Sorry, that's wrong, it makes a LOT of difference. Get a cable and plug your PC (temporarily) into the router. Do your speed tests again and post the results. Until you've done this there's no point in proceeding further.

I can understand your frustration but your car example is different. You said "a car that will do 35 miles per hour", and if it didn't your buyer would have a claim against you. But that's not how the broadband guys advertise. They always say something like "up to 35Mb", and "up to" can mean anything from 1 to 35. If your speed is really only hitting 2Mb most of the time I think that's exceptionally poor and they should do something about it. First, have you had this broadband service before from anybody else? Was it faster? Are you miles from your exchange? It sounds like you ought to be considered as one of the 10% the original post was talking about. Have you already complained to Sky about the low speeds? If so, what did they say? (If not, that's your starting point. You have to give them a chance to fix things before you go any further.) One other thing. Is the PC / laptop you're doing the speed tests on connected directly to your router by Ethernet cable? If you're connecting via Wifi or through your house power sockets ("Powerline networking"), then your measured figures don't mean anything as far as the ISP is concerned.

Really? You'd have to have been on Mars not to have caught this story when it broke a few weeks ago.

Exactly right, ADDLED. Third hand (at least!) and no real content, just a classic scare story with no useful information about what actually happened. It's a shame CAG can't do a bit of vetting of these before deciding to add themselves to what amounts to a chain letter.

The whole thing misses the real point, which is that if distance from the exchange etc. is causing your slow speeds, changing supplier is pointless because they all use the same BT cabling to get from the exchange to your house. So once you've gone to all the trouble of changing suppliers your broadband will still be just as slow as before, but your argument will just be with a different company, who also can't do anything about it.

Although your may get some responses here, this is really a question you should put in writing to your conveyancing solicitor. If he agrees and that turns out to be wrong, you will have some redress. If you follow the advice of someone on the forum here and it's wrong, you're on your own.

I think "can now download an MP3" is somewhat missing the point of this. Anyone who has bought a CD can create their own MP3s from it in a few minutes, so that would be pretty pointless. The key thing about this is that your CD collection now resides in the Amazon "cloud", so you can play any track from any of your CDs by streaming it to a smartphone or tablet using the Amazon MP3 app, rather than downloading the MP3 or filling up your device with bulky music files.

Yes, that seems to be the situation. Insurance does tend to be taken at purchase time, but I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be able to buy cover at any time, as long as a potential liability has not been confirmed by a search, as mentioned previously. I also don't see in principle why you should need solicitors to be involved. It may be though that the insurers prefer it this way because they can get reliable assurance from them that there is still no established liability. On your own you might have a harder time convincing them of this. No harm in contacting one of them and asking.

That's it in a nutshell! It's a crazy situation which has allowed the insurance companies to create a racket which amounts to a licence to print money. (But then again, hasn't printing money become fashionable recently? )

I doubt the MOD would have worried much about incurring this liability, since being a public body they would be spending taxpayer's money rather than their own if asked to contribute! And of course once you've bought the property you've taken over any responsibility from them. Certainly the real risk varies from place to place, but it's hard to know without doing the full Kew search, which can have serious consequences for your ability to get insurance. Is there a actually a church anywhere near you which could be the subject of repairs in the future? If not, the risk of your incurring a large liability would seem small, and it's likely all your ex-military neighbours would also be expected to chip in. But really the trouble is, majsheridan, none of the above will much matter to your purchasers; they'll just want to be secure from any risk and I doubt they'll accept your arguments that there's little risk, even if the arguments are soundly based. This is a topic which all conveyancers are well aware of now so every prospective buyer of your house will raise the same question. You may as well just respond that though you think liability is unlikely, you will deduct the cost of "in perpetuity" insurance from the asking price so that they carry no risk or extra cost. Compared with the price of a house, the typical premiums quoted earlier in this thread seem trivial.

Just as a follow up to this - I managed to get the dogs called off after convincing the local court office that the person they were looking for had never been at my address. They took a long time to sort this out though - they kept saying they had suspended action, but the bailiffs claimed not to know about this suspension. Eventually I made a formal complaint against the court administration - this did the trick! I later found that there is another street in Liverpool with the same street name as mine, and a person with the specified name was listed at that address. I suspect what happened is that the person actually did give his correct address but without a postcode. The court (or the police) then later looked up and added the postcode, but picked the wrong one. Great.

OK, thanks, will do that now. I suspect though that they'll still turn up at the door. What do I say? What are my rights? Should I go back to the court again? Seems to me this must be quite common as anyone could give a random false address. But I couldn't find something similar searching the forum.

A few months ago a I received a fixed penalty notice for a public order offence addressed to someone who does not and who never has lived at my address, and is not known to me. I complained to the issuing court and they asked me to return the notice with conformation that the person was "not known at this address" or words to that effect, which I did. Two weeks later I received a further notice af arrears, so I lodged a formal complaint with the court administration. This resulted in a letter from them saying they were sorry, were making further intelligence enquiries relating to the location of the person, and that they should have put a stop on the account at the previous letter, but failed to do so. They said this had now been done. Today, two weeks later, I received a 7 day notice of distrant from a firm of bailiffs. Any ideas what I should do now?

I wonder if they're doing the research but deliberately not recording at the Land Registry just yet for fear of spooking the horses, and then intending to register them all as a block just before the deadline? Or perhaps that's too devious?

I'm desperately trying to avoid making my feelings on the Church, and religion generally, plain for fear of getting blocked on my first day in the forum, but I agree they won't be making this investment just for fun. Some nasty surprises are on the way for many homeowners over the next year or two. Does the Land Registry (have to) let you know if some new claim is registered on your property?

Wow, that's a good point, hadn't thought of that. But maybe that could in due course raise enough dust to make the government reconsider?

Indeed. But you can tell from the way that they say "in many cases this effect can be mitigated ..." that they know they aren't really responding effectively. Typical weasel words to give the impression to the uninformed that there isn't really a problem.

The Petition to the Prime Minister has today resulted in the following response from the government: "Chancel Repair Liability has existed for several centuries and the Government has no plans to abolish it or to introduce a scheme for its redemption. The Government has, however, acted to make the existence of the liability much simpler to discover. From October 2013, chancel repair liability will only bind buyers of registered land if it is referred to on the land register. By that time, virtually all freehold land in England and Wales will be registered. The Government believes that this approach strikes a fair balance between the landowners subject to the liability and its owners who are, in England, generally Parochial Church Councils and, in Wales, the Representative Body of the Church in Wales. The Government acknowledges that the existence of a liability for chancel repair will, like any other legal obligation, affect the value of the property in question, but in many cases this effect can be mitigated by relatively inexpensive insurance. It is for the parties involved in a transaction to decide whether or not to take out insurance." Nothing encouraging there.