Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Places’ Category

Every time that the issue of ID cards comes up in the UK, there are questions asked about how securely the information collected will be held and every time the government says “trust us”.

Well, today we’ve seen just how much we could trust the government with our information. Not that far at all as it happens as they’ve just managed to lose the complete ID records of just about everyone in the UK. Had it been anyone other than the government that had lost it, those places providing ID theft solutions would be advising everyone to change their bank accounts. When you’re talking millions of people, that’s not really a runner of course.

Still, there are encouraging signs in this fiasco. For one thing, it’s a great example to refer the government to when they say that the ID card information will be perfectly safe. And, of course, it’ll be a brilliant excuse to use when your bank claims that you’ve overspent on your credit card as you’ll be able to say that your identity was stolen.

Perhaps TNT aren’t the best company to use if you’re sending really valuable items in the post!

A long time ago, I was brave enough to ask the question which many are afraid to ask: do you need to speak French if you want to live in France?

It’s not such a simple question to answer as it might appear. For one thing, there are many expat enclaves throughout France where, by and large, English is the only language used. Within these enclaves, the shopkeepers and so on can be expected to speak English and indeed even if you speak French to them, they’ll reply in English. So, yes, you could live in France without speaking French.

However, in many other areas (most of France in fact) you couldn’t do that. The locals either cannot or will not speak English. After all, why should they be expected to? It is France after all. Except that everywhere else in the world the locals DO speak English: that’s why people expect to be able to move to France without speaking French.

Funnily enough, just a few miles south in Spain the locals won’t speak Spanish and actually insist on using English. Well, to be fair that’s Catalonia and few people outside it ever have the opportunity to learn Catalán which tends to dictate the use of English with foreigners.

If you’re moving to a new area it makes a lot of sense to rent first rather than dive straight in and buy somewhere.

That’s simply because, no matter how much research you do in advance, you’ll never really properly know a new area until you’ve lived in it for a few months. That’s the amount of time that you need to really settle into a new area but realistically is far more time than most people can devote to researching a new area.

Aside from anything, renting an apartment involves a much lower committment on your part financially so, if it turns out that your choice of apartment isn’t quite so perfect as you expected it to be, then you can move on relatively easily. However, even then, that time isn’t wasted as it’s much easier to research an area whilst you’re living there so chances are your second choice would be that perfect one.

Of course, you’ll want to be looking somewhere that has a wide selection of apartments for rent and for that the obvious choice is ApartmentFinder.com.

Whilst series that get off in their prime can often stop very abruptly even in the midst of a double episode, long running series tend to wind down more gradually these days with the A-team of writers being replaced by the B-team in often a very noticeable way.

So, it’s nice to see that a long running series like MASH was allowed to make a proper final episode which tied up all the loose ends, going through what each of the characters was going to do afterwards. Most of the time these days there’d be a major league lead-in to spin off series but that didn’t happen here which meant that the couple of spin-offs had to stand on their own (neither did particularly well).

Still, I suppose that MASH was an exception that wouldn’t happen these days. After all, who would let a strong series just stop rather than simply wind down into obscurity?

One thing that really amazes me is how few people even think about what using their credit card abroad is costing them. For that matter, there is still quite a significant number of people who buy all their foreign currency in the Post Office assuming that “commission free” is exactly the same as “free” when, of course, it isn’t.

Taking a nice round amount of £100 for simplicity, that “commission free” purchase actually costs around £6.50. In fact, in some cases it can be cheaper to get the money from a place that charges commission as the exchange rate they use may be better. The cost to spend that amount abroad on most cards? Well, that’s just £2.75 (£7 if you lift cash out of an ATM with a credit card).

What about that nice prepaid card that the travel agent sold you? The £100 will cost around £30!!

But surely you have to pay no matter what you do? Well, no, you don’t. Get a Nationwide Building Society flexaccount and both cash withdrawals and purchases don’t have any foreign exchange charge.

More on this at our article on getting money abroad.