levels of contamination in the London area; of 500 notes tested, only four had no traces of cocaine.[16] Most of the banknotes showed only low levels of contamination, suggesting they had merely been in contact with contaminated notes, but 4% of the notes in the study showed higher levels, which the researchers suggested was the result of either being handled by people under the influence of cocaine (which is excreted in skin oils), or by being used directly to snort the drug. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_currency#:~:text=-dollar bills."-,In the United Kingdom,had no traces of cocaine. And that was in 1999 - which was 22 years ago, it's probably ten times worse now! Or possibly - The source of banknote contamination in London IS the House of Commons??? You chose!

You may already be conversant with French succession law having read up on it. You may or may not be aware that there were some changes applied from 1st November 2021. https://www.stoneking.co.uk/literature/e-bulletins/important-change-french-succession-law

" I fear though that France is going to suffer another Macron term" I am not a Macron fan, but if he achieves a second term what policies is he likely to adopt, given that he will not need to worry about his popularity, as he currently does? The one sensible plan he has put forward recently is to propose a program of building more nuclear power stations to bolster France's energy security, instead of wasting money on renewables.

Our youngest daughter in the UK is a hospital manager in a large hospital in Manchester, she reported a couple of days ago about thirty covid patients with one or two in ICU. Virtually all are unvaccinated, so not too much cause for concern she said.

"Sorted for you, Harnser. Whenever you encounter such problems, simply copy the text, paste into Notepad, re-copy and past into the body of your post, prior to posting. Notepad dumps any annoying formatting" Yes I'm well aware of that procedure, but I usually use Wordpad which for some reason doesn't sort the formatting from the Telegraph.