Country diary: these many-legged creatures raise a stink

Crook, County Durham: Spotted snake millipedes have ozopores on the flanks of each of their segments to repel predators

Digging the vegetable garden, I uncovered a potato, overlooked in an earlier harvest. I wondered if it was fit for the pot, then noticed the small hole in the side. A long column of pale, centimetre-long, thread-like animals marched out into the sunlight and fell to the ground.

I captured a few of the army that had hollowed out the potato. The first question, in my mental identification key to soil animals, was how many legs per segment? Easy: two, so they must be millipedes, not centipedes. Second question: total number of legs? Almost impossible to count, because they were never still. Scores of limbs rose and fell, in a rippling, undulating wave – mesmerising choreography that travelled the length of the animals’ bodies, in an endless cycle.

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Lenders left wondering how PM's homeowners pledge will be achieved

Boris Johnson’s conference promise leaves mortgage industry bemused and puzzled

Boris Johnson’s pledge to create 2 million new owner-occupiers with a new raft of 95% loans has left the mortgage industry bemused and puzzled as to how it can be achieved – with lenders describing it as little more than a revamped help-to-buy scheme.

In recent months low-deposit mortgages have virtually disappeared in Britain, as lenders have become fearful that house price falls could leave them exposed to big losses. Major lenders such as HSBC and Santander have mostly withdrawn from offering 90% and 95% mortgage loans, with first-time buyers struggling to qualify for a loan without putting down a 15% deposit.

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Getting to know… St Ives

Read our guide.

The post Getting to know... St Ives first appeared on Property blog.

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How much would you pay for an extra bedroom?

Read the full story.

The post How much would you pay for an extra bedroom? first appeared on Property blog.

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This house has a swimming pool in the main bedroom

We're not joking!

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Robert Rinder: 'Law is meaningless unless everybody has access to it'

The barrister and TV judge, who is now a Shelter ambassador, on why he’s passionate about tackling housing inequality

“I feel like a horse that has been waiting to bolt on this for years,” says Robert Rinder. The barrister, celebrity and star of the popular courtroom daytime TV reality show Judge Rinder has been appointed as a legal services ambassador for the housing charity Shelter. It has given him an opportunity to talk about social justice, and he doesn’t hold back.

His views come tumbling out, from street homelessness (“it is hard to think of a more poignant example of [social] failure”) to the dire lack of social housing, the short-sighted dismantling of legal aid, and the complexity of the benefit system (“one gets the creeping sense that it is made as challenging as possible for those who need it to be as easy as possible”).

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Nine top tips for working with your estate agent Nottingham Estate Agents

Your property is going on the market and, having chosen and instructed your estate agent, it is time to start working with them to find the right buyer. This top tip guide from OnTheMarket is designed to help you work effectively with your estate agent to achieve this goal as smoothly as possible. Work as […]

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