Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

Things were going really well with the football coaching yesterday afternoon as with it being the week for the “FA Cup” the kids were all taking it really seriously.

One of the best players was a beefy kid who was unusual in being good both as a player and as a keeper. It was no surprise that his team were in the final two for the playoff.

And then it went to pieces. In a very fast paced match, the first goalkeeper let in four goals in a row and we saw the beefy kid first lie down on the floor then head off for his parents on the touch-line where the tears and wailing started. And kept going and then went on some more. In fact, he ended up wailing right through the rest of the match whilst another three goals were let in.

OK, not such a good game for his team, but the wailing seemed way over the top.

Cash cards are much more limited in function than credit and debit cards but they have one really big advantage abroad: without the PIN, they’re useless and therefore they’re of much less interest to thieves.

Cash cards for international use come in only two versions which are Cirrus and Plus. Both are linked to your bank account although you can also get prepaid versions of both.

These cards can’t be used in shops to make purchases and are limited to withdrawing cash from ATMs. Some banks put these symbols on their cards without considering that it means the cards can be used overseas so the charging for overseas transactions is sometimes less than clear. Once or twice I’ve found banks who were so sure that their card couldn’t be used abroad that they had no provision for making additional charges in their terms and conditions (and didn’t in my case, but don’t rely on that).

Although it’s not always clear, you can use Cirrus cards in all Mastercard branded ATMs and Plus cards in all Visa branded ones. You need to check that the country you’re going to has ATMs (not all do!) as these cards can’t be used over the counter in banks. Also, check that it will be practical to use them eg in India I found that ATMs were not widely available and Rarotonga didn’t have any ATMs until quite recently.

Charges on these are made up of a transaction charge of around 2% with a minimum of £2/$2 plus a foreign currency conversion fee of around 3%. It’s therefore best to make withdrawals of £100/$100 at a time to minimise these charges.

Downsides are basically those charges and the fact that you can only use these cards in an ATM. For those living in the UK, some pre-paid cards eliminate all charges and if you’re in the American military a USAA card works in much the same way. If your bank is a member of the Global Alliance (Bank of America, Bank of Nova Scotia, Barclays, BNP, Deutschebank and Westpac) then you can withdraw cash from one of the other member banks ATMs without the transaction charge (you still get charged the foreign exchange fee).

I’m going to work my way through the various ways you can take money abroad over the next week or two in the travel money series. I’ve already covered cash, travellers cheques, credit cards/charge cards and debit cards and will be covering prepaid cards in the next episode.

The Daily Star probably summed up most clearly the public opinion of the Irish government in its headline the other day.

However, it’s not the doing of a single government that has driven Ireland to bankruptcy: it has taken years of nonsensical decisions to get them here and it will take years if not decades to get them out of this mess.

For many years now the key skill in Ireland seems to have been to screw as much as possible out of Europe (ie everyone else) to finance a massive growth in the Irish economy. Until recently signs were everywhere announcing that one project or another was 85% financed by one EU fund or another.

That worked well in the case of infrastructure projects like the Dublin to Belfast motorway which replaced a truly naff road from Dublin to the Irish border that existed before. The problem is that it was only those European financed projects that went ahead and at almost every other point on the border you notice that you’ve crossed the border when the quality of the road goes down dramatically. The snag with these projects is that 1) only the capital costs are financed so Ireland now has a whole lot of motorway that it needs to pay to maintain and 2) now that Ireland has been replaced as Region 1 country by all the new eastern bloc countries it is not only not getting finance for its own infrastructure projects but needs to pay for those elsewhere.

Then there was the fiasco of untold numbers of “tax breaks” (ie bribes) for, mainly, American multinationals to establish themselves in Ireland. When the restrictions on those “tax breaks” ran out, Dell relocated almost immediately to Poland. In effect this bribe money (for there is no other way to describe it) was used by those companies to pay the salaries of the employees ie the Irish governments were simply borrowing to pay themselves. Quite why they didn’t realise at the time that this was never going to be a workable long term strategy is beyond me.

And, of course, all the above stoking of the economy meant that salaries rose and so therefore did house prices. Massively. Thus the banks were drawn into this Ponzi scheme. Like all such schemes, it looked like a no-lose situation. Like all such schemes, the money ran out. And like all such schemes, it collapsed in quite a spectacular manner, the full extent of which has yet to be seen. With increasing house prices comes increasing confidence and that surely led to increased personal borrowing in Ireland.

Sadly, this is going to be a very, very hard time for the Irish. Cuts and asset sales will be the order of the day for many years. The banks will probably be the highest profile casualties with the breakup of the non-Irish empires of AIB and Bank of Ireland looking like the first of many sales to come (already Bank of Ireland (UK) has been separated out). Cuts in a range of social security benefits and of civil service salaries are certain as are the inevitable protests against them. Gone too is any semblance of sovereignty over their own affairs. Not only are Europe and the IMF taking control of key aspects of life in Ireland but so too is the British government.

Much as I wouldn’t want to live in a united Ireland, I do feel for our friends in Ireland on this last point and even though Britain is doing it for selfish reasons (no way could it cope with a mass exodus of Irish to the UK), I’m sure that there will be a feeling that depending on Britain is a massive step backwards.

Many years ago when Wendy was first in the UK we applied for and received a European residence permit but after we went to France we didn’t bother to renew it.

To get the European family permit (ie entry clearance visa) whilst we were in France would have entailed a three or four day trip to the embassy in Paris and a wait of anything up to a year. This made it impractical for us so we didn’t bother and instead just went without the visa. Wendy’s Australian so doesn’t need a visa to get into the UK but as it turned out, the immigration people at Rosslare just accepted our statement that we were living in Belfast and let us pass.

So, we’re in the UK sans visa. Interestingly, since there’s no requirement to register with local authorities in the UK, there appears to be nothing stopping you just staying on regardless of what any stamp in your passport may say about when you should leave.

Anyway, to get Wendy legal we, in principle, are supposed to apply for a residence permit for her. Snag is that when we arrived the processing time for this was getting on for two years (despite the legal obligation for the authorities to do it within six months) and we knew that we needed to go back to France that summer. So we didn’t bother. Next time we came back the immigration people accepted our statement about living here (which we had been doing) and off we went again.

Since we’re notionally in the process of selling our place in France we knew that we’d need to go back there at some stage to finish packing etc. but didn’t know when so a two year processing time (during which time they keep your passport) also wasn’t on. Thus we find ourselves living in the UK for getting on for two years now with nothing to show any right to do so and nobody making any attempt to deport Wendy as yet.

The one problem is with social security who have already stated that they don’t believe Wendy is here legally but, despite their obligation to do so, have done nothing about reporting her to the border agency people although they do insist that we need a European family permit.

Funnily enough, we’ve since found that, courtesy of a determination made right here in Belfast, we were correct in our assumption that we didn’t need a European family permit to enter the UK. Just as well really since it’s a visa and you can’t get a UK visa when you’re actually in the UK as you can only get UK visas from British embassies and, of course, there are no British embassies in the UK.

What we are doing, somewhat belatedly, is applying for a European residence permit. At present, the advice is that we may be turned down for this (although we may not). Being refused this permit doesn’t appear to be a problem though as there are no limits to the number of applications and appeals that you can make (all of which are free) and you’re legal in the UK whilst they’re processing the application. Since it currently takes them about six months to process an application, all that you need to do is to reapply if/when you get the refusal and you’ve another six months legality. Weird, huh?

Quite why anyone bothers trying to stay here illegally when they can legalise things seemingly permanently so easily is beyond me.

It doesn’t seem so long ago that people were debating about whether mobile phones should be banned from restaurants.

Nowadays, many people make the assumption that they can call you at any time. After all, if you’ve got a mobile, then why shouldn’t they call you? Of course, at the other end of the line this leads to the habit of never turning the phone off and of answering it no matter where you are.

So it confuses people when I don’t have the phone switched on all day. Why would it? I don’t want to be called all of the time. It’s not so much that I switch it off in the movies  but that I only have it switched on when I want to be reached on the phone.

Probably more annoying to those who feel that I should be contactable 100% of the time is that I don’t even pick up the voice mails more than once a day. In this instantly-reachable age my record so far is one person leaving seven voice mails over the course of a single day asking me to call them. It must have been urgent then? Well, no, it would have been OK to leave it another week that time.

Regain your freedom: switch off your mobile!