Scalehill

Thanks for the responses.   I did ask him if they were Pine Martens (not sure what Stone Martens are), but he was adamant they were polecats. Shotgun not much use, as I suspect it would turn into a Tom & Jerry scenario with lots of holes in the walls and ceilings, and the polecats comfortably smoking a pipe. I'll pass the info on.   Thanks       ------- Roy

A friend living between Lassay les Chateaux  and Couterne is having problems again with an infestation of polecats. He neds to evict or exterminate the current incumbents, then make the poibts of ebtry secure. he hasnlt been able to locate any local Pest Control operatives but in a, largely, rural economy I'm sure ther must be such a practitioner. Has anybody got any recommendations       -------- Roy

In the event, I didnlt have to bother. Received an unsolicited e-mail today, in English, from the Manager to tell me that the card was there. After a couple of exchanges he's keeping it there for me to collect. Nice one.       --------- Roy            

Thanks everyone.   I had a bit of struggle getting them to send a new cheque book out in the post, but I'll contact them about a new card and see what transpires.     ------- Roy

    I see my card from Credit Mutuel expires at the end of April. In the UK, by now I would have already been sent a replacement. Do I need to contact them to ask for a new one, or should I expect one to arrive soon ?     --------- Roy

Didnlt get mcu joy when phoning the contact number on the site, mainly poor French-English problem. Had more luck e-mailing them. Here's what they said; ------------------ Bonjour, Je fais suite à votre message du 28 septembre. Vous avez effectué correctement la procédure de paiement en ligne et vous serez prélevé le 18 novembre sur votre compte bancaire. J'espère que ces précisions répondent à votre attente. Service Liaison- Recouvrement Trésor Public - NANTES ---------------------------------- So I deduce from that, that payment will indeed be taken without further action from myself. I further deduce that if I DO send the details to my Bank, they'll take it automatically every year. I think.  

Thanks for that Mike. I was thinking that the balance of probabilities was that, if I don't contact the bank, nothing will happen and that I can just send of a cheque and forget about it. Now I think if I do that, I might end up paying twice and never getting it back. Of course if I do nothing and wait for the deadline and no auto payment is taken, I'm going to be due the fine. I thought I'd just about killed off every bad systems designer in the UK. Now I see a whole new euro-challenge opening up in front of me.

  I thought I'd get on the ball and pay my bill online at http://www.impots.gouv.fr I entered my details, had them recognised and the the right amount showed up, and completed the clickthrough process supplying bank details, etc. I thought I'd paid and that was that. Then I got 2 e-mails which confuses me somewhat. The first was; ------------ Vous avez choisi d'adhérer par internet au paiement en ligne pour la taxe d'habitation. Nous vous en remercions. Votre demande a bien été prise en compte sous le numéro 00000000000 Vous trouverez en pièce jointe une autorisation de prélèvement complétée de vos coordonnées bancaires. Après l'avoir datée et signée, il vous appartiendra de l'adresser à votre banque dans les meilleurs délais, accompagnée d'un RIB. Vous recevrez prochainement un courrier de confirmation par voie postale. N° d’enregistrement : 0000000000000     référence de l'imposition : 000000000000 Nature de l’opération : adhésion paiement en ligne taxe d'habitation ---------------------- The second was; ------------------------- Vous avez choisi de télérégler votre impôt par internet et nous vous en remercions. Votre ordre de paiement, dont vous trouverez les caractéristiques ci-après, a bien été enregistré le 27/09/2004 sous le numéro 0000000000000.   Nom : M SCALEHILL Références de l'avis : 00000000000000 Type d'impôt : Taxe d'habitation Coordonnées bancaires : 0000 0000000000 000000000 Somme à payer : 259,00 euros Date limite de paiement : 15/11/2004 Cumul des ordres de paiement déjà donnés : 0,00 euros Montant de l'ordre de paiement : 259,00 euros Conservez ce certificat, il vous sera nécessaire en cas de réclamation. ------------------------------   Are these e-mails telling me that I've authorised the current payment to be taken from my Bank, and then inviting me to set up a Direct Debit for future years, or are they telling me that I've begun the process for paying the current bill by Direct Debit and must send details on to the Bank to complete the process PDQ in order that the tax due is paid on time ?

What did the LF lawyers say about my proposal for posters to rate out of 10 on a forum owner -defined set of criteria, rather  than going off into yards of comment ? My lawyer said it was OK.  

Still haven't seen any movement from the Forum controllers to try and introduce a system whereby contributors could articulate a personal judgment on services without getting into libel waters. It it will, Bill ?

I found only 2 companies when I was looking for a Luton to go abroad. One of them had a charge based on mileage, which soon took it out of price range. I was stuck with using Budget, who charged a flat £100 per day. Try here. http://www.budget.co.uk

I had a similar problem regarding getting the waste pipe across the floor. In addition to raisng the shower slightly to get the fall, I also put in a stud wall about six inches in front of the real one. This gave me the space behind to run the water, waste and radiator pipework. My wall went all the way up. You may get away with a half wall, or even simply boxing in the waste piep along the wall.

If you have a booking with Transmanche, Newhaven/Dieppe, you may wish to phone and check the sailing status before travelling. Last week, arriving for 7.30 am crossing, there was a 3.5 hour delay followed up with a 6-hour crossing. Main reason for potential disruption is that their 2-fleet operation is currently down to 1, with the larger boat being laid up after colliding with the harbour wall at Dieppe. The remaining boat is endeavoring to make all the scheduled crossings. My own long crossing came as a result of engine problems midstream. In fairness to them, they'd nailed the problem by the time I returned and all ws on time, but it doesn't leave much room for manoeuvre when things go awry.

I see a second thread has appeared regarding adverse reports on companies chosen to provide facility services selected, in part, as a result of advertisng in LF. Both those threads have been subject to censorship, on the basis of the 'naming and shaming' policy operated on the forum. The excellent thread posted by Frederic regarding his appalling experience also raised an interesting point regarding the positive in-forum promotion of some facility providers, the potential dangers of that, and the difficulty of being even-handed. Whilst understanding the nature of the problem of content for the owners of this Forum, and the fact that as print-publishers they are in the business of attracting paid advertising, it seesm to me that they would at least wish to have some moral responsibility toward acknowledging that some advertisers sometimes are not all that they crack on to be. It also seems a nonsense that a Forum provided as an information resource does not provide a mechanism for giving full-range feedback, positive or negative, on typical facility services. The current 'You can say that they're good, but not that they're bad' is clearly a poor policy. I have a proposal that could address that. One of the issues on giving qualitiative feedback is that different people use different performance indicators. For example, some people might think a company provided were 'good' service if they received a progress phone call everyday, whilst others might think them 'good' if they heard nothing but had the result . If, however, the performance indicators were laid down in advance then there is an attempt to define a level playing field. So, let's say that Forum contributors were able to provide feedback on a service that they'd received, on an 'out of 10' basis; -------- I recently used XYZ Services to find me a house/lay me some drains and found the following; Customer Service 5/10 Value For Money 8/10 Use Them Again Yes/Maybe/No -------- Now, clearly, this does not enter the realms of libel. It is subjective comment, unqualified, and it serves three purposes; 1. It allows sharing of information that does not take place at present 2. It allows people to 'voice' their satisfaction or lack of it (the latter is usually very important to most people) without getting into the grudge. 3. It gives the magazine publisher an opportunity to monitor the reality of services being offered by an advertiser, something whcih one would assume they'd be pleased to know when considering accepting repeat advertising. Just a thought.

Horses for courses really. Ryanair are great at servicing the out-of-the-way airports like Dinard, but crap at major city flights, where their chosen airports often are so far away from the destination that the extra cab fare far outweighs what you would have spent paying the extra to EasyJet in the first place. When booking ahead, this site is often useful for getting a broadbrush picture of fare patterns; http://www.skyscanner.net but don't rely on it as gospel, as it often misses special offers or even some carriers altogether.

You mention software tools, but you don't mention human management,or lack of it, which is primarily what virus spread is based upon. By that I mean your policy to e-mail/attachments, using preview options in rubbish programmes like Outlook, use of passwords, use of programmes such as P2P, etc, etc. It's no conincodence that virus attached e-mails have gone on to use subject lines which appeal to curious clickers. If you're sure you've taken steps to clean your machine (and that can included emptying the Recycle Bin after running a security utility) and are running the utilities as part of a schedule, then it suggests the re-infection is occuring because of something you, or another user, is doing. perhaps you might consider; Switching e-mail client to something like Pegasus Mail or, indeed, anything except Outlook Setting you e-mail client to auto delete any mail carrying an attachment ending in .vbs .exe, etc Implementing a policy that unsolicited e-mail is deleted without further ado Using a programme such as MailWasher which allows you to view and manage mail on the server, pre-download, before it ever gets to your machine There are many more. Point being that to rely on utilities alone is a dangerous strategy.

Never tried it myself, but a decorator told me they used caustic soda mixed with wallpaper paste, applied to papered walls, which left to act made stripping easier.

I went on it just after launch. Really good, problem free run, and no sea-sickness from those in the party prone to it. Good comfortable seating, adequate fodder, and free video showing in the lounge to help keep the carpet rats amused. Best thing though is the journey time; it makes that route viable. I'll have this as my preferred route and service during the Summer.

You don't need to know much about the medium before you start considering the message. Before you even go near any production tools you should be able to articulate what you need in a Brief. Put together a sheet or two of bullet points under the following headings; Aims & Objectives what's it for ? To attract business, to market a service, to tell people about yourself, to sell goods ? Target Users who's it aimed at. Gender, age group, culture, economic profile, race, location ? User Needs what would make iot attractive/useable. Do your target users make a homogenous group, e.g. computer-literate, non-techie, diaposable income, multi-lingual material ? Content Scope what will be on there. Do you need to educate or inform, take/track orders, provide feedback (forum) or chat, login/logout, lots of text, lots of images, animated material (informative or eye-candy), user forms ? Technical Issues what might be needed. Database support (existng or new),streaming video, FrontPage support, amount of data to transfer (lots of high res images, etc) ? Once you've tried to articualte those ideas, you'll be in a better position to decide whether to learn how to do it all yourself and what level of learning you need, or to get involved with others for assistance in some or all of it. That goes the same for choosing the right software tool to develop in. For a pro tool, only consider Dreamweaver and forget in particular any MicroSoft product. There are also a few highly useable WYSIWIG shareware production tools for under 50. I work as a multimedia consuktant in corporateland, mainly producing specification material based loosely on the above. The more you plan, and resist just piling in and knocking out something/anything, the better your output will be.

? ----------- Amendments Bookings can be amended subject to availability by contacting the call centre by telephone during opening hours (please check call centre information). Please note that an amendment fee of 10 will apply and that if there is a difference between the original fare and the fare for the amended travel you must pay SpeedFerries the difference. ------------ Personally I can't see where any confusion might arise. Hardly hidden in legalese is it ?

Great posting. Let's have a few more like that. It will help ensure that Mayenne doesn't get like Brittany and Haute Normandy, tripping over the awful English everywhere. I like 53 just the way it is. Have to say though that picking Laval and Mayenne Town is enough to put anyone off the region.

Programme on Channel 4 tonight featured exactly this issue. The couple concerned had had their retirement plans ruined when they found that the barn they hoped to convert to a gite could not be used for occupation because it was within 25 metres of a building used to house livestock on the adjacent working farm. Don't know how much was telly drama, but they seemed genuinely to be stuck.

Can anyone advise where one would start the ball rolling, and likely process, of getting a property connected to mains drainage ? Assuming that a house 50 metres away in the village is already connected. Also, likely costs ?