Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

We’ve been following the progress of two of the hotels that we looked at before settling on the place we’re currently running.The first of these that we saw before we met up with the estate agents was a bit large for us in that it was a 30 bedroom place though very central in Perpigian. They were only selling the business too which put us off it as well. Still, quite a thriving place that had been running since around 1850. Just over two years ago, it sported a big sign that said it had been converted into apartments which seemed fair enough as there are loads of apartments in Perpignan and they generally seem to be doing quite well. Not so the hotel though as within the last year, that plan has been dropped and they’re now doing some serious conversion work on it for yet another purpose.

The second of these was the first that we were shown round by an estate agent. It’s the Hotel Maillol which was a four storey 13 bedroom place that was very much on our shortlist as it ticked pretty much all of the boxes on our requirements list. Not only that but it was going for EUR 300,000 which seemed incredibly good value in that it was pulling something like EUR 100,000 a year (very little of it declared though). Occupancy was good and growing and it was pretty much right in the heart of Perpignan yet positioned at the end of a short street so very quiet.

In fact, the price was so good that there were a number of people bidding on it and it didn’t sell for several months ie just over three years ago. Not too long after that, we noticed that there was some serious redevelopment work being undertaken on it which is still ongoing, much to our surprise. Well, after all it was in such a good location that an upgrade to a more luxurious place was an obvious thing to do and would probably have let them keep the occupancy figures up whilst taking the price from EUR 40-odd to around EUR 60 or so.

However, what they’ve actually done is to convert the place to a B&B as you can see. This means that they can’t run more than five rooms so the income will drop considerably.The 100k income was made up, roughly as follows: open 10 months ie 300 days x EUR 40 per room x 13 rooms x 60% occupancy = 93k. However, as a B&B the equation works out as 300 days x EUR 60 x 5 x 60% = 54k. Ordinarily, a B&B in France can pretty much double their income by doing evening meals but that’s only because most B&Bs are in the country and this one is surrounded by restaurants so they won’t be able to do that.

Actually, it’s a little worse than that as the Maillol had been running for quite a number of years and had built up the business considerably. The B&B version has changed the name, closed for three years (it’s not opened even now) and probably taken the room price up a fair bit. The combination of those factors mean that it’s almost certainly lost virtually all of the customers that the Maillol had so it will be reopening from a standing start and will need to build up to that 60% figure.

The final problem is that the occupancy was quite biased towards the summer with getting on for 100% occupancy of the 13 rooms for three or four months and, of course, since the B&B has only five rooms to play with the income over that period will be much lower.

So, why do people do it? Le Crocodile Rouge is far from unique in converting from a hotel to a B&B and we’re just singling them out because we’d looked at it ourselves.

Well, basically because they’re all aiming to create luxury B&Bs and charge a fortune for them. Snag is that there are limits to how much you can charge. Even quite luxurious chateaux only get away with EUR 100 or so and the luxury B&Bs can generally only charge EUR 70 at best. The biggest problem though is that five room limit because the holiday season in France is very much concentrated on around six weeks during July and August when you’d really need to be able to go to more than 100% occupancy but obviously you can’t do that.

Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.

As you may know, I am a participant in the Technorati favourites exchange which was thought up by DoshDosh as a means of getting loads of into the front rank of Technorati and indeed a growing number of the participants are turning up in the top 100 favourites list on Technorati.

However, what I found most instructive was the number of ideas exchanged across the last 10 days amongst the various participants in this programme. For one thing, a considerable number of those participating fall into the “techie” or “make money online” groups of blogs worldwide and the number of lessons I’ve picked up in that time has been enormous.

Some of the first fruits of those lessons has been in the new ad format that you can see throughout the blog. I figured that if the square adsense format was used by almost all the “making money” blogs, it was bound to be a “good thing” so I’ve adopted that. Also, you’ve seen from a few days ago the little underlined popup adverts which is also used by them.

Funnily enough, although I was adding all the blogs to my favourites just to get into that top 100, I’ve found a number of the articles on the favourited blogs quite interesting. I’ve even picked up several relevant backlinks from blogs which I’d not otherwise have seen.

Now, if only I could up the traffic on Foreign Perspectives and/or get ‘yall to click on the adverts for me, I’d be able to give up the day job… Funnily enough, I’d not really have thought that possible a few weeks ago but there does seem to be a whole lot of people out there living off their blog income so apparently it is possible.

Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.

Offshore banks are banks that operate in various tax havens around the world. The most familiar in the UK are the Channel Islands and the Isle of Mann but there are many based in small islands in the Carribbean.

If you’re moving abroad, it can be useful to have an account with one of these banks both to simplify your taxes a little and for the additional services that many of them offer to the expat community. None of the legitimate centres offer tax-free interest on your accounts these days but offer you two options for the interest on your accounts: 1) a withholding tax roughly equivalent to the tax that you would normally pay in your country of residence and 2) no tax but they report your income to the authorities in your country of residence.

Although no longer taxfree, the additional services that many of these banks offer can still make them worthwhile. Even the simplest of them are much more familiar with international bank transfers than a normal high street bank could be expected to be but most go beyond that offering multi-currency accounts, debit cards in a range of currencies and often expat advisory services.

On the whole, the range of services on offer increases in proportion to the increase in the minimum income that the banks ask for. A reasonable compromise with this seems to be Abbey International which offers accounts and debit cards in pounds, euro and dollars for an opening balance of £5000.

Most people will think of Switzerland in terms of “offshore” banking, but is there anything special about it? The banks there are generally more aware of the needs of international clients but this generally comes at a price. By and large, unless you have fairly sizeable amounts of money (say 25,000‚€ upwards) to deposit or invest, they probably aren’t worth it. However, even the post office in Switzerland is geared up for international clients and in this case a relatively modest amount of money (about £3,000) will get you quite economical banking.

We’ve included a list of the main banks operating in this arena in the directory which should let you choose the perfect combination of prices and services for you.

Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.

Everyone and their dog seems to be running up lists of blogs these days, so I thought it was time us expat bloggers got in on the act. Why though? Well, it helps everyone on the list get a few more links for their site and thereby improve the visibility and hence traffic of their blog.

The idea is a simple one and was pinched from the idea of the T-List which lists travel blogs itself copied from the Z List, originally launched by Mack Collier of Viral garden. I shamelessly pinched the original of this from Ministry of Propaganda.

Coming soon are the rest of the world… there are wayyyyy too many expat bloggers to put in one list!

What you do is:

1. Write a post titled “The Expat List”
2. Copy the links below into it
3. If you’re an expat blogger not on the list, add yourself
4. Add any additional expat blogs that you know of (English language only please for the moment)
5. Notify the blogger you got the list from in a comment to their post.

Note that cut & paste doesn’t always work with links ie check that the list you have has clickable links.

Austria

    Novalas Europa
    Life as it happens
    Metamorphosism
    Nerd’s Eye View
Belgium

    Tomato And Basil Sandwiches
    A lawyer’s dream of heaven
    My Boyfriend Is A Twat
Denmark

    Observations of a globalite
    Desirable Roasted Coffee
    Moron Abroad
France

    An Australian Lass, a Frenchman & a Burmese
    Textism.com
    Les filles in Glasgow (oops) Paris
    Non Tibi Spiro
    Anders Jacobsen’s Blog
    Petite anglaise – lost in france
    Foreign Perspectives
    Peregrinations
    Blethers.com – Weblog
    Perso.fraise.net
    Home in France – News for family & friends –
    Wicked French Kiss
    From my French Window
    Dispatches from France
Germany

    Bits and pieces
    Mausi
    Rancuret abroad
    Rainy Day
    PINAYexpat: In Deutschland
    I am a doughnut
    Bowlerised
    Broke in Berlin
    Flip Flop Flying
    London Dan
    Transblawg
    Greenhaddock
    The Silent Penguin
    Murray’s Diary
    Keys Corner
    Savory’s Blog
    That Queer Expatriate
    Stringbean abroad: the Xpatriate files
    LawPundit
    German Joys
    AGITPROPOLIS
    Schokolade Mädchen in München
    My Euro-American Life
    Daily Dose of Dave
    Greg’s World
    American in Dusseldorf
    HeisseScheisse
    Germany Doesn’t Suck
    Chicagokarl
    Moore’s Radio Free Mike
    JeweledConcrete
    Notes from Germany
    Culture Shock and the blondelibrarian
    German Diary
    Raskal trippin
    PapaScott
Holland

    Suze Abroad
    A Canadian Girl’s Just Dazzle
    Dutched Pinay on Expatriation
    Reluctant Nomad
    Thinking Aloud
Italy

    Ben Hammersley.com
    A Welshman in Milano
    With a Rebel Yael
    Il Blog Enogastronomico di Brendan
    At Home in Rome
Luxembourg

    EuroYank: an American Alien in Europe….

Portugal

    The Weblog
    Tim Worstall
Spain

    Brain Tags
    Trevor’s k’alebøl
    The Spanish Cockpit
    A wandering woman writes from spain
    kellycrull.com
    mylifeinspain
Sweden

    How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Herring
    Shazzer’s ShazzerSpeak
Switzerland

    Ms. Mac’s Meanderings
    GLOG: A Genevan Log
UK

    Anthonyjhicks.com – weblog
    I live on your visits
    Michael Jennings
    Speedysnail
    What’s new, pussycat?
    Bloggerheads – the weblog of Tim Ireland (aka Manic)
    Christof.Meerwalk@blog.www
    Anna Overseas
    Trailers and dirt
    blog from a broad: Lisa’s nonsensical ramblings
    Knitting on the Cam
    A Canadian Postgraduate in London
    The Dustless Workshop
   

 

Ministry of Propaganda
    I can do waffle in my sleep
    FlorianDargel
    Beans on toast
    Hiya
    A Student’s Life
    Cartside
    dotFAF.com
    The Earth Beneath Her Feet
    Lost in Thought
    J+B=Us
    Not as lame as the JediKid
    A Tennessee ex-pat’s The Vol Abroad
    Adam Curry’s Weblog
    Dùn Èideann Wayfaring
    Towering intellect
    The Misadventures of a Jersey Girl that crossed the pond
    Neurotic Traveler
    Jackie Danicki
    Yankee Fog
    Cambridge mba blog
    Occasionally, something happens
    An American in London
    Expat Yank
    Grey’s Journal
    Wanderingz
 

Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.

One of the striking differences of this election vs previous ones is that there is an appreciation that a significant proportion of the French population lives overseas.

Of a total population of 53 million voters, an estimated minimum of 2 million are resident abroad. Now 4% or so might not sound like a very big proportion but critically, the political makeup of the overseas French is considered different from the political makeup of those remaining in France and, on the whole, they are more to the right than to the left. How come? Well, the typical left wing approach of bribing the electorate by increases in social security payments clearly won’t work with this group as they simply won’t receive them ie there is no pull towards the left for them. On the other side, they will, for the most part, be in countries that are more to the right than France is and can see a less socialist system actually working ie there is a pull to the right. Combine these and you get a drift to the right for this group as compared to the makeup of those remaining in France.

Surely, that doesn’t really matter as there aren’t really that many of them, are there? Whilst it’s true that the absolute numbers represent a mere 4% percent of the population compare this to the typical predictions of the share of the vote for each candidate: you’ve around 27%, around 25% and around 20% for the leading candidates. That means that only 2% percent can change the running order and that’s why those overseas voters are so important.

Consequently, we have the peculiar sight of a political rally in London conducted entirely in French.

Is it right that these people should be able to vote at all though? After all, some of these people have been abroad for 20 years or more. I’d question the validity of the vote of someone who has been living outside France for that long. What contact would they really have had with the issues affecting people who live in France? Would they even understand the issues after so long? Yes, some will, but the majority will not.

Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.