RMweb Premium NGT6 1315 Posted October 18, 2012 RMweb Premium Share Posted October 18, 2012 Morning all... Get well soon, Ashers! I believe I'd feel just as rotten to be taken off my feet yet again if I were in your place... Quite balmy indeed for this time of year and the forecast does look not too bad either. Now for another cup of coffee... 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
DDolfelin Posted October 18, 2012 Share Posted October 18, 2012 Just been watching some space junk or something similar moving across the dawn sky between the rain clouds. Any modelling skills I have now called upon to bridge the 1mm gap between the downpipe and the new water butt. Best not to cut the grass just yet, Martin. GWS Ashers. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium skipepsi Posted October 18, 2012 RMweb Premium Share Posted October 18, 2012 Morning all, I'm lte I'm late when you don't set the alarm it doesn't go off. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Happy Hippo Posted October 18, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted October 18, 2012 More rain overnight, but blue sky now, with a few grey clouds being whipped along by a brisk sou'wester. the obergrumpenfuhreur gets back from her visit to her mother in N Wales, so today I will be donning the pinny and making sure that the house is clean and tidy. This will mainly be ensuring that the wrappers from an e bay purchase are carefully tidied away, and the contents are cleared off the marshalling yard (aka the conservatory table), where a number of highly technical calculations have been establishing how long the fiddle yards of my next project need to be. Alternatively, it might just have been a self centred boasting exercise at how much stock I have with no railway to run it on. It also reinforces the question: 'Why did I buy that?' Get well soon Ashers Regards Richard 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Tony_S Posted October 18, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted October 18, 2012 Morning all. I couldn't think of anything to say earlier except that it was dark and dry. Now it is light and drizzly. Had a BBM text from Matthew this morning. His exams went well yesterday, he seemed pleased with the one about Canada (a compulsory module). Then he said he had been struggling with producing population pyramid charts on Excel for some coursework. No-one seemed to know how to do it but he had found a YouTube video demonstrating the process. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
trisonic Posted October 18, 2012 Share Posted October 18, 2012 Tony, It seems everyone was taking exams in North America yesterday. My daughter was doing PSAT (she's a sophomore High Schooler: 15 - 16 years old kids). So was everyone else her age too across the country, apparently. My snap comparison vs the UK is that Maths and the Sciences the USA is slightly ahead of the game, English and the Arts less so. Best, Pete. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Oldddudders Posted October 18, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted October 18, 2012 Morning all Dreary and wet again. Just when I think I'm feeling better and looking to sort out my finances, I get an additional tax demand for 3k euros - a social charge we haven't been asked to pay before. Life doesn't want to play fair at present! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Tony_S Posted October 18, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted October 18, 2012 Pete. Matthew's exams were" mid terms". His coursework in Canada seems to have to be submitted weekly rather than at some odd interval. He seems to have settled quite well into the Canadian study system though. 50% of his Canadian grades will be added to half of his Leicester 2nd year grades to determine his final second year grade. So he does have to work hard this year to maintain his grade standard. His first piece of coursework was to "critique " a journal article (translated from French) about African asylum seekers fleeing religious persecution who had settled in Dublin. I don't know about comparisons between education systems. There are gradings carried out and I think Singapore usually comes out near the top. I was rather disappointed with Mathew's secondary education. His school seemed to just want to get as many students with 5 GCSE grade Cs.His English and Economics teachers were very good. The teaching at post 16 at the local sixth form college was excellent. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium AndyB Posted October 18, 2012 RMweb Premium Share Posted October 18, 2012 Morning all. Sorry to hear you're poorly, Ashers. Dropped off SWMBO in Farnborough this morning and saw developers are continuing to knock down more and more of my old lab. The buildings dated from the 1940s and are making way for housing. Won't be long till there are no traces of the decades of leading edge science that we did. Ok the research is still available to read. But there's a lot of nostalgia for the little community that we were. Hey-ho. The past is a country we can't visit. Andy 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Tony_S Posted October 18, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted October 18, 2012 (edited) Morning all Dreary and wet again. Just when I think I'm feeling better and looking to sort out my finances, I get an additional tax demand for 3k euros - a social charge we haven't been asked to pay before. Life doesn't want to play fair at present! Not long after Matthew was born, I was ill, not receiving any pay, no sickness benefit and suddenly everyone seemed to be demanding money. Government departments here can't seem to write a letter without some sort of threat but often the people on the phone were much nicer. Is the new social charge to do with France trying to reduce its deficit? Can you put a cow on your horse field and claim some farming subsidies? Edited October 18, 2012 by Tony_S 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Oldddudders Posted October 18, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted October 18, 2012 Not long after Matthew was born, I was ill, not receiving any pay, no sickness benefit and suddenly everyone seemed to be demanding money. Government departments here can't seem to write a letter without some sort of threat but often the people on the phone were much nicer. Is the new social charge to do with France trying to reduce its deficit? Can you put a cow on your horse field and claim some farming subsidies? I think this is a tax that has never previously been levied upon incomers like us, who are retired. Deb knew it was upcoming and warned me we'd have a problem. At the time, of course, we thought we were still owed some money on her insurance claim, which would have covered it, but of course that turned out to have been spent on our house alterations to suit Deb's immobility. My paddock is very small and currently just a muddy mess - which is why the horses broke out, looking for more grazing on the lawn! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
DDolfelin Posted October 18, 2012 Share Posted October 18, 2012 Officials can make mistakes, Ian. Have you got the energy to follow through implying an error? I would start with a RL letter to a named person giving a frank description of your current circumstances (?fixed income) and querying if that charge is, indeed, justified and to recommend a course of action to mitigate its impact. There should be a sympathy element for you to draw on if you hit the right contact. If nothing else it might gain you some time. However, these are just my thoughts - please ignore them as appropriate. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold beast66606 Posted October 18, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted October 18, 2012 Morning all. Dark and dull in Suffolk at the moment but getting better as the morning progresses. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold The Stationmaster Posted October 18, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted October 18, 2012 Morning all, Sympathy to Ashers - not nice and I wonder if it's linked to the shingles? Ian - just 'argue' with them I reckon and play for time, and yet more time plus the sympathy angle. I reckon the hint about the field might be worth looking into further even if it is the size of a pocket handkerchief because the French seem to be intent on supporting 'small farmers' so you never know. (unlike this country where we are virtually stuck with getting the same rent for a field as we were getting 20 years ago because the bloke renting is has to do all the things various Ministries require which usually seem to add up to less cultivable area every other year as margins are planted with grass to encourage whatever it is grass encourages and the hedges can't be trimmed back because they've got something else living or nesting in them - all of which is far more important than growing food, apparently). Cloudy here with occasional peeps of sunshine, won't be quite so sunny when I'm spending time 'checking' our Czech builder's NVQ, or whatever it is, exam paper on traditional plastering methods as a favour for him - his written English isn't brilliant and he's dyslexic; why do I do these things? (mind you a magazine article I recently checked/corrected was written by a born & bred Briton and I'm still trying to puzzle out what his sources were, because they weren't - if you get my drift). 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sixoh8sixoh Posted October 18, 2012 Share Posted October 18, 2012 Can you put a cow on your horse field and claim some farming subsidies? Don't ask. I know far more than anyone should know about the possibilities of getting Single Farm Payment... Dry and bright for now in Edinburgh but still plenty of water on the ground. Time for a coffee. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dilbert Posted October 18, 2012 Share Posted October 18, 2012 Officials can make mistakes, Ian. Have you got the energy to follow through implying an error? There should be a sympathy element for you to draw on if you hit the right contact. If nothing else it might gain you some time. The French Income tax system has a major difference compared to the UK version in that it doesn't operate a PAYE type scheme of income tax payments at source - effectively income tax paid in CY12 will be based on revenues declared in May/June of this year that correspond to CY11 taxable revenue. They haven't got round to collecting 2012 income tax. There are two ways of paying income taxes due - the first is to opt for three payments in the year (mid-Feb, mid-May & mid-Oct). The first two payments will be estimated on the previous year declaration. The third payment will apply any outstanding adjustment based on the May/June declaration. The alternative option is to go for a base monthly pre-payment, Jan-Oct inc. (again this will be based on the previous CY declaration). If you have up to Sept. overpaid, this will automatically be adjusted in the Oct. payment. If you have underpaid then the outstanding amount will be (in general) split over Nov. and Dec.. I use the second approach in that it is possible during the year to change the monthly amount you pay to reflect reality. Of course, if someone seriously underestimates what is due, then not only wil they pay the difference, but they will get fined as well. In Jan. of each CY, there is the official tax website that proposes a simulator to enable you to accurately calculate what is due (based on your input)... dilbert 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted October 18, 2012 Share Posted October 18, 2012 Heavens above - and I thought the German Tax system was complicated! 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium NGT6 1315 Posted October 18, 2012 RMweb Premium Share Posted October 18, 2012 I'm sorry to hear about those complications, Ian. Not being familiar with the options you may have under French law, I probably cannot offer any advice beyond what's been mentioned on here already, but certainly there ought to be some leeway for the revenue office to agree on a solution in difficult situations like yours. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium skipepsi Posted October 18, 2012 RMweb Premium Share Posted October 18, 2012 Having coped with being 50 mins late out of bed I was feeling quite smug but getting a letter like that Ian would bring my whole world crashing round my ears. Just stalling for time is probably the best plan for the minute until you can gather enough information to work out what to do next. 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sixoh8sixoh Posted October 18, 2012 Share Posted October 18, 2012 Good grief. Sounds as complicated as Jarndyce vs Jarndyce... Tony, meant to say - I managed to reset the decoder on my 67 using the Lenz handset. No joy using the JMRI yet, but think I need to plough my way thoroughly through the instructions... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Oldddudders Posted October 18, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted October 18, 2012 The one advantage to the French system is that I do have a proper tax office that I can go and talk to, and it's only 10 miles away. I will need to dig out all the papers and rush off there tomorrow. I am already paying the 2011 Income Tax - first of three payments went out on Monday, but this is an additional requirement for the first time on retired foreigners. It effectively doubles my tax bill. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
gordon s Posted October 18, 2012 Share Posted October 18, 2012 (edited) Morning all, just back from the hospital having had a steroid injection into a bursal sac in my right foot. Hopefully it will make it a little more comfortable to walk on. The NHS is definitely improving. Waiting time was down to 15 minutes and staff appeared more at ease with their lot. The Ultrasound technician went out of his way to explain what was going on and what he was going to do. Having a needle stuck in the side of your foot for a minute or two is not really the best way to start the day, but it's done now... Back to another day of track laying on ET, so could be worse....3000 Euros worse. Ouch Ian, that's a bummer! Edited October 18, 2012 by gordon s 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
trisonic Posted October 18, 2012 Share Posted October 18, 2012 Let's hope the Steroid was not from America, Gordon. Ian, First things first, don't panic! Secondly, stall, stall, and stall again. use the time to gather information on how to proceed,,, Shame you are in France. A friend of mine moved to Rome for three years - despite doing all his preparations by the book - during the three years he never received one Electricity bill, Telephone bill or Gas bill. At the end of three years he shrugged his shoulders, left his American address and returned over here. He still has never received anything. Best, Pete. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sixoh8sixoh Posted October 18, 2012 Share Posted October 18, 2012 What is it they say? "If you ever feel that no-one cares if you're dead or alive, try missing a mortgage payment." 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Tony_S Posted October 18, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted October 18, 2012 It has been a bit like a birthday here today (except I don't get presents then for some reason). Gordon posted a link to one of the BFI transport films. Last time I looked Amazon were out of stock of the box set but they had them this time so I ordered that. Also a Hornby chuff chuff arrived. I'm having a break from railway modelling and I'm making what would probably be better described as a trainset. I think the last Hornby train I bought was a blue Sir Walter Whigham for Matthew's trainset when he was about 4 years old. I got a loco I always wanted once upon a time, a Britannia. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now