nomoss
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Posts posted by nomoss
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[quote user="Geordie girl"]
I do that too, my french neighbours gave me that tip. Having said that it`s the same french neighbour who supplied us with 2 dozen empty wine bottles to scatter about the lawn to deter the moles. Wind whistling around the neck of the bottles apparently. Didn`t work though.
I think it was easier for him than going to the dechetterie
[/quote]
Story probably put around by the same person who suggested putting bottles half filled with water outside the house to stop dogs urinating there. Several of our neighbours do this, with no noticeable effect on the dogs' habits.
In Spain they sprinkle sulphur powder on the side of the house, with the same results.
Bicarbonate of Soda sprinkled on the floor in doorways does get rid of cockroaches however.
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It is possible the paint stripper has a built-in protection device which cuts off the power if it gets too hot.
Appliances for domestic use are often rated only for intermittent use, which implies switching them off periodically to allow them to cool down, and not for continuous duty.
This information should be on the nameplate and/or in the instruction manual.
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Before any more people call the UK Pension Service in connection with the article in February "French News", expecting a bonanza.
If you don't have French News, the article originally appeard in LFN Digestive, available here http://lfn.org.uk/ by suscribing to it.
We just contacted the Pension service, and the information in the article, which quotes Liberal Democrat MP Steve Webb, is apparently erroneous, in that the increase is not back paid from the year in which the age of 60 was reached.
I think the information is also on Mr Webb's webbsite.
It is now possible for women over 60, with a reduced pension, to make backdated payments up to the year in which they reached 60, but the increase in pension is only back paid from the date on which the payments are received.
Cost is about £300 for each year back paid, and the increase for each year is around £1.50, so it takes about 4 years to break even, if you are still around.
Not surprisingly the Pension Service have had several enquiries this morning
Edit: Add details missed out.
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But don't forget the cost of the approved type invertor and associated equipment to tie into the grid, installation by an approved engineer, plus that of the inevitable EDF inspection of the installation.
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[quote user="Ron Avery"]
Good points nomoss, but one big assumption is the people who have allegedly told these "facts" by French officials are telling the truth or more likely its what they thought they heard or wanted to believe was being told to them due to translation and language difficulties.............................................................................Small point, you don't have CMU membership under an E 121. You are covered by the general medical cover scheme, THE CMU is for inactives not the disabled or pensioners............................................................. By the way seems a waste of money having a PHI in the UK, exactly when and under what circumstances do you expect to use it? As soon as they find out you are no longer NHS covered by the issue of your E 121 you would not be covered in the UK and it won't be valid in France either will it?
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I would never suggest anyone on this Forum was not telling the truth. My suggestions were for anyone unsure of their command of French.
Thanks for the correction, I should, of course, have written "Assurance Maladie"
I did not say our PHI is UK based. It is valid worldwide, and as I said, we keep it "just in case".
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Quillan said :- "Out of the two people I know personally one completes a French tax return (7 years) and the other does not (5 Years). The latter is ex services and has asked for a tax form on more than one occasion and has been told no because of his UK military pension is his only source of income and as it is taxed in the UK completing a French tax return is pointless"
I believe there is a point to be made here, although not much help to people already suffering problems due to being misinformed.
This is to insist that verbal advice and information given by an official, whether of CPAM or the Tax Office, should be written down and signed by the official, recorded by a suitable third party at the time of an interview, or copies of all correspondence kept if consultation is by letter or email. Advice received verbally or by telephone is useless in this respect if any reference needs to be made to it in the future.
Those with insufficient command of French should get English-speaking professional help, whether or not they think they understand their rights and obligations.
Unfortunately, all tax officials and CPAM advisors are not necessarily au fait with all points of tax law, and the relationships between taxes paid, Contributions Sociales, health cover, local taxes, etc., especially those pertaining to foreign residents, and may unwittingly give the wrong information.
I made an error in my tax return for 2004, which resulted in my tax and RFR being wrong. I sent an email about this to my tax office. The official who replied corrected the tax, but his calculation resulted in the wrong RFR. When I queried this he replied that it didn’t matter, as I had no tax to pay anyway. I pointed out that the RFR affected other payments I had to make, and after 10 emails back and forth, over a period of two months, he sorted it out courteously and correctly.
I am quite sure I would not have achieved this over the telephone or through a meeting, as I had to continually refer to the stack of information I had available, which would have been quite difficult in a direct discussion, and I would have had no record of the discussion.
By the way, we have CMU via our E121’s but we still maintain the private health cover we took out in 1985 – just in case.
Edits 16.06: correct para. spacing. 16:23: Add quote
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Possibly quite humane killing design :-
Plenty more on eBay
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Hello Tandem Pilot
You can register to pay on line at any time if you have your Numéro Fiscal and your bank details. You may be able to pay this year's taxes on line together with the late payment charge, but possibly these would only be available on line if you were already registered when the demands were issued.
If they do appear online, you can get the document reference number, required for payment, from the copy of it in your Espace abonné there.
It is worth a phone call or a letter to your Centre des Impôts explaining that you have not received the demand(s). I found them very helpful in similar circumstances.
It is possible to have the demands sent to any address in or out of France. I believe it is actually an obligation to provide an address where you can be contacted. I had all my tax demands sent to various addresses outside France for several years. This only requires a letter, possibly with a utility bill copy showing UK address.
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Whilst our daughter was enjoying her 5th birthday party with her friends, my son, aged 3, was apparently feeling a bit left out of the celebrations.
Eventually he remarked defiantly "When I grow up, I'm going to be SIX!"
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Hi Barbel Bob,
As Gyn_Paul said
[quote user="Gyn_Paul"]Phones:
In the UK the 2-wire incoming signal is on pins 2 (of 6) and 5 (of 6).
p
[/quote]So connect the incoming 2 wires to terminals 2 and 5 of the master socket (there may be 2 wires on each terminal if the line continues to another phone outlet in the house) and plug your phone into the socket.
You can add master sockets for each of the UK phones you want to use.
Or use one master socket and regular sockets for the other phones, and use one of the spare coloured wires in the existing cable to connect all their no. 3 terminals.
I simply mounted my UK sockets adjacent to the existing French socket(s).
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I've not seen any coloured sleeving used here. The only coloured sleeving my local electrical wholesaler has is heat-shrink sleeving, which is quite expensive. I'm sure someone has it tho'.
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Try Googling "telephone master socket"
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Believe it or not, red wire was used for earth on Italian equipment some years ago (ca 1970), as I discovered when our workers complained about getting shocks from Italian-made hand held equipment they were using. The plugs had been replaced to fit our outlets, and the red wire, not unreasonably for someone not aware of this, had been connected to live.
Was your boiler maybe made long ago in Italy?
I suggest you trace where the red wire goes to from the switch connection. If it does go to earth you should replace it with a yellow/green wire, or tape it with yellow/green electrical tape.
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Thanks, Paul, for your clear explanation.
I wish you (and the web) had been around back then.[:)]
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Hi Sid. Seems the BT system changed since I had my problems getting UK equipment to work. That was several years ago.
I was stuck with a very expensive fax machine that didn't work,and even the supplier didn't know why.
Eventually, after many phone calls I found a telephone engineer in UK who knew the answer, and I had someone there mail me some of the appropriate master sockets. I was using one in this house until I junked an old UK phone recently.
In the system explained to me the 2 wires from the line went to the master socket, then 3 wires went from it to the other ordinary phone sockets, the extra wire being for the ring. To avoid connecting the extra wire I simply used a master socket for each piece of equipment.
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[quote user="sid"][quote user="nomoss"]
This is why UK phones and other telephone line equipment, such as fax machines, don't detect calls when connected to a French telephone line. They can be made to work by connecting a UK master box to the line, into which they can then be plugged.
[/quote]
My UK phone works fine here... it rings and I can even make calls on it! [geek]
Sid
[/quote]
Hi Sid. It is some years since I brought my phone, answer phone and fax machine from UK and had to then get master boxes from the UK to make them ring or respond to calls (although I could make calls on them without one).
Evidently, since yours works correctly here, UK phones, or at least some of them, now use the same system as here.
I would be interested to know how your UK phone is connected to the French line. Is it just wired to a French phone plug, or are you using an adapter?
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[quote user="Bugbear"]
As someone with all those categories SD, do you know the timescales for medicals and more importantly, will a medical certificate be required on the date of renewal or following a request from the licencing authority as in the UK.
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I received my first French licence on 27/3/07. Expiry dates for the vehicle categories are :-
A - None
B - None
C - 07/9/08
D - 27/3/08
EB - 27/9/08
EC - 27/3/08
ED - 27/3/08
"C" puzzles me a bit, maybe a misprint. Otherwise it seems they have given me 18 months for the lighter categories and a year for the heavy ones.
I intend visiting the Prefecture next time we go to the smoke to find out if I have to have 3 medicals next year. A neighbour told me he would not be surprised if this were the case.
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[quote user="ErnieY"]
Can I just dispel an misconceptions I think you may be under................
Without going into deep technical detail there is no voltage on a telephone line unless it is ringing therefore no power to operate a device.
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Hi Ernie. Your telephone line may be different, of course, but mine and others I have checked have 50 volts dc between the 2 wires. An ac signal is superimposed on this for the "ring" to occur.
Incidentally, this signal passes through a "ring detect" circuit before it operates the "bell". The ring detect circuit is in the "master box" on all (or most) UK systems, but is in the telephone in many other countries including France.
This is why UK phones and other telephone line equipment, such as fax machines, don't detect calls when connected to a French telephone line. They can be made to work by connecting a UK master box to the line, into which they can then be plugged.
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[quote user="J.R."]
To expand on the "control wire"
There is actually a "volt free" or "dry" relay contact on the EDF compteur that changes state from normally open to closed during the heures creuses.To make use of it you run not one, but two wires from your tableau, the first takes mains voltage from a 2 ampere disjoncteur to one leg of the single pole relay contact, the second wire brings back the voltage (during HC when the contact is closed) to activate the contacteur jour/nuit on the tableau which in turn feeds the hot water heating element via its own disjoncteur.
You would need to buy if they are not already present the 2 ampere disjoncteur and the contacteur, it is not that hard to do if you are reasonably competent at electrics, if you are not sure than leave it to a proffessional.
I actually have a second triphase contacteur wired in parrallel that I use to supply 3 seperate night storage heating circuits, it cost less and takes up less space on the tableau than 3 seperate ones.
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And if you don't understand that you should get an electrician to do the job.
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[quote user="Sunday Driver"]
Just an additional point...
In order to benefit from the automatic switch-on during HC hours, you need to have had a control wire installed in your system - the electricity supplier sends a signal down it to activate/deactivate your appliance(s) at the appropriate times. Without this, you'd need a manual timer.
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The control wires have to be connected to a relay in the distribution panel which controls the supply to the circuit breakers (/fuses) for the appliances which you wish to use only during the off-peak period.
The relays are available from electrical and some bricolage outlets, but should only be installed by a qualified electrician.
If you have a "Tempo" meter, this has provision for two control wires, one for the water heater, the other for the house heating system, and six tariffs. This meter option may now no longer be available, the settings for it have disappeared from EDF's website, but if you have one, you should probably hang on to it, especially if you have air conditioning.
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I think the Gov't are being pretty magnanimous. All anyone needs to do to is "develop an unforeseen medical condition, which prevents them from being able to obtain private health insurance" and they're away.........
Anyway, how many people develop a medical condition which they expected?
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Solely from observation, I had concluded :-
Amber = Accelerate
Red = Stop, provided the vehicle in front of you stops
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I don't think there's any problem building it yourself, but you should submit a form, available from your Mairie :-
Déclaration de Travaux Exemptes de Permis de Construire ou Déclataion de Clôture
Backdated UK Pension Increases - French News Article
in French Legal Issues
Posted
Thank you for your response, Mr Webb. We would have contacted you via the email address on your website, but it stated there that this is only for use by your constituents.
My wife called to enquire about paying the years 96/97 and 97/98, what increase she would get, and the total of the back payments of her pension she would receive.
She called the first number quoted in the French News article, 00448456060265. She was told that they did not deal with this, and gave her another number, 00448453021479, which turned out to be an HMRC helpline.
There she was told that she could pay only 1996/7, as she reached 60 (just) before April 5 1998, which would cost £309.40. They could not tell her how much pension increase would result, nor anything about back payment of this, and gave her another number to call, 00448453013011.
On calling this last number, she was told that paying 1996/7 would increase her pension by between £1.50 and £1.60 per week, but that no increased pension payment would be due for any period before the date on which such a payment was received.
On stating that she had been led to believe that any increase in her pension would be back paid from her 60th birthday, the gentleman asked her if she got this information from the French News. She confirmed this, and he replied that he had received other calls as a result of the article, and that they would be contacting Mr Webb about the information.
As it happens, after wading through some of the information we have, since both our pensions are determined by contributions made both in UK and other EU countries, and are also interdependent, any increase in my wife’s pension would affect other calculations for our UK and EU pensions. From bitter experience we have decided that this could result in a decrease in the total of our pensions, so will not pursue the matter.
This does not alter the fact that the gentleman she spoke to completely dismissed the information in the French News article, nor that pensions paid seem to be the result of esoteric calculations and individuals' own knowledge of what they are entitled to claim.
Nor should it be necessary for people to go through administrative hoops in order to get pensions and other benefits to which they are entitled. Changes in pension payments we receive from other EU countries have been made with no necessity for us to make any claims apart from our initial applications.