Clarkkent

[quote user="Anton Redman"] IMHO most of the operators loose track of their reason for being in the business. Compare and contrast P & O's retail offerings with BAA's. If you are stuck airside at Heathrow you can buy books which are not available yet in the UK, and a reasonable seletcion of clothes etc.   In contrast the shops on P & O seem ignore the end of duty free, they have booze, cigs and perfume at more than the price you can buy in main land Europe and a selection of DVDs and paperbacks which make Wilkinsons seem attractive. Even going back to the UK after 8 months in France P & O had no newspapers I would consider reading let along buying. [/quote] The main purpose of any large public company is to provide shareholder return. If a company's established operation fails to provide adequate shareholder return then the board will dump it - irrespective of the operation's historical importance. The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company's recent history exemplifies this.

Dead right. There are no traffic jams in France - they are an invention of the British and only occur in the United Kingdom. I suppose I must be hallucinating when I recall it taking 8 hours to get from Avignon to Lyon, with roads parallel to the autoroute being equally solid; or when it took from 5.00 pm to 9.30pm to travel one quarter of the Paris perepherique; or the time when I drove out of Paris on a Sunday evening to see a 25 mile long queue of people trying to get in from Normandy. If there are no traffic jams in France why do the tv stations waste time giving  information about predicted trouble spots?  

After some searching, I found the controversial cartoons. My judgement was that they hadn't been intended to be offensive but to express irony - on the way that Mahomet's message had been hijacked. Everyone should have the opportunity to make a judgement for himself. One of the complaints of the objectors - that it is forbidden to show a likeness of the prophet - is just plain wrong. There is no such prohibition, Mahomet did not want his image to be worshipped: the prohibition is against idolatry. There is a long tradition of portraits of the prophet and I believe that the University of Edinburgh has an extensive collection. It is clear that there has been a deliberate campaign to generate discontent by using outrage to inflame the passions of muslims whose understanding of their religion is not very deep. The history of Abu Hansa, as it emerged during and since his trial, suggests that anyone can set himself up as an imam and pursue his own agenda. Most of the muslims in Britain and France are descended from immigrants from agrarian and impoverished cultures. I believe that their behaviour often reflects those cultures rather than their religion - and this includes the treatment of women.    

[quote user="londoneye"]   For other response - know what you are saying about inheritance.   My family have been made aware all goes to partner and trust them implicitly to see this is done if anything happens to me (dont laugh I know we all hear stories but i dont think i am rich enough to drive them into uncharacteristic mercenary behaviour!).   I will back this up a will, although not sure how much credence that will have in France.   [/quote] It doesn' t matter what you want or what you have written in any will. The French state determines what happens to your property and it will go to your family - who will probably have to sell it to settle the whopping tax bill they will face. Seek French legal advice.

Excellent package. And you can measure the length of runways used by Ryanair and ask yourself whether it is really safe for a 737 to land on THAT.   Another interesting feature is that jumps from one location to another follow great circles. You should expect that but our experience of the world has been shaped by Mercator's Projection and we don't readily perceive great circles.

That said, glad to hear the good review of the Dell. My own experience of Dell is somewhat mixed. Yes, it did work straight out of the box - but then so did HP and Acer machines I have bought. I ordered it direct from Dell. They promised 14 day delivery. Over the next two days I  tracked its progress on the internet from a warehouse in south west Ireland, to Dublin, across the Irish Sea to a warehouse in Coventry - about 30 miles from where I live. There it sat for 12 days. They promised 14 day delivery and that's what I got. The other machines were bought from dabs.com and were delivered the next day. Of the three, I prefer the HP.

[quote user="Ab"] DID NOT WANT TO REPAIR BUT THOUGHT SOMEONE HAD SOME IDEAS I COULD TRY-SUPPOSE I WILL WAIT FOR THE REAL SUPERMAN TO ASSIST. ONLY A JOKE  CLARKKENT. GOOGNIGHT TO ALL YOU READERS. [/quote]   You don't have to apologise for your reaction to advice you find unpalateable.  If I were in your situation I, too, would feel aggrieved - particularly in view of the high original cost of the dvd player. But then, I have had to throw away a laptop which was much newer than your dvd. It had been accidentally damaged and its repair cost was unreasonable compared with the price of a new computer. My household insurance policy did not include damage to laptops*. I just had to bite the bullet! My original reply assumed that you had checked all cables and connections.     * Apparently this was a general change adopted by almost all insurance companies. If you have a laptop or other portable electronic device it may be worth checking with your own insurer.

[quote user="Ab"] thanks but since sony cost 825 euros i would have thought something could be done before binning it>!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!    ANY OTHER IDEAS ON FIXING PROBLEM. [/quote] My advice is still to ditch it. Its purchase price bears no relation to its current value - which is zilch. What would be the point of spending  €100 on a repair which would give you a machine which will not perform as well as a new, unbranded dvd player costing half that amount?

I remember being on the platform at Nottingham Victoria station waving to my father as he went back to his ship. I was 3 when the War ended so I must have been about 2. I also have a memory of a metal tricycle with a flat platform for a seat and riding it on the pavement at the corner of Berridge Road and Noel Street (the location in the recollection is precise). I remember just a few snapshots of life until I was about 5. From then on the snapshots grow much more frequent but only become home movie excerpts from about 7. Funnily enough, I cannot remember my brother being born (he is 3 1/2 years younger than me) nor can I remember falling in the River Leen on the day that he was born - but my mother has told me of this many times!

Since you can buy perfectly adequate dvd players for as little as  €35 - 40, it does not seem worthwhile to investigate a repair. Go to your local hypermarket and see what they have. The general improvement in dvd player quality over the past five years is considerable and dvd players are almost a commodity item. If you only want to play commercial disks there are few real benefits to be had from buying a major brand.

[quote user="Teamedup"] She already has a masters in psychology and dismisses that as it has no value what so ever to anyone. And it was her BAFA (sp) that got her this particular job in the first place. Can anyone explain to me simply why her masters degree has no value what so ever........   [/quote] TU's friend seems to be believe that a degree must have direct utility arising from the subject matter studied. If this is the case she is mistaken. The purpose of a degree - any degree - is to "train the mind" and to provide its holder with a general set of tools which will increase his or her effectiveness in any future activity. The subject area is the context within which the tools can be developed. This is as true of "vocational" as of "academic" disciplines. In addition to learning about the subject matter, with a psychology degree your friend should have acquired the following skills: the ability to analyse a problem and to identify the origins of that problem the ability to evaluate other people's arguments and viewpoints the ability to hypothesise about situations and to develop methods of testing those hypotheses the ability to express herself clearly and concisely both orally and in writing an understanding of quantitative methods and the ability to analyse numerical data an ability to plan and to predict and evaluate the consequences of that plan. These are the kind of skills that are required of anyone in any position of responsibility in any occupation. If TU's friend cannot see that these skills are transferable and usable in any situation then perhaps she did not have the necessary qualities to embark on her studies in the first place or the insight to profit from them.      

[quote user="nicktrollope"]Is this found in European statute, or is it just another urban myth? [/quote] It was the rallying cry/justification (whatever) for the revolt known as the Boston Tea Party and hence the reason for the American War of Independence.

France is a secular state. The name makes him ineligible.

[quote user="Rascalb"]If you have a local government pension from UK employment - ie from Education/Council employment etc it is taxable in the UK not France. As far as I know this is the only oddity.[/quote] This is not really an oddity but written into the double tax agreement. British people in France and French people in Britain who receive a pension paid from government sources (civil servants, armed forces, teachers, local government workers and so on - a very large goup) pay tax at source.

  And don't let's forget that in the original submission to government, Eurostar PROMISED to run PROPER (Eurostar) trains from Leeds, Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham etc straight through to Brussels, Paris etc, with intermediate stops in London for some, and at Ashford for others. As soon as the tunnel was finished and they had their money from Government, they reneged on the promise. AND on the promise to run sleepers...THOSE sleeper carriages already bought, (with goverment funding), were then sold for use in Canada, and the profit went back to Eurostar.   If my memory serves me correctly the North of London services died because: (a) Customs/Immigration didn't like the idea of an international service also being used by domestic passengers (b) The Rail Regulator (or someone similar) would not let intermediate passengers (ie from York to Grantham rather than York to Paris) use the services The real irony is that the St Pancras/Kings Cross location was chosen and laid out to facilitate NoL services.

What everyone seems to be forgetting is that ALL payment methods incur costs. Cash has to be counted, stored securely and carried to the bank (or the bank - in the form of a security firm - collects it). Cheques have to be transported to be paid in and their value is not cleared for several days - resulting in a loss of potential interest (or worse - temporary insolvency!) and banks may charge for handling them. Debit card transfers - which ought to be instantaneous - are treated like cheques and banks may wait a few days before clearing them. The transaction fees charged to merchants by credit card companies may not, in reality, be very much greater than the costs of other payment methods and it is unfortunate that consumers cannot challenge credit card surcharges. FlyBe have got a nice little earner here. Perhaps they may put their credit card gains to good use by getting a fleet of decent aircraft.

In one test, a brick wall was shown to be travelling at 18mph! Isn't that the speed the earth rotates at ? (Fact dimly remembered from an answer given by Superman explaining why he was wearing protective clothes that woudn't burn but the people he was 'carrying' weren't but yet were still safe.) If the Earth rotated at 18mph a day would be about 1,330 hours long. The actual speed at the Equator is about 1,000mph. My Earth made clothes are protected from destruction by a force field emanating from my Krypton physiology which is stimulated by the presence of a yellow sun. [;)] As far as speeding cameras are concerned, I find this a matter I cannot bother with. The injustice is not that cameras are "unfair" but that drivers ignore speed limits. People who get steamed up about them would be better employed sticking to the speed limit. Then they wouldn't get caught. What speed other people drive, and the consequences to those people, is none of their concern. Driving a motor vehicle is not a right but a permitted activity subject to specific conditions - one of which is not exceeding stated speed limits. [:|]

One other point - to add to TU's excellent summary. Under both French and UK nationality laws, there is nothing to stop your child, if it wishes, having both nationalities.

For what it's worth ... Move if you want to, but think very, very carefully about your daughter. She is now one year away from GCSE. Is it fair to jeopardise her future? She would be better remaining in an education system she knows than moving her to one which will be completely alien. She will have to put up with a different language and culture, a different curriculum and pedagogic environment. It may take her two or three years to cope with changes such as these. You will also tear her from her established social and support network. If you do move then make arrangements for her to stay in Britain and complete the current phase of her education. And if you are considering letting her join the French system when she has completed GCSE then have a Plan B. Why should your dream become her nightmare? There is plenty of related material in the archives and you will find some parents (though I cannot recall reading input from children) who say their offspring took to the change like a duck to water but you will also find many more saying that it is not so easy.  

I read somewhere that this year 600,000 houses were bought by British and Irish and that it was forecast that a further 800,000 were expected to be bought in 2006 ! If this is a fraction of buyers a couple of years back........ And do you actually believe this? Is this what you would base a business plan on? Allowing for an average family size of three persons, there are about 20,000,000 households in Britain. Are you really suggesting that this year one household in 30 moved from Britain to France? That next year one household in 25 will move to France? In the space of two years one household in 15 will have moved to France. Does that accord with your experience or knowledge of either country? Such numbers are fantasy. One judgement that I have seen is that there are perhaps 600,000 houses which are owned by British people - as either first or second residences. I saw this stated in another part of this forum. It says much for people's numerical capabilities that nonsense such as this is so readily believed.  

In centuries past people used to terrify each other with horror stories as they sat around their hearths in midwinter. Here is one for the 21st Century in France: According to something I heard on the BBC, following the car torching festival of a few weeks ago, there has been an upsurge in people of North African origin registering to vote. In the last French presidential election the fragmented party structure resulted in the two front runners each receiving less than 20% of the total vote. If an Islamic figure emerges with wide appeal within the immigrant community, the front runners could be him and a neo-nazi like Le Pen - and Sarkozy would be sidelined ...  

When I first visited my house in Lot et Garonne I realised that I needed someone to cut my grass during my absences and found a local Englishman with whom I came to an arrangement. A few days later I had a phone call from his wife who told me that she had grown up in the English village where I now live. In fact my house backs onto the house she had grown up in. Two years ago, at a dinner party arranged by an old friend who had moved to a French property close to mine, I started talking to the man next to me and realised that we had been at school together. He had changed over the 50 or so years since we had last met.   ... and here is a little twist: we were on a family holiday in Le Lavandou. My daughter and her friend did not want to be on the beach near us and moved away.  While doing some topless sunbathing they heard a familiar voice. Their headmaster was sitting next to them.  

Speaking from experience, my circumstances were similar to yours and I bought "en tontine" - there is a single sentence attesting to this in the Expedition. When my wife died, the property became mine and my children's expectations lie in my own eventual death - should I still own the property then. A tontine is an arrangement in which ownership of the property is not determined until there is only one survivor and in the case of a married couple works in much the same way as the English "joint tenants". There is, however, an upper limit on the value of the property for which a tontine may be arranged.

Didn't Charlene used to work in a garage near Ramsey Street? I seem to remember she had a nice bum.

I'm always bemused by the belief that bottled water should be any safer than tap water. If the bottled water has been taken from a spring then it will be contaminated by whatever lies in the substrates through which it has percolated. This may include fecal contamination from farm animals and nitrates from fertilisers. If the bottled water is stored for any length of time at ambient temperatures then bacteria (fecal) may multiply and cause intestinal problems - especially in very young children. It might even have been taken from public water supplies and "treated" before being bottled. The chlorination of public water supplies means that there is no bacterial contamination. My mains supplier (SAUR) sends me a brief report on its product's quality once a year with my water bill. Your mairie should receive regular reports.