Eslier

a tricky one, but try "ouverture prochainement"

Try:  "was able to"  (over a period of time in the past)

If you change your mail client settings to the new Wanadoo Secure Server then you problem will be solved and you'll be able to send e-mails to ntl and tesco accounts without a problem. Details of what youhave to do to change account settings can be found HERE.

A large tub of Joe's ice cream from Swansea ? (All you've got to do is figure out how to get it there !)

Not only has the weather turned but today is the last "red day" for Tempo electricity users. Half price electricity after today until the autumn ! Time to open up the pool.

Most of the work will probably be carried out in a day. Then they'll probably have to get it inspected by someone on behalf of the commune before it is all covered up, which might even be the next day.

We get a  very good service, in our village, from La Poste. The small village post office which used only to open for two hours on two mornings per week is now funded by the commune and is open five full mornings. Our postie delivers around 9.30am each morning. To send a letter to the UK it costs 55centimes which works out at just under 38p. To send the same letter from the UK to France costs 42p so I would say we get exceptionally good value for money. Don't forget, you can also give letters you wish to post to your poste when he or she delivers.

Now I realise this post won't go down well with some of you but . . . Perhaps I've been in France too long and the countryside ways are getting to me but, for goodness sake, bats are vermine. Thinkof them as flying rats. Would you be happy to let a rat run around your home, no I think not so why do you allow a bat to fly around ? My own, one and only experience of having a bat inside, well two bats in fact, resulted in about half an hour of great hilarity as we threw pillows at them. One, sensibly, decided it was better to fly out of the door it had entered through and the other eventually was stunned by a flying pillow and disposed of. It is possible to buy ultrasonic speakers which emit a very high pitched sound that humans can't hear but drives bats batty. Plug one or two of these in and your bats will pack their bags and look for somewhere else to live. Sorry !

Yes, should work fine.   You only need the card for Ch4 & 5 these days but if it's a "yellow house" ex-contract card that should be ok anyway.  You'll almost certainly need to do a forced software download when you first connect the box to the dish which it might be a good idea to do first on someone else's dish so you know it is working properly before you try it on your new dish.

It depends very much on whether your yearly turnover is below the TVA threshold. If it is below, then in theory, yes, you should be able to do just that but, depending what the items are, you might need to check this out with  your accountant. For example, there is no VAT in  the UK on children's clothes but  TVA is chargeable  in France, hence, this might be a problem. If your turnover exceeds the TVA threshold (most likely if you are intending to earn enough to make the whole thing worthwhile with social charges etc.) then you will need to charge TVA on items sold as applicable. This isn't such a bad thingas, if you are selling to shops other businesses, they will almost certainly be TVA registered too and therefore won't have to pay it - which makes your sale price cheaper. If you are registered for TVA then you shouldn't have to pay UK vat on items despatched from the UK to France but claiming the vat back on items you've purchased yourself in France is a whole lot more difficult. If you are keen to go ahead then discuss all this with your accountant, and remember it is illegal to trade, or even advertise, until you have submitted your business registration to the Chambre de Commerce.

A lot depends who your clients are likely to be. If the majority are Brits, then you will probably find it easiest to collect UK bank cheques from your clients and simply put them in the post, along with a paying in slip, to your UK bank. That's exactly what I do.  A few people take up the offer of direct payment by Internet Banking but a lot fewer than I originally expected. As your clients will need to return a completed and signed Booking Form, it's very easy for them to send a cheque at the same time. We take 20% at the time of booking and the balance eight weeks before. We always send a reminder about two or three weeks before the balance is due and include a form for them to send back with the payment asking confirmation details of ferry crossings and arrival times etc. I don't send out directions until we've received the final balance.  There's no problem with a UK bank account as far as the tax man in either country is concerned but make sure you can justify every credit entry on your bank statement and include all income on your tax return.

Thanks Will, that's good advice. Sorry, you would think, by now, that I should have realised the need to be more specific with my first post ! BJSLIV, you are right that it should be possible to have items that are supplied and despatched from the UK to France invoiced without vat. Unfortunately, as has been clarified to me by my accountant, things like advertising and UK mobile phone bill etc. are for a service that is provided within the UK and therefore UK vat has to be charged. It would only be possible to reclaim these amounts by submitting a UK vat return. Likewise, with anything purchased in the UK and brought back to France personally, it would be a lot of hassle to show proof that these items had been taken out of the UK and into France. VAT would be correctly charged by the retail outlet and it would be necessary to claim this back somehow. The UK "Retail Export Scheme"  is not applicable to items exported to EU countries.

Thank you for you comments. I already have an accountant, I already produce proper accounts, I am already on the régime réal, and I already know about how and when I would need to register for TVA and how returns are made. As you can see from my original post, I have three options to consider; any of which are completely legal and come with my accountants blessing. The business is solely gite rental. We are registered for B&B/Tables d'Hote too, but havent needed to offer this service since our first year. When talking to my accountant however, she was not certain exactly what rate of TVA applies to gite rentals, hence my question. She will research this and eventually come back to me but I was hoping to get a quicker answer from someone who has already been there. There are, most certainly, advantages to being able to claim TVA relief against expenditure in France. Unfortunately, it's not so easy to claim back VAT paid to UK companies for things such as advertising. It's not impossible but would mean submitting vat returns in the UK, as well as in France and the associated accountancy costs would probably not make it cost effective. This is why I need to have all the facts an figures before I make a decision which way to go. At the moment, as it seems unlikely we would exceed the TVA threshold by a huge amount anyway, I am tending towards just opting to stop taking bookings when we reach turnover just below €72k. There must be someone ou there who has been in a similar position who can offer some advice. I would be very interested to hear how things worked out for anyone who has become TVA registered.

There is a distinct probability that, next year, our turnover could exceed the TVA threshold by a smallish amount. If we go down this route and have to charge TVA on rentals, can anyone tell me, for certain, what rate applies ?   I have been advised that it is a "split rate" but am not sure what this is. I have to do the sums before setting rental rates for next year. Basically, I have three options: 1) register for TVA next year and deal with the financial implications - some good some bad 2) change one of the properties to long term let (income then not included as part of business turnover) 3) simply stop taking bookings when turnover reaches just below the €72k threshold I would be interested to hear from anyone else who has been in a similar position and can offer any advice.

The main area of controversy hereis the use of this word "illegal". Unfortunately, it has become over used by anglophones and the meaning is not always fully understood. In essence, however, as has already been pointed out, for something to be illegal there must be a law on the statute books , or within common law, specifically making it so. First let us deal with the Sky issue. When Sky issue a viewing card as part of a monthly contract or as a "freesatfromsky" card, it issued subject to acceptance of their terms and conditions. These t&cs include clauses that states the card can only be used by the person to whom it was issued and  more importantly, only at the address to which it was issued. So, even if you move house in the UK you should advise them of a change of address or you will have infringed their t&cs. If you bring a viewing card to France then you are clearly in breach of the t&cs to which you agreed when you  accepted the card. In theory, Sky could  take you to a civil court and seek damages from you for being in breach of contract but in practice they don't really care too much and there seems to be no record of them ever having done so. If, however, it comes to their attention that a card is being used abroad then they are quite likely to remotely disable the card. If asked, Sky have no option but to inform you that you cannot receive their broadcasts outside the UK as this would be outside the terms of their broadcast license. Regarding the copyright issues, the legal aspects appear to be untested so the significance to the viewer is unclear. As others have said, broadcasters such as the BBC and ITV only hold the broadcast rights to broadcast in the UK for many of the programs  they send to air. As such, it is their duty to do all that is possible to ensure that this copyright is not breached. If, therefore, you ask them they will tell you that their television broadcasts are intended for the UK only and should not be viewed outside this region. To this end, both the BBC and ITV used to use the Sky encryption to try and enforce boundaries. That both have now abandoned encryption is a sign that many owners of the original material are becoming more relaxed about wider range audiences and are happy to still allow the UK broadcasters to have broadcast rights without such stringent barriers in place. Whether or not it is acceptable to view programs outside the area they are intended for is probably the greyest area of all, is untested and probably unlikely ever to be tested. A scenario to explain the issue is this. Bernie Eccleston, for example, owns the rights to Formula One motor racing. He makes a huge amount of money selling the broadcast rights to different companies in each country. So, the french broadcaster who has paid a lot of money for these rights might get understandably cross if it discovers that thousands of people in France are watching it on UK satellite ITV. The question is, can the viewer be held liable for breach of contract or is the responsibility with ITV ? No one really knows the answer to this for sure but it could open such a huge can of worms and the numbers of viewers are not that significant to make it worth anyones while challenging it. Radio broadcasts are now available on the world wide web so international copyright appears no longer to be an issue. Surely it won't be long before tv broadcasts follow suit, and then you can expect to see the bottom drop out of the satellite market ! Regarding the company advertising Sky in France, if you look at their website, they make it clear that Sky contracts and viewing cards must be registered to a UK address. They are not doing anything wrong as long as they make that clear. It is the owner of the card that makes the choice, or not, to bring the card to France.

Bouffon, in your rush to post something that is more what we might expect to read on AI, you forgot to read the original post. If you had, you would have read that  ngh1 wants to receive FTA channels and didn't mention anything about a subscription.  There is most certainly nothing illegal about bringing a Sky Digibox to France and using to receive satellite transmissions any more than it is to receive the same signals via a box you buy in a brico store over here. Yes, if you have digibox - bring it with you, it will work fine. Yes, if you have a dish - bring that with you too. A 45cm minidish will work fine in most of France but you might need a bigger one if you are heading for the south.  

If you have money in the bank to cover your social charges for the first year and you build this into your business plan then, providing you have a business which will make some decent income then there isno reason why you should not find it easy. You will need to allow about 4000€ for social charges  in year one  (regardless of whether you have any income or not) and probably best to allow another 1000€ for accountants fees etc. The problem in France isn't the setting up of a business, it is finding a business which will generate enough income to provide enough gross profit to cover your overheads.  Prepare your cashflow projection spreadsheet and see what it looks like. If you think you can make enough money then go for it. Using an accountant will take all the bureacracy away and all you have to do is sign the cheques !   

If you go to add/remove programs and simply remove the Wanadoo software, this won't remove the driver for the modem or Livebox. You should then be able to reconfigure your Windows internet connection settings without too much problem. If you are starting from scratch with Wanadoo,  still go through the initial  stage of the set-up proceedure on the cd supplied. There is a fairly obvious point about half way through the process where you will see that the driver is installed and the modem or livebox is successfully conigured. This is the point where you can abort the set-up program before it goes on to install "espace wanadoo". You can then configure your internet connection settings to automatically connect to the internet when Windows starts and remain connected all the time. All you then need to do is start your web browser and e-mail client each time. 

dc, prooviding you have done your research properly and found a good kennels run by caring people, you have nothing to worry about. If you are unfamiliar with dog kennels however, go and look at three or more different ones to get an idea of what is available. Standards in France vary enourmously, especially amongst places run by Brits.   We looked at three overe here, the first was awful: draughty and insecure, the second was not bad but the only kennels with heating were in the sick bay, and the third which is fantastic but you need to book almost a year in advance to get into. Unless you know that your dog is used to socialising with other dogs, make sure she will be exercised on her own - not just let loose in a field with all the others. If she usually lives indoors, make sure that heating is provided in the kennel. Check to see that the dog's bed in the kennel is raised off the concrete floor on a wooden platform or something. Make sure that the kennels will provide the same food that your dog is used to. Look for things like, is that soft fluffy "vetibed" type bedding provided and kept clean, is there a radio left on to keep the dogs company. Finally, chat to the owners or staff and be sure that they are caring. Providing the kennels pass all these tests then you can leave your dog with confidence and not worry. Dogs don't seem to have the same perception of time passing as humans so she'll be fine. You are bound to be sad saying goodbye to her but that only shows that you love her and is understandable. She'll be delighted to see you when you pick her up and all good kennels give their guests a good grooming before they go home so she should look good too. It's far better to leave you much loved dog in the safe care of professionals in a good kennels than with strangers at home. You can enjoy your holiday knowing that your dog is safe.

Adriana, what you need is one of  THESE  Sign up for the basic package with simple modem but don't load the software  or use the modem - keep it for backup.  You can use the Netgear ADSL modem/router for your Wanadoo connection. It is really easy to set up and best of all you don't need that horrible Wanadoo software !

No, I'm afraid both the DVLA and the Prefecture are correct. It's a bit of a catch 22 ! The only legal options would be: a) re-import into the UK and register at UK address (trouble is, you will need a new uk mot and uk insurance to do this) b) get the vendor to register the car in France in his or her name and then deal with it as a sale/change of ownership but this will cost two lots of registration charges.

There is an English church (Anglican) in Dinard.

I see from your website, Steve, that you are in Brittany so don't be talked into believing you need one of those ugly great 80cm dishes sold in France. A standard 40cm minidish as used in the UK will do the job fine and look much better on your attravtive old buildings.  You can buy a dish, quad LNB, spare remote and the TV Link jobbies from www.satcure.co.uk  I've had a few things from them and they are great to deal with and don't mind posting to France. For Sky digiboxes then ebay uk is probably your best bet but make sure you only buy ones with a remote and that are confirmed as in working order. I have a personal preference for Panasonic digiboxes (I've got five systems) but, because of their excellent reputation, often go for a little bit more than some other makes on ebay.   Satcure will also be able to sell you a sat finder meter with switchable hi/lo band readings which I recomend you get as it will make setting up the dish acurately much easier. Using a meter is also the only way to optimise the fine adjustment which can make the difference between getting a good signal in bad weather or not. Yes, I agree that providing English TV in gites aimed at the more lucretive UK market is imortant. It does seem to be one of those must have luxuries and with the football world cup this summer I suppose it is even more essential.

OK, just to complicate matters even more than they already seem to have become, I'm going to suggest another option. First however, I'm not sure why there is all this talk of three LNBs. For what you want to do, all you need is a single "quad lnb" which is a single unit, requiring only one dish but with four outputs. You will then need three seperate cables from the LNB into your attic. Then comes the clever bit . . . Why not put the three Sky digiboxes in the attic.  Into each box, take one of the new cables from the  LNB. Also into each box, take one of the feeds from the aerial signal  amplifier into the "RF  In" connection.  Then  connect the existing RF cables that go down into each gite  to one of the RF out  conenctors in each digibox. It needs to be the one that has an optional switchable voltage which off the top of my hear is RF2. You then need to tune one of the RF channels on each TV to the output signal from the digibox. Then, or better still before you start this, buy yourself three "TV Link" little thingies (pretty cheap, around £7.50 each I think) and plug this into the back of the TV aerial socket in each gite. You should then find that your Sky remote will control the remote digibox from the gite without any problem and you'll still get normal TV. You get what you want and have the added bonus that the guests can't fiddle with the digibox other than by the remote, and you don't have to install any new cables to the gites.   The only thing is that you'll need to replace any of those fancy three way aerial sockets with a standard single socket as the filters in the three way ones don't allow the control voltage through needed for the TV Link jobbie.

This is nothing like as straightforward as you might think. A French accountant (a french qualifie one practicing in France) will give you the best idea. I can however give you a few pointers in the right sort of direction: Firstly, the matter of residency. You can't choose where you are resident. If you spend more than six months of the year in France then the impots will deem you to be resident in France and treat you as such. In any case, you need to be "resident" to be eligible for full French healthcare. Regarding whether your business needs to be registered with the Chambre de Commerce is going to be dependant on a number of things including how the officials in your particular area interpret the law !    The amount of income generated will be taken into account, as will  any other sources of income you may or may not have. The only thng that seems to be  slightly consistent is that  if your  B&B business is your main source of income then they will probably say that you should be registered. If your main source of income comes from elsewhere, and the B&B business doesn't generate more than about €7k then you probably won't have to register. As I said, however, this area of law sems to be interpreted differently in different places and depending upon who you speak to. If it is decided that you need to register at the Chambre de Commerce then you will find it much easier to let your  accountant handle this process to ensure that you register inthe most beneficial way (tax régime etc.). Once registered you will start to receive bills for cotisations from various bodies and you will be really and truly "in the system". Social charges in year one of registration will be around €4k regardless of income. As I said, speak to an accountant about this. He or she will be able to give you much better advice, based upon your individual circumstances, than any of us on this forum. One thing you should do, however, is obtain a license from the Douannes (customs) which is needed to serve coffee etc. at breakfast and wine included as part of a table d'hote dinner menu. I'm fairly sure this is called a "Class II" license but I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong. These are issued on the spot at your nearest customs office after filling in a few forms - as you might expect. There is no charge for the license. This will enable you to offer wine as part of an inclusive menu but won't allow you to sell wine or any other alcoholic drinks seperately. You are only allowed to offer up to half board in a B&B.  Only a "hotel" can offer full board and you certainly don't want to go down that route!! Good luck