Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

A little birdy tells me that you guys can’t believe the admin hassles that are part of daily life over here. You ain’t heard the half of it!

It’s rare for a week to go by without us receiving some mail from the French authorities. Turns out that once you’re registered for business in France, that registration is picked up by an endless stream of government and quasi-government outfits who just take the registration at face value and proceed accordingly as though the world outside France didn’t exist.

For instance, the pension scheme… Whilst pensions are generally regarded as a “good thing”, the French version is an accident waiting to happen. Sorry, one that’s already happened, they’re just ignoring it. As far as I know, all French pension schemes operate on the “pay as you go” system which means that the pensions of the people currently retired are paid by the people currently working and there is no savings element to it. Net effect of this is that, as a result of the ageing population, pretty well all of these schemes will go belly-up within the next 20 years or so (it varies by country: Germany & Italy already have problems, Ireland may be OK as it’s got a generally younger population). That being the case, I really don’t want to be flushing my money down the pan by paying into such schemes and I also know that because a) I already have a pension scheme in the UK (which I can still pay into) and b) the european freedom of movement legislation, they can’t compell me to join the French schemes. But then this is France, so when I just ignored the requests for information about my membership of a French scheme (because none of their letters asked for any information that actually existed), they just signed me up anyway and sent me a bill. They did this by recorded delivery letter which, in France, means you’ve to cancel it by recorded delivery letter (another EUR 4 down the pan). Thought that was OK in July but there’s another scheme that just sent a bill (with no prior notice) in August, at least not by recorded delivery so it was cheap enough to tell them to clear off.

Essentially their problems stem from a) they like their documentation in France b) most of what they want in terms of documentation simply doesn’t exist outside France and c) they don’t really recognise that there is a world outside France.

The no-mans ground that I’m in with the Crown Servant status is getting to be more complicated by the day. We’ve now got our applications in for both Child Tax Credit and Child Benefit for John as there’s a cut-off date for claims on both. I figure it’s best to whack in the claims on the off-chance that we might be eligible as I’d be seriously annoyed if it eventually turned out that we were eligible and missed out. As usual, we appear to be breaking new ground on this one. The query with the Inland Revenue in Lisburn has gone up to the Inspector now and he doesn’t know the answer as nobody has pointed out before that all the Civil Servants on career breaks are actually still employed by their Department. More to the point, anyone abroad would appear to have Crown Servant status which has a whole lot of knock-on consequences. I, of course, make things even more complicated because I’m still getting paid as well. I suspect the whole thing is an effect of how I think they created “career breaks” within the rules in the first place ie as basically very extended periods of unpaid leave (I reckon that because of that, they probably shouldn’t be issuing P45s to people going on career breaks).

Back in France, the social security people have been merrily ignoring my letter to them way back in August to say that I may not be in their system at all. Well, they finally acknowledged it this morning but they have kept sending the bills. Natually, their letter asks for documents that don’t exist. But, hey, what’s new? Anyway, the reply will help my written French no end.

On the health front, we have only just received Wendy’s health card. The hospital rang yesterday to say that they wanted us there pronto with it to pay the bill (or rather so that they can claim it back). Snag is, that it’s in the name “Wendy Stewart” and the health people reckon that the hospital won’t be able to accept it so they’re re-issuing it (another couple of weeks). Still, we’re off to hand it to the hospital tomorrow.

So far, we’ve just started up the restaurant on a not-too-serious basis over the summer and have completely ignored any registration required for restaurants although we are planning to become a bit more legal over the next few months. We are properly registered to serve food, but as a table d’hotes so strictly speaking we should only be serving food to people who stay with us although you’d think that somebody would have inspected our kitchen before now. We’ve also been flogging wine in the shop now and again and it seems that, although we are licensed to flog anything up to and including hard liquor in the restaurant (we gather that we can even run a bar although we know diddly about that so we aren’t bothering), we don’t have any kind of license to flog it in the shop. The previous owner didn’t either but then he was mainly flogging his own wine which I gather is a bit different.

We’d yet another family staying who were looking to buy a house here (number 7 I think). I just read this morning that the property prices here have gone up 28% in the last year as a consequence of all the English moving in. So if you’re thinking of buying, get the chequebook out soon!

I see that Jackie has finally completed the tunnel. There’s gonna be nobody left that knows me at this rate!

Can’t remember if I said, but we’re running up a website for the Mas Camps vineyard (I think it’ll be the first one for any vineyard in the region). We’ve been busy taking the harvest photos over the last week or so for it. The vineyard owner will be writing the descriptions in French once we get the harvest out of the way and we’ll be adding a bunch more pages over the coming months to complete the vineyard version of the hotel pages. As usual, we’ll be running with a bilingual site (possibly trilingual a bit later) but this time, the French will be fairly good and the English will be rubbish (well, what do I know about grapes?). However, you can peruse the initial photos at www.mascamps.com/cave/en.htm now. We might even venture out into the online sales in due course once we get our act together. It’s hard to judge how much it’ll bump up his sales but if it’s anything like the hotel business, just having the site will increase his sales by getting on for 50%.

And last, but not least, the OU exam is fast approaching. October 7th at 10am in Stranmillis to be precise. Anyway, I’m off to sunny Belfast on the 5th. Wendy’s shopping list is getting longer by the day so I’ve not booked the flight back yet. So far, we need soap (the local Makro never seems to have any; stop all those jokes about the French!!), HP Sauce, assorted makeup, magazines (if you’re ever coming over, bring lots of mags!), big Spanish (and possibly German) dictionary, pork sausages from Sainsbury… I’m hoping to call into Rosepark at some stage while I’m over before y’all go to pastures new.

Our washing machine is on it’s last legs so we thought we’d get ourselves a new one before it keels over altogether so it was off to Darty. Thought we’d get a make that we’d heard of as supposedly it would be more reliable but seeing as the cheapest one I’d heard of was EUR 439 and the cheapest cheapo make was EUR 199 we figured, “hey, so what if it breaks down after the two year guarantee; we’ll just buy another one”. Anyway, el cheapo washing machine should be turning up sometime tomorrow. And even better, I got to use my brand new Amex card! Yes, we have now found two shops that take it. Not exactly the most useful card to have in France although it does look very pretty.

Seeing as it looks reasonably likely that the assorted Inland Revenue offices will consider me as a Crown Servant I figured that we’d best get the tax credit & child benefit claims in for John in case there’s some limit to the backdating of payments. It sounded a good enough argument to the child tax guy who was all set to pay us the tax credit but our record is currently locked (those guys gotta get a new computer system!) so that’s certainly sounding promising. Child benefit are debating the issue as supposedly you need to pay national insurance in the UK to get it but, assuming that the main tax office accept the Crown Servant status, that’s where I’d be paying it so I guess it’s a matter of waiting for their decision. Snag is that the French tax year ends in December so I need them to decide pretty soon. The biggest plus point would be that I could ditch our **** French accountant, all being well I’ll be looking for a UK accountant very shortly.

Also thought it was time to regularise Wendy a bit so it was off to the work permit place (for reasons which are even more complicated than I could possibly describe here). Anyway, after a very long chat there which which brilliant for my French, we now have to go to the Mairie to see about getting the residence permit which should have been here a month or two ago.

Oh, nationality again… the Paris guy reckoned, no, John wasn’t British because the new nationality legislation of 2002 still isn’t in force yet (despite it having gone through parliament over two years ago!). However, as I queried a few things he dug himself into a hole and now has to consult HQ. To summarise the state of affairs: as the old nationality legislation is still in force, I can’t pass my nationality on to John (they define “father” as “husband”). However, children born to Crown Servants (a rather significant status) are treated as though they were born in the UK. Were he born in the UK, Wendy could actually give him British nationality as she has a residence permit which is automatically renewable (next month in fact) ie she can live in the UK “without limitation” which means that in Belfast we could get a passport, so adding that to the Crown Servant status means that…. our man in Paris can’t answer the nationality question but he now realises that he’s given me enough rope to hang him! So, it’s possible that we could just apply for a UK passport for him in Paris (or indeed in Belfast when I’m over). Laughably, we can now get James a British passport so perhaps we’ll manage a consistent set some of these days (we’ve been pulled up twice in the airports already as it looks very suspicious to have a British guy and an Australian girl taking an Irish child abroad).

We’re now up to five separate groups of people who’ve stayed here since July and are buying houses. Latest arrival is a couple from Bristol who are off househunting as I write this. We haven’t actually noticed the prices going up and you can still get quite a reasonable place in the next village for about EUR 50,000. However, we did notice a similar property to ours (though about half the size) on sale for EUR 900,000 last week which is getting on for twice what we paid and seeing as our place is more than twice (possibly as much as triple) the size of it, I guess ours is worth more like EUR 1,500,000. Hmmm, almost enough to sell up & retire. Seriously though, if there were a way of getting the place valued over here, we’d be quite keen on having that valuation to take along to the bank.

I guess now and again it comes across that it’s a complete nightmare living here with all the bureaucratic nonsense that they get up to sometimes and the last week or two has certainly been one of those times when it’s end to end bureaucratic dead-ends. But then we sit back and think: hey, it’s September, it’s 30 in the shade, we’ve a really serious suntan, we own a hotel (that definitely falls in the category of phrases I never expected to be uttering, in spite of the odd joke after Roger bought the restaurant), and whilst we may have the French bureaucracy to deal with now and again, we’ve none of the daily hassles of working for anyone else. And aside from anything else, running a hotel is dead on: the guests are only here in the morning and evening so we’ve pretty much the whole day to ourselves.

Almost forgot, it looks like Mark C has relinquished his title of the “tightest tourist” (jointly held with Norman H and my Mum) and will be venturing over next year. Although, I’m sure he’ll be pushing for discounts when he gets here… He’ll also be making his second TV appearance, in France this time (naturally all costs being met by someone else!).

Arnold

I’m sure you’ll all have gathered that this was a bit of a busy week!

Last Sunday we were doing quite nicely with our first couple of days of having the place to ourselves since sometime in July. Wendy had a bit of a rough night of it and after breakfast announced that we should maybe make our way to the clinic. That was at 10.23. Not in a rush or anything: loads of time to get shaved and all that. We were driving along at a nice pace ’til we passed Estagel (the little village next to us) when I started getting strangled and got told to call the clinic right away. As it turned out, that wouldn’t have been a great move and instead I went a whole lot faster (well, John, we now have proof that there aren’t any speed cameras along this bit of road!).

We pulled into the clinic car park just about 11am when she announced that her waters had broken. I thought that was an appropriate time & place to call the maternity folk. They’re not really geared up to people calling them from the car park so by the time they’d wandered down, Wendy had hobbled in and was almost at the stairs. Don’t know why, but we never did find out how to work the lift so she’d to head on up the stairs which is far from easy in her state.

We figured it was best not to “ring & wait” at the door of the maternity unit and headed straight for the “salles de naissance”. I’m sure that the Ulster Hospital would have been telling us that it was probably just a urinary infection as they did with James. No time for any messing around wiring her up as by then John was well on the way and we found out that our visit to the anaesthetist was a waste of time as things were too far on to do a spinal or epidural (they don’t do “gas & air” over here).

Anyway, cutting out the gory bits, John Philip Anthony Stewart made his appearance at 11:08. Yeah, it was that fast.

We did the checking in bit afterwards when the first “little” problem arose. Seems that thanks to my (soon to be former) accountant, I was the only one with any health insurance or at least the only one on the Carte Vitale (health card). So, they wanted me to go to health place and sort that first thing on Monday.

Monday, Orasanté (the health place for self-employed folk round here) said that they couldn’t cover her as the (soon to be former) accountant had registered the business on May 1st, not in February as he was told to do, and because Wendy had her “declaration of pregnancy” dated April 26, nothing doing. However, the CPAM would do it.

Off to the CPAM. No, you’re not covered. What about my e111? Off for behind the scenes discussions for 30 minutes. Nope, you need to get an e111 dating from before you are pregnant. Can’t. The UK only issues them from “today”. What about the european freedom of movement legislation which allows for pre-existing conditions? Off for another 30 minutes. We’ll have to refer it to our international people. Anyway, a very good opportunity to practice my French.

Walk out to find that by now the car had been towed as a 5 minute appointment had now run to over an hour and a half. The pile of bills for the (soon to be former) accountant is mounting up… so far EUR 50 not being paid for the registration which is wrong in every key aspect, EUR 100 for reconnection of the phones because he hadn’t done the registration on time and now EUR 130 to retrieve the car. That’s not even counting EUR 200 of lost bookings because we couldn’t accept the French equivalent of accomodation vouchers due to his mistakes in the registration and who knows how much for the week that the phones were disconnected.

Phone call… CPAM international. Yes, you are covered. By Orasanté. Doesn’t matter that the (soon to be former) accountant hadn’t registered you before April 26. You were pregnant before you got to France and covered for 42 days before the birth therefore it’s Orasanté’s problem. Nope, I don’t know what happens if you arrive pregnant and drop junior before 42 days elapse.

Tuesday went in attempting to retrieve the car which is far from simple as everyone “knows” that it’s in the place behind the train station. It’s not even close to the station.

Wednesday we finally managed to get Wendy and John home. Didn’t manage to register him though which was becoming a larger and larger problem (you “must” do it within three days of the birth in France and by now we were on the fourth day). The place was closed by the time we got there so we finally managed to get the registration done it was day five (ie Thursday). We’d quite an argument when we left the clinic without paying. All maternity cases are paid 100% in France and the admin people in the clinic know that but simply won’t accept it without having an “attestation” to that effect. Attestations take at least 2 weeks to produce yet they wanted it that day (and they know that they can’t be had in less than 2 weeks). This was the best opportunity yet that I’ve had to practice arguing in French. You just can’t put a price on lessons like that!

Had another go at the health registration on Thursday with John’s paperwork. Seems that the attestation will be here in a few days because we applied for it about two weeks ago. However, it won’t list Wendy as being 100% cover as they said on Monday that they (Orasanté) weren’t the place to cover us (see above).

Anyway, more anon on the above saga as we’ve to call into the clinic on Monday…

There’s a big photojournalism and photoreportage festival on in Perpignan up to the 12th of September so just about every hotel in the place is full of Reuters, BBC, etc. We’ve started to fill up ourselves as a consequence of that (we’d have been full except that we only really got onto the booking systems during July). For next year, we’re planning on running a package deal for the thing but at the moment we have the usual problem that we don’t know why people are here ’til they come. Anyway, we’re currently ferrying two guys from the Times of India (one of the world’s largest circulation English papers) back & forth, we’d one of the award winners in a few days ago and there’s a few more groups coming over the rest of the week.

Remember the saga of getting a British passport for James? Actually, quite laugably, he can get one from Paris no problem. Well, I need somebody to sign the forms to say that the photo is a “true and fair likeness” but that’s the only problem. We start John’s saga here…. fired off an e-mail to the embassy in Paris a while back who said that I need to check with the Home Office how I go about proving paternity as per the new immigration & nationality legislation; they promptly referred me back to Paris, who, of course, have jursdiction. Another e-mail early in the week came back to say that he isn’t British and needs to be “registered” first. Nope, ’tain’t right as the new (as of 2002) legislation (very, very specifically the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 part 1 section 50 9(C)). They’ve not replied yet.

Oh…. could someone check if any of our Foreign Office colleagues know someone in the Paris embassy who could speed this along a bit for me? We’re hoping to get a little holiday soon-ish and would be needing a passport for him.

American Express are weird. Just before we left I thought that it would be a good time to finally get around to applying for one as I figured that if need be I could just transfer the account over here (although in practice it looks like hardly anyone takes it here). I fired off the application for their blue card (I’m too stingy to pay the money for their charge cards) and it came back “no”. Never thought any more about it until I got the maildrop from William at the end of July when I found buried in that a “60 second” application for their gold card which was addressed to me at my parents address (which I’ve not been living in for years now). Well, less than 60 seconds later, I’d filled it in for the laugh and off it went. Just got the latest maildrop of credit cards that I’ve not gotten around to changing the address of and what should I find but my brand new gold American Express card! So you apply filling in your proper address and they don’t give you it. You fill in an address from years ago and they send you an even better card. Weird. Still not very useful in France but it does look very pretty as the whole card is a gold hologram. Oh, and I’ve even got a free sportsbag for applying too!

I think that it’s safe to say that next week is very unlikely to be as eventful as this one!

Had a bit of a dash to the hospital this morning as this little guy decided that it was time to venture out into the world.

Wendy’s waters broke just as we pulled into the carpark so it was a bit of a dash after that ’til 11:08 when he made his appearance. Seeing as we took the last photo of the three of us at 10:23 and it takes a good 30 minutes to drive to the hospital, we weren’t hanging around along the way!

Nothing happening on the baby front at the moment… Wendy reckons sometime this week for sure.

I thought I’d have a go at claiming the French “child benefit” a few weeks ago which helped to kick off quite a bunch of tax papers from the UK to join those starting to arrive from France.

Up to now the French side has been relatively simple. Apart from a few hitches several weeks back we are on track to be fully into the French health system (although probably not before John turns up) and, thanks to the European freedom of movement legislation, I was able to tell the French pension scheme where to go last week (they can’t force you into their compulsory pension scheme if you’ve already got one in another European country). I even had the first bill from the social security folk last week which I was all set to pay, until I started working through the UK Child Benefit form.

I got onto the second page when I came across the question “when did you stop working in the UK?”. That sounds simple, doesn’t it? Obviously it would be whatever date in early March I stopped getting paid ie just looking at the P45 would give me the necessary date. Ah, well, no.

Those of you in Rosepark may recall that I didn’t have a “leaving do”. That’s because I didn’t resign. I’m actually still working for the civil service! No, seriously, I am. Think about it: they’re paying for my further education, they invite me for promotion interviews, they send me circulars, they say I’m still subject to civil service rules,… OK, they’re not paying my salary, but in all other respects, I’m still “on the books”. Net effect of this is that it would appear that I can opt out of the French tax & social security system altogether. I would also appear to have the status of Crown Servant which is pretty significant in a lot of respects, and particularly so in terms of tax (and, I think, nationality ie it will affect John).

Anyway, I seem to have become a job creation scheme for the Inland Revenue and an education service for them and their French equivalents!

Assuming that they agree with this state of affairs, step one is to sack the French accountant (a major upside) and acquire a UK one then start fully unravelling myself from the French system. I’d also need to start planning for the fateful day four and a bit years off when I actually do have to resign although I think I can still stay out of the French system even then.

More anon on this one as it will probably take the Inland Revenue a month or more to work out the implications of my situation.

Saw a bit more on the dreadful year for the French tourism industry at the weekend. Seems that the travel agents had been telling everyone to go somewhere other than the south of France for their holidays this year. Net effect, naturally, is that the number of tourists knocking around France is well down. They have also changed their holiday habits and are generally looking at the forecast and going if it’s nice and going for shorter periods too. To be honest, we haven’t really noticed all this as we’ve been ramping up the promotion for the hotel since we started so it’s quite difficult to tell whether the number of customers we have now is increasing because it’s the high season or because of the increased advertising we’re doing. Probably a bit of both.

As it is, over the last month we’ve had more bookings than both the local hotels put together which impresses me no end as they’ve both been at it for years. Although we’ve been mostly getting bookings just a few days ahead we’ve already got bookings for October, December, February and March. Kind of un-nerving to have a nearly empty reservations book two weeks ahead but it’s been like that all through July and August yet we’ve ended up almost running out of sheets & towels for the rooms at times in practice.

All being well, we’re hoping to start properly promoting the restaurant in a few weeks time after Wendy recovers a bit. Suggestions for an opening promotion welcome!

Must head on now… ’tis tea-time.