Foreign Perspectives

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.

This is the first really serious recession that the euro has had to deal with and there are starting to be signs appearing that it’ll be the last.

The problem arose basically because the entry requirements for going into the euro were created with the political aim of getting as many countries into the euro as possible. Net effect of that is that countries never got around to getting the basics of the operation of their economy into line and that’s why we’re now seeing a number of countries getting into more serious trouble than they would do otherwise.

Ireland is perhaps the worst case of this as it was an economy very dependent on European grant money. Go down any new road up to a few years ago and there was a panorama of “x% supported by the European Regional Development Fund”. That was courtesy of its status as a deprived region up until a few years ago. Now the situation is that not only do the roads not get that European support but the Irish are effectively paying for the roads in Poland. Combine that with the global economic crisis and you’ve a big problem.

However, it’s not just Ireland that has problems. Greece is paying its bills by borrowing short term which is a very dangerous game. Italy is in little better shape. For the worst case you need to look at the former eastern bloc countries who went into the Exchange Rate Mechanism which is a pre-euro state: going directly from one of the softest currencies in the world to using one of the hardest is, to put it mildly, a major shock to the economic system.

Will the euro survive all this, or will we see some countries dropping out soon?

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.

By the time you read this we should finally be underway on our journey back to the UK.

Despite us having the luxury of being able to spread the packing out over a week or so we still found that we had an awful lot of stuff still to find a home in the car or trailer right up to the night before we left. In fact, we ended up postponing the last of the packing ’til the morning of our departure as so much of the final pile was all those little things that you don’t know what to do with.

Anyway, as I say, we should be off by now. In theory although it’s quite a long trip, it should be a fairly leisurely one as the 10 hours driving time will be spread over two days rather than crammed into one as many people do.