Owner: Foreign Perspectives URL:http://www.foreignperspectives.com Join Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 05:10:05 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: News and editorial on life from the south of France, a regular series on how to move here and some random musings too. Site statistics:Click here
The Languedoc-Roussillon Region 2007-04-02 17:52:06 Just as France is huge, so too are some of the regions within it with the Languedoc-Roussillon area spanning a vast area stretching along the Mediterranean to Provence in the east.
Even we who should know better often think of “the Languedoc” as being countryside with a few hills yet we know that there are proper mountains less than an hour west of us (OK, not in the Languedoc). Similarly, we shouldn’t really expect to be surrounded by castles outside our own little corner of Languedoc-Roussillon. In fact, we’ve hardly explored the eastern edges of the region and have rarely passed Montpellier for that matter.
What’s quite striking is the difference in scenery that you get in travelling as little as 90 minutes from here. Last week, we had a little trip along the coast and came across the lovely Lake Saligou near Clermont L’Herault set in almost alpine scenery. I’m sure that it’s over-run with tourists in the Summer but we had the whole pl
Google pagerank and site value 2007-04-01 19:13:12
My blog is worth $11,855.34.
How much is your blog worth?
As we write this we are languishing at PR2 which is “below average” but then we’ve only had this domain registered for a fairly short time.
What is a little peculiar to look at are some of the values the pagerank prediction tools are producing at the moment for the site.
For me, the most interesting collection of little site monitoring tools is that at iWebTool which has recently changed it’s prediction from a quite respectable PR5 to a PR6. Will we get that next time round though? I can’t honestly see us sitting at PR6 this time next month (the pagerank review is due in early April) but PR5 would be quite nice.
They arrive at these predictions basically by looking at the number of backlinks (ie links to) our site. So, when the last pagerank review came up a few months ago we had around 1000 links to our site and thereby ended up with PR2. That was a so-so start though I think we’d h Read more:Google
Buying a house in france: part 14: housing: your house in the UK 2007-04-01 13:52:40 We’re looked at French housing, but what about your house in the UK?
Even if you are absolutely certain that you are going to spend the rest of your life in France, it’s best to retain your house in the UK if you can so that you have a fall-back position in case things don’t work out in France or you change your mind about living here. Not everyone is able to maintain houses in two countries of course and it will probably make finances a little tighter in France than they would otherwise be. However, once you sell your house in the UK you can find it very difficult to get back into the housing market. In our own case, our UK house went up over 40% in less than three years and effectively beyond our reach had we sold it when we moved.
If you are lucky enough to be able to keep it, you should try to rent it out. Not only will this keep the house occupied but it will help pay the mortgage etc. without needing to rely on income from France to pay for the various bills tha Read more:Buying
Buying a house in France: part 13: housing: the buying process 2007-03-29 10:18:34 In many ways, the house buying process in France
is quite similar to that in the UK but there are important differences.
Once you’ve found a place, the first stage is to sign a Promis d’Achat (promise to buy). If the seller accepts this, then you have your house as they aren’t allowed to even show it to anyone else (ie no gazumping), subject to you following through with the later stages of the purchase, of course. Signing this commits you to buy the place at the agreed price but only commits the seller to sell to you if they accept this contract.
Since it commits you to buying, you MUST add a “subject to mortgage” clause if you plan on getting a mortgage for the purchase. The mortgage clause needs to include the bank that will be giving you the mortgage, the rate and the term of the mortgage so if you are hoping to get a French mortgage you’ll need to see the bank first. If you haven’t done so already, you should open a French bank account at
Is Belfast anti-European? Exchanging a European driving license in Northern Ireland 2007-03-27 14:28:29 Seeing as SuperFrenchie thinks I’m “just” anti-French, I thought I’d redress the balance a little and point out one area where the UK is anti-European
too.I was in getting my driving license renewed last week which is something of a hit and miss affair as the explanatory leaflet leaves a LOT to be desired in clarity. Even though the thing was in English and, one would assume therefore that I’d understand it, the opening paragraph on what proof of ID was required was totally incomprehensible and appeared to be totally wrong too.It opens by saying that if you have a colour photograph on your existing driving license then you don’t need to have someone certify your photograph nor to present a passport. Except, that when my father presented his renewal application complete with his old driving license with colour photo, they wouldn’t renew it without his passport.
It then goes on to say that you always need to have your photo certified yet they hap Read more:Northern
, Ireland
Will Bayrou shift the French political spectrum? 2007-03-25 15:41:47 Although Bayrou
appears to be in third place, the peculiarities of the two stage electoral process in France mean that he’s the candidate with the greatest potential majority in the second stage, assuming that he gets through the first stage of course. It seems that the candidates in France have had a similar analysis of the voting possibilities to our own and are adjusting their approaches accordingly.
As reported in the Financial Times, this has already had a considerable impact on socialist thinking with an unsigned manifesto in Le Point calling for quite a radical rethinking of socialist policies. In effect, this would represent the realignment of socialism in France that happened with socialism elsewhere in Europe some years ago. Will that realignment happen this time around? I suspect not as there seems very little time before the election now and I can’t really see such a change being one that the electorate would believe.
To an outsider Sarkozy doesn’t seem t Read more:French
, political
Buying a house in France: part 12: housing: where to look for a house 2007-03-19 08:49:57 The housing sales market has been very slow in France
during 2006 which we’ve noticed through the large drop in house buyers staying with us during the year.However, it does seem to be picking up fast as we’ve had quite a flurry of house hunters staying with us recently and bookings into the new year for house buyers are well up on what they were over the same period last year. That in turn appears to be taking the prices being asked for up too so if you’re planning on buying somewhere over here it might be as well to get moving on that idea sooner rather than later.One of the best ways to get a feel for the market here is via the major property exhibitions in London. The best one is Vive la France which is a combined French property and culture exhibition held each January. If you miss that one, the next best is the French Property Exhibition in early September which is basically Vive la France without the cultural section. There are regional versions of both of thes Read more:Buying
Would you bet on this horse-race? 2007-03-18 09:55:21 The French presidential election is a two stage process which creates almost a horse race approach to the presentation of statistics from the various polls.
Whilst Sarkozy is clearly the front runner and, to a UK audience, “obviously” he will win, that’s not quite so obvious as it might appear. If, as seems likely, the first stage vote doesn’t give Sarkozy over 50% of the vote then the top two polling candidates will proceed to the second stage of the voting.
As we write this, it seems certain that Sarkozy will get through to the second stage and let’s take that as read for the moment to simplify the rest of this discussion.
The second person who gets through is far from a sure thing at this point as the polls are indicating that Royal is sitting on 23% and Bayrou on 21%. Considering how polls work, it’s quite possible that the real position is, say, Royal on 21% and Bayrou on 23%. Yes, the polls indicate a margin of error which would exclude that bu
Happy St Patrick’s Day! 2007-03-16 20:14:30 St Patrick
’s Day is an odd sort of day in Northern Ireland.For one thing, although St Patrick is celebrated as an Irish saint, he was actually British. Naturally, he was Catholic as there wasn’t anything else in terms of Christian religions in his time.
In years gone by, the combination of those two facts produced a peculiar result in Northern Ireland. Although considered the patron saint of the whole island of Ireland ie of both the Republic of Ireland and of Northern Ireland, in NI at one time he was “taken over” by those that would consider themselves Irish (effectively the Catholic population) and thus the celebrations of his day were largely in “Irish” parts of NI. I get the impression that things are changing and the celebrations are less exclusively Irish these days but I suspect it’ll be several years before St Patrick’s day becomes a completely non-nationalistic event in Northern Ireland.
Perhaps the most appropriate place to cel Read more:Happy
Foreign Perspectives: As seen on TV 2007-03-15 18:08:18 Recently, France24 asked me (along with, no doubt, thousands of others) to contribute to a blog portraying the upcoming French presidential election as seen from the eyes of commentators overseas and I contributed my piece on Royal which they subsequently published. My article on Chirac even managed to hold its place as lead story on the site throughout March 12th and was picked up on their broadcasts too thus giving me my 2 seconds of fame.
What most impresses me about all this is that, seemingly for the first time, France is asking the rest of the world what they think of the events in France.
Obviously the presidential election is very much an internal matter for France. However, who the French president is matters outside France: how France reacts on the international stage will be very different depending on whether it’s Sarkozy, Royal or Bayrou as president. So it’s important that this election receives the exposure that it deserves worldwide and not just in France.
Read more:Foreign
An Australian, an Irishman and a Frenchman… 2007-04-03 13:33:39 An Australian
, an Irishman and a Frenchman were sitting in a pub.
Australian: Gee, it’s wet today.
Irishman: Sure is, almost as wet as we get in the west coast of Ireland.
Frenchman: You’re not French. You’re not allowed to criticise the weather in France. I’m going to start a poster campaign against you and have someone come round and smash your place up.
Australian: Wow, do you mean that the weather in France is just the same as it is here in Belfast today?
This one is specially for SuperFrenchie
Ice Cream Vans as an indication of attitudes about the climate 2007-04-05 10:59:48 Although Northern Ireland is definitely cooler than the south of France, one surprising difference is that Northern Ireland has icecream vans at just about every possible location that you’d find crowds of people whereas France seems to have none of these.That’s indicative of quite a different attitude towards the climate in general between NI and France which we’ve seen illustrated numerous times whilst we’ve been here.
As soon as the temperature drops below around 30c over here, all the locals don their Winter coats. Not just any old Winter coat either for the coats on sale in the local shops seem more suited to Arctic conditions than the, usually, very mild Winters that we get here. Although it’s been warm enough for us to be running around in t-shirts almost all the time since March 2006 (yes, all year), the local population has been wearing their heavy coats since late September.
Perhaps the most noticeable difference that we’ve seen though is w Read more:Cream
, attitudes
Astronomy in the south of France: the moon with Venus 2007-04-04 13:40:22 I’ve always had a bit of an interest in astronomy but I’m a bit of a warm weather astronomer hence my interest in solar eclipses which are the one astronomical event which is pretty much guaranteed to occur when the temperature is well above freezing.
However, one advantage of being in the south of France
now is that the nights are generally warmer and we’re also outside the city lights so have a much clearer sky. In fact, the sky is so much clearer that the moonlight is noticeably brighter in comparison and when there’s a full moon, you could almost read with the light outside.
Anyway, that’s to introduce an occasional series that I hope to do on the sights that we see in the night sky over here which, hopefully, will be illustrated with some images though I’m still trying to work out how to take night sky photos with the digital camera so bear with me.
To begin with, here’s a nice photo of the crescent moon with the planet Venus
taken in Feb Read more:Astronomy
Economical international commuting 2007-04-06 12:20:38 It feels like I’ve been commuting between Perpignan and Belfast over the last month or so with two trips already and a third looming.Since we have places to stay in both countries, it means that our timetable is quite flexible so I’ve spent a bit of time on SkyScanner checking out the cheapest prices and coming up with some slightly peculiar routes.
Belfast isn’t really that easy to get to from here so I usually end up flying into Dublin which has considerably more choice in terms of discount flights and seems to have lower departure taxes as well which drops the prices a little bit more. The only problem is the bus up which isn’t nearly as reliable as it used to be and on Fridays it’s quite common to have to wait for as much as three hours just to get a bus with any free seats. Of course, for me, Friday is often the day with the cheapest flights as most people are leaving Ireland for France/Spain on a long weekend therefore the flights from France/Spain t Read more:Economical
Solar eclipse 2006 from Turkey 2007-04-07 12:10:18 Last year we went to Turkey
to see the solar eclipse
.Whilst everyone and their dog turned up with really serious cameras and telescopes, the photo that I was most impressed with is the one that you see here.
When I’d finished taking all the photos with the Nikon F3, I thought that I’d just have a go with my little digital and this is how that photo turned out. No messing around with settings, worrying about flash, or anything in fact other than zooming in (all of x3).
However, no matter how good the photos or video you’ve seen, it’s absolutely nothing like the experience that you’ll get when seeing a total eclipse of the sun. How can I describe it? When the eclipse is nearly at the point of totality (about 10 minutes before the full eclipse starts), things start to become quite strange. Flowers close up, the birds settle down for the night and it gets quite cool. All this is happening in the middle of the day, of course. The lighting is VERY strange. It&r Read more:Solar
buying a house in France: part 15: banking & finance: introduction 2007-04-08 22:41:16 International banking
raises issues that rarely arise when you confine your transactions to one country and we’ll be covering these over the next couple of weeks.If you are moving to France
to live, you might think that you may as well either close or at least tidy up your finance
s in the UK before you leave. Resist this temptation! It can be much more difficult to open UK accounts when you are living in France and if you have closed everything you may find it virtually impossible to open any account in the UK.
The banking scene in France is completely different from that in the UK. Whereas there are the “big four” in the UK, France doesn’t really have any truly big banks and the majority of French “banks” are what would be considered relatively small regional building societies in the UK. As with small building societies, the range of products is quite limited.
Next week we’ll begin with what you might think is the simplest part of this topic:
Technorati favourites exchange 2007-04-11 12:02:14 One of the blog marketing sites, DoshDosh recently suggested that it may be possible to get into the top 100 favourites on Technorati
relatively easily.
Whilst we’ve all been beavering away in building up links back to our blogs, it will take a “while” to get to the top 100 linked to blogs as number 100 is currently sitting at over 3000 links. On the other hand, it would only require just over 100 people to favorite us to get into the top 100 favorited blogs which certainly seems in the realms of possibility.
Why bother though? Well, being in a top 100 list of anything is almost certain to increase the traffic on the blog and indeed quite likely to increase the number of blogs linking to us for that matter.
Anyway, if you’re interested in exchanging favourites in this way you can start the ball rolling by clicking
and letting me know that you’ve done it in a comment to this post (quote your Technorati username so I can confirm the link). A link back in a
Why are there no wetbacks in Europe? 2007-04-11 10:56:30 I recently came across Immigration Orange which covers immigration issues primarily in America but increasingly worldwide.When I thought about the things that they cover, it struck me that there don’t seem to be any Canadian wetbacks nor do there seem to be any in Europe
. For those that don’t know “wetback” is the (derogratory) term used to describe illegal immigrants in America, essentially because the border is marked by the Rio Grande and therefore in times past they could be picked out by having wet-backs from crossing the river.
Legal immigrants to America fall broadly into one of four categories:
Employment-based preference, essentially those who have skills that are in demand;
Family preference, which allows people to sponsor close relatives;
Diversity, which aims to increase the numbers of under-represented groups; and
Refugees
There aren’t any Canadian wetbacks for the simple reason that it’s relatively easy for a Canadian to live and work
The first grape shoot of Spring 2007-04-10 12:54:35 The landscape around us has remained stark since the last of the grape bushes were prunned at the end of the year but it’s all about to change.
As you can see the first shoots have started to appear on the grape bushes just beside us but already the landscape has taken a greener appearance. The various types of grape start growing at different times so we’ve been watching as the greenery has been sweeping towards us over the last week or so and we noticed the first signs of growth in the plants beside us just a few days ago.
What’s very surprising is the sheer speed at which the plants grow. Once they get started, you can find a small bush appearing within just a few days of rain. The climate locally is pretty dry so most of the growth happens in very short bursts after each day that we get rain.
Read more:Spring
buying a house in France: part 16: banking & finance: the UK 2007-04-13 11:55:15 Even if you are intending to live the rest of your life in France
, you should resist the temptation to close any UK bank accounts or credit cards. The only exception to this is, possibly, for those accounts/cards which have an annual fee.
In addition to the accounts which you already have, you may find it useful to open others as the international dimension changes how you use accounts. For instance, if you have a holiday home in France you’ll obviously be transferring money from pounds into euros much more than you were previously.
The range of accounts in the UK is massive and therefore we can only give an indication of those that you might find useful here; the reference version of this guide will be more comprehensive.
The Nationwide Building Society Flexaccount (cheque account) is a must. It gives you entirely free transfers from pounds to euro and, at the moment, is the only truly free currency exchange service. Their credit card comes close behind with free exchange on pur Read more:banking
, finance
2k bloggers 2007-04-12 21:40:13 A while ago, the folks at 2kbloggers
thought that it would be a neat idea to create a montage of bloggers.
Well, the montage includes the good, the bad, the ugly and me. Snag is that it takes donkeys to download. However, Chino Yray has now produced a nice big text version of the 2k.
Anyway, here’s a “few” blogs for your perusual…..
http://1001gatos.org/
http://1800hart.com/blog
http://1loup.net/
http://20nonprofit.blogspot.com/
http://25yearplan.blogspot.com/
http://303dsoldier.blogspot.com
http://32countries.wordpress.com/
http://360.yahoo.com/dkearns72
http://360.yahoo.com/kendylau_bekhoebengoan
http://360.yahoo.com/profile-SBCqSDYjdKijOiMd1hROXw
http://365ad.wordpress.com/
http://3for365.com/
http://4clubbs.blogspot.com/
http://52novels.com/
http://6doi.net/
http://aaranda.blogspot.com/
http://abcchin.blogspot.com/
http://abehap.squarespace.com/
http://abenkwain.blogspot.com/
http://absinthedreamers.blogspot.com/
http://abundanceabounds.blogspot.com/
http:
The most ignored sign in the world? 2007-04-12 09:35:04 Whilst we might complain about the volume of dog poo in France, at least they have the little trucks to clean it up in the towns.But, why is it that this seems to be the most ignored sign in the world? After all, the penalty on this particular sign is £500 and that sum seems fairly typical of the fines imposed in other countries.
I suspect that the simple reason is that the police similarly ignore this sign.
After all, when have you heard of a dog owner having to pay £500/500€ in court?
The master of blog marketing 2007-04-14 19:12:36 Whilst I’m feeling quite chuffed at moving from a 200k ranking on Technorati down to 100k in a couple of days John Chow is the true master of such things and presently sitting at number 154. Even better, his blog is there to help you make money online, in this particular instance by (hopefully) driving traffic to Foreign Perspectives. All that’s required is to link to his blog.
His blog is just filled with ways of making money online so all being well, once I’ve worked through them all, I’ll be able to give up the day job.
Blogsite promotion 2007-04-14 14:21:03 This seems to be my week for marketing the blog!
Most of the time, I’m incredibly lazy about doing it and it’s just gotten to where it is today by chance for the most part. In fact, I didn’t really do any promotion of it worth talking about ’til this week when it was something of a blitz that I’ve not yet recovered from.
I started the week with the blogsite submission service at DirectoryVault which at $23 seems something of a bargain. To be fair, there was some duplication with the dribble of promotion that I’d done on a now and again basis over the last six months or so. Things like the obvious of Technorati and Feedburner mainly but it did turn up a considerable number of seemingly good places that I’ve never heard of before.
Then there was the Technorati favourites exchange on Wednesday which is still rumbling on and which has left behind a fair amount of work that I’ve still to catch up on at some point.
Finally on Thursday, I aided
A wrist slapping from Technorati 2007-04-15 20:19:46 As you know, I was one of the first to repost the 2kbloggers list last Thursday and in common with Bob and Chino had my blog suspended from Technorati
s listings temporarily (Angela by chance didn’t make the list clickable). It would have been rather more than a temporary suspension but for the words of wisdom from Bob.
Now, Technorati have gotten around to replying to us as to the reason for the suspension in a comment on Bob’s site. Seems that were a substantial number of the 2kbloggers to have similarly reposted the list, their whole ranking system would have become worthless. Their reasoning is that their system is intended to give high rankings to blogs which get a lot of relevant links.
Emm, guys… if that’s the case, how come you allow the growth of “blog reviews” as a side-line to the likes of John Chow? For that matter, how come you allow the growth of blog review blogs at all? After all, the link that I have on this blog to bloggyaward is hardly a relevan
The best toy ever? 2007-04-18 10:06:19 Whilst I was over in Belfast last month James and John separately discovered the treasure trove of toys in the roofspace and, boy is it a treasure trove, as they’ve been living in that house since I was three.
They both liked the Scalextric car racing set which I was amazed to find still operational after over 30 years. All that it needed was a bit of sanding on the tracks to get rid of a little bit of rust. James was really keen on it so we’ll have to see about getting some new brushes for the cars.
James loved the little moon rovers too which also, quite amazingly, worked perfectly with new batteries. It seems a little odd to have toys with the big D size batteries rather than the much more common AA size that you get these days. On ‘tother hand, I’m not so sure that the present day toys will still be in working order 30 years on.
But, the toy that they both liked best was this little motorbike. No batteries required and the back wheel has broken off but it w
Strawberry, honey, truffles, you name it, they’ve got a festival for it! 2007-04-17 18:49:28 With start of April starts the onslaught of the festivals for just about every fruit, vegetable or drink you could name.The one problem with them is that you’ve really no idea in advance whether or not a given festival will be a popular one or just a few stalls trying to sell some obscure vegetable.
One of the best we’ve been to lately was the strawberry festival at Bellesta which is a village quite close to us but one we’d not been to before. They were lucky enough to hold the festival on a particularly sunny day following some of the last of the Winter rain. Combine that with the Vide Grenier (car boot sale or flea market) and the village was seriously struggling under the weight of traffic and people looking for parking spots on the day.
In fact, there were only two small stalls selling strawberries but the other stalls gave a very good representation of the local produce ranging from excellent honey
as you can see, through the spicy sausages that you find everywh Read more:Strawberry
Trips and holidays: New England 2007-04-16 19:31:27 It’s been a while since I’ve been on one of the grand-scale holidays that I used to go on quite regularly but the point is coming up when it’ll be time for another one so I’ve started looking round the places that I went to in the past.
Anyway, as part of the pre-trip plans, I’ve started tidying up and updating the outline guides that I used to run up for the big trips and they’ll be starting to appear on the trips section of this site in due course.
The first one is for New England
which I spent about four weeks going round way back in mid-September 1996. That’s quite an unusual area for America in that it has quite a bit of history behind it and is quite compact too. So compact in fact that we ended up spending almost three weeks within 150 miles of Boston.
The unexpected highlight of the trip for me was Concord Massachusetts which is where the War of Independence started or, as we would refer to it, the rebellion. Whilst in the rest of America us brits feel very much a Read more:New England
How much influence will off-shore voters have in the French election? 2007-04-19 11:10:37 One of the striking differences of this election vs previous ones is that there is an appreciation that a significant proportion of the French
population lives overseas.
Of a total population of 53 million voters, an estimated minimum of 2 million are resident abroad. Now 4% or so might not sound like a very big proportion but critically, the political makeup of the overseas French is considered different from the political makeup of those remaining in France and, on the whole, they are more to the right than to the left. How come? Well, the typical left wing approach of bribing the electorate by increases in social security payments clearly won’t work with this group as they simply won’t receive them ie there is no pull towards the left for them. On the other side, they will, for the most part, be in countries that are more to the right than France is and can see a less socialist system actually working ie there is a pull to the right. Combine these and you get a drift to Read more:influence
Buying a house in France: part 17: Offshore banking 2007-04-20 13:50:45 Offshore banks are banks that operate in various tax havens around the world. The most familiar in the UK are the Channel Islands and the Isle of Mann but there are many based in small islands in the Carribbean.
If you’re moving abroad, it can be useful to have an account with one of these banks both to simplify your taxes a little and for the additional services that many of them offer to the expat community. None of the legitimate centres offer taxfree interest on your accounts these days but offer you two options for the interest on your accounts: 1) a withholding tax roughly equivalent to the tax that you would normally pay in your country of residence and 2) no tax but they report your income to the authorities in your country of residence.
Although no longer taxfree, the additional services that many of these banks offer can still make them worthwhile. Even the simplest of them are much more familiar with international bank transfers than a normal high street bank could be Read more:Buying
, France
, Offshore
, banking
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