SueM

Gite owners who complain about forking out £27 for a new unbrella when receivng a cheque - for  profits - of £18,000 Sue M Geddit!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re Norfolk Houses - it was his first year of having one house for dog owners and I think he was surprised at the level of occupation. Sue M

Because they take up too much room on the bed. As for your other question, who knows. Maybe we won't take any guests without dogs. Sue M

Reading some of the comments - those from people who didn't want to provide towels, or who charged -  reminded me of a conversation we had whilst staying inland from St Tropez. The gite owner, who looked after other peoples gites recounted how he had just given a cheque for about £18,000 to a villa owner who complained at the deduction of £27 for a new umbrella. We've stayed in gites for the last 30 years and have had good and bad experiences. A French gite with only tiny coffee cups to drink from and an enormous cook's knive and no other kitchen knives, cracks around the walls that daylight could be seen through and mould on the shower curtain. It did have a fig tree which was some  compensation. Last year, 8 of us stayed in a gite in Honfleur. We arrived to find a heap of dirty bed linen on the kitchen table, unmade beds and no clean linen. We had paid for this service. Check in time was from 4.30 and the English owners, in England, were uncontactable until 6.30. Eventually 2 teenage girls turned up with clean sheets and left us to make the beds. This year some friends were invited to stay for a week as part of a 60th birthday celebration. The birthday couple had hired a gite for 14 for 4 weeks and, whilst linen was provided, there was only one set which was meant to last for the whole of their stay. This gite was quite cheap (e1400 per week) so I guess you get what you pay for. Sue M  

We're hoping to do some b & b and will also have a small gite  when our house is completed and we intend taking dogs. We have 2 of our own which have free reign of the house, apart from bedrooms. What prompted this decision was talking to the owner of a b & b in Norfolk. He had 2 small houses on the coast, one of which was available to people with dogs. This property was vacant for only 4 days last year, compared with the other, of a similar size, where occupation was a lot less. There are a lot of dog owners out there who haven't travelled abroad on holiday because they don't like to leave their pets in kennels and so it is a reasonably  new market to be tapped. I'm not sure yet how we'll work it but I suppose we will designate some rooms as being permanently dog free for those people with allergies. Sue M

Try highlights, in 2 or 3 different colours - lighter and/or brighter than your natural colour. Roots don't show so badly. Re makeovers - try the scarf trick. Get a 2 or 3 other women. No make up. 1 sits in from of a mirror and you drape different colour fabrics around her neck. The one sitting in front of the mirror will notice the difference that colours make but those observing will be more aware how some colours can deaden and some lift your skin tones. The end result is that people will say how nice you look rather than how nice your dress etc looks. Sue M

A big thank you to Kathy C for her comments. It's good to know that there's at least one other person out there who I can agree with. To those who deny that property inflation is unearned income, how do they explain the following:. 20 years ago we left London to move to Suffolk. The Suffolk house cost the same as our London house was sold for. Now, our house is worth 5 times its purchase price but my salary has increased by about 30%. My husband is a self employed furniture restorer and his hourly rate has also increased by about 30%.  All we've done to earn that increase in value is pay the mortgage, maintain the property  and sit back and watch it grow in value. Obviously, I'm not complaining about the increase in value of our house. Nor am I complaining about the low salary which  is the price we paid for an improved quality of life. Another little illustration, apropos IHT.. My parents owned one house during their lives. The deposit for this was paid from compensation my mother received for catching encaphalitis (and nearly dying) whilst working as a part time nurse in the fifties. Fifteen or so years later, my father, an only child, inherited his mother's house. By this time we ( there are 4 of us) were adults and working with varying degrees of success/reward. He spent a large chunk of this on a Saab Turbo, at that time (late seventies) quite a special car. We didn't begrudge him this, we thought good on you. None of us thought that he's spending our inheritance and thus depriving us. He also lent 2 of us deposits for our houses and there were various treats for us all. My parents had 2 or 3 years to enjoy this money before my father died  of cancer when he was 55. My mother was already in the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease. She lived for another 10 years. Eventually their house was sold and most of the proceeds were used to pay for her care (in addition to her pension) This is life.Stuff happens. I regret my parents dying at relatively young ages and I was in my early thirties but it never occurred to me to complain that my inheritance was depleted. I am grateful that I received a good education, enjoyed my childhood and felt secure in their support when I left home. We all make choices - in our case we haven't been ambitious, nor did we want a job for life. We now see the consequences of this as our friends start to retire on quite good pensions, whilst we know that we have to continue to earn a living.  Such is life. For those of you who are so bothered about IHT - downsize, set up trusts for your grandchildrens' education, take holidays, take your children and their families on holiday, leave some money to your favourite charities, spend it but don't moan about something that you will not have to pay yourselves out of your own income. Finally, for those who are still under the misapprehension that pension contributions come out of taxed income, they don't. If you are in an employer's scheme, the contributions are deducted from your gross earnings, before income tax is calculated. If you are paying into your own pension scheme, the contributions are paid net of tax - the government is making up the difference. Sue M  

He didn't wipe out quite all the income............. UK pension funds have suffered, to a large extent,  from ineffective or unscrupulous management. Many funds have taken pension holidays, so that no contributions were made, in some instances for several years. Company directors have syphoned money from pension funds to add capital to the parent company. You mention IHT - what's so wrong with that? It is a tax upon the living not the dying  It is the benficiaries who suffer IHT. Would you rather that income taxes were increased in order that people who inherit their parents' house or other assets can do so free of taxes? I know that older people worry about being able to leave something to their children and often deprive themselves in order to to do that. All my firends (the post war baby boom generation) have a different attitude. They have educated their children to the best of their abilities, some have helped with housing, some have paid for weddings or supported their children financially inother ways. Leaving property to their children is the last thing on their minds.  Some of us have already inherited from parents. Our inheritances have been used to buy second homes in France or caravans, cars, boats etc etc etc. Because we didn't work for that money, most of us don't begrudge any IHT paid. That's not necessarily because we are altruistic but because it's money that has arrived in our bank accounts without us having to work for it.  One of the reasons we are moving to France is to get away from the people who moan about taxes etc etc. Since we have to continue to work past the pension age, I have been researching French taxes. Overall, they seem to be higher than those suffered in the UK, which may be why there are thousands of French people living and working in London.  

In the discussion about pensions, many of you are forgetting that tax relief was given on pension contributions. In the seventies, this could have been as much as 80%. Following the Tories reduction in higher rate taxes, many people would still have been receiving tax relief at 60%. In any event, all contributions into pension schemes, whether in the  state or private sectors, obtain tax relief. Now that relief is given at source, perhaps present day contributors don't notice  it. It is because of the tax relief given in building up the pension pot in the first place  the income derived from that pot is taxed. Most of you have complained about Gordon Brown but it is this government that have tried to make things more equitable by reducing tax relief on pension contributions to the basic rate.  SueM        

Having signed up yesterday, I thought I'd while away some hours at work reading the post bag. There are the occasional references to useful information being received but the vast majority of messages appear to be sniping at other correspondents and it is extremely boring. I can only assume that there are a lot of sad people out there, with nothing better to do so I guess I'll have to look elsewhere for useful information. SueM

I've been looking through the post bag for TVA on newbuild and can only find references to TVA on barn conversions and renovations. We've bought a plot of land and are about to have a house built - using an architect and contractors. Can we register for TVA and claim the tax back - in the same way as you can if self-building in the UK ? The only books I've been able to find deal mainly with renovations and don't address the subject of TVA on new buildings in any great detail so any advice would be greatly appreciated. SueM.