Clarkkent

Bob My situation sounds very similar to yours - I have a current account which I top up at irregular intervals which is used only to pay regular bills, almost all by direct debit. I received a similar request from Credit Agricole about three months ago. To the best of my recollection I sent a copy of my latest PAYE coding notification and of the most recent P60 from my pension provider. I have heard nothing since so I presume this information was satisfactory.

Why have any kind of officiant anyway? Contrary to most peoples' understanding, the celebrants at ANY wedding are the bride and groom - not the priest, minister or whatever. Why doesn't this (presumably happy) couple just seize the opportunity to celebrate (that word again) their union in a manner to suit themselves and do it their own way? Why don't they design their own ceremony where they are in charge? They are humanists - they should see no need for an officiant representing some established opinion or philosophy which is not their own. One of the glories of the National Gallery in London is the wonderful portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his bride celebrating their marriage in the privacy of their home before their witness, the painter Jan van Eyck. There is no priest or officiant.

Outage I heard some person in a recent radio programme explain that "outage" was used when there is an unplanned break in service (breakdown etc) and "power cut" is used when the break in service is planned (maintenance, equipment renewal etc).

ADVICE REQUESTS 8 & 9 Check the availability of telephone lines and of ADSL. Provision of both can be difficult especially in agricultural areas. An "internet cafe" using only one conventional phone line is unlikely to be very effective.

'Les Miserables' has been voted Britains favorite musical... No it hasn't. It's been voted the favourite musical of those Radio 2 listeners who bothered to vote in this particular survey.

Don't bother to look for a tv in England. Next time you are in France go along to your nearest hypermarket and decide what you want from the wide variety of brands and prices. You will almost certainly find one with built-in vcr and/or dvd. It will be dual standard - all tvs now sold in France are!  Connect it to your satellite receiver with a scart (peritel) lead. Why transport a heavy and bulky tv set all the way from England?

Where is your source of income? If it is in the UK then borrow money in the UK. If you borrow in France you will have to service the loan from UK sources with a variable, unpredictable exchange rate and with currency transfer costs. Should the euro move upwards against the pound this may add greatly to your expenses. If you borrow in sterling you can predict and control your expenditure. I cannot answer your questions about banking policies in France, others on this forum (like Teamed Up) can.

When my daughter was young she had frequent bouts of cystitis - sufficiently frequent for her to invent some when she wanted to bunk off school. The cause of cystitis is bacteria contained in faecal matter which can be transferred via the very short female urethra into the bladder. In many cases children infect themselves by inadequate cleaning after a bowel movement. Dirty toilets in a school is (or should be) totally unacceptable since this could lead to the transmission of cystitis from one girl to another. The school should be made aware of its public health responsibilities.

Teamed Up is absolutely right - talk to a bank. There are now very strict EU-wide procedures about money transfer which relate to the monitoring of potential money laundering.

The following is on the Independent website: Bird lovers are up in arms after France declared open season on its duck population three weeks ahead of schedule. The government was accused by animal rights activists of making a backroom deal with France's 1.5 million hunters in return for support for its failed attempt to ratify the EU constitution. Isn't French politicking murky!

We asked this very same question at our local tax office last year and were informed that if the policy was taken out before 1991 in England then it was not taxable. I may be mistaken, but my recollection is that until about that time, the premiums on endowment policies could be set against income tax. Since then, premiums for new contracts have not been exempt from tax. Are you sure the person advising you was not telling you this?

I feel depressed by this. The man was a Brazilian evidently, I wonder if his experience of authority in his home country caused him to run? (There was a stupid posting on this forum a couple of days ago purporting to compare Brazil favourably with Britain.) A police officer - no doubt hyped up by the sense of continuing danger - will now probably face a murder charge, and other policemen may refuse to carry arms. A small victory for the terrorists, who will feel emboldened by the chaos they are creating. But I still feel that this matter will be dealt more honourably and with greater honesty than anywhere else I know.  

I have used lastminute.com twice to go to Japan - with no problems at all and for very low fares (Birmingham - Tokyo return: £350 + taxes). I only bought air travel from them, and received "electronic tickets" (number + passport at check-in), the process was so straight forward and easy that I cannot envisage using a travel agent again. Lastminute.com (which owns Holiday Autos) has - I believe - recently been taken over by ebookers, which provides very similar services. I have also used Expedia which has been equally satisfactory, and also allowed me to book my preferred seat on the aircraft.

Yes, an excellent book. It has been discussed a number of times on this forum over the last couple of years. Perhaps there ought to be a reference to it in the FAQs.

 I am majoring in french and my wife is majoring in biology. She will probly work in a hospital or do something medical. Would there be any problems with Qualifications for her? What kind of job could you get with a french major in france? I plan to go to school in france and try to live there for 5 years to get citizenship.. Oh I am from the USA if that helps! Forgive my presumption, but I get the impression that you don't actually know much about France. You may find "Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong" by Jean-Beoit Nadeau & Julie Barlow useful. They are both from North America (from Canada) and write very informatively about the impact French culture - in its widest sense - had on them. Their chapters on the French educational system may answer questions you haven't been able to formulate yet.

ClarkKent, their property will be worth well over the ceiling for tontine We expect the property to be worth about E.150,000/180,000 when completed. TU, the value of the property is only their assessment of what it might be - no one can foretell the future, and the taxable element of the tontine is half the value of the property. I don't know what the current threshold is but €75,000 - 80,000 may be below it. All I can say about my case was that my property was conservatively valued - by the notaire - so that it would not attract any tax.

Did you buy en tontine? We did, and when my wife died the assignment of ownership to me was made without any reference to or requirement for a will of any kind.

The is a serieis of fictional novels by dennis wheatly(?) about a british spy in revolutionary france and onwards. I suspect you mean The Scarlet Pimpernel series by Baroness Orczy. A few of these were dramatised by the BBC a few years ago, with Richard E Grant as Sir Percy Blakeney/The Scarlet Pimpernel. There was a VHS version - it might be available on DVD. There was a Broadway musical version and a production will be staged in Dereham during October.    

Do girls have parlours these days? Believe me, Dick, they have things you couldn't even imagine.

There is no money in the academic science game, at least not in the UK. No but any half decent academic can more than double his university salary doing consultancy work. And the institution will encourage it.

Oh. I thought that he was referring to the phenomenon whereby people get confused between girls and mayor's parlours! Because they are in France they think that Mary should be Marie.

Yes, i am well aware this will be a multinational project, but being situated in France, where nuclear know how is as well developed as anywhere, i assume most of the scientific/engineering expertise is already available. The expertise that France possesses in its own right is in nuclear fission (extracting the energy contained in very large atoms such as uranium and plutonium) this project is concerned with nuclear fusion (harnessing the energy released when light atoms such as hydrogen are combined). To the best of my knowledge, the main repository of expertise in this area in Europe currently is at JET at Culham near Oxford. What's the betting that Americans will have project and design leadership?

I'm afraid I can't answer you question directly, but I think your understanding of the nature of this development is not correct. This is NOT a French project but a multinational project which will be located in France. It will not be "the French" that will require anything. The construction and project management companies employed may not be French, they may be American, Japanese, British, German, Russian - who knows? Some of the construction labouring force will probably be local. When the project is running the scientific and administration staff will almost certainly be selected from the most appropriate candidates anywhere in the world. My guess is that the only real benefit to the local French economy will be a demand for low level jobs - catering, caretaking, basic maintenance etc.

I find that this site is now loading quickly. But then, I'm only 15 miles from Cheltenham ...

The final decision of the Olympic Committee was between the two most appropriate candidates and either choice would have pleased me, but London has won. So why are people so disparaging about this? It presents a wonderful opportunity for urban and cultural development. Please don't blame changes to Stratford on the Olympic Games - these would have been achieved by Eurostar anyway. But what else does the decision say? Was London's bid more focused on the future and the transforming effect of the games, and Paris's too concerned with past achievements? Might this be a metaphor for the state of Britain and France.