Régime réel or micro bic

[la vache!]

Alan,
you have offered some very valuable advice. I thought prior to this thread that it was a law that you had to register as professionel if letting was your main source of income/your revenue exceeded 23,000€ / your properties were let for more than 6 months per year. If there is no law to force people to do this, I'm surprised that so many do. I need to question things more! Alexia, you have made me think twice about my mutuelle cover, it probably isn't worth it for me either.

[Alan Knighting]

Susan,

I tend to "sound off" when it comes to bureaucracy so you really do have to "read between the lines".

As someone with a long legal background I ask not only "what should I do?" but also "why should I do that?".

I can't help it, it's something inbuilt. I will not do something I don't want to do unless I am convinced I have to do it. Being a questioning person doesn't make me popular with the authorities, whatever that might mean, nor does it make me popular with the "dedicated followers of fashion".

In politics it is said that information is power. Well, join the club, stay informed!

Alan

[alexia s.]

Alan's right, of course - check everything - twice.

(And that reference to suppositories! I'll never forget going to a pharmacy in Rome when we were very young, asking for something (I can't remember what) and being given some "tablets". My very young husband asked for a glass of water and proceeded to swallow the oddly shaped "tablets". He said that they were disgusting.......)

[Alan Knighting]

Alexia,

That reminds of the story of the good Geordie lad who fell ill while on holiday in France and got some pills from a local doctor. Afterwards a friend asked if the pills had worked and our good Geordie lad replied "No, I might as well have stuck them up my arse."

Alan

[la vache!]

Oh, the French obsession with suppositories - a (French) friend of mine with two young children always treats their (many and varied) illnesses with suppositories. However, she doesn't use them herself and neither does her husband apparently. I have to say that in the whole time I have been in France neither my daughter or I have ever been prescribed suppositories. Do you think that the French GPs are told that the British are not used to this sort of treatment, so we just get the oral medicines instead? Medicines in plural of course - it is rare that I go to the doctor and end up with a prescription for less than 4 items (and I'm not talking about any serious illnesses here).

[Alan Knighting]

Susan,

Joan and I never get prescribed with suppositories. Could it be we are recognised as Geordies and therefore would inevitably insert them into the wrong orifice?

Alan

[Paul Carmel]

You are not kidding! My wife has a sore throat, she went to the pharmacy yesterday and, as you have to if you don't want 7 different products, said she already had lozenges, spray, soluble aspirin etc etc. So, they gave her some syrup and also some suppositories!! When she got home, we double checked the instructions several times to be sure, but yes, the French seem to think that the cure for a sore throat is to insert a small torpedo in your backside! And no, you really wouldn't want to swallow one of them (so she tells me) . . .
The French are definitely hypochondriacs.