My problems began with a cracked pipe under the kitchen sink. Without the tools or expertise and with a large number of guests due for dinner, I reached for the phone book to find a plumber willing to do a weekend callout. Big mistake.
I gulped as I agreed to the company’s eye-watering charge of £80 per 30 minutes. Even my accountant does not charge that much, but I was desperate and I thought it was a simple job. Second big mistake. Continue reading
A trip to a Disneyland Paris is almost a rite of passage for British kids these days but such is the rate at which the French theme park has expanded over the past five years, parents still need to precision plan their visit to ensure everyone gets the most out of it.
It’s not just the size of the park that makes a two-day stay essential – queuing, already a familiar sight at UK theme parks, is something you’ll get very well used to at Disneyland Paris and can severely reduce the number of attractions you can squeeze into your day. Continue reading
Skiing with kids is always a challenge, not just because the little darlings learn how to whizz down slopes much more quickly than their parents do, but for the occasional difficulty of finding suitable apres-ski activities.
Resorts like Val D’Isere struggle to cater for families because they’re so tuned in to the needs of older teenagers and twentysomethings, for whom a copious supply of alcohol and loud discos are the order of the day. Continue reading
A shortage of suitable property may have driven up urban prices over the past few years but a mass exodus from towns across the UK is likely to do the same for country homes.
New research shows that more than a quarter of metropolitan househunters are trying to find properties well away from larger urban areas.
Some 27% of would-be buyers are trying to get away from City pollution and noise to find some rural calm, according to the survey by assertahome.com. Continue reading
Insurance companies are turning to technology in a multi-million pound fightback against fraud. Wrongful claims cost insurers about £3bn a year and now companies are investing in industry-wide IT systems that analyse data to detect patterns in the claims submitted.
Other insurers are turning to lie-detector systems and psychological analysis to uncover when policyholders aren’t telling the truth. Continue reading
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