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Everything you always wanted to know about France |
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France Voila - Number 79 - 12 October 2003
1. Advertising in this Newsletter 2. Vampire Frogs 3. Taking pets back to the UK 4. Lollos' Famous Chicken 5. The Cathar Crusades and the Beginning of the Inquisition 6. Fence That Pool - Now 7. New property Forum - Wanted and For Sale 8. RSS Feeds and the Future of Newsletters 9. Satellite Internet In France 10. How to Pay us For Our Service - If You Want To 1. Advertising in this Newsletter We get many people asking to advertise in this newsletter and on our sites, we will now accept advertising from companies or people offering a service to property owners or visitors to France. This newsletter today is being sent to 9,463 subscribers - to the best of our ability and knowledge these are genuine, individual subscribers who have applied to us for the newsletter. We operate a double opt-in system and continually clean out all addresses which appear invalid, bounce or are listed as "undesirable". In the last month I have pruned this newsletter circulation down from our main list of over 25,000 addresses who have registered with us through our websites. The whole future of email advertising and newsletters is in question, see the feature about RSS in this newsletter, anyone who says their list is growing fast is "optimistic" we see over 3% of the total list are dead mailboxes every month, the fact that we have had a steady increase in the last three weeks is a good sign and the feedback we are getting is brilliant. We have not set a price for adverts - we are trying the "Tipping" method, see the article in this newsletter. Only a few adverts will be run in each newsletter, a condition is that any person or company offering a service in France musr be registered and give us their Numero Siret (or Siren), (if you don't know what this is - you have not got one). To suggest an advert, write to me through our inquiry form http://rentalsfrance.com/contact/ Contact Us Advert We are a couple living in the area & offer a property maintenance service,perhaps your property needs a touch up over winter or the garden,or maybe you would like regular security checks.Visit our web site http://www.luberonpropertycare.com/ Luberon Property Care 2. Vampire Frogs Taxation rules in France have always been difficult to understand. Now, since September 2001, with the rapid introduction of new laws and regulations to combat terrorism and drug dealing, the powers now available to all tax authorities are so strong that an error in a tax return can threaten you with the same penalties as if you were laundering drug money or supporting a terrorist group. Inevitably the same laws designed to protect us are being used to raise more funds for an ever increasing and fantastically expensive civil service machine with an inflation proof pension demand which now threatens to absorb more taxes than can be raised by an aging population and a shrinking productive workforce. The most common question we are now getting is from people wanting to invest in property in France and the taxation liabilities which will apply to this. Here are a couple of recent mails we have responded to. We are building a series of features about this and will be posting them on our sites. http://francevoila.com/features/arrrgh.html Arrrgh 3. Taking pets back to the UK Hi, I am looking for any advice about returning my 2 dogs and 1 cat to the UK. I am in quite a predicament regarding the blood testing policy of pets. I have lived in Spain for over 20 months, I brought our dog and cat from the UK and then I took on another dog here 18 months ago. All animals are microchipped and vaccinated against rabies. I I have to return to the UK at the beginning of November this year and I am informed that the pets can not travel until 6 months after they have been blood tested. Even if they are blood tested immeadiately they could not enter the UK for another 5 months or be quarantined (something I have heard dreadful stories about and could not afford). Is there any way around the blood test? I cannot leave them here they are a part of the family and I do not know what else to do. Any help or advice will be gratefully recieved. Thanks for your time, Lisa Lisa Hi, there is no way around the blood test and no way around the following six month wait. My best suggestion is to look at leaving them with friends or in kennels cattery if there is no way you can hang on the extra five months. best Renée Hemming www.cani-excel.com www.cani-excel.com 4. Lollos' Famous Chicken If you follow the story of our village of Nizas from our website http://nizas.com/ www.Nizas.com You will have read about Lollo, small but perfectly formed, Lollo has one very special exhibit - a chicken which lays eggs five time bigger than any normal hen - not quite as big as an ostrich, but a fantastic feat for a chicken. Visitors have come from many parts of the world to see Lollos famous chicken, Nizas has become a shrine to egg lovers everywhere and a substantial part of the municipal budget comes from these visitors... http://francevoila.com/features/lollochicken.html Lollos' Chicken 5. The Cathar Crusades and the Beginning of the Inquisition In recent newsletters I have mentioned the 13th century Inquisition and the way that nothing has changed in the minds of mankind. I was fascinated to read that the advice given to the state inquisitors 800 years ago advised the same interrogation techniques used today by our loyal civil servants. Here are some observations on the history of the Cathars, the Crusade against them and the Inquisition which followed. http://francevoila.com/features/cathars.html Cathars and the Inquisition 6. Fence That Pool - Now It is a criminal offence from next year to rent your private home in France if you have a swimming pool which is not fenced to the now published legal standard. We have been talking about this for a year, we have advertised on the front pages of our sites - I am dismayed by the very small numbers of people who are taking action and horrified at the indifference and ignorance of something finally brought in to save childrens lives. I would estimate that there are over one hundred thousand swimming pools in France which must have a new security fence fitted. More than half of these will have to be legally fenced by 2004 - all swimming pools in homes rented or used by families who are not the owners will have to be fitted with fences by that date, private homes which are only used by the owners family have until January 1 2006 to comply with the law. This is not simply a tedious local civil by-law, but an enforceable criminal law where it is the responsibility of the police to prosecute any contravention. The fines and penalties are severe. As with most legal or financial investigations in France, it will be the "friend" or neighbour who reports and denounces a pool owner to the police or the local authorities. We feel very strongly about this as the aim of the law is to save lives, especially the lives of children. Any properties with pools which are not protected by legal fencing cannot be advertised in France and will not be shown from our websites. Already all homes advertised here for private rental are recorded by several authorities, records are kept of all advertisments and prices, all homes with pools are indexed. If you rent your home in France, do make sure you understand the laws. We are here to help. For information on the pool laws http://www.aroundfrance.com/pools/raffarinlaw.html raffarinlaw For information on rentals http://francevoila.com/rentals/ Rentals If you are renting a home in France with a pool from anyone - not just us at http://rentalsfrance.com RentalsFrance make absolutely sure that the pool is fenced to the new laws - if it is not then the owner will have no insurance, you are taking a huge risk and may also be breaking the law yourself. 7. New property Forum - Wanted and For Sale While real estate purchases by foreigners rose 3 percent in 2002, Abbey National found in a recent study, British purchases soared 40 percent. By last year, the British accounted for 36 percent of foreign real estate holdings in France, followed by the Italians with 13.5 percent and the Dutch with 5.2 percent. The total figure is around 2 million properties. Interestingly most local authorities have no idea of the numbers of British and English speaking people in their own communities. In one area a Mayor who thought they had about 40 families was amazed when he was told that there were over 3,000 in his locality. With this strong demand, the number of estate agents is soaring to serve the visitors looking for their dream. In our local Medieval town of Pezenas http://pezenas.com/, when we arrived 10 years ago there were 5 estate agents, there are now 32. It is getting more difficult to find a suitable property and with so many agencies, most offering the same homes, it is a minefield and highly confusing for the visitor. We have started a simple forum to introduce buyers, sellers and English speaking agents. You can write in your requirements or offer, and your email is completely confidential. People offering property or interested in buying, or agencies offering their services can contact you through the forum and you can choose whether to reply. You can access the forum through our website at http://frenchpropertydigest.com/ French Property Digest Click on the "Members Log In" and the "Private forum" - I have left them open for you. The service is completely free - you just also click on the "For Sale" link on any of our pages at http://francevoila.com/ France Voila or http://rentalsfrance.com/ Rentals France 8. RSS Feeds and the Future of Newsletters I try to make a useful, relevant and interesting newsletter which is of some use to most people who come to France. It is free - one reason I write it is to encourage people to visit our sites which offer rentals properties here. We earn our money from advertising on these sites and from marketing services for the property owners. When a newsletter is sent out I know that some never arrive at their destination due to filters or the policies of the mail server. Out of the tens of thousands of newsletters mailed, I don't know if half, a quarter or even less get to the people who have asked for them. Even if you are reading this, I still don't know if you can use the links I have put in to help you find information. ISPs like aol and services such as hotmail often alter the email to their clients making links invisible. It is going to get more and more difficult to deliver any newsletter due to the vast amount of unwanted and unrequested mail sent every day, much of it is offensive and many contain increasingly dangerous virus. By using software and filters I delete from our servers, without reading them, about 2,000 emails a day now, the number is increasing and I know that I do lose mail I want to see including orders and letters from clients. I can at present take the time to look at the senders address and the subject line. Luckily most of this rubbish has silly addresses and a subject recognisable as something I really do not wish to receive, but every day I also find these pests have put into the mail one of our own addresses or have identified one of our permitted codes. Each day I am losing over and hour on this "cleaning" and patching. As is says in the old joke, "If you don't get this mail just write and tell me", this would be a great way to make sure all the mail gets through - but the problem of sending the email newsletter is going to get much worse. One solution is to send this news by RSS feed. If you know what this is the I don't have to explain it, if you don't know what this is then I can't really explain it yet. On most of our main pages you will see a little orange button with "XML" on it. If you click on it you will find a page of gibberish. But the important thing is the URL, put this in your aggregator and you can get all our latest news as it is written. There - I said I couldn't explain it. However - I believe that one day something like this will be automatically on all computers, any newsletter or information which you wish to receive will have a little button (probably orange) and with one click you will get told when there is a news news item sent by someone you wish to hear from - no one else can subscribe you, you are completely in control. If you are really keen to learn about RSS now, try these sites and type RSS into their search boxes http://lockergnome.com/ |