NormanH

I've had a really nice and fruitful day today. For I start the weather was lovely and sunny; even more important than that was the fact that I got lots of things done AND everybody was so very nice for a change! I started by collecting my new reading glasses. There is the new system here by which the lenses are free, and then you can either choose a small range of free frames, or choose something else to your own taste. In addition the opticians offer a second pair just for Reading, but made to your prescription, for an extra euro, so I got my main pair of bifocals (for the computer screen and the keyboard) PLUS a second pair to carry about with me for when I go and read a newspaper in a cafe for example. As I had chosen my own frames rather than the free ones I had to pay a bit, but for the two glasses it only came to €56. The optician was very helpful, and spent time getting them to fit properly etc. I even had a coffee thrown in ! I came out feeling I had a very nice experience and a good deal. Then I went to buy some new laces for my old pair of boots. There is a good shoe maker near my house, and he went to the bother of finding the best laces, but in addition he took the boots off; thredded them, put them back on me, and tied them in exactly the right place. Again excellent personal service for 5€ I have asked him to re-heel them, and do a small repair, and they will be ready by Saturday. Then to the pharmacy for the top up covid vaccinations (my fifth) where as usual nothing was too much trouble. We what all wearing masks of course, and I commented that is was we couldn't see each other smile, but one of the other customers, a large African lady, said that you can read people smiles in Their Eyes, and we all looked at each other and agreed. I had achieved everything I wanted to do do by 11 o’clock, and I came away feeling really happy with the world.

And is she equipped to store the Covid vaccine at the correct temperature ? Do you think that a pharmacist (not "someone in a pharmacy" to use your disparaging term) is less well qualified than a Nurse? (Pour être pharmacien, il faut être titulaire du DE de docteur en pharmacie.Les études durent entre 6 et 9 ans selon la spécialité choisie (6 ans pour les spécialités officine ) 😇

This is going round in circles when Dave and I have already explained it. A worked example: you say the two bills come to around 2000€, so: Say 1200€ TF and 800€ T dH. Suppose you leave at the end of June. 1)You owe 800€ T dh (because you were there on the 1st Jan and it is a second home so no exemption.) 2) If the Notaire arranged a pro-rata payment by the new owner you have already received 600€ in the sale account for the new owner's part of the bills and there remains 600€ at your charge.... BUT you have to pay the whole 1200€ now, the 600€ you owe plus the 600€ you received from the Notaire from the new owner 3) If there was no pro-rata you owe 1200€ anyway

I have my vaccinations done at the Pharmacie, but even there there seems to be some confusion about the the two. I had the one for 'la grippe' (for which I had received a prescription from Amelie) on the 25th of October at my usual local pharmacie, but as they don't do the Covid one I went to another one down the road for the Covid 'troisième rappel' (5th dose) to be told that either you have them together the same day in different arms or you have to wait 3 weeks between vaccinations. I can't find any confirmation of that on-line however and a friend of mine had the covid one a week after the 'grippe' one... To be on the safe side I will wait till Wednesday for the COVID one, but it shows that even the people giving the vaccine are not totally clear about things. Purely out of interest why don't others have the injections done at the pharmacie? Why ask a nurse ?

As Dave says you are responsible for paying both these taxes, and if they aren't paid on time they carry a % penalty increase. The owner of the property on the 1st of January is liable for the whole of the Taxe d'habitation for the year EVEN IF they move out on the 2nd of January. The "Taxe foncière" may be split pro rata between buyer and seller as Dave has indicated, BUT if the seller pays a % that will have been credited to you by the Notaire at the time of sale, and now the bill is due. In my case I get the bill for the TF in September and the one for the T d'H in October but this may vary according to local offices.

The point was that by doing it themselves there was no insurance as there would have been if they had been professionals, so they had to pay for the repairs. The work they had done was certainly within the last 10 years yes.

If you do it yourself or use unregistered builders be prepared to pay a lot of compensation when you sell if there is a problem. I have been translating the legal documents for an English couple who have just lost a case brought against them by a French buyer for 'Vice caché". He claimed 65,000 € but on appeal that was reduced to 47,000. By doing it themselves they had to pay for the faults that would have been covered by the insurance of a professional, and at the same time they lost the defence of being a private individual (who is not expected to have full knowledge of the condition of the property) as in renovating themselves they had taken on the status of 'promoteurs' who have a higher degree of responsibility.

I use Boursorama which give me free banking and excellent service and Wise which gives me UK and French IBANS plus the advantage of being able to create 'virtual' cards for single transactions which can then be 'frozen' or destroyed so they can't be re-debited. I still have Crédit Agricôle account too mainly for historic reasons, but also so I could pay in cash if eve anyone gave me any...

I would guess that replacing the helpful, practical concrete advice or information that used to be the 'norm' (intentional pun) by opinions unsupported by any evidence that a couple of more recent posters flood the Forum with discourages others from posting.

At last you understand my point about dragging in non-voters to discredit a result, but you misrepresent it when you write of "election results you disagree with" .I can't disagree with them; they are facts.

Read what I wrote A few figures. Registered voters: 48,700000 Voted for Macron 18,779641 So, just as in the other elections I quoted the winner had more people who DIDN'T vote for him than voted in favour. If people are going to quibble about the validity of Macron's election that gives some context about elections.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2022/apr/25/martin-rowson-on-macrons-victory-over-le-pen-cartoon#img-1

Not only the attitude, but the continual returning variants oh the same old France/Europe/Macron bashing theme. This is supposed to be a Forum for FrancoPHILES, where we can share information gleaned from experience of our lives here, to help others.

That in all these elections the winning side have had a minority of votes. That gives a context for comments about the validity or otherwise of Macron's election.

A few figures. Registered voters: 48,700000 Voted for Macron 18,779641 On a similar number of voters in the UK Conservative votes in the 2019 election: 13,966,565 Votes for leave in the Brexit referendum 17,410,742 Neither of those was a majority of registered voters and both have been accepted.

I have no problem accessing the articles, not the ones in The Telegraph that you sometimes say you can't read Nick...

https://www-lemonde-fr.translate.goog/idees/article/2022/04/22/empecher-le-pays-de-se-defaire_6123258_3232.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

I remember him in Cinema Paradiso with Philippe Noiret, another of my favourite French actors, now passed away.

LeMonde has a good page where one can compare the policies of the two candidates in Sunday's second round of elections https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2022/04/11/election-presidentielle-2022-comparez-les-programmes-d-emmanuel-macron-et-de-marine-le-pen_6121622_4355770.html

In Béziers yesterday. It's a Facebook link to a series of quite a few photographs which give a good idea of the event, but I don't know if people who don't use FB can see them... https://www.facebook.com/ville.debeziers/photos/pcb.5144051408966887/5144046235634071

I was paricularly struck by the hats.....hardly anyone wears a "proper" hat these days...

Some quotations in case the article is behind a paywall: "Le Pen has a fair chance of scooping up the neglected constituency of the old left, and that could swing the final outcome on April 24. Her economic agenda is a celebration of the welfare state and the French social model. She backed the protest of trade unions against the reform of the pension system in 2019, and again last year over the weakening of unemployment protection, describing President Macron’s policies as “shameful, economically stupid, inhumane, and unjust”. Her plan is a mix of Keynesian big spending and redistribution towards the working poor and young families, those suffering an erosion of real living standards long before commodity inflation hit them with a hammer blow. She has married left-wing economics with law-and-order nationalism to make a very potent political brew. " "Le Pen has been turning her party into a statist, anti-globalist, defender of the Modèle Français ever since taking charge in 2011" "Le Pen has not abandoned her right-wing policies on immigration, nor her defence of France’s cultural terroir. She remains a nationalist to the core, and an implacable foe of Jean Monnet’s European project. She will endeavour to undermine the primacy of EU law and the hegemony of the Commission from within. One might argue that her agenda smacks of national socialism, but there is no mileage in trying to evoke loose parallels with the 1930s. Le Pen is competing at the ballot box and under the rule of law. Nobody suggests that she plans a 1933 Enabling Act or a French police state once inside the Élysée Palace. Her ideological enemies are Anglo-Saxon globalist capitalism and the EU superstate in equal measure.