Mark Uttley

A very good point, well made.

What figures are you using? Using the latest Nationwide figure for house prices (£158,565) and yesterdays spot price for gold (£566.62) I get a figure of 279.84oz.

No. The Dow opens every week day, apart from public holidays.

Does he now? That must be it then. I'd always assumed that Miss Pitstop was saving herself for Peter Perfect. I had no idea she was keen on Dick.

I wasn't gloating. I was just stating a fact. The market could go up or down, but there is nothing to suggest that your cartoonland imagery is about to happen.

Sorry to have to inject a little reality into your Warner Bros inspired analysis, but the markets are up 12% in the last 3 months. Hardly treading on air.

Sadly (or happily, depending on which side of the equation you are) this is spot on. The rollercoaster always goes quiet when it reaches the top, just before the screaming starts.

Oh, I'm sure he does. Anyway, here's a chart we can all laugh along to.

....and a better run NHS. I'll give one example, which may seem trivial, but which shows how pointless some of the tasks drawn up by "managers" (in this case the PCT) can be. I work as a locum retail pharmacist in the North West. Recently, every pharmacy was sent out a number of "Customer Satisfaction Surveys" which they were told to hand out to patients collecting prescriptions from the pharmacy. The survey had questions ranginging from "How satisfied with the service from this pharmacy?" to "How satisfied are you with how long you had to wait?" etc etc. It was anonymous and took 5-10 minutes to complete. The surveys were not popular with patients, so staff would only hand them out to patients they knew would be happy to fill them out. This means patients who had been coming to the pharmacy for years and were already happy with the service they were receiving. Furthermore, in several of the pharmacies I worked in I posed the following questions. "What would you do if someone, with a face like thunder, filled in a survey and scored the pharmacy on all points?" and "What would you do if you didn't manage to have completed the required number of surveys required by the PCT?" To question 1, everyone said they would consider destroying the patients survey. To question 2, everyone agreed that they would consider filling in some of the surveys themselves. Some admitted to have already done so. I haven't seen any results yet, but presumably someone at the PCT is going to collate these surveys and produce a pie chart of customer satisfaction for the area. Presumably, at a later date, we can do the surveys again and compare pie charts to previous pie charts and pat ourselves on our backs if the level of satisfaction goes up, or shake our heads if it goes down ( if some pharmacy breaks rank and actually hands the surveys out to the dissatisfied customers). As a former pharmacy owner I found the best gauge of customer satisfaction was the number of patients who returned to use the pharmacy each month. The PCT's method is unpopular, onerous and a complete waste of time and money.

£1,650 down to £300!!! Spin that, Sibley!!

Could HPC not hit back and commission a photo of a fake queue of Estate Agents collecting their dole money? Would any members with a suitably miserable face and a cheap suit let themselves be known now.

So are you saying red is the new black? And a falling one too. It seems the only time to hold shares would be on a Sunday.

How many have you sold?

That is exactly how I remember it, except it was 2004.

Hamish or the guy on telly?

In theory the M25 was a good idea. Didn't they try something similar to this in Eastern Europe between 1917 and 1991?

Pants on fire GOM. No way your bank manager told you "financials" (I assume from the way you told him TSB shares were going to crash you mean financial shares) were a one way bet. This meeting didn't take place, except, perhaps, in your over fertile mind.

Is that true? 20 years ago you could only get a mortgage for 3.5x your salary, but I'm not sure thath that equated to the average house price being 3.5x the national average wage. The way the housing ladder used to work was that FTBs bought an affordable home and then moved up the ladder because their salary increased plus they had equity in their property. The current bubble arose when the banks threw the rulebook out of the window.

How are we supposed to remember something that hasn't happened yet? You said the FTSE was about to crash when it was at 3750. Remember?

Average asking price = £227.4K Source Rightmove Average selling price = £155K Source Halifax Average discount = 31.8% of asking price. " If you're not embarassed by your offer, then you offered too much."

In this case, no. It sounds to me that the OP's landlord can't afford to have a void even for a couple of weeks whilst he decorates it. Expecting the tenant to put up with the upheaval and inconvenience during the last few weeks of his/her tenancy is unreasonable, in my opinion.

You're missing the point. The OP doesn't want the inconvenience of having his/her flat painting. He pays the landlord for a service, which includes privacy.

Another one joins the fray! Question. Who decides what can be released by a freedom of information request?

You don't think that the biggest story here would be the government trying to censor the Daily Telegraph?

Tin foil hatting at it's best. Do you really think the government would pull this article, yet leave the scandalous MP expenses claims alone?