Madeira Jon

allanb Archers financial dealings were well reported during his trial for perjury. I don't make claims which are not in the public domain.  Surely you must have read about this!:- http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/archers-fall-mep-urges-fraud-squad-inquiry-over-kurdish-cash-678499.html This is part of the relevant paragraph:- Any Inland Revenue inquiry will focus on claims made by Michael Stacpoole, a friend and factotum of Archer. Mr Stacpoole has described how he smuggled in wads of cash from Jersey at the instruction of Archer. Mr Stacpoole said he would pick up the money from an offshore account in the island and bring it in hidden in pockets of his overcoat. Mr Stacpoole maintains that he was responsible for delivering between £7,000 and £ 15,000 a month to Archer, who boasted he had more than £1m there. Archer claimed the proceeds were from his best-selling books and he was not doing anything illegal. However, an Inland Revenue official said last night: "Now that the perjury trial is over, and considering its outcome, there is absolutely no reason why an investigation should not take place. If that happens we shall obviously expect Mr Stacpoole's cooperation. After all he has gone public with his account." And its obvious that the Inland Revenue believe its was TAX EVASION.

I certainly agree with Ron. If I may add to that we are talking about "greedy" and dare I add "immoral" bankers. Its only a couple of years ago they were receiving their bonuses in credit chits for works of art, so that they didn't pay income tax; they simply exchanged the chits for money. Also an Investment manager from a Barlcays Investment Fund (I forget which one) was on a salary of £15,000,000 per year and in the year 2006 received a bonus of £53,000,000! No, the noughts as correct. The salaries of the Funds staff accounted for 80% of its profits, the remaining going to its investors. Three weeks ago an article in the Sunday Times revealed the level of the bonuses. It stated that one banker had a colleague "whose bonuses will have secured his family for thousands of generations". A somewhat exagerated statement for sure, but it demonstrates the level of income they were and ARE receiving. Barlcays Executives will still receive their Christmas bonuses this year, thats the reason they have taken investments from the Middle east. In the same Times article one banker admitted that he had just (three weeks ago) cancelled his order for his £7,000,000 private jet; the reason he gave? "It would look bad in the current circumstances.".  The bonuses are not paid directly to the people but to companies which they own, and these are bases offshore to avoid tax. In much the same manner as profrssional footballers and even John Birt,ex-Director General of the BBC. Another person to use this tax avoidance scheme was Geoffrey Archer who has his monies in Jersey. His friend simply brought the interest back to Archer in his pockets when visiting the island! The money creating those bonuses had to come from somewhere, and it eventually came from us, the comsumer. An interesting article on the "immoral" business tactics of one bank in particular can be read from todays Times. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5299156.ece

Gordon Brown changed the title from Road Tax to Vehicle Excise Duty. With Road Tax people expected it to be spent on maintaining an improving the road system, as indeed was its original intention.  Gordon didn't want people to continue with this thought so he changed the name.

"a home in the sun," A true misnomer after the last 2 summers![:D]

Brilliant! She might have got away with it but as we all know the French as such doggie lovers! Good job the flic wasn't from Korea.  He might have thought it was just your ladys lunch on the seat!

If you use WORD just click INSERT then SYMBOLS

"but as Britain did not allow dual nationality" Someone has given incorrect statements.  I have dual nationality.  British and Portuguese. My mother was Madeirense, my father British. I was born in Madeira.

In my VISTA Ultimat I am able to use "Windows Update" to load in many languages as the default one. But it may be only the Ultimate version which allows this.  Anyway give it a try.

Thanks Jon I think I've remedied that now! :-)

I agree with Jon about Norton and McFee taking up valuable processor time. Before you do anything else, run highjackthis,  program, its free. http://www.merijn.org/programs.php This will show you all the programs which start when you switch on the computer. Have a look and see if there are any you are not familiar with. You can delete them if necessary. It could be the case where some programs have been surreptitiously downloaded onto your computer unknown to you. Another very good program which often finds nasties which are overlooked by other virus checkers is malwarebytes antimalwre.  This is free and can be found here:- http://www.majorgeeks.com/Malwarebytes_Anti-Malware_d5756.html MOD EDIT: link repaired by a moderator

Beaune Ahhhhhhhh.....fantastic wine!

The OP may well wish to change from UK Citizenship to anything else to avoid the new "spy passports" which are coming on line. These are to run parallel with the Bionic ID cards which will contain all manner of personal information. http://www.no2id.net/ However regrettably France is also going down the same road, so changing to a French citizenship + passport will do nothing. Maybe, knowing French fonctionaires, it will be quicker to do your 3 years in the Legion Etrange to gain French citizenship.

andyh4 Thanks for that info Andy. The place Im looking at has several acres so your suggestion may be viable.

Certainly my country bungalow in the UK shared a septic tank with our neighbour. We just agreed to share all the expenses which over a 20 year period just meant emptying it every 6 months.

Don't bother with Sarlat le Canada on Saturday; its market day and full of Brits! ;-)