IAN_S

Having looked at a vast amount of posts about this I have not seen an answer to my question. We are tax resident in France but own a house in the UK that I inherited in 2001. It is rented and I declare the income in the UK and France. I am now considering selling this house and buying a letting property in Spain. I assume the legal way for CGT is to declare the gain in France but will any CGT be based on a theoretical value when I inherited the house and whatever price I get for it when sold? If so, does my UK letting agent come up with the 2001 value or what. He says he can do this using the Halifax website. Has anyone else been through this process?  

It's 16k west actually!

We live in a small village 16k from Quillan, Aude 11. Having produced a small Christmas show that has motivated the local population to make more music, we are now looking for musicians of any nationality who wish to either play their instruments or just get involved, in rehearsing and taking part in some small concerts, fetes etc. There are a number of possibilities. We have an ex professional 70s/80s rock guitarist who is looking to form a band with good amateurs or other ex professionals. There is also a group of people who wish to play more classical music with recorders and/or other orchestral instruments. A trad jazz band is also a possibility. We have reformed the local choir of mostly fairly elderly French ladies who used to sing 20 odd years ago and are very keen, but they do need direction and a conductor prepared to take this on, on a regular basis, possibly once a week. Please PM me if you are interested in any of the above with details of your instrument, skill level and any other useful information. Ian  

Since this software changed I find I'm not wasting anywhere near the time I did before actually reading postings due to the (IMHO) very strange way of organising them. Where previously I looked at any posts since my last visit which suited me fine as I looked every day and found a relatively small number from different forums, now I look at two forums which doesn't take very long and I can get back to all the things I love doing like washing up, mucking out horses, shopping, etc. Is everybody else happy too?

This happened to me the last time the software changed. All you can do is email forum admin and ask to be reinstated as you were before. I wouldn't have thought there were two email addresses exactly the same?

We paid €45 2 years ago for 1 ha for horse grazing, then got to know the farmer who now won't accept any payment. I'm not sure why, but it maybe from a legal standpoint.

Why should they need to, unless it's to prove you are an EU citizen. So does this mean there are some British passport holders that are not classified as such?

I get this sometimes on any sky channel and all I do is pull out the card slightly and push it back, and all is then ok. Why it should do this, who knows?

As far as I am aware, if you are a British citizen then you have the right of abode in the UK, but if you are a British subject or another type of British national you may not. This is stated in para 2 of the notes in my passport.  I can't see what has been paid to the state in the past can have any  bearing on this.

Payment is made by using the the machine outside the terminal but this only allows 15 minutes between the time you pay and when the ticket is used at the barrier, so, when you get stuck behind someone who thinks you pay at the barrier and blocks the exit, your ticket can run out of time! Having said that, the new parking area is 1000 times better than the old mud heap that was there in the past.

I don't know when you did this comparison but in (11) our local supermarket gazoil is now €1.04 and a heating oil delivery about 3 weeks ago was €0.52 + TVA, the delivery guy did say it had gone down recently.

As I said before, I did eventually buy a French? PC from an online site with a good spec for the price but sold without an operating system or other bits and pieces. My French is improving but not really up to understanding all the technical computer terms so as the same software can be bought in English, why not? I did however buy an AZERTY keyboard to get the accents and hopefully this will work properly otherwise back to the QUERTY!

I compared the UK/French Dell sites for the same PC and found that in theory the French one would have been more expensive, except that when I followed a link to the UK checkout page, the price shown was way above the original page. Perhaps a computer error but not very encouraging.

What I did in the end was to buy a very good spec pc from a French site sold without an OS, which arrived in 3 days, and bought XP from an Amazon seller which is taking an age to arrive, any month now hopefully! In the meantime my trusty stone age machine is holding the fort.

I have run nearly all my small household electrical stuff with transformers in the past with no problems so don't see why you would have any with your fax. As far as the tv is concerned, secam was invented by France and is their standard so again I don't think you would have any problems. Also, if you are using it for any satellite digital service here your set has PAL to handle a digibox or similar, and secam for the French analogue transmissions, so I think you are covered in every respect.

Baz I do have a wide screen tv and I do exactly what you say, ie alter the screen size, but then I lose the top of people's heads etc so..... I still think with all those buttons to play with I should be able to turn things off I don't like. Much too democratic I suppose, just giving power to the people for no good reason!

Can anyone tell me if it is possible to get rid of the cr*p at the bottom of some news programmes? It almost drives me insane trying to concentrate on the main story whilst a totally different subject is running at the bottom of the screen. I have tried every button/menu on the remote but can't see anything that allows me to do this. Please tell me there is a way!

I have used OS for about a year with a Tiscali dial up and I find it definately does make a difference. It's not until you turn it off that you see how slow it was before! With regard to images, generally I don't need the best quality all the time and when I do, I just do a "show original image" and get the proper quality.

I have an unlocked Philips Savvy dual band which must be about 6/8 years old and I never got a sim card for it here for the same reason, too light a user. Are the sim cards the same size, shape etc as they were then do you think?

For BBC/ITV all you need is a digital receiver and a dish from anywhere, no card unless you want CH4/5 when as Martyn says, use an old Sky card or buy their £20 one if that's still going.

We specifically asked our Axa branch about the need for a certificate and they said "no, we don't need one but of course it would be safer to get the chimney swept". I now use a rammonage brick from our local supermarket which seems to do the job.

I haven't looked today but I think it's gone already, it certainly was not there last week for several days.    

Thanks everybody for your replies, I will look at Dell.fr today and see if I can sort it out in France, which from many points of view would be the best thing to do.

I have been trying to buy a new PC sourced in the UK and shipped to France, for various reasons. There are many sources that have websites but when I email them to ask if they ship to France I get no reply, even from one that asked me to email them for a shipping cost. Dell UK wouldn't even talk to me and said "phone this Paris number"! Does anyone know of companies that will definately do this, it's hardly the dark side of the moon here, is it?

I have been trying to open a new UK savings account to get a better interest rate, and there are a number that have a better rate than the bank I am presently with. But they all say, non resident, goodbye! I don't really understand this as the inland revenue know exactly where I am, I even get tax forms, refunds etc from them sent to me here in France. The savings bank I am with now would also not give me an account now if I told them I was non resident, but Natwest don't have a problem for some reason and again deal directly with me here. If anyone knows a way round this I for one would be very glad to know.