Tony F Dordogne

[quote user="Ron Avery"] Soon as you were gone in came Dog from Peckham ( gateway to the Sarrrfff)[/quote] Actually Ron, it was Balham - Baal haam as Peter sellers said it in his faux American accent - that was the gateway to the south.

It's the same as paying your subvention in the UK for your County/Regional government tho at a lower level.  IOt's likely that instead of paying increasing taxes locally, some of the functions of your commune are given to the Communuate de Communes, so you either pay them, and it's often employing people, economies of scale etc that generate their work etc. or you pay your commune for the work and they pay the C de C, whichever way, you'll have to pay the same sum overall, it's just itemised differently on your bill.  Here we pay the Commune and they pass the CdeC element on, swings and roundabouts. I doubt whether the tax office will make any changes for you, which bit of your local services would you like to duck out of?

[quote user="Scooby"][quote user="Tony F Dordogne"] Many other poeople were abused in their childhoods and managed to move on to do good things with their lives without all the money and privileges that MJ had.  [/quote] You're obviously someone who has no experience of the long term psychological impacts of childhood abuse.... [/quote] Scooby, you couldn't be more wrong and I live with somebody who was abused for many years and has lead a full and productive life and we have both worked for many years with victims of child abuse.  I didn't sal ALL, I said MANY! Edit:  Sorry, that didn't read correctly, I was also physically abused until I was 18 so have a very good understanding from a personal viewpoint about child abuse.

DR will correct me if I'm wrong here .......... Martin, the refusal at appeal was based on the law as it was then, a law which has itself been held to be unlawful and which has been overturned by the ECJ decision.  Whilst what they are saying is true IF the law was sound, the law wasn't sound so the legal basis of the appeal tribunal's decision must be unsound. However, I think you have valid grounds for going back at them at an Upper Tribunal for a review of that decision. What date did you send to them and what date did you receive a reply please? We need detail to pass on to our other liaison MP (not Roger Gale this time) who is helping fast track complaints.  It doesn't have to be quoted personally, just he needs some specific detail.

Many other poeople were abused in their childhoods and managed to move on to do good things with their lives without all the money and privileges that MJ had.  He was an adult and should have been able to make rational decisions about his relationship with children, especially other people's children and as for his '"suffer little children" quote, who the hell did he actually think he is?  And like Madonna and her adoption of children from Africa, if one of us dangled a baby over a balcony as he did in Germany, I wonder if we would have got away with it so easily, celebrity rules applied I think. His music did nothing for me and last evening on UK tele, it was wall to wall MJ, like somebody really important had died, not just a singer and dancer/entertainer/celebrity.  I wonder if they'll have similar coverage for Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young or any of the great artists from the 1960s and 1970s?  Highly unlikely tho their music could be regarded as equally important to their fans. He's dead, I do have sympathy for his family as I do when anybody dies suddenly, time to move on.     

Just to bump this up again.  The Campaign hasn't folded, just a great deal of work going on behind the scenes involving MPs, legal things and Parliamentary Committees plus ongoing pressure on the DWP/ExpoTeam to get their act together.  Just to assure those non-active people being effected by this.

I'd use comfrey rather than borage for a feeding tea, seem to recall that Bocking 9 is the bestest type.  As for cacti, I used to collect and breed them, mammalerias and I didn't see your previous thread.

We had similar just after we moved in.  It's likely to be mice, they get in the gaps in the bricks and eat the wall insulation so we were told.  Now we have cats, we don't have mice.

How many do you want, have dozens of white and blue ;)

No Cat, it's not but it has the same information - many thanks. Any chance that information could be made a sticky? 

Some time ago SD very helpfully posted a list of the documents you need and I think Clair posted a link to download the forms to change to a French dl. Any ideas where it may be, there are so many discussions on this, the list and link seem to have been lost in the mists of time? Not for me, done mine ages since, for J and one of our Brit neighbours who is diabetic and wants to change her dl straight away.

[quote user="Benjamin"]  Whether or not we bother to physically satisfy the 26/52 rule is still being discussed but this point may help others to make a decision.  [/quote] Under some circumstances the past/presence rule has already been found to be unlawful (Mr Justice Mesher's decision in the Upper Tribunal of 5 May 2009) but I don't think that it covers the circs of Mrs Benjamin. Benjamin, speak to Age Concern England's Income Benefits and Finance section, they may be able to give you better advice.

Well, it depends on what you want and the size of the vines.  If the vines are small, just 3/4 bunches on the plant.  Remember they'll all ripen at more or less the same time so unless you're going to preserve them or eat them for every meal, that would probably last you around 3/4 weeks - per plant.  The addage of the wine makers, fewer bunches = better quality seems to be what is important if you want good table grapes.  If you want more than 3/4 bunches and have plenty of embryonic bunches, take off every other bunch. If it's a huge vine, like the one we have over our terrace (here when we bought) we butcher that every February, right back to the main stems, so they look like 5 long, totally bare sticks.  This time of year we take off between 30/35 kilos of embronic bunches, that's from nothing in  February and just leave about 30 round the perimiter of the vine, where we can get to them easily in the autumn when they're ripe.  But the vine is at least 20 years old.

If you want to improve the crop, do what the wine makers do, reduce the baby grapes to 3 or 4 embryonic bunches and let them come on naturally.  I wouldn't cut them back again now, far too late.  We've just done similar to our newer vines and did the same last year for an excellent crop.

Tessa, you really do need to speak to the Maire and explain that you're coming out to France (?permenantly) in August and that you'll start renovating the property when you arrive.  And that you've spoken to your insurance company about it and they're sending an expert to assess the damage, which they certainly will want to do, they're usually flexible for dates and you may be able to make the appointment for when you're here.  Unless one of the slates hit somebody or something, he's likely - but not assured - of cutting you some slack on the date if he knows you're coming. Doesn't anybody 'keep an eye' on your house for you?  After 10 years of ownership I would imagine that you must know somebody in the village who might be able to update you in an emergency.

Don't you check your bills as you go?  If the estimate/correction bill was too low when you went to the house between 2006 and now, it may have been a better idea to speak to somebody at your water supplier before now. If the water is off at the mains when you're absent, I'm assuming that the water won't be reaching your home, therefore any leak may be the suppliers side of the stopcock unless of course the stopcock is inside the house and then the leak could be between the metre and the stopcock in which case it's liklely to be down to you. I think calling in a plumber is a good idea and if you have no leak and the meter reading is good, it seems that you've been underpaying for the past few years and they've finally got the bill right.  

That's certainly the little rascal, the fruits and leaves are exactly the same, many thanks.

I've posted this already on a UK gardening thread but sort of trying a belt and braces approach. We've got a tree in the garden, red leaved, looks good which we thought was purely ornamental.  However, this year it has developed a load of fruits which look, smell and taste like cherries.  And they ain't toxic because as far as I know I'm still sending this message and I ate a couple yesterday evening. I've never seen any form of red leaved cherry tree before and after asking on the Grapevine gardening forum, it's been suggested that this could actually be a chokecherry. Has anybody else got one of these and do you use the fruits?  The ideas for chokecherries are jams and jellies but I think they're sweet enough to put in kirsch or something similar. And ideas gratefully received.

IB is one of the qualifying factors according to the DWP's web site.

[quote user="barebackrider"] Please can you tell me how and when we start this? [/quote] I posted all the information on the campaign website http://dla-ecj.weebly.com/message-centre.html it's the last message on the first page. But first the DWP ExpoTeam have to respond to the complaint, and then to terry Moran, he wot has people to spread his erroneous information for him

I agree with you Clair, Bove is fine but sees everything from - I think - a paysant viewpoint and doesn't sometimes see the bigger picture, I think that Danny C-B has just about got it sorted now. What we need some redder greens, sort of radical radishes.

[quote user="PaysansG"]Aha... so we need to iron out that wrinkle [6][/quote] No, he's one of the good guys, we need to submit complaints, get knocked back, push it up the chain and when we get no joy, he will co-ordinate all our complaints to the Ombudsman - he's on our side :) 

Aha, there is a wrinkle in this.  Dr Tony Wright MP has agreed with the Parliamentary Ombudsman to act on behalf of all UK citizens abroad who need to make a complaint via the Ombudsman.  He's Chairman of the Parliamentary Standards Committee I think, or something of that ilk.  So in fact he will take all complaints to the Ombudsman rather than having to go through individual MPs.

I was at a bio foire yesterday and picked up loads of leaflets about registering for AB status for growing and selling plants and veggies. Does anybody know whether this can be done on an AE basis or have experience of registering a bio business?

Sorry Wilko, how about the money that the builders earn here, aren't they taxable here?  They work in France, they pay taxes in France?  So how do they do that without being registered here? I know for sure of two UK registered builders on short term work projects here who have been 'caught' here and have got their employers into serious trouble.