DaveR

Another article on the same issue(ish) but from a US perspective: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b4e08c58-ae0a-11e4-919e-00144feab7de.html#axzz3RKmHesUo Worth it just for the quote from H L Mencken: ?Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.?

If your agreement is with the cleaning company rather than the individual cleaner, then they are liable in principle; if your agreement is with the individual cleaner they may still be liable, it's just a bit more complicated. Get a quote for repair/replacement or whatever is need to put it back into it's original condition, send a copy to the firm and ask them to pay/agree to pay within 7 days, or you'll make a claim. Making a claim is fairly straightforward - there's lots of guidance online and in my experience most court offices are pretty helpful. http://hmctsformfinder.justice.gov.uk/courtfinder/forms/ex302-eng.pdf

"I'd much rather confront a bagged turd on the kerb.." That can be arranged.

I've always found Balfe's v reliable and competitive on price (which is not the same as cheap btw). I've used various Evans branches over the years and the quality has been generally good, but definitely not cheap. Competition is generally good for the consumer, but I do wonder whether Evans are going to cover their overheads in that shop.

"The various references all refer to the new station building for ED (or Denmark Hill) - plans published & image on the forum." No, they don't, and in any event that hasn't been built yet so the poorly built reference would obviously be premature. No plans available for the proposed Railway Rise development so it might seem sensible for people to wait before they rush to judgment, but I'm not holding my breath.

DFAS? FFS.

I'd recommend bamboo flooring - very hardwearing and stable, comparatively cheap and environmentally friendly.

Has anybody actually seen the plans yet? Various references to 'eyesore', 'ugly', and 'poorly built homogenisation' and i wondered what that was based on.

"Written from the viewpoint of affected staff - yes. They don't just say 'no': they are within their rights to fight these changes and to make others aware of the situation which is what the petition does. The proposals as they are presented in the petition point to huge potential changes in their terms and conditions and to their pay. They are raising awareness of the issue and it has produced discussion here and presumably elsewhere..." The problem with this analysis is that it's essentially meaningless. Of course the staff have an interest in changes to their pay and conditions. But a petition, by definition, is inviting those who have no direct interest to adopt a specific stance. In this case, there is no information to hang that stance on reliably - suggestions that DPG may not be acting lawfully, or would be paying below minimum wage have been swiftly dealt with - so the outcome is that this is petition premised on the fact that the management have got it wrong, without any evidence. It's based on a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of redundancies, despite the fact that (unhappily for those involved) people losing their jobs is an unavoidable fact of life - organisations need to balance the books, and better to lose some jobs than ultimately all of them. If you would sign this petition, you would sign any petition that said "people might lose their jobs - it's bad!" So yes, pointless. And stupid.

"....won't pay a decent wage or abide by employment law" Any evidence to support either of those? Almost certainly defamatory.....

"Hardly pointless. No one has said they're doing it for fun. There is usually more than one way to try and make savings" The petition is completely pointless because it just says "NO!". That may be a rational response to the question "do you want to experiment on animals" but it hardly works for "how do we balance our books?".

I also can't find the application on Southwark website, either using the application no. above, or searching for Railway Rise. I agree that architecturally the houses are unexceptional, but the site is a prominent one so you would want any new-build to be a really good one, whereas I suspect the developer wants to build a bland (cheap) box. Also, I'd generally be sympathetic to mixed commercial/residential development but this application is obviously completely speculative re future use, hence the application for A1/2/3 and B1(a) i.e. any non-industrial use.

Typical pointless petition. There's no evidence that DPG are doing this for fun - what does everybody suggest they do instead? If they don't have the dough they can hardly keep everyone, on exactly the same terms, and slowly go broke.

I think you're getting mixed up between fungibility and liquidity. An asset is fungible if one unit is much the same as another - a bar of gold, a barrel of oil etc. An asset is liquid if you can turn it into cash. However, the market moving against you doesn't necessarily make your asset illiquid - it just means you make a loss. There are lots of imperfections and inefficiencies in the housing market, as in lots of markets, but in terms of market information, when a seller puts a house on the market the price and all the key indicators of value are known, and comparable with other houses on offer. "it's a very inefficient market (given current transaction processes). Which, in my opinion, makes it a very bad advertisement for the efficiency of the free market." This is a non sequitur isn't it? An inefficient (and therefore less free) market is a bad advertisement for the efficiency of free markets in general. FWIW, even the most rabid free marketeer should be able to see that there are plenty of valid criticisms of the way the market for property as an asset class has been allowed to develop over the last 20-30 years by largely unthinking governments. And there are lots of good arguments now for interventions either to make the market itself work better e.g. free up more supply by loosening planning, or to push the market in a particular direction (e.g. tax penalties for land bankers and owners of vacant properties, or residency requirements for new purchasers). But that's a long way from saying that 'markets don't work' or that property is a special case where price controls are the only way forward.

"But it?s trite because he knows consumers demand those prices go down but consumers are divided on house prices." I prefer to use the more traditional terminology - 'buyers' and 'sellers', in which case the distinction you draw looks a bit artificial (or to be more accurate, stupid) "Equally, if someone or a small minority were to locally buy up all the bread and shoes in SE London, somehow stop supplies from elsewhere and start charging them at much higher prices it?s obvious that there would be intervention" yes - because it's outlawed by Art 102 TFEU. Are you suggesting that 'someone' has bought up all the houses in London while I wasn't looking? "Other stuff of life examples are energy, water etc- all regulated and not left completely to the free market" Because they were previously monopolies, and, unlike telecoms for example, nobody has worked out how to make competition work when you can't build another National Grid. "Not at all like that but feel free to say so." So tell me how it's different? Tell me how a private landlord charging the market rent for a flat is different from a shop owner charging a market price for a loaf of bread, where market price = what someone is willing to pay? London property prices are high because of market forces i.e. scarcity and high demand, and extra-market forces i.e. planning restrictions, land banking by developers, friendly tax environment for investment buyers etc.. Private landlords charging what they can get (and what they can get being a lot of money) is a consequence of high prices, not a cause.

"Private landlords can pretty much ask what they think they can get, and it's been that way for many years." Like people selling bread, or shoes, or massages. Bastards.

"...there are people who would be interested and see it as an interesting social experiment or allow them to get on the TV or have their own reasons for taking part" that was my question. Is there anybody who can think of a reason other than "allow them to get on the TV"? I'm genuinely interested, and I'm sure plenty of the people sneering live their lives at least partly in public via social media etc, which I find equally incomprehensible. How did we arrive at a point where every experience is somehow more valid if it is public?

Round, square, rectangular or oval, plain silver or enameled silver, or you can get silver + semi-precious stone quite reasonably priced - lapis or similar. http://www.aspinaloflondon.com/mens-collection/sterling-silver-gold-and-enamel-cufflinks

I don't want to hijack this thread, but a genuine query - why on earth would anyone want to do this? What possible benefit could you gain from it? If you want to meet your neighbours, how would having a TV crew present possibly help?

There's little doubt that London has a housing shortage and that increasing supply is part of the answer, and re-development of unused sites in areas of high demand is an obvious place to start. However, it's also true that applying the economics of residential development is an easy way to make commercial development appear unviable, and planning authorities need to be alive to it; to be fair, they often are where the development goes against the local plan or is otherwise in an area where commercial or mixed use is obviously desirable. The problem with this site is that its a bloody great warehouse on a residential street, and in an area where there doesn't seem to be a shortage of smaller scale commercial property. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the cost of redevelopment of the site into marketable commercial units makes it unviable, which would explain why it has been empty.

Carrying on the French car theme, I am on my second Renault Scenic, and despite the reputation for unreliability, have had no problems at all. Cheap to buy, cheap to run, comfortable enough and plenty of space.

Go ahead - what's the worst that could happen?

It should be said that none of this is surprising or even novel; the only thing that's new is the number and diverse nature of people now sitting on an asset valuable enough to make it worth leveraging.

Lenders consider mortgages at 60% LTV as practically risk free, particularly where the teaser rate is short term (within 2 years either you'll go elsewhere or they'll have another look at you). They bank the ?2k fee and look for the next punter. Also, 60% LTV customers tend to be desirable customers for banking generally, so if they hook you with a very good mortgage deal they'll then try and persuade you to move all your banking/borrowing. HSBC in particular have been pursuing this strategy pretty consistently since 2009. None of which means it's not a good idea to take a good deal if it's on offer. There are five year fixes around for less than 2.5%, and a big fee is easier to swallow spread over 60 months.

I can understand and sympathise when an area changes demographic and businesses that might have been around for years and doing OK either see their customer base disappear, or get priced out of commercial property. I can also understand long standing residents resenting an influx of different people, who dress different, talk different, want different things and are responsible (if not culpable) for the consequent impact on said businesses. But, when you start saying (i) all the new businesses are rubbish and dishonest, selling poor stuff at a high price and (ii) the people who patronise them are idiots, who like paying over the odds because it makes them feel superior, then inevitably you're going to get called a stupid malicious old troll, and you probably are one (even if you don't know it). Edited to add: this was posted about 15 mins later: "Well the Good Old Folk of ED are literally Queueing up to splash the cash.. Standards can be low. Prices can be high. Customer can be treated with contempt. ... But the higher the price.. the longer the queues.. "