DaveR

Bamboo flooring is very good - we have it in a couple of rooms. V hardwearing and sustainable (if that's your thing) We got it from here: http://www.bambooflooringcompany.com/

A few more, just in case dc is suffering lunch time ennui Kam Fung on Red Lion Street for enormous lunch specials Dapur just opened on Lambs Conduit Passage for authentic Malay curry and coconut rice Free State Coffee on Southampton Row - almost agressively hip, but very very good coffee The Enterprise, also Red Lion St for post work beer

I have a fair amount of experience of dealing with the police. In London, the vast majority of cops are white, and in some areas a signficant proportion of the local criminals are black. Not because being black makes you more likely to be a criminal, but because they are areas with lots of black residents, and because certain types of crime disproportionately involve black offenders (just as some other types of crime disproportionately involve Asian or white offenders). All too often it leads to a lazy assumption whereby young black male = potential offender. Young black men then get stopped and searched a lot, get p!ssed off and start complaining, get charged with a public order offence, and hey presto young black male = actual offender. And so it goes on. I've come across more than one black kid who has a criminal record consisting solely of public order convictions arising from being stopped for other crimes that evidently they did not commit. All of that having been said, the position in London, at least, was always much better than other cities I worked in. In Bristol I was genuinely shocked by how overt the racism was. If a big fight kicked off the cops would turn up and arrest everybody, but by the time it got to trial all the white guys had miraculously become prosecution witnesses and all the black guys were in the dock. I suspect that active racist attitudes are declining in the police as they are in wider society, and also because of the issue is taken much more seriously, hence more monitoring, internal investigations etc. The use of body cameras should be rolled out widely, because they act as a massive disincentive to bad behaviour by police generally.

I followed the video instructions, and all fixed. Thanks everybody. And I have a crush on the iyogi video tutorial girl.

Error message 'user profile cannot be loaded' Windows support suggests going to registry editor and doing some complicated stuff. Any other suggestions

"dismissing someone's point because of bad spelling or grammar is poor." I'd generally go along with that. On the other hand.... "All cyclist belong under a bus and they should all be mad to wear hi- vis targets on there back and a scoring system put in place and I can see the gramma nazi are out in force good times" ..there does appear to be some correlation between using no punctuation at all and being a complete tw%t.

I can't recommend them personally but Glazer Delmar on North X Road have a good reputation for property work, and the process for acquiring the freehold is fairly straightforward.

Seasoned plain flour and cold fizzy beer works perfectly

I think the point is that by 2007 there had been getting on for 10 years of uninterrupted prices rises in pretty much every region of the UK - very different from now. And there are still lots of areas in Greater London where prices are flat. It's easy to get carried away by stories of price madness in particular areas - currently it seems to be ED and Hackney - and assume that it's a universal picture, when it ain't. It's actually a very small number of properties in thr overall scheme (and that's one of the problems). Don't get me wrong tho' - if you look at the increase in asking prices, in particular, in SE22 in the last 12 months, you have to think a hard stop is coming pretty soon. But that's different from a bubble - intrinsic asset value remains high for houses in 'nice' parts of London, accessible to the City, West End and Canary Wharf, decent schools etc.

I have no doubt that the current rate of increasing prices locally cannot be sustained for much longer, and that asking prices may well have already overshot.....but it is still the case that the current state of the UK housing market is very different from 'last time' i.e. broadly 2000 - 2007. In particular, in much of the UK (and in many parts of Greater London) prices remain flat and have not returned to 07 prices, and, despite the 0.5% bank rate, mortgage lending is still much more conservative than back in those days. It is arguable that price falls/stagnation in inner London during 2008 - 2012 represented a gloomy view of the UK economy as a whole, and since 2012 the essential financial strength of London and the SE has reasserted itself. I don't pretend to understand every vagary of the property market (and anybody who does is a fool) but, absent some major macroeconomic shock, I still can't see prices round here falling steeply, or at all, in the foreseeable future. BTW, has anybody actually paid ?1 million yet for a 'normal' ED house?

"I think without buses London would be easier to get around for everyone" How does someone even think this without getting sucked into some kind of stupidity/implausibility vortex and then exploding into a million pieces? https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/244332/annual-bus-statistics-2012-13.pdf There are over 2 BILLION bus journeys in London every year. 2 BILLION! A BILLION, X 2. 2 000 000 000. But hey, I'm sure all of those journeys could be done more easily by people walking, cycling and driving. NOT.

There is a very good bathroom shop in Streatham called Potter Perrin. They have a good range of stock across different prices ranges and a number of different brands, and very good customer service, so will talk you through different products. We had our bathroom refurbed and after initially looking at loads of stuff online, we bought almost everything from Potter Perrin.

To be fair to William Rose, they turn over a lot of meat in the course of a day, and you will regularly see them re-stocking the shop display. I've bought meast from WR, and Libretto, and the butchers near the library, and Sparkes, and IMHO they're all good, way better than any supermarket meat.

According to Wikipedia Seb Coe was born in Hammersmith so Chelsea pretty local And his Dad was from Surrey, also typical Chelsea!

I don't have any interest in this but I still think your post was pretty stupid.

"The question of what is a problem in our parks should not just be confined to dogs. By narrowing the issue to dogs and posting an extremely biased survey, it is clear that dogs are being unreasonably targeted." That's a classic tactic to prevent action when it touches on something you disagree with. There has been an explanation of why there is perceived to be a problem; it's no answer to say 'there are other problems'.

Does Teenage Kicks sound wrong, but Phil Collins is clear as a bell?

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/10536122-9a4e-11e3-8232-00144feab7de.html#axzz2uEKmKzA6

There's loads more where that came from: http://www.27bslash6.com/ "Missing Missy" is my personal favourite

Kind of back on topic, and on the subject of Inner London vs Outer London, I saw this on the BBC website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/in_depth/uk_house_prices/counties/html/county39.stm and was surprised at (i) how expensive Southwark is and (ii) how stark the difference between inner and outer boroughs is. Basically, the whole of the southern and eastern/north eastern suburbs are massively cheaper than almost anywhere in inner London.

There is a crazy Catalan 'sport' called castellers - building human towers - which is fantastic to watch, and also always a great atmosphere. They only do it on particular dates during the year in different venues in the region, but one of the venues is the central square in the Gracia district, which is close to the centre of Barcelona (and also generally a nice place to hang out, eat, drink). It's a pretty unique thing and worth checking out whether it's on while you're there. I would also recommend going to eat seafood in Barceloneta - the places on the seafront look touristy but they are generally pretty good. If you have kids you might want to go to the Tibidabo amusement park. It's not up to modern theme park standards by any means, but it's fun and the location and views of the city are spectacular, and you can sometimes get cheap entry tickets online.

Just remember, Annette is a tw@t

I have had two Renault Scenics (and was concerned about Renault reliability before I got the first one) but have had no problems. Comfortable, easy to drive, lots of space, fuel economy OK. I got the first one 3 years old and drove it for eight years, then traded in for another one.

"The underlying message is someone like me shouldn't have to live near poor people" It's a bit more subtle than that - more someone like me shouldn't have to live somewhere that appears destined to be forever unappealing to people like me. And it is true to say that there are certain things that make neighbourhoods attractive - like period housing (and the old Victorian pubs that go with it), nice parks, markets etc. - and areas with these features are becoming unaffordable for many, and fast. That's why Honor Oak Park is likely to get pricy and Thamesmead isn't. But, again, that's not evidence of market failure (or to put it somewhat more obscurely, that "something's wrong"). The market is working because people who are willing to pay for what they want, get it. FWIW I do think govt (whether local or central) should be intervening to incentivise development of brownfield sites, particularly with well designed higher density housing, and to free up unused land from whatever source, with the explicit aim of stabilising house prices. But that's still not going to make ED cheaper.

There is a real question as to whether the current market is 'untenable' or a 'bubble' (both words used above) but pointing to the price trend over a short period in one corner of SE London does not even begin to provide an answer. Saying 'it's the market' is not an excuse not to probe further, but is useful insofar as the questions to be asked are about the fundamentals of market behaviour i.e. supply and demand. Supply in inner london is very limited, and in the case of period properties is essentially fixed or falling. Demand is high - London's stock as a desirable city has never been higher, and is bouncing back from a recession that we can now see impacted the UK economy outside London disproportionately. The real question is whether that demand is sustainable, and undoubtedly some of it is volatile e.g. overseas cash. But there is no evidence that I can see that demand is likely to just evaporate - credit is not that cheap for the majority of buyers and the trend towards inner city living (and the self-fulfilling prophecy that is gentrification) shows no sign of letting up. So while I'm pretty sure that prices in ED can't continue to rise at this rate (Anerley is going to look increasingly attractive, even more so when people start to believe it's the next coming area) but I can't see them falling sharply either, absent some kind of substantial macroeconomic shock (UK leaving the EU would do it).