Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Relocating’ Category

There’s been somewhat of a death in posting activity over the past few weeks, not because we’ve not had loads to say but rather because the ADSL line still hasn’t been installed yet (supposedly it’s another week or so away). Anyway, that delay has given me the excuse to buy one of those really neat little mobile broadband gadgets which has always been on the “would love to have but just can’t justify it” list. However, whilst it’s been on said list the prices have been dropping dramatically….

In that my mobile surfing will almost certainly be limited in duration the ideal plan for me is very much T-mobiles daily one. All of £2 a day on those days which I use it which means that the non-use charge is effectively £4 a year as you’ve to use it at least once every six months. Although most of the time such a deal seems sure to be a ripoff in fact you can change the topups on this one to a monthly £20 which is little more than “normal” mobile broadband charges these days and, for me, will be substantially cheaper.

On other fronts, we’re now in a minor battle with the Central Services Agency (CSA) over registering Wendy for healthcare. It appears that they have a rather flakey grasp on how residency rights actually work in Europe so they issue health numbers to any French that arrive when they should be requiring proof that they’re eligible to live here (European citizens generally need a job to gain the right to live in other European countries) and they’ve been insisting on all kinds of documentation from Bulgarians when they’ve been in Europe for about six years now and have the same documentation requirements as would the French. Wendy, as always, is unique as, despite the CSA insisting that she provide a visa and/or residence permit, she doesn’t have to provide anything other than her passport thanks to changes in European freedom of movement legislation over the last five years. Oh, and the CSA think that “freedom of movement” is just that: you can move, not actually live: in fact it’s both!

Anyway, all being well they will reject her application as the current rate of awards for such discrimination is over £20,000.

We figured that getting back into the UK health system would be a doddle and so it seemed to be initially. However, several days after handing in the simple “signing up to a doctor” form to our former doctor, we were told that in fact we need to fill in the slightly more complicated one for people coming from overseas and to provide birth certificates for everybody too.

In our case, the form isn’t quite so simple to complete as it might be in that when it asks if I’m making National Insurance contributions I’m not sure what the correct answer should be. OK, right now I’m not contributing in that we’ve just arrived here a few weeks ago but on the other hand chances are that I will be contributing by the time they get around to processing the form.

That “non-contribution” aspect prompted us to think about signing on for unemployment benefit (Jobseekers Allowance as it’s now called). So, starting out from the premise that all we really needed was access to the health system we now find ourselves making a claim for unemployment benefits that we’d not otherwise have bothered with. Silly, or what?

Still, at least it’ll give us some kind of proof to the French authorities that we’re not in their system anymore.

With our previous problems of settling into France at the start we thought that we’d make an early start on getting into the education, tax, social security, etc. systems.

On the education front, we were anticipating problems in that whilst there have been oodles of new immigrants to Northern Ireland and lots of new houses have been built, there haven’t been any new schools built. It turns out that this isn’t a problem in the primary schools but is very much a problem in secondary education depending on what area you’re looking at. As always, immigrants start off settling near the capital ie Belfast and further out there don’t seem to be the problems.

One interesting contrast with France is that it’s the state owned schools here that have the extra resources to deal with special needs kids like James rather than the private schools. “Special needs”? Well, thanks to him not really being educated at his school in France he can’t read or write properly and, of course, not in English thus he’s going to need some extra tutoring to get him back on track.

Obviously we’re still getting tax and social security bills from France so stopping them and getting ourselves into the corresponding systems in the UK is going to be our next priority.

Whilst the trip out to France seemed like a rather long trek at the time, the trip back was considerably shorter thanks to rethinking of the route and being able to be more organised before our departure.

Thanks to the courtyard we were able to space out the packing of the trailer over a week or so and managed to fit so much stuff into it that we’re still trying to find places to put it all over here! Funnily enough, the trailer wasn’t nearly as heavy as I’d been expecting that it would be which in turn meant that we were able to make much better progress on the motorway than expected.

This time around we’d one stopped at Clermont-Ferrand which was around the half-way mark and not quite so far along as we’d planned initially (thanks to a very, very late departure). The second day it was straight on to the ferry at Le Havre for a reasonable crossing to Rosslare. Compared to the alternative of driving all the way up England and then across Scotland this was definitely by far the most relaxing way to go and with a fairly quick Rosslare to Belfast drive at the other end it was overall an easy trip to do.

By the time you read this we should be well on our way to the ferry.

Although we’re going on one of the longest routes this time going the whole way from France to Ireland in one go, it’s actually by far the cheapest ferry route for us. Not only is the ferry cheaper but we avoid a very long drive all the way up England and the hotel night that we’d have to add in as well.

In fact, the only downside with the route is that the ferry only goes once a week. It’s got quite a late departure time but that means a much more relaxed trip up to the port for us in place of the usual dash to get there for an afternoon sailing.