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Loiseau

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Everything posted by Loiseau

  1. Is he pleased with it, mint? That's the main thing!
  2. Gosh, Norman, that is a shock - and seems most unfair given your circumstances. Can your GP pull any strings for you?
  3. I learnt a new expression today: French verb “brexiter”, as in: Arriving at a party, you declare: “Je vais brexiter”, meaning I am going to leave at 9pm - but in fact will still be there at 2.30am.
  4. QUOTE. Suein56 "'Ras-le-bol' is one that confused my other half..." Now, you see, ras-le-bol is one of the expressions I was not "allowed" to say. Yet people use it all the time, and it sounds/looks to me the equivalent of "I've had it up to here", so I just don't get why it is so "bad". I shal” have to look up yours, Norman; I have never heard them...
  5. In my early days working in France, back in the distant 60s, French friends discouraged me from using much slang - though they may well have been using the expressions themselves. So I have stuck with things at the level of "chouette", "mince!", "dingue", "génial", "casse-pieds" which seemed to be acceptable to them. I must say, if you hear foreigners using really "gros mots" in English, it can sound shocking, so maybe I understand where my French friends were coming from.
  6. Could you employ someone on a short-term contract to do the work, I wonder? Also, I seem to remember, in the canton where my holiday home was, that people could hire someone from some kind of sheltered employment scheme - sorry, can't remember its initials - to do very basic work. EDIT It,looks as if there might be a way via the URSSAF. Maybe this would be helpful: https://www.urssaf.fr/portail/home/particulier-employeur/particulier-employeur/travailleur-occasionnel.html
  7. i would photocopy it first, just in case you ever have to quote the number, or anything, on some future form.
  8. You're quite right, idun... There is nothing stopping a non-resident employing someone and paying them through the CES. You set it up through the URSSAF website, and then each month declare the hours the person has worked and how much you have paid. They get the money, and URSSAF take a further sum (almost the same amount again!) for your employee's cotisations. BUT - unlike permanent French residents - you can't offset any of the extra amount against your income tax. (Well, it occurs to me that if you DID have any income from letting a gite, say, then maybe you could offset some of it; but I didn't, so I didn't need to go into that.) I had an occasional gardener whom I paid to cut the grass in my absence. I wanted to be quite sure that nothing was going to come back on me if he should cut his foot off with my mower etc, so although it was expensive, it did give me peace of mind. EDIT Only just seen page 2 of this thread... Yes, I am sure the number of hours a week a CES can cover is limited. It's not designed for full-time work. Just for a few hours ironing, piano-teaching, gardening, etc in your own home using your own equipment/materials.
  9. Well, I found my former house in the Vendée. And a couple of others I knew of. Very interesting. Thanks Norman.
  10. You are right there, Richard. My local sub-post office does not do it, so I did have to travel a couple of miles extra to get it.
  11. Horrible thing to happen, dear mint. I can quite understand how shaken you feel - especially when you know a friend felt so concerned about you that she fell for it. I wonder if she could claim the fraudulent payment back from her bank or credit card company? Just a thought... Chin up, gal...
  12. QUOTE NB why blame french bureaucracy. Uk is the same. END QUOTE It was dead simple in England - over the counter in the post office: UK licence, photos, passport. £5-odd. Job done.
  13. Very sorry to hear your sad news CJ. That sounds a very odd thing, for the hospital to have handed your wife's jewellery over to the tax office. My husband and I had made a donation entre époux in relation to our holiday home so when he died (not in France) that was activated - I am pretty sure by the notaire. It's a long time ago now, so my recall may be a bit fuzzy, but I think the DEE gives the survivor the right to go on living in the house, and using the chattels therein, but the ownership of the house will be changed - and that will need a notaire, too. For example, if you jointly owned the property, then half is yours anyway; I think another quarter (half of your wife's half) would go to you too. But the remaining quarter might end up not being yours, if you have children. (I expect this depends on the regime you bought under originally.). So although the survivor has the right to remain in it, he/she would not then own the property outright. My notaire actually advised me to buy out the children if I could, so that I could be 100% in control of deciding whether I wanted to keep or sell the property. Good luck with everything...
  14. I find the choice of different lettuce-y things much more varied in France than the UK. In the latter, it's cos/romaine, iceberg, and normal floppy, whereas in France you have these plus chicorée frisée, oakleaf (green and red), and then "endives" both white and red (which both cost the earth in the UK).
  15. Blodwyn, I am a bit confused over which of you is incurring this charge. Is it you, or your friend? Or maybe your circumstances are identical, but one of you is incurring the charge and the other not?
  16. I had a lot of trouble with French correspondents on Orange not apparently receiving emails I sent from my UK email address. Turned out they had been hived off into my friends' "indésirables" folders; it was necessary for them to check that, and then to mark my emails as friends, or something.
  17. Yes, I thought of Cutty Sark too, Idun. Such a tragedy for France.
  18. I daresay his friends were pretty annoyed when he skipped bail and went into the Ecuadorian embassy: From The Guardian in 2012 Julian Assange supporters ordered to forfeit £93,500 bail money Payments must be made within a month by nine friends and backers who originally promised to pay £140,000 Robert Booth Mon 8 Oct 2012 13.41 BST Julian Assange's supporters have been ordered to forfeit £93,500 in bail money after the WikiLeaks founder sought political asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. A court ruled on Monday that the payments must be made within a month by nine friends and backers who in 2010 pledged £140,000 to guarantee Assange would abide by bail conditions during a failed legal challenge to extradition proceedings brought by authorities in Sweden, where he faces allegations of rape and sexual assault. Vaughan Smith, the former British army captain who hosted Assange at his Norfolk home while he was on bail throughout 2011, and had promised to pay £20,000 if Assange skipped bail, was ordered to pay £12,000, while Philip Knightly, a veteran Australian investigative journalist who exposed the British traitor Kim Philby as a Russian spy, was ordered to pay £15,000, £5,000 less than he originally pledged. ……. Assange's colleagues in the WikiLeaks organisation, Joseph Farrell and Sarah Harrison, were ordered to pay £3,500 each after originally pledging a combined £10,000. Sir John Sulston, a Nobel-prize-winning biologist, was ordered to pay £15,000 of the £20,000 he pledged. Tracy Worcester, a model turned environmental campaigner, had to pay £7,500 while Prof Tricia David, an educationalist, had to pay £10,000 of the £20,000 she promised. Caroline Michel, at one time Assange's literary agent, was ordered to pay £15,000 of the £20,000 she had promised. ………. He said he also took account of the sureties' means. "Professor David is a pensioner and the sum of £20,000 comprises a substantial portion of her savings jointly with her husband," he ruled. "Sarah Saunders has also provided details of her financial position and I am satisfied that she is of comparatively limited means. Mr Vaughan Smith tells me that if he forfeits the £20,000 surety it will have a significant impact on the welfare of his family and his employees." Smith said he …. would have to borrow the money. "I rely on an income from a farm and from my journalism and I don't have £12,000 sitting in the bank," he said. It is understood that a separate group of Assange supporters, thought to include the film-maker Ken Loach, the writer and campaigner Jemima Khan, the journalist John Pilger and the magazine publisher Felix Dennis have already forfeited bail cash worth £200,000 following a court order earlier this year.
  19. This place looks a bit high-end, but maybe got be worth a look https://www.bca-antiquematerials.com (Sorry, I can’t make the link live.)
  20. Oh gosh, Antonia, I am so sorry to hear of the loss of your husband. In addition to Patf's suggestion of getting the Maire to issue a statement that you had lived in France for x years, I wonder if your name figures on the deeds of the house? Would they accept that as proof? (Though I concede that owning a house doesn't actually guarantee that you lived full-time in it.) Or a joint bank account, showing your French address? Driving licence?
  21. Absolutely true, Lehaut. I looked into it once, as i gave regularly in the UK. I see that Canada is equally suspicious, even of France! "Depuis le 31 août 2000, le Canada prend des mesures radicales par crainte de la forme humaine de maladie de la vache folle. Il a décidé d'exclure du don de sang toute personne ayant séjourné six mois ou plus en France entre 1980 et 1996. Ces mesures semblent confirmées : une expérience écossaise aurait prouvé la transmission de la maladie d'un mouton à un autre par transfusion."
  22. Won’t the régime under which the property was purchased be stated in the deeds? Maybe the OP has access to those. But, yes, I agree with all those above that a notaire needs to be consulted - preferably the practice where the purchase was made, who would be sure to have a copy of the acte in their archives.
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