EUROPEAN Union citizens in France only have a few weeks left to register to vote in next year’s municipal and EU elections.
A campaign has been launched to prompt people to register before the 31 December, 2013, deadline as the electoral roll is updated at the end of the year.
It is a simple enough task and involves heading to your local mairie with an EU passport and proof of address, and upon completion of a short form you can take part in next spring’s elections.
WILDLIFE charity APAS has again called for more to be done to control hunting in France after six fatal accidents since the start of the season.
The Association pour la Protection des Animaux Sauvages says that a bee keeper who was shot dead by a hunter, who mistook him for a wild boar, is just one of the terrible incidents that have occurred in France in recent weeks.
APAS is continuing to call for stricter controls on hunters, including eye tests and a limit on maximum alcohol levels, as well as a ban on hunting on Sundays.
Related: A Sunday hunting ban and eye tests for hunters, demands anti-chasse group
THERE is a great deal of anger amongst expats in France and other EU countries at a cartoon that appeared in the Daily Mail.
The Mac cartoon features a couple lying beside a swimming pool who are taking delivery of a crate of wine, with the punchline saying ‘Oh goody! Here comes our winter fuel’.
Expats are angry at the inference that people use the Winter Fuel Allowance to buy alcohol, despite many saying the payment is used to help with energy bills in homes across France and the EU.
The Daily Mail cartoon comes soon after it was announced that expats living in a number of countries in Europe, including France, will lose the fuel allowance payment based on research that claims average winter temperatures were higher then those in the UK.
Now expats are being urged to write to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) to press the Daily Mail to issue an apology over the cartoon.
Graham Richards, of the Votes for Expat Brits website, said: “I have made a formal complaint to the PCC based on the fact that the Daily Mail has published a highly inaccurate, mailicious, badly and completly ill researched article and cartoon and is insulting to the vast majority of retired expats now living in other EU countries.
“It is an article of propaganda and falsifies their lifestyle as to alienate them from those still living in the UK.”
Earlier this year electricity prices in France rose by 5%, which will be followed by a similar 5% increase on 1 August 2014, while it is estimated that energy costs in the French countryside are 23% higher than in cities.
Ministers blamed ‘ridiculous’ European Court of Justice rules today as official figures revealed a near 70 per cent jump in Government winter fuel payments to ex-pats and pensioners living across Europe.
The Department of Work and Pensions paid a record £21.4 million to nearly 120,000 OAPs across the ‘European Ecomomic Area’ in 2012-2013.
Pensioners in Spain, Greece and Cyprus all pocketed the cheques, which are designed to help the elderly pay their gas and electricity bills.
Officials said the huge increase followed a judgement from the European Courts of Justice last year which allowed pensioners living across the Europe to apply if they proved “sufficient” links to Britain, such as having worked here.
Earlier this year George Osborne said: “From the autumn of 2015, we will link the winter fuel payment to a temperature test. People in hot countries will no longer get it. It is, after all, a payment for winter fuel.”
More: Expats in France look set to lose winter fuel allowance
THE winter chill is just around the corner, how do I know, the cranes, or grues, passed overhead last night.
Their call came on the breeze from the north, I could hear two groups moving along the valley, straining to see them through the darkness.
A small group passed by, but I could still only hear them, then the noise of beating wings tumbled over the roof top.
And there a dark, swiftly moving v-shaped line of the birds flashed past against the murky black clouds above.
The swooshing whirl of their wings letting me spot them on their journey south, from the cold winds of northern Europe to the restful winter sun of southern Spain and Africa.
The video above is of the cranes heading south that I took a few year ago, capturing them during daylight, it really is a magical gift of nature.
THE UK government is looking to make it easier for expats to register to vote by using an online service.
At present UK citizens living overseas wanting to vote in UK elections have to complete paper forms and send them back to their local electoral office.
But the Cabinet Office is working on a service that would allow online registration, promising a simpler and quicker service, as well as a more reliable electoral register.
The scheme is still in its early stages and the Cabinet Office is seeking expat volunteers who are visiting Britain to help fine-tune the process.
Testing days will be held in Oxford on Thursday 31 October and London on Tuesday 17 December.
The new online registration option will have no impact on the current 15 year time limit for British expats living abroad from being able to vote in general parliamentary elections and European parliamentary elections.
THE ecology minister, Philippe Martin, has definitively rejected proposed gas drilling plans that would have covered the departments of Corrèze, Dordogne and the Lot.
The Permis de Brive covered an area around the east of the Dordogne and initial plans submitted by Singapore based, Hexagon Gas, were given a favourable reading but now they have been firmly rejected.
Plans had been put forward to explore the potential of gaz de houille, or coal gas, across an area of around 1,777 square kilometres running from the south of Brive-la-Gaillarde to Sarlat, and then from the south west of Sarlat towards Villefranche-du-Périgord (disclaimer: my local village).
Opposition to drilling techniques such as fracking has been strong across France, with the Constitutional Court blocking a drilling company from exploring the potential of shale gas earlier this month.
More: Shale gas in France
THE Constitutional Council in France has thrown out a case brought by oil company, Schuepbach Energy, that looked to overturn the country’s ban on ‘fracking’, or drilling, for shale gas.
The council said that the need to protect the environment was strong, ruling that the current ban was ‘in accordance with the constitution’.
Schuepbach Energy, based in Dallas, Texas, had argued that the legislation blocking fracking had gone beyond its remit, with the current ‘precautionary principle’ requiring the technique to prove its safety.
But the French government rejected this, with a representative saying that the problems caused by fracking were known and strong enough to ensure the ban should stay in place.
Fracking, the process of pumping water, sand and chemicals into rock to release shale oil or gas, is accused of polluting the water table and even small earthquakes.
Related: Shale gas in France
IT is four o’clock in the afternoon and the church tower in Villefranche du Périgord chimes the hour, but also the opening of the marché aux cèpes, writes Carol Miers.
People pass through the barriers and exchange a handful of euros for a box full of cèpes, the large bun-like mushroom found in the woods of the Dordogne.
It has been a good year for the marché, in the past it has not been able to open as the delicate balance required of the weather was not right.
Cèpes need warmish temperatures, but also a slight chill that gives the initial mycelium a thermal shock, followed by rain and about ten days later beneath the pines, oak or chestnut trees the first signs of the mushroom will bloom.
Down seldom used lanes in the forest, vans come to a stop and locals get out with wicker baskets sometimes lined with soft green leaves to show off the mushrooms once collected.
Walkers may hear strange scuffling sounds and voices from thickets under the trees, while local farmers arrive bearing gifts of trays of cèpes but also orange amanite des Césars.
For maybe a week or so the woods are glazed by unusual bouquets and clusters of fungi; girolles, lactaire delixieux, chanterelles, parasol mushrooms, brittlegills, puffballs.
For every changing season, a crop. Today the fleeting marché aux cèpes, short-lived, before the farmers rush home for the next harvest, la châtaigne.
Frenchwoman Lise and her Polish girlfriend Agnieszka have been together for three years. They were looking forward to getting married after France this year became the 14th country to legalise same-sex marriage, following months of bitter debate.
"We were also really happy because it meant that we were accepted by the society," Agnieszka said. "Then our relationship can be recognised, and we are not freaks or…"
"Different," Lise added.