I travelled via Belgium last week and decided to stay overnight at Dinant, where I have stayed previously and found to be marginally less bad than most towns in Belgium.To anyone contemplating a similar stop - don't.The whole of the town is being
At La Dolce Vita exhibition at Olympia this year I bought a jar of garlic cloves preserved in a pizzaiola type oil and vinegar mixture.It is just amazing for snacking, the whole cloves are really crunchy with a fairly mild flavour of the garlic an
I need to buy a tyre for my car. I googled all the usual words but came up with nothing. Back in UK I would simply go to Kwikfit, or ATS etc and it would be done on the spot.
Does anybody have a contact for a sun blind maker?Think of a conventional, rather old-fashioned roller blind with the roller fixed at the top of the window and the blind hanging vertically down.
I recently read "Italy's Sorrow" by James Holland which gives a (fairly harrowing) account of Italy's plight after the armistice, when Axis armies were forced northwards out of Italy by the Allies, both sides laying waste to vast tracts of the country and killing thousands of people on the way. The only mention of Emilia Romagna is about the slaughter of "more than 30 men, women and children at the tiny village of Bettola" but I thoroughly recommend the book to give some idea of what the Italian people went through. Terry (As a footnote, there is an official plaque on my garage wall designating the very spot where partisans blocked the road with a tree trunk and apprehended the disguised Mussolini and Clara Petacci in their attempt to escape to Switzerland. Our village is currently building a museum to commemorate the event).
it is not my experience of Italian friends and neighbours, who have always been helpful and supportive Friends and neighbours are not the problem. The Spanish issue is caused by local government seeking out any properties deemed to have been built illegally. And you will probably find that most foreign-owned property is for holiday use rather than people trying to fit in with the local community. I have many, often well educated friends with property in Spain and most of them can't form a simple sentence in Spanish (or even pronounce chorizo correctly!). Without knowing anything about the illegal property, it seems to me the authorities are probably in some part culpable, as surely some sort of permissions must have been granted at the time of building. My overall take on it remains the same as since 1996 (ish?) when the Valencia land grab started - as in, who on earth would risk anything to do with property in Spain after the way they dealt with that? Terry
Better a bit of quiet now and then than a load of mindless claptrap foisted on you by compulsive posters with nothing else in their lives but the internet, as can be seen in lots of other message boards. Terry's Law states that the less interesting stuff you do, the more time you have to tell people about it.
As part of the application for residency you will be required to submit evidence of healthcare provision. If you are intending to live permanently in Italy, you can opt out of the UK NHS and transfer into the Italian system, or you can take out a fairly basic private health policy. Either of these options is OK to get residency. If you opt out of the NHS you are no longer eligible for routine healthcare on the NHS whenever you are in the UK. You would still get emergency treatment on the NHS via the EHIC card (issued to you by the Italian health service) in the same way as you presently are covered for similar healthcare in Italy or anywhere else in Europe via the UK issued EHIC. In other words, you trade the UK system for the Italian system. A complication lies in that the UK system is "residency-based", which is variously interpreted as merely owning a house in UK in which you reside for part of the time, or as spending more than 6 months there each year. If you don't qualify under these rules, you must opt out of the NHS. However, a further complication is that the UK tax authorities claim that you are tax-resident in the UK if you spend more than 90 days there. Whether this also counts as residency for NHS purposes, nobody seems to know. And if you interpret it all incorrectly, it's probably not a hanging offence . Terry
The Dutch clearly agree with you, being as they are, one of the most overcrowded countries in the world. If their population growth continues as it has been doing, they may wonder about the future now that the gas which gave them their prosperity has just about run out.
Except Casa Monal, that the reason the locals became lazy in the first place is because of the short-term thinking of employers and governments in using cheap imported labour to build prosperity. To me, the only way of stopping benefits culture is to persuade the local workforce to work, especially if people think that jobs are beneath them. When the chips are down and the benefits budget runs out an economy needs to work its way back to prosperity and those countries which don't have an able and willing workforce will fail. Importation of more cheap labour simply makes a bad situation worse.
Call me old fashioned, but I think immigration carries responsibilities on both sides. But my guess is that these are not genuine immigrants, they are refugees fleeing a temporary situation. They are saying "It's shit where I live right now so I'll go to France". And because Libya can't control it's borders at the moment - well done Mr bleedin' Cameron - disgruntled Tunisians are able to get to Italy. Brianm is right when he says that Italy should repel them but doesn't want the trouble of getting involved so have bailed out by giving them documents to travel to France - though I disagree that this is typical of the Italian way. I'm constantly surprised that France doesn't do the same with all the illegals living in "the jungle" near Calais so they can get rid of them to UK which is where they all want to be. Much of the problem rests with countries positively attracting people to try to enter (benefits, health service etc) and providing little in the way of disincentives to deter people from trying illegally. And most of that is because anyone who says or does anything against even illegal immigration is usually roundly castigated (often by the hypocrites who wish they had the balls to do/say the same ). Just a few general observations, not an invitation for castigation thankyou. TK
Midweek there shouldn't be a problem. If you do get a queue the pass is an option though I haven't ever had to use it. I'm told it's about 30 mins extra but the views are slightly better .
However, remember that the 5% rule is tax deferred and not tax exempt, so that you may do so for 20 years but then at that point you would have to pay tax on the cumulative withdrawals. Unless you had assigned it to a non-taxpayer just before this happens.......
Comments posted
I recently read "Italy's Sorrow" by James Holland which gives a (fairly harrowing) account of Italy's plight after the armistice, when Axis armies were forced northwards out of Italy by the Allies, both sides laying waste to vast tracts of the country and killing thousands of people on the way. The only mention of Emilia Romagna is about the slaughter of "more than 30 men, women and children at the tiny village of Bettola" but I thoroughly recommend the book to give some idea of what the Italian people went through. Terry (As a footnote, there is an official plaque on my garage wall designating the very spot where partisans blocked the road with a tree trunk and apprehended the disguised Mussolini and Clara Petacci in their attempt to escape to Switzerland. Our village is currently building a museum to commemorate the event).
it is not my experience of Italian friends and neighbours, who have always been helpful and supportive Friends and neighbours are not the problem. The Spanish issue is caused by local government seeking out any properties deemed to have been built illegally. And you will probably find that most foreign-owned property is for holiday use rather than people trying to fit in with the local community. I have many, often well educated friends with property in Spain and most of them can't form a simple sentence in Spanish (or even pronounce chorizo correctly!). Without knowing anything about the illegal property, it seems to me the authorities are probably in some part culpable, as surely some sort of permissions must have been granted at the time of building. My overall take on it remains the same as since 1996 (ish?) when the Valencia land grab started - as in, who on earth would risk anything to do with property in Spain after the way they dealt with that? Terry
Better a bit of quiet now and then than a load of mindless claptrap foisted on you by compulsive posters with nothing else in their lives but the internet, as can be seen in lots of other message boards. Terry's Law states that the less interesting stuff you do, the more time you have to tell people about it.
As part of the application for residency you will be required to submit evidence of healthcare provision. If you are intending to live permanently in Italy, you can opt out of the UK NHS and transfer into the Italian system, or you can take out a fairly basic private health policy. Either of these options is OK to get residency. If you opt out of the NHS you are no longer eligible for routine healthcare on the NHS whenever you are in the UK. You would still get emergency treatment on the NHS via the EHIC card (issued to you by the Italian health service) in the same way as you presently are covered for similar healthcare in Italy or anywhere else in Europe via the UK issued EHIC. In other words, you trade the UK system for the Italian system. A complication lies in that the UK system is "residency-based", which is variously interpreted as merely owning a house in UK in which you reside for part of the time, or as spending more than 6 months there each year. If you don't qualify under these rules, you must opt out of the NHS. However, a further complication is that the UK tax authorities claim that you are tax-resident in the UK if you spend more than 90 days there. Whether this also counts as residency for NHS purposes, nobody seems to know. And if you interpret it all incorrectly, it's probably not a hanging offence
. Terry
The Dutch clearly agree with you, being as they are, one of the most overcrowded countries in the world. If their population growth continues as it has been doing, they may wonder about the future now that the gas which gave them their prosperity has just about run out.
Except Casa Monal, that the reason the locals became lazy in the first place is because of the short-term thinking of employers and governments in using cheap imported labour to build prosperity. To me, the only way of stopping benefits culture is to persuade the local workforce to work, especially if people think that jobs are beneath them. When the chips are down and the benefits budget runs out an economy needs to work its way back to prosperity and those countries which don't have an able and willing workforce will fail. Importation of more cheap labour simply makes a bad situation worse.
Call me old fashioned, but I think immigration carries responsibilities on both sides. But my guess is that these are not genuine immigrants, they are refugees fleeing a temporary situation. They are saying "It's shit where I live right now so I'll go to France". And because Libya can't control it's borders at the moment - well done Mr bleedin' Cameron - disgruntled Tunisians are able to get to Italy. Brianm is right when he says that Italy should repel them but doesn't want the trouble of getting involved so have bailed out by giving them documents to travel to France - though I disagree that this is typical of the Italian way. I'm constantly surprised that France doesn't do the same with all the illegals living in "the jungle" near Calais so they can get rid of them to UK which is where they all want to be. Much of the problem rests with countries positively attracting people to try to enter (benefits, health service etc) and providing little in the way of disincentives to deter people from trying illegally. And most of that is because anyone who says or does anything against even illegal immigration is usually roundly castigated (often by the hypocrites who wish they had the balls to do/say the same
). Just a few general observations, not an invitation for castigation thankyou. TK
Midweek there shouldn't be a problem. If you do get a queue the pass is an option though I haven't ever had to use it. I'm told it's about 30 mins extra but the views are slightly better
.
I always go via tunnel to Belgium too.
However, remember that the 5% rule is tax deferred and not tax exempt, so that you may do so for 20 years but then at that point you would have to pay tax on the cumulative withdrawals. Unless you had assigned it to a non-taxpayer just before this happens.......