Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Local Administration’ Category

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!

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.

My Carte Vitale (health card) turned up last week along with three separately posted “attestations” listing who is covered. Two seem to be identical and include everybody but the health card only listed me. Separate from all that, we got an envelope listing what they’d paid us re our claims of a month or so ago and yet another envelope with a pile of claim forms that they said they couldn’t pay because they predated the validity of the health card (which kicks in from July 26th). Anyway, with so much documentation from the one place, we thought it was time to pay the CPAM another visit.

First off, they said that the attestations weren’t valid because they weren’t responsible for us and in fact the only person covered was me and that was from May 1st and not July 26th. The health system here is a bit peculiar: basically the health “system” that you join depends on what work you do. I don’t know all the details of it but there’s one system for the employed, another for the self-employed and yet another for the farmers (no doubt there are more!). As I’m self-employed here, that’s the scheme that I should be signed up for so we’d to go off to their office the next day.

As with the normal CPAM office, they also said that I was the only one covered and wanted copies of all the birth certificates etc. They’re confused (as are we) about why the CPAM people paid out on claims we’d made and then said they weren’t the ones who were covering us. They say that they’ll cover us all from May 1st but that the attestation saying that will probably arrive at the start of September which is a bit of a problem as that’s when John is due to arrive too. We’re not quite sure what happens if he turns up before the attestation and neither are they but seeing as we actually have an attestation listing Wendy we’re going to give that a go if need be. All this hassle is due to our accountant not getting off him bum and registering the business in February: everything would have been sorted out by the end of April, giving us stacks of time to play with. It turns out that if we’d been registered when I specially stayed here a week to get things sorted in February, we’d only have had to pay for Wendy’s very first examination as the French health system reimburses maternity care 100% so all you need to do once the pregnancy is confirmed is to hand them your health card. All being well, I’ll be referring to him as my former accountant in the not terribly distant future (we’re actively looking for someone with a bit more brains).

Further complicating things on the health front is that the surgeons are going on strike for a week around the time that John is due to arrive. However, as he has now “engaged” if you know what that means (I don’t) he may be arriving in a week or two (ie a couple of weeks ahead of schedule) which is probably just as well as she can hardly walk at the moment. She’s twin sized but there’s only one little guy in there.

We’re filling up with Italians at the moment although funnily enough they’re not coming from the Italian hotel website that we recently got listed on (haven’t got any bookings from it yet). Generally speaking, we’re doing really well from the “hostels” booking site that we signed up with late last month. It’s the one that’s used by Ryanair and FlyBE who are two of the three airlines that fly here (I’ll have to check out how Airfrance directs people to book accomodation and work on that next). They charge me 10% commission on each booking but it’s only on the room rate so for instance last night we’d three Italians in a triple room which we’d normally get EUR56 for but as they’d booked through the Italian version of the hostel site we only got EUR 50.41 but they took breakfast so that brought it up to 68.41 so it’s working out around 8% commission rather than 10%. On the other hand, they’d not have been here at all except for that site so we’re really up EUR 68. We think that we’ll get bookings from them for virtually the whole year too although obviously not so many when we get out of the main holiday season.

Funnily enough, we are now getting more bookings than both of the local hotels put together and they’ve been here for years! The local auberge has hardly any bookings at all at the moment (there’s a sign up in the tourist office window which says how many rooms they have free so we’ve been looking at that every week to see how the competition is doing: they don’t know what our figures are though) and he’s been here just over two years now. He’s got a webpage but hasn’t bothered to get it onto the search engines and doesn’t seem to be registered with any booking systems either so you can’t find him unless you know he’s there and as he’s in a little village off the main road, he doesn’t get many drivebys either.

Oh, I’ve started on an “events” page for the Pyrenees area (well, anywhere within about 90 minutes of here really). As far as I can tell, there’s nothing like it on the internet at the moment, which probably explains why there are so few tourists at any of the events. My little page is at www.mascamps.com/event/en.htm; I’m adding everything that I can find which takes some doing as they mainly just publicise festivals etc. locally so you actually need to go to the tourist office in each village to find out what’s going on. If we’re out and about it’s quite common for us to end up in a village that has a festival ongoing that we hadn’t heard about (and that counts places within a few miles of us too!).

Our first long-ish stay visitor is leaving tomorrow. Seems like they’ve just arrived but they’ve been here nearly a fortnight! We’re had quite a run of people booking to stay for a week or so over the last few weeks with the first of those arriving at the end of next week. All through the Ryanair booking system too which is strange as I was originally expecting that we’d only get short-stay visitors that way.

I thought that we weren’t doing too well on the wine sales (well, the shop certainly isn’t but then we’ve done diddly in promoting it up to now) but we’re down to our last couple of bottles of Chardonnay from the original six boxes so will have to buy another couple of boxes of that soon. As far as the rest go, we’ve lots left as people are taking some of pretty much everything but the Chardonnay is by far the most popular.

Have to think about what to do about that promotion trawl too… Sod’s Law would, of course, apply and I would be bound to be top of the list. On the other hand, if I do take up the career break “insurance” and return to Rosepark (wherever that may end up!), maybe I should go for it. On the left foot, sitting typing this in t-shirt & shorts in a sun-drenched courtyard in the south of France beats sitting in a rain-drenched Rosepark anyday. And on the right foot, I still haven’t had the time to complete my annual report so the chances of me getting time to run up a major league job application in the next two weeks don’t seem great. If I could run to voting buttons on this e-mail, I’d ask you to vote on my options!

Bonsoir!

It’s been pouring all day. Yes, folks, it really does rain in the south of France.

Anyway, seeing as the weather wasn’t great, we thought we’d have a bit of lie-in so it was a bit of a rush just after 9am when the doorbell rang. That was our first potential employee. By the time I managed to get downstairs, the French was operational enough to tell her that we might be looking for people around the end of June.

We had another bin-trip over lunch to clear out another trailer load of junk left by the previous owner. At the current rate, it’ll be the end of the month before we’ve gotten rid of it all.

Since it’s the start of the month, it was time to drop off the first pile of invoices with the accountant so that’s where we ended up this afternoon. Unfortunately, it’s mainly bills that I need to pay rather than bills that people have paid me but all being well that split will change by the summer. Time too to see what’s involved in employing someone. It seems simple. The minimum salary (SMIC) is ‚€7.19 an hour but that’s gross, of course, so they end up with about 80% of that and employers taxes mean that it costs about ‚€10 an hour for me to employ someone. There’s also the complication of the 35 hour week here with a maximum of 48 hours. In practice, the hours we would need someone would be a bit bizarre: probably about 2/3 hours in the late morning/early afternoon to make the beds etc. and the same again in the evening to look after the restaurant. I suspect we’ll need at least two people to do that.

That’s the gorge around the corner that we were at yesterday.

A bientot,