hastobe

Congrats Ali!!!!!!!!   Its finally yours [:)]......now how about that coffee? (We should be over next week for a few days [:)]) Kathie

[quote user="cooperlola"]Kathy, my mother, who brought the two of us up, and also worked part time, is now 85 and living on her (meagre) NHS pension.  How could she have possibly known, Teamedup, that she would be divorced at the age of 40, and then have had to make her own way having not paid into a pension up until that point?  Yes, women were "given the option" (hah,hah) but does anybody really know what awaits them in life and in that generation most expected to be cared for by their husband's provision.  Short-sighted?  Hmm, possibly.  But it was, as Kathy says, a generation thing.  So many of my contemporaries got divorced, that it never occured to me to do anything other than pay as much into my own pension fund as possible so I would never - and will never - have to rely on that of my OH.  But I have my mother's experience to draw upon.  In the past the advice, and the wealth of experience of such things, was not so great.[/quote] Any divorce settlement now will split  include a settlement in respect of the pension fund.  It is acknowledged that men usually have far better pension provisions than women due to the fact that the female partner will have had time away from work raising children.  The split can either be as a cash settlement (either kept or transferred to the wife's pension fund) or a future right to a share of the husband's pension.  The danger with the latter route is that if the woman marries again she will forfeit that right.  (The above applies to protect the husband if he has the lower pension fund) ....so then you end up with two people on low pensions.....[:)] Kathie

[quote user="catalpa"][quote user="Russethouse"]I know someone who kept saying her eBaying was a hobby - the French taxman did not agree [/quote] I think I read somewhere - maybe on LF - that the French tax authorities' interest in EBay transactions is why Ebay France has not been the success it has been in other countries. I've no idea how accurate that is. [/quote] HMRC are very interested in the ebay activities of UK residents.... Kathie

Certainly in the UK, hobby income is not necessarily taxable (or conversely, losses incurred deductible).  In the UK it would depend on a number of factors, inter alia - the intent, the organisational approach to the activity, the frequency and nature of the receipts and profits etc. Kathie

[quote user="PossumGirl"] As to potatoes, try roasting them in duck or goose fat.  You will be astonished and will never want to do them any other way! PG [/quote] I agree - when we have tinned confit (which the kids love) we freeze the excess duck fat to use for roast potatoes. Kathie

[quote user="Loiseau"]Yes, I always use Clarcyl too - you beat me to it, Eslier! And Eparcyl (sachets of grey powder) to keep it happy.  When I arrive after a long absence, I put two packets down, and thereafter just one, about once a week, or whenever I think of it. Angela [/quote] I think the amount of Eparcyl depends on the number of 'users' so if we have a large group at the house I chuck an extra sachet down just to be sure.. Kathie

I would echo what has been said above - we have taken our laptop to France and had no problems at all (except when the house flooded and water got into the power supply - but that's a whole other story LOL!) Kathie

House swaps is what we are doing at the moment, KathyC- and we think its a great way to travel.  It means the kids can visit (more) fun places (in their opinion!) to France but our holidays still only cost us the price of the travel tickets. Our main holiday this year is a swap with a family from Iceland (the choice of the boys who want to see glaciers, geysers and whales!).  We plan to continue doing this even when we do retire, as it's a very cost effective and fun way of travelling.  Having had very full careers we think we are going to find the transition to retirement hard (after the initial few weeks of tranquility!) never mind a retirement to a relatively quiet French rural backwater!  Bizarrely, though our current swaps are all with our UK home rather than our French one - so our French home still isn't 'providing' the bulk of our holidays for the next couple of years - so our French house will still be sitting idle!  Hopefully, this will change in the future as it is more of a pain to swap your main home - and we would then feel the French house was at least being used more - albeit not directly by us. My upbringing was always 'not to waste anything' - and it does irk to have the house idle but as others have said, we are very reluctant to have the hassle of letting the house.  We wondered if we were the exception in this regard, as we read so often on here of people buying with the sole purpose of trying to make an income from rentals. Its reassuring to know that many others are in the same boat!  We really love our house - and wouldn't wish to sell.  (Plus the transactions costs in France are so high we would really lose out!) I guess we need more holidays....and no kids [:-)] Kathie

Seems we are not alone - either with our french home or our kids!!!   I have to be honest, we would be very reluctant to sell - even if we only made it for a couple of weeks a year.  We now wonder if, perhaps, we would have been better waiting 'til we had retired but we didn't so... My brother and his wife are using the house for a week or so early this summer - and we hope to visit for a week ourselves later on so that's a couple weeks or so this year.  Hopefully we can get another weeks visit at Easter - we just go when we can. Unfortunately, living in Normandy wouldn't help us much, Pierre, as we are a five hour drive from Calais.  France is a long journey for us - which ever part we went to - so we thought we may as well go where we liked! Kathie

[quote user="Anton Redman"]At the risk of raising false hopes I thought this was one of the areas where there had been serious medical progress both in life expectancy and quality of life over the last 20 years. Might be worth googling and seeing what the latest is.  [/quote] My sister is a specialist nurse for patients with Huntingdons and, as far as I'm aware, the care available is palliative / respite care - essentially making their time and passing as easy as possible.  Its a truly horrible disease - my sister has patients as young as 16 who have been diagnosed with it - and if you have watched family members die - it must make it even more horrible.  My heart goes out to your friend's family, Tony. Kathie

[quote user="Dick Smith"][quote user="hastobe"]...still refer to us as 'les anglais'.  Again, no doubt a 'cultural thing' but one we still find offensive. [/quote] Although I understand and agree with the rest of the post, I take 'anglais' as complimentary rather than offensive. Just think what you could be called [;-)] (I know, it's the sense in which it is meant rather than the word itself) [/quote] Sorry Will - I was always brought up to use someone's name to address them (if I knew it).  It's just common courtesy. Kathie

[quote user="You can call me Betty"][quote user="Jon"] Austalia (in population terms) is a small nation surrounded by much larger ones. France is not. Her only larger neighbour is Germany. The Netherlands, Scandinavia are also small nations and they consequently have become very adept at speaking the language of larger neighbours - it makes good business sense after all. [/quote] I assume that your reference to Australia as a "big" nation in linguistic terms refers to the fact that Australians speak English? I can't tot up the numbers of French speakers in the world, but I don't think it leaves France as a linguistic "also ran" by any standards. [/quote] Exactly - and that is what Jon was implying when he made the comparison...

Question for second home owners...   How often (i.e. weeks per year)  do you get to visit your French home?  If your time in your French home was limited - at what point would you consider selling (i.e. consider that the house was no longer worth keeping)?   Does anyone have a house that they have only bought for retirement but in fact rarely visit? Is letting a second home really worthwhile?   We didn't buy with the intention of letting but rather as a place to retire to (OH retires in five years time) but in the meantime using the house as a holiday / second home.  However, a combination of work commitments, family issues and the kids vociferous pronouncements that they dislike France and all things French (our children are teenagers who have holidayed many times in France but now consider France to be 'boring') means we are hardly spending any time at the house - or are likely to until we retire.  We thought about letting the house but are very leary about longer term lets.  The short holiday season, hassle of letting, potential damage to property - together with agents fees and tax (we are both higher rate tax payers in the UK) makes its seem hardly worth the return to consider shorter lettings.  The main aim is still that it is our retirement place - but it seems such a waste to have the house empty for 50 weeks of the year. We wondered if anyone else had found themselves in this situation? Kathie

[quote user="Jon"] Austalia (in population terms) is a small nation surrounded by much larger ones. France is not. Her only larger neighbour is Germany. The Netherlands, Scandinavia are also small nations and they consequently have become very adept at speaking the language of larger neighbours - it makes good business sense after all. [/quote] France is no longer a 'big' nation in linguistic terms (certainly not when compared with Australia) - I think it more to do with a general attitude of the French about their language.  Its not that long ago, after all, that we saw Chirac throwing his dummy out over English being chosen as the language of preferece at EEC meetings...... Kathie

We have seen something of what wen describes.  An elderly couple in our village won't attempt to listen any French spoken to them by English people.  This are probably in their early eighties and have a calor gas sales depot in the village - although depot is perhaps an exaggeration.  They sell only a few gas bottles now (all the old style)  but they do get some customers still....  If ever any English knock on for gas all you hear (even if they ask in perfect French - an often before the English person has even had chance to open their mouth) is a yell of 'les anglais' to our other neighbour (who is French but bilingual). Imagine if I ran a shop and everytime any asians / poles etc came to buy something from me, before they even opened their mouths, I yelled to my neighbour (who I knew spoke Urdu / Polish etc) - 'Pakis' or 'Poles' - how rude!!    I wouldn't dream of doing it - it's insulting and offensive. Similarly, we find the way these neighbours behave is insulting and offensive.  We would add, though, that we have found this behaviour to be exceptional - for the most part our efforts to speak french have been welcomed and we have been helped - but there are a minority who won't try to listen to what you say.  (As an aside I find references to 'les anglais' similarly rude.  Even though many people know our names (we have socialised with them regularly, babysat their children etc etc) the still refer to us as 'les anglais'.  Again, no doubt a 'cultural thing' but one we still find offensive. Kathie

He lives in Shropshire - that's miles from Liverpool! Kathie

[quote user="LanguedocGal2"][quote user="sugarfree"]   We will have no mortgage payments.  4,000 euros  a month is not a huge sum (by UK standards) but a lot of people in France manage to live very well on considerably less than that. [/quote] Sorry, but am I the only one who finds this statement a little odd?  4000 euros/ roughly £2500 a month in the UK without mortgage or rent to pay.  Personally, I think the average Brit would be delighted and live comfortably on that too. [/quote] I guess it depends on what you're used to in the UK - for some that would be a pretty big drop in income - it's all relative.  I find these 'how much do I need to live on questions daft'  - what one persons idea of living well is another's idea of pergatory and vice versa.  It's an impossible question. Kathie

I was quite amused with the comments that suggested that children should learn to speak welsh etc rather than french, spanish etc.  As a child I couldn't understand why I had to learn french and (so I am told) frequently asked my parents why I couldn't learn Welsh instead so that when we went 'abroad' (to Wales!)  I would be able to read the road signs etc!  I honestly never dreamed of being able to go as far as France and thought the time spent learning French was pointless. I had to drop French after a couple of years (our school syllabus was quite restrictive so it was science or languages).  I never missed having French lessons - didn't get to visit France (or any other French speaking country) for more than fifteen years after and forgot most of the French I learned at school - with the exception of a few songs and the history of the Basque area - which I had found interesting (probably because it was a distraction from stupid verbs!).  When we did start holidaying there with the children I still never found that I needed much more than the phrases I could find in my little travellers phrase book.  My sister has never visited France - and has no desire to. Neither have my parents. Since we developed more of an interest in France (and more recently bought a home) the need for French has become greater and so we have had private lessons every week for the last 15 months.  I can now read and write pretty well, chat regularly in French to a number of (french) friends on msn - and am frequently told my French is excellent (though I would debate that!!) To learn anything there has to be a desire to learn - a purpose.  I can understand the point made above - that children should start to learn another language at an early age as it is, irrefutably, easier this way but this does presume that all children 'need' a second language - they don't.  Although derided above, for some children the time would be better spent learning to speak English properly - or learning to make a pizza, handle finances - or a saw and screwdriver.  Although I was denied the chance of learning French (to any useful level) at school, I don't resent the fact at all.  What I do resent is the fact I was taught my own language so badly it has made it much harder to learn a second language - when I needed to. Kathie

Out of interest - how long ago did you live in London? Kathie

[quote user="KathyC"][quote user="Jon"] 1) Which language would British pupils be best advised to learn. French? German? Spainish? Something from the PRC? They cannot learn them all... [/quote] Personally I'd like to see them learning English properly! Joking apart, if you have a proper grasp of the grammatical structures of your own language and some understanding of the derivation of  vocabulary it can facilitate the learning of foreign languages at any stage in the future. [/quote] That is so true KathyC - if you don't know what the future conditional is in English how on earth are you supposed to understand it in French?  We were horrified at our children's lack of understanding of English grammer and are now teaching it at home - and I'm sure our children aren't unusual. Kathie

[quote user="wen"] Notice though I did not say 'British' but 'English'. [/quote] Which is odd because I am proud to be English - but not British.  I think that has also been one of the big criticisms of the propsed 'Britishness classes' - people associate more with being English, Welsh etc - than being British. Kathie

[quote user="Gluestick"]Another thing most do not know, in a business sense, is that the professional costs of defending oneself againt any investigation, unfair, incorrect assessment, are in themselves not a tax qualified expenditure for a business: these costs must be defrayed from Taxed Income! [/quote] I know of one business that spent over £2m - proving they were completely innocent of all charges - non deductible of course... Kathie

If you keep a property in the UK then, even if you only spend a few months of the year there, you may not lose your UK domicile for inheritance tax purposes - particularly if you have UK source income (i.e. UK pensions etc).  Just worth bearing in mind.. Kathie

If your background experience before coming to France was living in the UK wen, I could well understand your point.  In our local hospital you are lucky to find leaflets in English - however, there are millions of the things in urdu, hindi, bengali, punjabi - in fact our hospital has dedicated staff available to translate into urdu... So maybe its a cultural thing - or French being behind the UK again?? Kathie

Thing is though Britain came out much higher economically - so the Brits can afford to have a home in both countries whilst the French can barely afford to exist in France....at least that's how it is in our hameau.... Kathie