Bonjour,
Gosh is it Flyer day again, they seem to come around faster each time. Well they seem to for me anyway. Hopefully you will continue to find it useful. Certainly both the way the readership is growing, and the numbers of people contacting me to place ads indicate satisfaction. Those ads go some way to make the time spent worthwhile.
It’s interesting to see a new English language newspaper circulating on the stands, The French Paper, let’s hope it has none of the bad luck of The Scottish Play, the cursed Shakespearean tragedy.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, seems to have got himself into a bit of a problem, he always make me think he looks a bit like a minicab driver in his little jacket, but I prefer that to many leaders of impoverished countries swanning about in their Armani suits. Where is all the money from Iranian oil exports? It’s not in Mahmoud’s wardrobe and nuclear programmes can’t be that expensive!
Funny things gardens aren’t they? You spend loads of time trying to get seeds to germinate in pots and trays with varying success, and now I find the most successful propagation place in the garden is all of the gravel paths I have. At the plant swap earlier in the year, Serge did a competition for seed identification. He used one of the barbeque stands as a table and must have dropped various seeds during the process. I now have crops of dill, parsley and celery in abundance, in the wrong place, but growing well.
I am sure many of you will have noticed with some pleasure that the Pound is slowly continuing to improve in value against the Euro, last seen at 1.18ish, roll on 1.60 again? What would you do if they decided tomorrow to switch to the Euro at say 1.25? Lots of people moving money into US Dollars hoping that they will improve in order to bring money then into Euros with a greater value?
It must be caused by inward tourism and low priced exports - certainly when I was in the UK recently there appeared to be little sign of any crisis. Those who still have a job must be having a great time, low mortgages and price reductions everywhere.
I often wish to buy things in the UK and then wonder how I would transport them. Yes I know there are lots of men with vans going up and down, but I never seem to be able to coincide with their schedules. I feel there’s a need for a regular service with a location where things can be sent to and then come down from on the next run and a geographic area for pick ups. I am currently investigating a few items. Do you have something that needs to come down here which is en route from Exeter to Dover? Let me know, it could be a good test.
Sunday July 19th Routier Vide Grenier
Thinking of doing a Vide Grenier in the summer?
Why not come and do it here where you will have access to toilets and be a little more comfortable. There are some spaces are available in my garden which will be open and also the home of some of the food and drinks for the day. Put the date in the diary come along even if you don’t wish to sell, it’s also a Fête Occitan with lots of things going on throughout the day and the evening.
Sunday 11th October Autumn Plant Swap and Conker Championship and Aude and Ariege Forum
Steve
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Greetings once again from France-Financial and the Spectrum-IFA Group. There are a few things I'd like to talk about this week, and I'll start with a person called Warren Templeton. Normally I would refer to a third party as a gentleman (or lady), but in this case person is as good as he's going to get. He is currently on trial in a Bordeaux court for posing as a financial consultant and swindling clients out of millions of euros. It is likely that he will be jailed for three years, which to me seems scant reward for abusing the trust placed in him by over 40 of his clients in the Dordogne region. Please, please, do not seek advice from unregistered, unregulated, unscrupulous people such as this.
On a lighter, but still serious note, I'd like to tell you about an exchange of e-mails I had last week with a client who has a brother in North America who is obviously concerned for her financial welfare. So concerned in fact that he was urging her to take advantage of a magnificent offer available on the internet. He had discovered that ING bank was offering 12.25% interest on deposit accounts. Rather startled by this (I used to work for ING and never found them over-generous), I decided to look a little deeper. It turns out that my client's brother has converted some of his hard-earned savings into Romanian Lei and placed them on deposit with ING in Bucharest, and he is indeed earning 12.25% interest. This is where I start to feel useful, having worked for many years in the (mine)field of foreign exchange. Do not do this, ever. Romanian inflation has averaged 12.5% over the past five years. In the last year alone the Leu has depreciated by 16% against the euro. In 2003 Romania had to completely rebase its currency, so one Leu replaced 10,000 old Lei (plural of Leu). This is a seriously bad idea. Again, please do not do this.
Pensions are boring, we all know that, but they have a sneaky habit of getting more interesting the older you get. If you're not careful they can become very interesting when it's too late for you to do anything about it. Those of you who were sensible enough, or as in my case lucky enough, to have collected a decent personal pension during your working lifetime deserve to be kept informed of important changes in pension rules and flexibility. The new kid on the block here is QROPS. When I first started to study this new structure I thought it was too good to be true. I still think it is that good, but it is true, and my personal pension is in one. No space left here to list the benefits, but I will revisit the subject soon.
If you have any questions on this, or any other subject, please don't hesitate to contact me, Rob Hesketh:
By phone on 0468 247758 or mobile 0631 787647
Or by mail at rob.hesketh@spectrum-ifa.com
You can find out more about Spectrum on www.spectrum-ifa.com
And about France-Financial on
www.france-financial.com
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