uncivil servant

IMHO, employers rarely act for the good of the employee against their own best interests. If it were me, I'd check whether what the company was offering was more, less or equivalent to the Government minimum redundancy pay, and how easily I could find another job in this recession. If it was a fair bit more and I had a good chance of finding another job, then I'd probably take it. If not, then I'd sit tight. At least if you're made redundant there is no qualifying period for any benefits I'd be entitled to.

Absolutely not!! We decided to give it two weeks to get the asking price and then take the best we could get. Luckily for us, we got the asking price.

I think your best bet would be to look on a website like www.rightmove.com, put in the area or postcode and see what kind of flats come up in the area and surrounding areas. We placed our property with Winkworth and Chard. Both of them were fine, and, as a landlord, I'd recommend either of them, but I have no experience as a tenant. Good luck.

I'm very glad we let in West London and not in Sheffield. The property we rent was on the market for two days. On day one, we had an offer of £40 below the asking price and turned it down, hoping we'd done the right thing. We had. The following day, we had a another offer via a different EA, this time as the asking price. The tenant paid the holding deposit and signed the tenancy agreement yesterday and moves in on the 14th.

You can pay by monthly instalment with a Pay Point card. When you move out, you tell the water company, and stop paying. You have to call the water company to arrange to pay by monthly installments, but, when you do, they are very accommodating.

It didn't work that way for us. My sister and I rent out our parents house in Notting Hill, West London, ever since my dad died back in 2000. The house became vacant again at the end of February. We decided to completely refurbish it, then go for another rental, rather than sell it in the current depressed market. We finished the renovations on March 22. We saw three EA's on March 23 and placed the house with all of them. Two sets of renters wanted the house, so a bidding war started, and the house went for the asking price. We had pitched the asking price high, expecting to be knocked down, so we were very pleased when we actually got a higher price than we expected, with the tenants signing a contract for a year with two months rent as a deposit. I'm sure West London is not typical of the rest of the UK, but our experience as landlords in a 'renters market' was certainly a good one.

There are two similar developments in Acton, West London. They are almost opposite to each other on either side of the Uxbridge Road, a busy main road with double yellow lines on both sides. One development has a limited number of parking spaces available to buy for around £12,000 each, and the other has no parking at all. All of the surrounding streets from Shepherds Bush to Ealing Common have residents' parking schemes in force and nobody living on these developments are able to buy a into any residents' parking schemes. To make matters worse, there are no public car parks in the area that people could buy or rent spaces in, even if they wanted to. Both developments have a large number of flats still for sale, and it's been interesting to watch the prices for the flats dropping like stones. I know some of the falling prices are due to the crash, but I think the lack of parking spaces must also have an impact. I'm waiting to see what will happen if/when a significant number of the flats are sold or rented out, if they ever are.

Haggling on rent seems to work these days. A friend's daughter wanted to rent with two of her friends in Putney, West London. I'd read about a glut of property for rent and how people were haggling down prices, so I told her to try for a reduction. She did, and the landlord agreed immediately. She only wished she'd asked for a bigger reduction!! Good luck.

I won't believe it until I see it confirmed by the Daily Star.....

Gordon is being very generous with taxpayers' money. I wonder why he is so sure he's going to get the money back with interest from an organisation that is bankrupt? It seems to me all he is ensuring is that we all share in the losses, whether or not we had any money in the Islandic bank.....

Well, if I were you, I wouldn't start making too many plans for how you're going to spend it.....

No shortage of them in Lincoln.....

Thank you. That is a relief. At least for now........

I read in the Telegraph article : Experts suspect that it may have to take a majority stake in Royal Bank of Scotland, while it will also have major holdings in HBOS, Lloyds TSB and Barclays under the plan. but no mention was made of my bank, HSBC, or of NatWest. Does anyone know if that's because those banks don't need any government assistance, or because they are beyond help? I hope it's the former, but these days, who knows?