Penguin68

James I absolutely agree with you that there will be more graduates in the future than jobs that require graduates (we have only recently upped the intake to 45% of 18 year-olds so it won't be until the now 25-30 or so year-olds are 67 that 45% of aspirant workers will be graduates) - the problem is that if undergraduate places are restricted there will be people unable to attend university who would be as readily able to get a degree and do those jobs as the people who do attend. This is an issue of faireness - are you happy that talented individuals should be excluded from opportunity? The problem with the current and proposed system is the concept that all graduates will earn a graduate premium - evidently and eventually about half of them won't. Ideally we should set pay-back as occuring when graduates start earning the 'graduate' median wage (or even the wage that differentiates graduates from non graduates) - that could well be age related - so that the 'target' payment figure increases with age. That way those lucky enough to be payed a graduate premium would then pay back their 'debt' - the others, who lost out on the availability of graduate jobs, would not have to pay based on just having been to university, rather than against the option of earning more. Of course, as a country we can no longer afford to do what is 'right' but must do what is expedient to pay down our debts. Maybe the cuts to be announced on Wednesday will force the public sector to adopt the economies already forced onto the private sector - to deliver the same or better levels of service using fewer resources. If you compare public with private levels of sickness absences, for instance, it is possible to suggest that if the public sector achieved private sector levels staff cost savings of 15% or more could readily be achieved (and yes, I have worked in both sectors, and I do know what I am talking about).

It also helps to understand locks - a 7 lever mortice is more secure than a 5 lever mortice (these latter are standard for domestic properties); Banham locks are expensive but have a good reputation (which means they discourage thieves). Hinge bolts (these fix into the side of the door opposite the locks) provide additional security where the entire door may be attacked - as do metal bars to protect the wooden frame into which the locks are normally fitted. Don't fit additional metal grills across the whole door - these can be very dangerous when it comes to fires. Glass door are always vulnerable - particularly single-glazed panels - so a metal grill over glazing (but not otherwise restricting the opening of the door) may be a good idea. Don't use good locks on the front doors and make do with mickey-mouse fittings at the rear - burglars have been known to gain access to the rear of houses and attack these - often more vulnerable, always less overlooked than street side access. The police are often very good at giving security advice. As I have said in other posts - your objective is to make your property sufficiently challenging to move a casual burglar on to someone else; but if it's known you have something tasty (and readily converted into cash) a thief will be prepared to go the extra mile to turn you over. Thieves who steal 'rubbish' kit (i.e. old TV's, videos etc.) often do it so that you will buy some tasty replacmeents with the insurance - that's why so many people who have been burgled once get burgled again a few months later. It's not just bad luck, it's good burglary planning. That's why even though the security will normally have been upgraded, it's worth the burglar coming back - more effort this time, but also a much surer reward.

Insurer's worries aren't actually about past movement (unless this has already so destablalised the building that collapse is immminent) but about future movement. Movement 'in the past' doesn't necessarily imply either (a) that this was caused by subsidence or (b) that subsidence, if it did occur, is still active. If the movement your building has suffered hasn't occured in the recent past then you can not know if there is still a problem, or (probably) if the past problem was subsidence, i.e. a collapse of subsoil under your foundations not associated with a direct cause (such as German bombs) which is not now actively affecting your property. Insurers (who are lazy gits) are happy to avoid risk by assuming that all past movement is still-active subsidence, but this ain't so - some insurers draw huge boundaries around known areas of subsidence (such as clay substrates) and then claim all properties within this boundary are suspect. As I have said, unless you have certain knowledge that any movement in your house is definitely and certainly associated with subsidence you don't have to declare such (lack) of knowledge. Any building (particulary but not only with timber framing) will have moved if it's been standing for more than 50 years or so, without that necessarily being in any way worrying. I have a badly cracked front garden wall whose cracking is directly associated with heavy lorries using road-humps as take-off points, but if I didn't know better I might guess at 'structural' sob-soil movement underneath the wall. If you have worries, call in your own surveyor or structural engineer - don't let the insurers scare you with their post-code lotteries.

They normally choose the night when the door-ringing gypsies and paedo clowns aren't out and about, of course. I would expect the littler extortionists to be demanding sweets with menances on the Saturday, and the larger ones whenever they want to. It's getting to be like November the 5th - a date which just forms an epicentre of mayhem. Oh and edited to say 'Bah! Humbug!'

While James may well be right about the dryness of the summers (not something I particulary noticed in 2009, I must say) he does not mention that the water table in London has been rising, as industry (particularly but not exclusively the brewing industry) has ceased to be major water users. In some area this has caused problems of damp and flooding. It also depends, if you use your front garden for parking, how you do this. Concrete and tarmac will cause run-off, for instance, gravel over membrane, or brick paving over sand are porous and much less likely to cause problems of drying off, indeed where vegitation has been removed more water rather than less may be percolating towards the foundations and their supporting soil structures. Over time, tree stumps and their supporting roots will rot away, which will leave eventual voids - I would much rather have the stump properly removed and the resultant hole properly re-filled. However what looks like 'subsidence' (i.e. evidence of wall movement) can be caused by the removal of trees close to the property. This will almost certainly have stabilised quickly, and if you have past evidence of trees having been removed may well re-assure a surveyor that he/ she is not looking at a more deep seated problem of underlying land movement. Most houses locally were built to allow for some elements of movement, cracks may be unsightly but, if they are neither extending or opening now, should not be worrying.

The answer to 'has the propery, to the best of your knowedge, suffered from subsidence' requires you either to have evidence that it has, i.e. from previous surveys, evidence of remedial work to cure subsidence etc., or to be sufficiently adept as a trained surveyor that you can assess a property for active subsidence. Finding evidence of former house movement is not evidence of subsidence - many houses were 'moved' locally by the effect of bombs exploding near to them, for instance, 65-70 years ago. I would not personally rely on hearsay ('the neighbour said they were told there was a subsidence problem'). Of course, if you are buying a property, you need to get good information from your own surveyor, for your own peace of mind, but if that informaation does not confirm active subsidence, but only talks about past evidence of movement (without actually confirming subsidence as a cause) you can reasonably answer 'no' to the question. In my view.

That sort of thing used to be The Bill filming - I remember coming home to armed police around Langton Rise running up the road - came round the corner to see the cameras etc. but bit of a bad moment for a minute.

Muzzling all dogs over a certain size/ weight because they might be dangerous is like jailing all teenagers because some are criminal thugs. The vast majority of dogs (actually of most breeds), like the vast majority of teenagers, are harmless and engaging (well, the dogs anyway). Responsible owners know when their dogs are nervy, aggressive, difficult with other dogs, difficult with children etc. and act accordingly. Irresponsible owners, like the one described, don't give a monkey's, and legislation as described won't impact them. We can't afford to employ sufficient dog-wardens/ pounds to police any such blanket muzzling requirement legislation anyway. Would wardens need to carry scales with them to weigh the dogs? Law-making based on exceptions is generally poor law-making. If you want to cut down on this sort of thing, don't penalise the owners of non-aggressive dogs (who generally (the dogs) don't like wearing muzzles - would you?) - make sure that ownership of an out-of control dog can be severely punished - confiscation of all animals, life-time banning from keeping animals, fines and imprisonment. If it becomes punitive to have and train aggressive dogs the owners will begin to desist, because the alternatives are disproportionate to the 'pleasures' of keeping devil dogs.

An old scam used to be to break a large window pane (stone throw etc.) then wait for it to be replaced, then lift it out and gain access whilst the putty was still pliable. Was your window recently installed? How was the unit fixed into the aperture?

What a liberty, this is where our council tax is going! Eh? - The Royal Mail/ Post Office have nothing to do with the local authority. I cannot see how your council tax is going to support the Royal Mail. There is, in rural areas, sometimes council support for local sub post-offices/ village shops (not owned by the Royal Mail, but operated on their behalf by independant traders), but not in London.

Oh, that'll be the Zippo Circus Clowns winding themselves up for a fright-fest throughout ED. They rush round linking hands with the gypsies and ringing door bells. It's a tradition thing.

In general the rule about security is that anyone can break in anywhere, the trick is to make your place more difficult than others', so that the bad guys chose theirs not yours. (In evolutionary terms, you don't have to run faster than the cheetah, just faster than the next antelope to you that is being chased by the cheetah). Sometimes more difficult is more costly - so that the bad guys will not think they will get a great return from attacking you - they will need more and better kit, ladders, crowbars, glass cutters, expertise in lock picking and so on. So they will go for the cheap and easy option (that's why safes are cash rated - they are designed to cost more to break into than the likely value being kept in them). So if you make your place more secure it will keep out the casual thief, ie, the one who doesn't care who he burgles as long as he burgles someone, but not the thief who is after your Picasso etchings in particular. The more inviting your property, in terms of ease of access, the more the wrong sort of person will be invited. Conclusion - invest sufficiently in your security to keep people out, but don't spend more on security than your property might be worth. A better gate is still probably a good investment, as would be sensors pointed at the gate to light up or sound out if someone comes over the top.

Whats the train line got to do with it? are they commuting to Sainsburys - in a sense they probably are - railway lines form safe and wild channels for wild life to move around in (and live in) - no people, relatively few predators - like the banks of motorways they have become wild-life refuges. It is rare for anyone to lay poison or traps in railway lines, as they do in more people frequented areas.

What age would that be? (I'm on the wrong side of 50 and not a gym bunny at all.) Try the wrong side of 60 - and with arthritic knees

I don't know whether anyone elese has noticed, but Holland is a notoriously flat place - London on the other hand, and particularly around here isn't. (Notice that almost all the local stations other the the 3 Dulwich stations have 'hill' in their name.) Once you reach a certain age much of ED and its surrounds becomes quite a struggle - apart from the less than bike-friendly roads we have generally around here.

As the person who started the taxi-driver hare - I should point out that I was commenting on perceptions which might create a price differential between apparently similar housing north and south of the river. In fact, my own experence of whether drivers are prepared to go South of the river are as mixed as anyones - it does help to say, vaguely, 'Camberwell', (or even 'Vauxhall') and then just direct from there. Although there is no tube, taking a train into central london from ED (granted there are fewer of them) is actually much quicker than travelling the equivalent distance by tube 'up north'. But perceptions place us as a transport black spot. And that does impact housing prices.

Cant understand why the place is so much more affordable than say, Muswell Hill, Crouch end etc because its style and Chic are pretty much beyond them both. It's South of the river. Taxi's don't come here, neither do the tubes. Neither, thank god, do people, generally, from North of the river, because of what they have heard.

You can find out about BT Openszone availability here http://www.btopenzone.com/find/uk/index.jsp - in this area most will be via BT Fon, which is spare capacity allowed by private BT Broadband users off their wireless systems. You would have to have a BT customer near you who has enabled FON to get a good signal. The strong Openzone signals are going to be in town - the West End and City. I have checked on the map you can link to via the BT site http://btopenzone.hotspot-directory.com/results.php and there are no Openzone sites in ED - they are all offered via BT FON. So if you want signal locally you will be relying on the generosity of those living around you (people who offer FON connectivity themselves can then access FON spots nationwide on their travels)

PS Love the argument that as a 'foreigner' I'm not entitled to an opinion, what other unpleasantness is hidden behind your veneer of bonhomie? Surely the issue wasn't about foreigness but about lack of immediate knowledge. To challenge 'anecdotal' views of those who are actually on site, as it were, seems a tad presumptuous - none of us (of course) is either undertaking independant, statistically significant surveys or giving evidence in court, when hearsay evidence could be discarded. Those who have been posting, in the main, are however here (in ED) to observe/ participate in the effects of the lights now, and most remember the position before the lights - I certainly do and I recall that crossing the street at the crossing was entirely safe. Drivers tend to be more careful of crossings than they do of lights - because they actually have to think and observe. And I definitely 'rat run' to avoid the hold up at the lights. I have lived relatively close to the junction (continually) for more than the last 20 years.

You are probably out of 'line-of-sight' of the Vod mast - that is a problem with ED - hills can cut signal - microwaves work best when there isn't intervening ground (i.e. hills) to dampen the signal. I always lose signal coming over the brow of Dog Kennel Hill, and again driving up Sydenham Hill.

If there is a requirement for a seven day wait (that actually makes no sense, when I had gas work (emergency) done outside my house the hole was opened and closed in 48 hours) it could still be scheduled in; and doesn't account for the very much longer delays we are seeing. It seems very unlikely that they are using jointing glues that take 7 days to cure - it should be apparent within 24 hours of gas flowing whether the joints are sound - there are actually ways of doping glass fibre (the sort used in communications) to be sensitive to gasses. I think it more likely that the crew who fill-in and surface weren't scheduled to turn up for seven days (they would be a different group from the ones pipe laying and jointing) - that's why the 7 day delay story was used, because otherwise it looks like (it jolly well is) very bad project management and planning. You might schedule crews with a 24 hour delay (to take account of over-run works because, for instance, of torrential rain) - but 7 days is just " 'avin a laugh, innit?".

Part of the problem is that a number of different trades are needed for the sort of planned works that the gas and water companies are doing locally - instead of proper project management and scheduling they only really plan for the initial hole digging, then send along the other trades as they become available - at least that's what it looks like. They should be required to show a full schedule of works to the roads authority, with all trades planned-in and a firm completion date - which should be agreed by competant surveyors as being reasonable - then fined very large amounts per-diem for over-runs - ?5000 a day seems a good start point, possibly escalating to ?10,000 a day after 5 days, and then up by ?5000 increments for each period of 5 days following. No works should be allowed to start which are not planned for completion in 3 weeks - that being (to my mind) a maximum disruptive period I am prepared to put up with. For extended works (like working all along Lordship lLane) 'breaks' should be required of at least 2 weeks before more disruption starts again (but of course the teams could then go and work in a different area). Unplanned works (sewer collapses etc.) are different, but they should not be prayed in aid when planned works over-run - companies should be required to have sufficient staff/ contractors to hand to cope with emergencies as well as planned works. I suspect that the skills of project management, the existence of Gantt charts, critical path analysis, etc. etc. are all firmly closed books when it comes to the contractors who work around SE London.

Some trees have roots which spread and are close to the surface, birch I think are like this, some which go down quite far before spreading - conifers I think have deep roots - but you should check. Deep-rooted trees are less likely to have an impact on buildings (re roots coming into drains etc.)- but will of course take-up water. If your house is stable removing a tree close by may actually make things bad, by allowing the water table to rise now nothing's drinking it. Take advice, would be my advice, from someone who knows the impact of different sorts of tree.

What is a brick field? A brick field is a site from which clay has been 'mined' to make bricks - if the site has been fully depleted of clay, houses built over it are less likely to subside, as they are not being built on an existing clay substrate - however if the brick field is not exhausted then there will still be clay residue on which houses may have been built. Unless you can be sure that the site is exhausted then it indicates just that there is, or has been, underlying clay. Normally brick field sites will have been depleted of (most) clay, I believe, as that would have been the economic action before selling the land and acquiring a new site for clay 'mining'.

If you are buying, and you believe there may be a problem (or you are being told there is one) your seller may be able to provide you with the original survey done for him/ her - if that identifies 'problems' (for instance wall-cracks) which are essentially unchanged since then (assuming the survey was done some time ago) this may help identify a 'problem' which (see above) has stabilised. Also check to see if trees have been recently removed close to the property, as this will alter the local water table without necessarily being a substantial or real problem. I have said on another thread that (in the expectation that you will eventually want to sell) recording the state of a property when you buy may prove helpful later when selling - my house has a hairline crack in it unchanged over 20 years since I bought the house, and associated probably with a later (pre-war) built garage but which could still trigger concern in a casual surveyor, charged (unless you are instructing him/ her) with protecting the mortgagers interests. Many structural experts are now much less worried about subsidence, particularly in older houses which have had time to flex, than they were previously - collapse is far less common than one might think, and the symptoms are normally pretty dramatic and visible long before the walls go down. That doesn't stop (some) insurers being ultra-cautious of course - mainly because builders who address subsidence do so whole-heartedly and expensively.