Araucaria

[quote user="BobDee"]Hi Anton, Thanks for that. I hadnt seen that document before, but under Pensions it seems to imply that tax should be applied only in one State but it also mentions being a Citizen of the US. So I guess I dont qualify for this consideration. Whilst I lived in Tthe UK, the pension was paid without being taxed, As soon as we moved to France tax got deducted.[/quote] Bob: Anton's link didn't work for me (edit - later - working now) but this one did and it takes you straight there: USA double taxation treaty with France Article 18, which deals with pensions, doesn't say anything about citizenship (though the US does have rather a bee in its bonnet about taxing its citizens even if they have been living for years elsewhere), but what it does mean is that pensions that have their "source" in the US will only be taxable in the US, and in that sense the treaty doesn't help you. It explains that it applies to pensions paid by the US under its own social security legislation, or pensions paid by US pension funds in respect of previous employment. It's the exact opposite of the US treaty with the UK, which says that pensions are taxable in the country where the pensioner lives. It's sometimes possible that a pension doesn't fall within the definition in the pensions article - for example, because it isn't paid in respect of past service (e.g. an annuity you had paid for yourself). If that were the case, the treaty's "sweeping-up" article would apply. That is Article 22, which deals with "other income", and which says that income of that type is taxable only in France. If you feel like telling us what kind of pension you get there might be a chance of getting away from the withholding tax. Not much chance, though.

Seven or eight years ago I took the Eurostar from Ashford to Paris and left my passport at home. Not deliberately, you understand. There was no-one at Ashford looking at passports on the way out, and there was no-one in Paris looking at passports on the way back. There was, however, a man on the train back checking passports. When I told him I didn't have mine, he was totally unconcerned: I filled out a very short form saying who I was and where I lived, which he kept. I don't think he even asked if I had any other forms of identification. And that was it. I suspect because processing forms like this is a bit of a chore, when the idiot with the missing passport is a boring white man with a London accent who is wearing a typical office suit and carrying a briefcase (as I then was), the form ended up in the wastepaper basket before the immigration official got off the train. Things may be different now. But I'd be interested if it was actually a legal requirement for UK nationals to carry a valid UK passport when entering or leaving the UK. If it is, it is a change in the last 50 years or so.

[quote user="gardengirl "]We're very pleased with our internet radio ...... [/quote] Which one do you have, GG? Because I am far from pleased with mine (a Revo Blik, now discontinued and I'm not surprised).

I was struck by this bit from the Grauniad article: In August 2006, Laura Walsh was looking to rent a château for her family holiday when she chanced upon chateaudefretay.com. The site is gone now, but you can still find it on the internet archive, with its photograph of horses grazing by the lake, plus a list of activities such as fishing, swimming, a games room, a go-karting stadium, cycling and a weekly treasure hunt. Laura phoned Joanne Hall, who told her, "We're not Center Parcs, but we do our best", which Laura took to mean they were something like Center Parcs. And so, swept up in the lovely sounding nature of the thing, she offered to pay the full amount up front – £2,600 for a fortnight's stay. I appreciate you can't believe much you read in the press, but I wonder what she would have thought if the owner had said "We're not the Ritz, but we do our best"? She'd have expected something like the Ritz? and paid in full up front?

[quote user="AnOther"]I think many if not most will have encountered such questioning at one time or another, I certainly have, unfortunately the twirps who perform these unnecessary and intrusive interrogations have the power for that instant, and know it, so as you say discretion is the better half of being hauled into a cell for going over with a rubber truncheon. [/quote] It's not the rubber truncheon I'd be worried about so much as the rubber glove and the cavity search ....

[quote user="Anton Redman II"]Where did you buy the 22 mm pipe ? Did you buy it as a coil ?[/quote] Brico Depot sell 22mm copper pipe and compression fittings for it. It is possibly available there as a coil, but what I bought in the Rodez branch was the (hard) straight lengths. From memory they had it in 2m and 3m lengths. If you need to bend it you'll have to anneal it first. With compression fittings, I don't think you should ever try to get PTFE tape between the pipe and the olive. The olive is supposed to compress and make a very close fit on the pipe, and stay there once compressed. You can use it round the outside of the olive, though if your fittings are well made and everything is nice and clean you shouldn't need to. However, if the joint leaks after tightening up without PTFE tape, you can always try a bit of tape round the olive on your second attempt.

The OH and I both took up scuba diving rather late in life (as pensioners) but we learnt in the Lakshadweep Islands. For some reason that I can't recall the qualification we got was the CMAS one. Do I understand that this is more acceptable world-wide than BSAC? Because I had thought that BSAC was pretty rigorous (unlike PADI) - though my knowledge of the other qualifications is very secondhand. Incidentally if anyone fancies a very different diving experience, I can really recommend the Lakshadweep Islands (part of India, formerly known as the Lacadive Islands, and the main dive base there is called, of course, Lacadives - www.lacadives.com).

I used to make relatively regular visits to Detroit in the 1980s and early 1990s. It actually did look like they had had a war there: acres of derelict buildings and factories, whole blocks bulldozed because the property taxes hadn't been paid. I drove out to see the Ford museum in Dearborn nearby and the first part of the road - originally a dual carriageway - was in some places reduced to single track (and I don't mean single carriageway) by a factory wall that had collapsed onto the road over a distance of some hundred yards or so. It hadn't happened the previous day either: there was simply no city cash to clear it. You can see some of the effects of this by using the "wind back the clock" feature in Google Earth. Unfortunately it won't take you back to the 1950s.

I had my thicknesser blades done mail order by a business in the UK at what I thought was a reasonable price, and quite quickly too (turnaround was about ten days from me sending them to getting them back). Google "sharpkives" and I imagine you'll find it. Their prices are pretty transparent and you can work out for yourself whether it's cheaper than going to a nearby or more distant local sharpener.

I think Davy's point was that the Scottish, like the Welsh, are British. So they don't need to be mentioned separately. On the other hand, if you'd said "English" instead of British, the Welsh would have felt slighted. Rightly so, as the Welsh are in their origins more British than most English people are.

[quote user="Quillan"]Persoanlly I always think a proper domain name looks better and more proffesional.   [/quote] Some other things help, too.[:)]

But I think you need a decoder (set top box) that will handle HD? Naturally, the one we bought in February this year doesn't.

I don't like compression fittings either, but it's a solar heating circuit and they (the "experts") recommend compression fittings on the hot part of the circuit. None of my soldered joints leaked. I'm not a professional plumber, but it was only 4 out of 22 compression joints that were a problem. And the tape definitely cured three of these, maybe all four (I'll find out shortly). But in general I'd agree: compression fittings don't need tape. The 18 good compression joints didn't have any. What went wrong with the other four I really can't say.

Thanks everyone. In the end it was mostly Boss White and hemp (though having done some research I think it's probably flax, aka tow, rather than hemp). This made a pretty good joint. I suspect a thick enough layer of PTFE tape would have worked too, but on the couple I tried with PTFE, even after 20 or more turns of tape the threads screwed all the way down without making a decent seal. A couple of the compression fittings seeped a little bit, and elsewhere I had found a suggestion that one or two turns of PTFE tape on the outside of the olive (not on the threads) might help. And it did.

[quote user="Thibault"]We are also in 71 and went to the local SPANC meeting.  It was rather heated and the chap from SPANC was terribly patronising to the local farmers who were up in arms at the costs of inspections.  One surprising thing we did learn was that "poor" communes pay MORE for the inspections than "rich" communes.  This seems absolutely crazy but it is linked to the amount of industry/commerce in a commune.  As ours is very small (900 people) and rather poor, we have to pay 150 euros for the inspection - charged at 30 euros per year for five years.[/quote] Our rural commune is 370 people and we're due to be stiffed €100, all payable at once. At the public meeting the cost was the main concern of the audience. But one of the other topics that seemed to generate a lot of heat related to farmers emptying their own septic tanks and then spraying it on the fields. The departmental official who was there said that septic tanks could only be emptied by licensed operators. He eventually said that as a matter of practice there wasn't any likelihood of SPANC stopping people from doing what they have always done.

How interesting: the Treaty of Berlin was needed in 1921 between the USA and Germany because the US senate rejected parts of the Treaty of Versailles. Sounds a bit like the current nuclear weapons treaty, START III, which is probably going to be turned down by the new Republican majority in the Senate. But ..... about deaths in 1919. I don't think there was any fighting going on anywhere after the end of 1918, so those deaths may be from earlier wounds or from the Spanish 'flu as suggested earlier. I believe a lot of the Spanish 'flu deaths occurred in hospitals for the war-wounded. It killed a lot of young people (such as those ex-soldiers) as they had not acquired any immunity in milder earlier epidemics.

The brico-places nearly all sell hemp (I am fairly sure it really is hemp) and whatever the French equivalent of Boss White is.  There's a different formulation for drinking water, but Boss White is pretty well grey nowadays, and perhaps it always was. Maybe it was a Mr White, who happened to own the company, who invented it?

I've got a number of brass BSP plumbing joints to make, mostly 3/4" but some 1" ones, and the matching pieces are all a pretty slack fit in their raw (untreated) state. What do others recommend: lots of PTFE tape, or Boss White and hemp? Is there some form of professional guidance on which should be used where?

11th November was an armistice (ie cease-fire) rather than peace. But when precisely the war ended with a peace treaty depends rather on which of the participants you were. For the Russians it ended with the treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918: for the Ottoman Empire with the Treaty of Sevres in August 1920, and for the other participants at various dates in between: the Treaty of Versailles with Germany, the Treaty of St Germain en Laye with Austria, and the Treaty of the Trianon with Hungary (possibly there were others that Wikipedia doesn't list). A substantial number of English war memorials show the "Great War" as the war of 1914-1919. I think those are also the dates on the Cenotaph in Whitehall, though in roman numerals: MCMXIV on the Parliament Square end and MCMXIX on the Trafalgar Square end.

One reason for leaving a gap of a millimetre or two (or maybe more) is to ensure that the grout you push down into the gap will both go in and stay in. If the gap is too narrow it's hard to get the grout in. Another reason is that if you are doing the tiling yourself, or if the tiles are not quite regular in shape/size, a gap between tiles helps you even out the irregularities. Very few tiles come exactly all the same size: there is always some very minor difference. Amateurs (like me) tend to go for a wider gap for that very reason. But if you have the luxury of having a real professional doing it, just ask him/her to make the gap as small as possible.

[quote user="Hoddy"]I'm deleting the original post so all those which follow will disappear too. Hoddy[/quote] maybe not?

Apparently not .....

All I had was a piece of plain paper with a typed-on address saying Mr X had sold the car to me, on the date which was shown on the V5 as the date I acquired it, and the price I paid. Obviously nothing about VAT. The lady at the tax office was very happy to get the pad of blank forms out and fill in the quitus fiscal just on the basis of that and the V5. Mind you the car was visibly very old (pre-VAT in fact), but what they are after is people trying to import new cars tax free, and five years ago should be old enough. Of course different officials may do different things. Good luck!

[quote user="Anton Redman II"]Search on 'raccord cuivre' using Google.fr but as a start : http://www.plomberie-pro.com/Catalogue/raccord-cuivre/raccord-a-compression-olive.htm 20/27 corresponds to the fittings which are 3/4 inch [/quote] Thanks Anton (and thanks Andrew), I think I am sorted now. The Plomberie-pro prices are a lot more reasonable than Cedeo's, though they do have both a minimum value order (€18 HT) and a delivery charge starting at €10 as well.

Does anyone know an on-line retailer of 22mm compression (plumbing) fittings in France? I'm just looking for a single equal T, but my trip to the local Cedeo (in Aurillac) produced the response "we don't do them that big". And I think on the Cedeo website the biggest they showed was 18mm. Mind you, at Cedeo's price of over €28 each for the 18mm one, I might do better to buy in the UK and have it chauffeured over here in a stretch limo (Screwfix in the UK has the 22mm Ts at £7.35 for two). I need compression fittings as it is for a solar installation. Any suggestions would be gratefully received.