Disenfranchised British Citizens and the Foreign Office

I enclose a correspondence I have just had with some of my political friends. It was generated from a very interesting dinner we had last night in Paris. The main subject of our many conversations was the absolutely scandalous disenfranchisement of British citizens living in the EU – but not in Little England. As you can see, the Foreign Office slogan is ‘If we can’t find you we can’t help you.’ When registering, answer this: ‘GIVE US BACK OUR NATIVE BRITISH CITIZENS’ RIGHT TO VOTE, YOU ROBBERS!!’ Britain has the worst voting rights record in Europe.

Hello Gregor,
My wife Sioned said that she'd promised at last night's dinner to forward you the message below from the British Consulate concerning registration of British citizens abroad.
Muriel Langle who passed on this message on behalf of the Consulate is secretary of the British Community Committee (BCC)which operates under the logo "britishinfrance" (www.britishinfrance.com),as an umbrella organisation representing many Loi 1901 British Associations in France.This is an example of how effective it can be in informing the British community at large.If you have a look at their web site you could find it of value for your Society of English Language Authors to join (annual fee Euro 20 if you fit the qualification criteria)for more visibility within the British community.You can contact Muriel for further details.
BCiP is already a member association, by the way.
Best regards,
Rod Harper

--- On Tue, 6/24/08, Muriel Langle <mlangle@club-internet.fr> wrote:

From: Muriel Langle <mlangle@club-internet.fr>
Subject: Registration of British Citizens abroad
To: "LANGLE M." <mlangle@club-internet.fr>
Date: Tuesday, June 24, 2008, 3:23 PM

The Consulate has asked for the following information to be
circulated:

The Foreign Office's on-line registration for British citizens resident or on holiday overseas is now up and running. This is designed to help British citizens in any kind of emergency or catastrophe such as, for example, the various natural disasters that have occurred in some parts of the world recently. The FCO slogan is "If we can't find you, we can't help you".

Visit www.fco.gov.uk/travel. Click on LOCATE. An information page including an on-line registration form is displayed.

This service is available for expatriate British citizens resident abroad, as well as British travellers temporarily abroad e.g. on holiday or for work.

Once registered, it is easy to keep your details up to date (change of address, etc.)

Will you please pass this information on to any other British nationals you are in contact with.

Best wishes,
Muriel

AngloINFO keeps ahead of the times

Since its original launch eight years ago, AngloINFO is now benefiting from the most dramatic redesign in its history. As from the 27th May 2008 the AngloINFO site will have a new look.

The redesign is a response to the ever-growing amount of information the AngloINFO group websites deliver to their users. Each day we provide more and more content to our users – the challenge is making that content accessible to everyone.

To satisfy that need, the new-look sites feature a set of common navigation elements that make it straightforward to get from any one part of the site to any other. AngloINFO has so much to offer and it's important that we communicate that to everyone using the sites. The new features do a great job of telling people about the whole range of things we provide for free, from the directory of locally-relevant businesses and the reference library of INFOrmation Pages to the discussions, classifieds and the all-important guide to what's on in the region.

The new design provides a platform for plenty of new functionality, to be added over the coming months. Literally everything has been re-written, providing the base for the next phase of development as we continue with our strategy of offering more and more to our users and to our customers. Some new tools are already in place – including a massively-enhanced search function – but you can expect to see plenty of others as 2008 continues.

AngloINFO Paris-Ile de France now looks better, works better – and it's faster too. We are really excited with the changes and can’t wait to share the new features as they come online.



We are sure that the changes will bring about enhances usage and even greater benefit and return to all our customers and users.


Karen Dys
Director
AngloINFO Paris
06 33 83 62 32

Invitation to Book Party 28th June 2008

The paperback edition of SOAF member Ian Walthew's 'A Place in My Country: In Search of a Rural Dream' was published in May 2008 by Phoenix.

On Saturday 28th June, 2008, The Abbey Bookshop, 29 rue de la Parcheminerie, 75005 Paris (Metro: St Michel/Cluny la Sorbonne) is hosting a party themed 'A Taste of the Country' where Ian will be signing copies of his book; more importantly wine will be flowing, served with cheeses and saucissons from where Ian lives in the Auvergne. SOAF members are welcome but are kindly requested to drop an email to info@ianwalthew.com ASAP if they intend to come, and indicating any guests they are bringing with them.

On Monday 30th June, Ian will be doing an evening reading at Shakespeare & Co.

All SOAF members are also welcome to come along.

Ian's book is perhaps best captured by some of the reviews he has received.

PRAISE FOR 'A PLACE IN MY COUNTRY'
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, hardcover July 2007; Phoenix paperback May 1, 2008)

'Stressed city couple seeks slower life in Cotswolds idyll'. The premise is so familiar there's even a predictably technical term for it: 'downshifting'. Yet it's hard to think in those terms about A Place in My Country, given the care with which Ian Walthew has skirted all the sprung traps of nostalgia and sentiment…Avoiding the usual bland elegy for the rustic and redemptive, his book is a valuable memoir, both personal and social, a meditation on belonging in one of many Englands.’
The Observer


'Far from being an idealistic paen to the English countryside, the book becomes a hard-edged and moving account of life rural Britain today.'
Sunday Times

'a poignant portrait of country life....the book could have been a rollicking, laugh-a-minute riff on ignorant townies having to ask what exactly a heifer is. There are certainly some fine comic episodes.. but it quickly turns into something more sombre - and more interesting...His beautifully written book is an elegy for an England that is dying, or at least in terminal decline.'
Daily Telegraph

‘compelling and often deeply moving… Walthew’s own struggle with age-old issues of identity, friendship, community and a place to call home are fresh, sympathetic and never trying…a page-turner’
Hugh-Fearnley Whittingstall

‘an affecting and inspiring memoir. What sets it apart from others of its ilk is the author’s enviable immunity to cliché and his determination to love his homeland better than he used to. His elegiac account of relearning how to be an Englishman should be required reading for anyone who claims to know or love this country.’
Financial Times

‘Funny, touching and ultimately very moving, this is a beautiful, unsentimental account of a personal loss that is reflected in the rapidly changing texture of life in rural England.’
Sunday Telegraph

‘Even peripheral characters…really come to life; as does the beauty of the Cotswolds and the harsh realities it conceals. A Place in My Country is an edifying consideration of the English countryside, its rich history and its attempt to adapt in today’s world’
Times Literary Supplement

‘I have been reading about the British countryside all my life but this is the first post-modern take on a national asset so routinely taken for granted. Author Ian Walthew takes a 12-inch plough to the cosy complacency that so many apply to the subject and reveals that 21st century rural life is not a place for the genteel - in a corner of Gloucestershire most commonly viewed by outsiders from their 4x4s as they hurry to overpriced weekend retreats, he finds a farming heartbeat that is proud and defiant, defended by a cast of characters that outshine The Archers. A revelation of a book.’
Tim Butcher, Author of Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart
(Galaxy Book of the Year 2008, 3rd Prize Winner)

‘A riveting read....a warning to newcomers about the dangers of upsetting village hierarchies and sensibilities'
Country Life

‘One of “The Top Ten Summer Holiday Books You Must Own”
Mail on Sunday

Reporting from Palestine 1943-44 by Barbara Board, edited by Jacqueline Karp.

Barbara Board (1915-1986) was a rare woman foreign correspondent, from the age of 20 she reported from Sudan, Egypt and the Middle East.

Newsgirl in Palestine was published in 1937, her Newsgirl in Egypt followed in 1938. She was later expelled from Egypt. This – her third book – was stopped because of Government war censorship then post-war paper shortages, and has lain forgotten until now.

Reporting from Palestine was written from the front line of the conflict between Jews and Arabs, Zionists and non-Zionists and Jews and the British Mandate Government. Barbara Board was there when the bombs went off, reporting mainly for the Daily Mirror.

Barbara Board interviewed everyone she could find – supporters and opponents of the Jewish underground armies, Arab landlords and peasants, Armenian and Christian minorities, refugees and British servicemen. Reporting from Palestine is a period piece, written at the time and representing the views of people at the time, without the dubious benefit of hindsight. The book is edited for the modern reader by Jacqueline Karp.

Reporting from Palestine is available to order from bookshops, or by secure credit card on www.fiveleaves.co.uk
978-1905512324, 288 pages, £9.99

Five Leaves Publications
PO Box 8786
Nottingham NG1 9AW

French Sécu, French Taxes

Some time ago I offered to try to help Gregor clarify the complex French tax and social security systems for the benefit of SOAF members. How do English people who move to France become registered fiscally and with the health service (and obtain that necessary Carte Vitale?) The report which follows covers my own findings and conclusions and please bear in mind that I am a literary agent and not a lawyer or accountant!

A person who moves to France and acquires a principal residence here, who works here, either freelance or in employment, will probably have to register as a tax payer here and will need to register with the Secu for health care. A salaried employee will possibly be given help and advice by their employer, as after all the employer has to pay contributions on their behalf, so they should be able to register with the CPAM and obtain their Carte Vitale without problems.

It is the freelance person, the position of most writers, who has a more difficult time.
The self-employed freelance writer cannot register with the CPAM. Nor can they expect help from the NHS in the UK – I think this is a good place to mention that the E106 health entitlement certificate available to EEC citizens is only intended for short visits, holidays. The E121 is available to an EEC citizen who is sent to work here, in another country, by their employer, say a British company. It is therefore for someone seconded to work in a different EEC country, a migrant worker! So where do you go?

AGESSA is the organisation for creative people, for writers and artists among others.
They have a very good web site, and I am pasting below the link to the page for authors
http://www.agessa.org/getpage.asp?NUM=6&RUB_CODE=14&RUBCODEPREC=3

But the web site is in French. To apply, there are forms to be filled in and details of income to be attached and they will assess whether the applicant actually qualifies.
Should the applicant not qualify, then there is another organisation for professions liberales, CAMPLP for people who live in the country, “en province”:
http://www.plp.le-rsi.fr/
And there is its counterpart for people who live in the Paris region, the CAMPLIF
http://www.secuartsgraphiquesetplastiques.org/site/organismes/o_08.html
Again, these sites are in French. But AGESSA and CAMPL would be the organisations to approach.



In my experience, and I have heard the same from others, the easy way to deal with registering as a taxpayer is to seek the help of an official at your local tax office. In my case, this person completed the form with me the first year and I have been able to complete them on my own ever since.

My own situation is that I work for my own, British company and as a director of that company, it is deemed appropriate that my personal fiscal domicile remains in the UK.
Nevertheless, in that position and given that my principal residence is in Paris, I am still obliged to file a normal annual tax declaration in France to which I attach the form 2047-K which is the declaration of earnings abroad, but in terms of the double-taxation agreement between the UK and France, I am exonerated from paying tax over here.
Since Taxe d’Habitation (and the television licence fee) are both linked to the tax declaration, your Taxe d’Habitation will be assessed, expensively, as a residence secondaire if you do not file a tax declaration here.

After the age of 65, an individual may become registered with the CPAM and obtain the precious Carte Vitale by arrangement with the NHS in the UK. The application is made through the NHS as part of the agreement between EEC countries, where the UK agrees to reimburse France for the cost of this health care. The individual will then be asked to declare, annually, that their situation has not changed and show proof that they are in receipt of a UK pension. The advantage is that since one no longer contributes to the NHS after official pension age, even if one continues to work, one does not have to pay French “cotisations”.

I have been given the name of a firm of American/French accountants who would be able to explain the system in detail in English. It might be a good idea to ask this firm to send someone to address a meeting – which could be written up and sent to members who cannot attend in person. I have not yet approached them so have no idea what the fee would be, but the cost would have to be divided between members who would like this advice, so please indicate your interest to Gregor.

Shelley Power
3 June 2008