Thursday, November 13, 2014

Anglais pas bien parlé ici

Not exactly news to American tourists, but;
The annual report from the language training company Education First has once again ranked France’s workforce as one of the least capable in Europe in terms of speaking English. France was awarded a score of 52.69 which places it behind other influential European nations such as Germany, who scored 60.88 (10th), and Spain, who ranked 20th with a score of 57.18.
And well behind the Scandinavian countries (Denmark being #1). Though Riviera Times has another story that leads us to believe than some French are adopting an attitude Tea Party, toward taxation;
“The principle is simple, the tax goes into the funds of the community; if they do not want the tax then a simple vote will be sufficient to ensure that it is not applicable in that area,” said the finance minister [Michael Sapin], adding, “the State is not forcing this upon anyone.”
Because, what's in a law, anyway.
The bill was included in amendments to the supplementary budget for 2014. Communities have the option to enforce the tax increase of 20% upon owners of furnished accomodation which is not their principal residence. The aim is to encourage the huge numbers of predominantly empty second homes to be "freed up" for others, in areas of housing shortage.
The taxe d’habitation increase concerns 105 agglomerations, which comprises 1,150 towns including Ajaccio, Bastia, Menton, Draguignan, Fréjus and Toulon - if the respective authorities don't reject it.
Someday they may even be left free to decide whether or not to tax themselves. Comme le monde anglophone.

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