Clarkkent

Just go into the electrical/computer department of your local hypermarket and pick up a free internet disk - most commonly Wanadoo or Tiscali and set up a new internet connection on your laptop (by the way you will need a suitable connection lead for a French phone - also at the hypermarket). You can have as many dial-up connections on your computer as you like. Since you will be spending only part of your time in France, don't take out a contract just do pay-as-you-go. When I am in France I go via my French ISP (Tiscali) to the BT (UK ISP) portal and pick up my e-mails there. I don't bother with my French e-mail address (it's stuffed with junk anyway). If you are unhappy with having a French homepage you can use Control Panel/Internet Options to set your UK portal as your home page.

Southern Britttany or SE England ?  erm..........it's a difficult decision !!! You are absolutely right. Life in a Nantes HLM is so much better than in the South Downs.

I hear brits say, I like french good family values and I don't understand. It appears to be one of those supposed characteristics of life in France (like universal politeness and nonexistant crime) that cause people who are unhappy with their life in Britain to imagine that they would be less unhappy in France. How people know what goes on in other people's lives is a mystery to me. I suppose the good family values are responsible for the reported incidence of one French housewife being beaten to death each week.

Ian S, of course, you are right. But call me cynical - I don't think that we know the real origin of this matter. I wonder if it is really being driven by the USA in its post September 11 anxiety and its demand that passports/visas should contain biometric identity information? Then there will be the usual insistence that that the world falls in step with US practice.

And what makes you think that France will not go down the same route ... eventually?

All you ever wanted to know about chicken pox: http://kidshealth.org/parent/infections/bacterial_viral/chicken_pox.html Something for consideration - it's the pointless prescribing of antibiotics for viral illnesses such as chickenpox which is the real cause of conditions like MRSA. NB Paracetamol is known as acetaminophen in USA.

You have to speak fluent French and have no criminal record. This subject has been covered before - see: http://forums.livingfrance.com/shwmessage.aspx?forumid=287&messageid=103896#bm103782

Have you considered the online service from Insure and Go? http://www.insureandgo.com/ You can obtain instantaneous quotes for personal travel and Europe-wide breakdown insurance which you can then compare with other suppliers.

Fait a:  Write the name of the town where you are at the time you complete the form. Le: Write the date Signature: Sign it

In all the years since I have been aware of the principle of headlamp conversion, I don't think that I have ever seen a continental car on British roads with converted headlamps. As for British cars in France  - I must confess that I ceased to convert my headlamps some years ago. I was forever being flashed by oncoming drivers when my beams WERE converted, so I gave up using them and my experience is that that I now cause far LESS annoyance than before. Perhaps all the cars that annoy you actually ARE using beam converters and the wretched things (like rubber strips making contact with the road to "earth" static electricity) just don't work.  

A hoax or not, many contributors to this forum would not have been able to help since blood from British residents is not acceptable in France because of the supposed elevated risk of variant CJD in the UK population.

The "Post Reply" box should be headed with two toolbars giving a range of options. Even if you cut and paste from Word you should still be able to use them. I am using a PC and Outlook Express - I don't know whether this is a factor or not. You could go to Control Panel  and see whether there are options you can select there.

Sorry you are wrong with your percentages, thats the amount of vote Labour got, not the percentage turnout. My error was to transcribe "60.3%" into "60.7%". I suggest you go to the following URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/constituencies/default.stm It will give you all the information you will ever want about the recent election, including a turnout of 60.3%. A turnout of 48% is more in line with the turnout in US presidential elections (and the term "registered voter" is closer to American usage than British). However, I completely accept that 60% is hardly a beacon of excellence in representative democracy.

Labour is in power in the UK, they won the election, like it or not. I believe the biggest question is why only 48% of the registered voters in the UK bothered to vote. I share your sentiment about its inadequacy, but the UK election turnout was actually 61.7%. I suspect that part of the problem with low turnout in the UK is attention drawn by single-issue pressure groups to their interests (world poverty, the environment, "peace") - which young people find attractive and inspiring, while real politicians have to concern themselves with a whole basketful of policies with conflicting demands (education, health, security, taxes) - which appear to be tedious. If we got 60% of the people to vote would the result be different... ... but we did and it wasn't. I do like your analogy ... it appears to be so true.  

Mr.Chirac was given the residency by the people of France. You know kind of elected with a majority. O that that were true! In the first round of the presidential election Mr Chirac received about 19% of the vote and Mr Le Pen about 17%. This means that they each were not acceptable to over 80% of the voters. When the voters were asked which of these two highly disreputable individuals should become president, they chose the one they disliked less. Such is democracy in the Fifth Republic. 

Book through a broker like Holiday Autos - you'll probably get an even better price.

  The UK has separated the functions of Head of State and Head of Government and these roles are occupied by the monarch and the leader of the majority party in the House of Commons. This results in the monarch's position as national figurehead being untarnished by political matters. Some republics have adopted this model with the president being only a figurehead, the best known are Germany and Ireland. The president of France, just like the president of the USA, is both Head of State and Head of Government - a situation known as Executive President. The current constitution of France requires that the President appoints a prime minister to manage the day-to-day administration of the state while the president remains the national figurehead and manages the direction of government. In theory this permits the president to appear to keep his head above political matters, but in practice the prime minister is little more than the president's gopher and fall guy. If you like, the president is in charge of strategy, the prime minister of tactics. The French model gives the president great political power, but also the impression of having clean hands when things go wrong. Strangely, it assumes that the government will always be that of the president and following another of Black Jacques' miscalculations, when he was faced with a government of a different political hue, he found himself with a prime minister, Jospin, whom he could not treat as fall guy. The French model also fails to produce real figureheads. Partially because of the French nation's belief in its own greatness and destiny, Jacques Chirac has to be seen to be in charge of government strategy - hence his dash to Germany yesterday to team up with another potentially lame duck - and hence his reactions to the recent referendum.

No, not art or literature, wine or food, I’m referring to roundabouts.  Did you know the French invented them?  No, I didn’t either but apparently they did and they continue to build them at the rate of 1,000/annum, accounting for 50% of the world’s total of 35,000. Well, who would have thought that? I'm not sure if I believe it - when I started driving in France in the 1960s they were conspicuous by their total absence, and anyway, they are COMPLETELY incompatible with priorite a droit. My recollection is that roundabouts in France only took off about 20 years ago with the relaxation of the priority rule when they were introduced to replace traffic lights. In spite of rapidly catching up with the rest of the roundabout building world, Gallic flare has nothing to match Swindon. In the 1970s a roundabout appeared on the N98 near St Tropez. Because of the priority rule people on the roundabout had to give way to traffic entering - this led to massive traffic jams in the summer - it could take as much as an hour to cross it. I suppose that the Place de l'Etoile in Paris might be called a roundabout (but this needs traffic lights to make it work) and has been there for a very long time. (By the way, I did see, in my local remaindered bookshop, a small book showing the 50 best roundabouts in Britain - several being in the Redditch area, if I recall correctly.)

 As for voting, "first past the post" ensures that a minority govt gets in, my vote never made a difference anywhere so about 10/15 years ago joined the apathy party. I hope that you are not suggesting that France is more acceptable because it is somehow more democratic. In 1992, the French managed to get themselves a president who obtained only 19.2% of the popular vote. Out of 28.5m electors only 5.6m voted for Chirac. The electorate were then forced to vote in a beauty contest between two contestants each of whom had already been rejected by over 80% of the people that had voted in the first round. It would seem that Jacques Chirac comes a poor second to Tony Blair in the legitimacy stakes! I suppose that being a French citizen must bring its own frustations to the business of democracy.

Plugs. It is as simple as that. Most domestic appliances are made with double pole switches - therefore it does not matter which wire goes to which terminal in the plug. And since many appliances are sold in France with only two prongs it is clear that it does not matter which way round it is inserted into the socket. If the appliance label shows a symbol with concentric squares this shows that it is double-insulated and so does not require an earth. There are some appliances - heavy duty (eg cookers) or used near water (eg kettles, washing machines) where you may have to be more careful, but in general just take a pair of scissors and snip off the UK plug.  

Apparently there are NO charges if you are an HSBC Premier account holder. To be one of these you have to have income over (I think he said, as I fell off my chair) £70,000 single or £100,000 joint or £30,000 savings or an outstanding mortgage of £150,000 with them!  Normandie Bou: I posted the message above before I read yours. Without giving too much away about myself, I have a pension which is a fraction smaller than a quarter of the single income amount and ISA savings which amount to nothing like £30,000 but HSBC have made me a Premier account holder. I have told them several times that I do not qualify - as they can see from their dealings with me. This has all been brushed aside with "consider it a reward for being a loyal customer." You never know ....

The following is taken from the HSBC website. It refers to the Premiere brand services which require a certain level of involvement with the bank.   Banking overseas with HSBC Premier HSBC Premier has been set up to provide customers with a higher level of individual attention - wherever you may be in the world. It puts at your disposal a comprehensive range of accounts and personal services that we tailor to your individual needs. International Services is a part of HSBC Premier that has been especially designed for customers moving overseas to live or work. This is a unique service which is available between the UK and a number of key countries and includes: a relationship manager in the UK and your new country to help you every step of the way access to credit facilities, such as loans and credit cards, in your new country at similar levels to those you enjoy in the UK* new HSBC Premier current and savings accounts with cheque books, bank cards, credit card and PINs for your new country - normally available within ten working days of completing your application fee-free transfer of funds between your accounts within the HSBC Group in the same name in different countries, via the internet wide range of offshore services available from HSBC Bank International Limited.   Incidentally, HSBC Worldpay costs £10 per transaction. In my experience you have to specifically request it or you may end up paying £21 for their standard IBAN transfer service.

So you are not a burnt out has-been but a nice upright person, just the sort that France needs perhaps. No. I am just that - a burnt-out has-been now looking forward to a slow decline in health and well-being who will become more and more dependent of the services of whichever state I live in. And it is partly because of this that I choose to maintain my French house as a maison secondaire. Were I to move permanently to France I would contribute very little (in terms of my skills and expertise) but gradually demand an increasing amount of wealth I have not created. I am very pleased that Di and Coco have found themselves useful and productive lives in France and wish them every success. Just because you do not fall into the category I describe does not invalidate my statement: most, not all, of the British people leaving for France are doing so to retire there, most of the French people leaving for Britain are not going there to retire. Why not read the totality of what I wrote and ignore the single phrase that annoys you? And, Evianiers, just because someone makes a statement you do not agree with is no reason to demand removal of replies. In fact, I was offended by your assertion that there is "mass exodus" from the UK - but in retrospect find the statement just rather silly. Nor do I understand the veiled reference to Tony Blair in the heading. I don't try to restrict your right to say that but I do expect the right to make my own reposts to what I think was an ill-judged and confrontational posting. It seems ironic that people can make "clever" posts slagging off Britain and then demand censorship for replies which don't reflect their viewpoint.  (And by the way, my preferred reading is The Independent and the Guardian.)    

Am not certain whether this topic has been covered before, but on wonders whether anyone in the government [or even opposition for that matter] has ever asked themselves why it is that so many from the British Isles are upping stakes and leaving for pastures new? It seems it is fast becoming a mass exodus with everyone knowing someone else who has left to settle elsewhere, many of them in France and Spain. There must be some very significant reasons. This question is very interesting - not really in terms of the question as posed but in terms of the poster's perceptions. The answer really is "'twas ever thus". Britain has always been a high emigration/immigration country. I doubt that the number leaving now is any different from what it always has been - could you provide evidence (not impressions) of "mass exodus"? The number of people who post on this forum is very small compared with the number of people with houses in France. Perhaps some members are re-inforcing each other's judgements? As TU points out, there are as many French people living in Britain as there are Britons living in France, the difference being that these are mostly young ambitious people whose loss, at the present, France can barely afford. These are the people who will regenerate France's economy. Is it not also interesting to consider that, because of their time of life, these British "escapees" are placing a greater burdon on the already near-bankrupt French health system?

It is not reasonable to compare tests for cholesterol levels with those for blood clotting time. INR is not a test to determine lifestyle but to prevent thrombosis. The short-term consequences of a cholesterol test are not critical, those of an INR most certainly are, as I'm sure Peter CD and his wife are well aware. The body has a low tolerance of Warfarin and its dosage must be supervised by a doctor. If I were her, I would ask her UK GP for a statement about dosage and target INR to show to any French doctor. If she carries a card with dose information she should take this and the statement to a French GP at the first reasonable opportunity and rely on his advice. Just go along to the nearest GP - or ask neighbours if they recommend one. The cost of the test will not be great, a few euros, and you will be reassured that you will be receiving appropriate advice.