marina

Mobile world from Carphone Warehouse

With LD Lines you get what you pay for, i.e. inferior service. Though if you dare to say that on the Anglo Info Normandy forum you will get torn limb from limb, probably because they are a load of cheapskates who think that Brittany Ferries is part of a conspiracy theory against them and LD Lines is the saviour of the planet. I have used both, and usually go with BF out of choice. The thing in favour of the Newhaven crossings with Transmanche/LD is that they are short. An overnight crossing on the Norman Spirit from Portsmouth is not a nice experience.  Booking in advance or not is a bit of a lottery. I generally find that outside the real peak seasons when the ships are packed out, you will pay no more, possibly a bit less, if you book with Brittany late. Whereas LD Lines will, like Ryanair, load the fares considerably for late bookings, so you will often pay less for the far better BF service.

If you are French resident you have to make a tax return even if you have no tax to pay. In fact it is to your advantage to do so. Once you are eligible for E121 form you will receive, at no extra charge, the same health care that any other French resident past state retirement age would get. That means you would have to take out top up insurance to be fully covered. However if your income is very low you may be entitled to a free top up. Most over 60s have to contribute, at least until they qualify for E121.

The 'making charges easier' thing was a Chirac idea, which might or might not reach fruition under Sarkozy. It all seems to be tied up with having just two bodies, RMI and URSSAF, collecting charges rather than the three (URSSAF and a variety of primary health insurance and old age caisses) which most independents have dealt with up to now. None of these things stop you paying charges, they just hope to make the first couple of years a bit fairer if you do not get much in. The best way to keep charges down regardless of who is in government is to have a good accountant who keeps your income down. Dont fall into the trap that some people have done by thinking that 10% is all you pay to the portage companies, making them a much better deal. You still have to pay the social charges as well, not to mention your tax. Your clients have to be companies that the portage co can invoice, not other individuals. But they can work well for some.

If we share them, they wont be secret any more [:D]

Lindaandrichard - be very careful. If you are offering a house or business for sale in France on behalf of somebody else you have to be profesionally registered as an agent immobiler or notaire. The authorities are hot on 'illegal agents' in some areas.

British buyers are obsessed with prices when it comes to property. To please them you have to sell at a very low price so they can make a big profit when they come to sell it on in a few years. Sorry to generalise, but there is a lot of truth behind my cynical comment. 99% of them want cheap rather than quality. If you want to sell to the British is it because you have heard that British buyers will pay more than French buyers? No longer true I am afraid. The best place for French sellers to meet British buyers is through one of the agencies that specialises in English speaking clients, you will find plenty of names in French Property News for example. But you will need to accept their valuation if you want a sale, and also bear in mind the agency fees which may make the house look less attractive to the price obsessed British. I like your approach to getting round the forum's 'no advertising' rule by the way.  

Has Sarko already outlawed tourist offices speaking English then? That didnt take long [:)]

If UK police power makes you so uneasy I think you will have a shock when you move to France.

Ive never seen any hostility in Wales though I am sure there has been some. I have though seen just the sort of thing that Monaco has posted about directed towards English people in Brittany.

Also Capt Pugwash and his mates Seaman Staines, Master Bates and Roger the Cabin Boy, though they did realise with the last one and changed his name to Jim.

We have a Grundig sky box which is working perfectly on all channels.

Note that many French banks are not really national banks but strings of regional banks, some of which may only have one or two branches, but they share the same name, and some of the products, so it is hardly surprising that there is a lot of variation where charges and policies are concerned. You will find one particular oddity of this is that although you can draw money out of any bank sharing its name with your home bank, it can be very hard to pay money in when you are out of your own region.

...stick it? My suggestion would be up those who do not know the difference between mairie, maire or Marie. But not any of those were handy, so the deed was duly done to a passing...

It is strange, when I put my cursor over the post in the active list, I can see what you wrote, but if I view it in the forum it just shows asterisks. You should be OK writing 'pussycat'.

UK or other non-French wills are mostly useless in France, unless the way you want to distribute your estate is exactly in line with French inheritance law. French law says that if one of you dies then the property is split between the survivor and the kids. If you wanted the survivor to have a legal right to stay in the house this should have been included in the Acte de Vente but you may be able to sort this out, at a cost. If you get on with your kids and you are happy to share ownership of the house with them then you can do a handwritten will which is lodged with a notaire. It is called a testament olographique. The cost of a will like this is small, or nothing, which is why lawyers do not often recommend it. It has just as much legal value as any other. Typical wording can be found here, http://www.lexeek.com/droit/7942-modeles-testaments-olographes/?sres=1 or ask a notaire for words to suit you. You should also remember inheritance taxes which can be high in France.

[quote user="Later"]OK, sticking my my flag in the ground now.  If Sarkozy doesn't get in then, France is in serious trouble. Deep, deep,deep deep in the mire.   [/quote] And trouble (maybe less serious) when he does get in. His reforms may be needed, at least according to him, but I believe every Frenchman will say that the reforms apply to everybody else and will ignore them. The status quo suits most of the French but is unsustainable.  

Quotes from other replies (sorry, I don't know how to do quotes from two or three posts) "Love the wide isles, local seasonal food range of cheeses and fresh fish. Local Auchan had a Jacuzzi full of Lampreys last week. Like the priority check out for expectant mothers and the infirm which people respect. Love being able to park without circling the car park for 10 minutes waiting to pounce on the space when somebody leaves." "I love the lack of screaming undisciplined kids "expressing themselves" Well that just shows how things vary. Apart from the biggest and newest hypermarket, miles away, we get cramped crowded smelly shops with the same old boring stuff year-round, very little fresh goods, and no shortage of unruly kids and trolley rage, especially on Saturdays and market days. "French supermarkets don't sell nearly enough Fairtrade stuff.   Maybe one jar of coffee in your average planet-sized supermarket." Well, that's one think that our area seems to do better. We have whole shelves of fairtrade, usually the same size as the English shelf. I don't see any difference in crowding between French and English. You have to choose the time of day when you go. Give me the 24-hour Asda or Tesco any time, when I do my English shopping there are more shelf fillers than customers. At least Tesco has a decent number of checkouts, and will open more when needed. By the way AR, be careful with those lampreys. Remember what they did to Henry I (a Norman king of England). WJT, you are a person of taste and discrimination, I agree with you.    

That'e right Rumzi. You can find a France to suit any argument. There is the republic built on socialist principles, and the right wing diehard capitalist society; the modern multi-national cities and the old-fashioned rural idyll; and so on. I think many of the non-French in France see only the France they think they moved to, in many cases the France they found on holiday, saw on TV or read about in books and magazines. The other bits of the nation they either havent discovered or they deliberately shut out when it doesn't suit them. The real French do something along the same lines of course, they are the past masters at looking after number one, being capitalist when it suits them, European when it suits them etc. Sorry to get philosophical but I do get fed up with some of the tosh quoted by people who move here and think they are "integrated" but make no attempt to understand how the average Frenchman thinks.

[quote user="Ron Avery"]I read yesterday in a French paper that there was a 20% increase in fatalities over the Easter holiday in France compared to last year with 20 people including many children killed in France.  [/quote] There are a lot more speed cameras in France than there were a year or two ago. Many of them, like my nearest one, on dead straight bits of dual carriageway with no junctions etc nearby. Even more blatant than the British revenue-earners. Brunstrom likes one thing - publicity for himself. He doesn't mind what controversy he courts or what nonsense he spouts as long as he gets in the papers. He was the same in Manchester where he was in charge of policing Old Trafford and came up with many silly ideas about he would deal with non-existent crowd problems. His silly ideas there meant he was known as Superintendent Brainstorm.

The o/p also said (s)he wanted gaz, That's butane/propane, surely?

Fun with Spaniels may have been banned, but you can still get the following titles: The Hound of Music, The Beagle has Landed, Viva a Spaniel, Corgi and Bess, A Quite Short Goat and a Pink Dalmatian, Al Satians to Crewe,  Red Setters in the Sunset, Borzoi Ballet, The Official Retriever, A Tail of Two Setters, The Borzoi's Back in Town, Beagles Bangles and Beads, Spaniel in the Lion's Den, Beyond our Cairn, Wolfhound Amadeus Mozart, Irritable Bowwow Syndrome, Sitting with my dog on display, Roverdance, Bark Odes, Waiting for Dogot, Pekinese up Mother Brown, Man and Doberman - among many others. See http://www.mrsackroyd.com  

Sorry Val. but the idea of the testing department in the lavatory factory is just too amusing for words. It conjures up all sorts of Carry-on images.

It is not true for British, so I don't see why it should be right for Americans. It just shows that you can't always believe what one official tells you, you need to get several answers. Or get the one that suits you in writing and signed.

EDIT Marina said "- it IS scarily nearer the truth than one would like" No I didn't, but something I did say has been attributed to somebody else, so I am probably seeing a different version of the forum from some others. Otherwise I agree with you Ron.