Fire Prevention.

Richard Greenland

I wrote about annual pre-emptive maintenance last week, with particular emphasis on flooding, a very common hazard for landlords. However fire can be far more devastating.

The easiest way to prevent it is by tenant education. For instance, did you know that a faulty mobile phone on charge is a common cause of house fires? This burnt out a house just three doors away from my own. It was restricted to just one room, but the smoke damage, compounded by water damage from the fire service, made the whole house uninhabitable for six months. I always talk to new tenants about this, and point to a clause in my AST. It states that phones should only be charged on a non-combustible surface such as a ceramic plate, and only when the tenant is in.

Phone charging safely

I’ve also noticed that young tenants in particular can be quite blaze about piles of magazines or the cord of a toaster hanging over the edge of a cooker. This also gets a mention in my AST.

Smoking is an obvious hazard. If you accept tenants who smoke, Sam Collett suggests in her excellent blog that you require them to smoke outside. She says they often readily agree, though I’m not sure how enforceable this is.

For blinds and furniture covers I prefer cotton or linen to nylons as the former are less combustible. I don’t have curtains partly because these are more prone to ignition from candles.

Candles are a particular hazard. Sam had a flat burnt out because the tenant had run out of electricity at the meter, so had tea-lights all over the flat, including the (highly flammable) carpet! I provide dedicated dishes for candles, the use of them is required in the AST, and candles only permitted for dining. Again this isn’t enforceable in practice, but hopefully it focuses the tenant’s mind. We almost had a fire in our own house when a candle in the bedroom burnt down and set fire to my wife’s plastic hairbrush and a book. I tell new tenants this story as a cautionary tale.

Finally, if there is an open fire, insist that the tenants use a proper spark-guard, and keep rugs back from the hearth.

I’m not sure what I’ll write about next week, if anyone has any suggestions or ‘property-doctor’ type questions then send them in and I’ll gladly reply. If not I’m considering a series of blogs on things to look for when buying a house.

Rich

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Tags: candles, curtains, fire, Maintenance, rich, smoking
Posted in General on June 1st, 2010 |

3 Responses to “Fire Prevention.”

Sam says:

June 1, 2010 at 9:59 am

This is an excellent post and I had no idea that mobile chargers were so dangerous. I will now ensure that I educate all tenants on this.

RE: candles since the incident of the fire at the property we have added a clause that they are prohibited from use.

You also mention about the smoke and water damage to a property following a fire. In my blog where I write about the fire which happened I need to write an update. 7 months on and the flats are finally now ready to be lived in again.HOWEVER – the damage done by the water jets used by the fire brigade is still coming out now (damp patches). I have been told it can take over 12 months for a propert to fully dry out! You can read my blog about the tenant fire here: http://wp.me/pCIxO-z

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Richard says:

June 1, 2010 at 12:05 pm

Re the water damage, yup sometimes the cure can be almost as bad as the disease!

My son’s mobile once spontaniously ignited while it was on charge. Apparently it’s not uncommon.

Rich

Reply
Nick Parkin (Pimlico Flats) says:

June 2, 2010 at 5:31 pm

A property up the road from me burnt out just before Christmas. The family spent Christmas camping out with neighbours. The property is still a long way from being habitable (6 months later) because the fire created dangerous chemicals & the property is still being de-toxified.

The cause of the fire (clue in the beginning) …… the family put real candles on the Christmas Tree!

Reply

It’s Pull not Push, Marketing not Sales, 3rd Millenium not 2nd

Twitter FollowFriday

Image via CrunchBase

As it’s Follow Friday I thought that I would talk about Twitter – I’ve been on Twitter for a couple of years and we rent most of our flats due to twitter. I discovered fairly early on that Twitter doesn’t work as an advertising medium, and that the people with a small number of high quality followers are much more influential than those with large numbers of followers acquired by automated and indiscriminate means. Almost since the beginning I have been an advocate of quality, not quantity, and if you don’t want to follow my story jump to the Conclusion.

Twitter and Facebook

My Twitter account is a business account – rightly or wrongly I restrict Facebook to family and personal friends and the swapping of personal news, photos & events. I did syndicate my Tweets onto my Facebook account for a short while, but my friends didn’t appreciate business type tweets invading their Facebook timeline just as I block Farmville et. al. from mine, so I rapidly disconnected the 2 accounts. If you are one of my Facebook friends who sends their twitter feed through to their Facebook Status, then I am afraid you are wasting your time, you are blocked, and further you are losing the opportunity to connect with me on a second level. I urge you to disconnect your Twitter feed from Facebook, you can always do what I do – use Tweetdeck for Facebook as well as Twitter, and when a Tweet is appropriate for Facebook send it to both sites at once.

Twitter and Advertising

Perhaps I should explain what I mean by the apparently conflicting comments that I successfully use Twitter for business, but that it is useless as an advertising medium. I’ve nearly always been personal on Twitter even though it is a successful business tool for me, but in the early days I used to use twitter to advertise the vacant flats that we had, just as classified ad sites used to feed their ads onto twitter. This was a resounding #fail and anyone still using Twitter in this way is crippling their Social Networking effectiveness for zero benefit. I do occasionally mention vacancies, but Twitter is just a window into me and my business. A prospective tenant peers in through this window, and if they like what they see they will go & find out whether we have vacancies. It’s pull, not push, marketing not sales, 3rd Millenium not 2nd.

Can you have Too Many Followers?

Can you have Too Many Followers? – if you wish to leverage your internet presence, then yes!

I just stated that you can’t sell to people on twitter by broadcasting to them – the reason for this and the beauty of twitter for it’s users over other media is that the listener controls what they listen to. The only way followers will actually read what you tweet is if they know enough about you to recognise that you are worth listening to – and that means some form of engagement, which probably means that you have to listen to them on twitter also. The simple equation which most people and twitter applications miss is that your reach is related not to the people who follow you, but on the number of people that you successfully follow.

How do I successfully Follow?

How do I successfully Follow? A very easy question to answer – you read what your followers tweet. If you aren’t reading them you shouldn’t be following them! I use Tweetdeck to separate my follows into groups, the most important 2 being:

Friends
Follow Friday

Most of my follows are not on either list, more of that later.

Friends

Believe it or not I need to explain who Friends are – they are people I know and like, but I’m not interested in their Twitterfeed. I think it’s very important to avoid the concept that follows on twitter are people that you like, and vica versa. These are people I love very much, but don’t want to read their feed all the time.

Follow Friday

Follow Friday is a list that I maintain solely to recommend to others on Friday (today!). I read the all tweets of these people (when I have connected to twitter – one of the most powerful twitter tools is the OFF button!) and these are the people that I recommend to you to follow. The list is continually revised – if people for their own reasons start repeating their tweets excessively or change their behaviour in some other detrimental way I drop them off the list, there is one person who has been removed & reinstated 4 times! Here is the list that I recommend for Follow Friday that you can subscribe to, but if you are only looking at it to see if you are on it then you are missing the point!

Follows

Before yesterday I used to follow 1300 people – this wasn’t the result of blind auto-follows, I have always tried to be selective about about who I followed, however I decided that following 1300 people and giving them a reasonable amount of attention would take up more time than I can afford. Yesterday I discovered a tool that I thoroughly recommend and used it to unfollow 650 people. It was an intensely manual process taking me 2 hours, so I wish that Twitter rules could be relaxed to allow it to be automated, but nevertheless I am pleased with the result. No doubt I made a mistake, and if anyone reading this was unfollowed please contact me and I will refollow. The point is that the people that I needed to unfollow will either automatically unfollow back, or not notice. Both are fine with me, as both types are exactly the sort of person I was trying to unfollow! If you notice, then I am very happy to correct my mistake.

Conclusion

Sorry – that has been more of a rant than I had intended when I started. I hope that you read it through, and got something from it. The main two lessons would be:

Here is the list that I recommend for Follow Friday that you can subscribe to
Here is a tool that I thoroughly recommend to unfollow people who you shouldn’t really be following

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Tags: Advertising, Facebook, followfriday, Online Communities, Social network service, Social Networking, TweetDeck, Twitter
Posted in General on May 28th, 2010 |

One Response to “It’s Pull not Push, Marketing not Sales, 3rd Millenium not 2nd”

school grants says:

May 29, 2010 at 1:28 am

Pretty nice post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed browsing your blog posts. In any case I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you write again soon!

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Labour Party Election Manifesto on Housing (1945)

Clement Attlee, British Prime Minister 1945-51

Image via Wikipedia

HOUSES AND THE BUILDING PROGRAMME

Housing will be one of the greatest and one of the earliest tests of a Government’s real determination to put the nation first. Labour‘s pledge is firm and direct – it will proceed with a housing programme with the maximum practical speed until every family in this island has a good standard of accommodation. That may well mean centralising and pooling of building materials and components by the State, together with price control. If that is necessary to get the houses as it was necessary to get the guns and planes, Labour is ready.

And housing ought to be dealt with in relation to good town planning – pleasant surroundings, attractive lay-out, efficient utility services, including the necessary transport facilities.

There should be a Ministry of Housing and Planning combining the housing powers of the Ministry of Health with the planning powers of the Ministry of Town and Country Planning; and there must be a firm and united Government policy to enable the Ministry of Works to function as an efficient instrument in the service of all departments with building needs and of the nation as a whole. . . .

The 1945 Labour Party Manifesto

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Tags: Government, Renting
Posted in General on April 26th, 2010 |

Rent a Flat near Westminster Parliament from Pimlico Flats

All Pimlico Flats’ flats for rent are within the Division Bell, a technical Parliamentary term meaning that MPs can go home and be called back to Parliament when it’s time to vote, so if you are expecting to win your seat than all our flats are well within the new lower MPs expenses limit so we offer superb quality at excellent value for money.

However if you expect to be called by the Queen to form the next Government then it looks as if you will be heading to “Young London” the Lettings Agency who are advertising 10 Downing Street for rent at an asking price of £72,000 pw (I really do think it worth negotiating on this rent). This is a unique opportunity to head up one of the world’s oldest democracies, and a major European State, so an early viewing is recommended.

Downing Street

Located in a quiet, gated, cul-de-sac, it is a secure property with 24 hour protection with a security checkpoint, armed police patrol and a police guard outside the front door at all times. The property also features a blast proof steel front door and secure, off street parking.

Tastefully decorated and finished to the highest standards throughout, Downing Street is available furnished, and boasts a number of priceless antiques and pieces of art, including pieces by Turner; on loan from the Government Art Collection.

Situated in the City of Westminster and Whitehall, the property is a stone’s throw from some of the most recognizable, picture postcard sites in the city including The Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey. Thanks to its central location, it is fantastically placed for every imaginable amenity; the popular sights, shops, eateries and entertainment of The Strand, Trafalgar Square, and Covent Garden are close by and the shopping centres of Oxford Street and Bond Street are also within convenient distance.

The area is well served by parks; St James’ Park is on your doorstep and boasts 58 acres of open space in SW1 bordered by Buckingham Palace to the west, The Mall and St. James’s Palace to the North and Horse Guards to the east. The park has a small lake and offers great views of Buckingham Palace. Victoria Embankment is also on your doorstep and offers a pleasant riverside path with views of the South Bank across the Thames, and attractions such as HMS President and HMS Wellington and Cleopatra’s Needle.

Situated in Zone 1, it is as superbly connected as Pimlico Flats, the tube stations is a short walk away, offering quick connections to any part of the city. The major rail termini of Victoria is also located close by and provides quick, convenient routes out of the city across the South East and to Gatwick Airport via the Gatwick Express.

What Young London carelessly haven’t detailed is that the accommodation comes with a job – I have got hold of an application form, so if you are interested in the property fill out the form and apply for the job.

Prime Minister Job Application

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Tags: Buckingham Palace, Fun, London
Posted in General on April 15th, 2010 |

Rooms to Rent in Buckingham Palace

Last week Estate Agency Young London put on the market the des res to end all des res.

Buckingham Palace. A number of rooms have become available to rent in this stunning property; offering luxury living in the heart of the Capital and accommodation in a slice of the country’s heritage.

The Agency pick out a number of features of the accommodation:

Tastefully decorated and finished to the highest standards throughout, the interior boasts a Belle Epoque gold and cream colour scheme, while a number of rooms feature original 19th Century and Chinese regency designs
the property has a large park-like garden with lake, which is able to accommodate a variety of large open air functions ………the current occupiers welcome small, well behaved dogs.
a secure, gated property and boasts 24 hour protection from armed guards……….Secure, off street parking for a large number of vehicles is available to rent separately and there is ample stabling at the property.

Buckingham Palace Front

We note that whilst the Palace comes with all the usual Pimlico advantages of location, it is not as well placed as Pimlico Flats for access to Buses & Tubes, this is probably why the Queen isn’t able to use her Bus Pass and is driven everywhere:

Buckingham Palace boats a fantastic Central London location; situated in the City of Westminster, the property is a stone’s throw from some of the most recognizable sites in the city and is conveniently located for every imaginable amenity. The palace is just a short walk from the popular sights, shops, eateries and entertainment of The Strand, Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden and the world renowned shopping on Oxford Street and Bond Street.
Buckingham Palace is also fantastically located for the fashionable districts of Knightsbridge, Belgravia and Chelsea, Sloane Square which are all within easy walking distance.

The area is well served by parks; Green Park is on your doorstep providing a quiet, shaded oasis from the hustle and bustle of city life. St James’ Park, one of the oldest Royal Parks in central London, is located equally close by and offers 58 acres of open space bordered by Buckingham Palace to the west, The Mall and St. James’s Palace to the North and Horse Guards to the east.

With 240 Bedrooms and only 78 Bathrooms we note that Buckingham Palace does not meet the Westminster City Council Code of Practice for Houses in Multiple Occupation, and as such is probably operating unlicensed. I would expect Young London to withdraw these rooms from the market until the property is brought up to standard and properly licensed, nevertheless they are to be congratulated on a very fine April 1st Marketing coup.

Buckingham Palace

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Tags: Buckingham Palace, Central London, City of Westminster, Green Park, Knightsbridge, London, Sloane Square, Tourism, Trafalgar Square
Posted in General on April 5th, 2010 |

Bin Laden Blue Plaque Threatens Diplomatic Row

Blue Plaque

Local residents in Pimlico have been raising eyebrows at the latest commemorative blue plaque to have been put up by English Heritage in Winchester St.. The plaque commemorates the short stay in Pimlico of the Civil Engineer Salem bin Mohammed bin ‘Awad bin Laden whilst studying Civil Engineering at London’s Imperial College. The plaque describes him as a Civil Engineer, whilst in fact he never completed his studies leaving to manage the family business on the unexpected death of his father Mohammed bin Laden in 1967. The controversy starts because Salem bin Mohammed bin ‘Awad bin Laden was in fact the half-brother and cousin of the infamous Osama bin Laden architect of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City.

As if local distaste wasn’t enough US/UK relations took an ominous turn as the UK ambassador to Washington was summoned to a dressing down over the affair which threatens to have widespread ramifications. The Guardian has reported that the idea for the plaque came from London Mayor Boris Johnson (who was born in New York) seeking for a way of sending a clear signal to Washington of his displeasure at plans for the new American Embassy . Mrs Hilary Clinton, the US Secretary of State yesterday referred to his action as “petulant and childish” and “the vengeful actions of a beaten man”.

With the support of Jenny Jones, the Green party chairwoman of the London Assembly‘s planning committee, the Mayor has been opposing granting planning permission for the new embassy, hoping to trade a go ahead for the new building for the US to pay £3M in unpaid congestion charges, and a £2.5million contribution for the proposed Crossrail train link.

New US Embassy

However a recent Law Lords ruling in favour of the US Government means that the international agreements known as the Vienna Conventions which codify the rules and agreements, providing standards and privileges to all states, do indeed grant the US diplomatic immunity from local planning regulations. The US has declared it’s intentions to unilaterally proceed with major changes to the south London landscape without UK permission, or even consultation, and these include (but are not limited to):

The new 12-storey building, which will be able to house 1,000 staff, covers 45,000 square metres will have it’s site extended.
The new site would be protected by a 200-metre “blast zone” and a detachment of US marines, complete with a corps of tanks sited at Battersea Power Station.
A branch of the underground system solely for the use of the US military to be built from Kennington Tube station to Battersea Power Station via the embassy site at Nine Elms, where a station would be built.
Chelsea Bridge and Vauxhall Bridge will form a one way Gyratory system with traffic lights controlled by a computer system within the US Embassy. At certain times of day normal traffic will be halted to allow Embassy staff secure and easy access to and from the Embassy and their homes.
Battersea will be renamed to give the Embassy a more prestigious sounding location. Barack Obama is expected to give his decision on the new name next week, but favourites appear to be either “South Pimlico” or “Westminster-on-Sea”.

The US Embassy has announced a Press Conference to discuss these plans at their existing embassy at 11:59 on April 1st.

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Tags: Battersea Power Station, Fun, New York City
Posted in General on April 1st, 2010 |

Debden is the only place you can’t rent Pimlico Flats

Image via Wikipedia

For a couple of weeks now I have been posting in various places scary and astounding facts, such as that Debden is the only Tube station not to use any of the letters in “Pimlico Flats” in it’s name, or

Do you know the only tube station not to have any of the letters in “Tesco iSold” in it’s name?

I’ve been waiting for someone to ask me how I know these things, but as no one has – I’m going to tell you anyway. For about 3 weeks the internet has been featuring the important information that Pimlico is the only Underground station which does not contain any of the letters in the word ‘badger’, a few people felt such a statement shouldn’t go unverified and with a call like that up stepped Ben Green with his website for testing Tube Stations.

So know we know:

Debden is the only place you can’t rent Pimlico Flats

Pimlico is the only Underground station which does not contain any of the letters in the word ‘badger’

The only tube station not to have any of the letters “Tesco iSold” in it’s name is Bank

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Tags: Debden, Fun, London, Pimlico, Pimlico Flats, Tesco, Transport, Underground
Posted in General on March 15th, 2010 |

Pimlico Flats have London Flats to Rent

Image via Wikipedia

Lots of different ways of saying

London Flats to Rent

01001100 01101111 01101110 01100100 01101111 01101110 00100000 01000110 01101100 01100001 01110100 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01010010 01100101 01101110 01110100

That’s Binary, and in Hexadecimal it reads

4c 6f 6e 64 6f 6e 20 46 6c 61 74 73 20 74 6f 20 52 65 6e 74

tneR ot stalF nodnoL

|_0nd0n Fl_475 70 l23n7

I guess there will be 2 kinds of people reading this. Those thinking “what is this guy on?”, and a tiny minority thinking “wow that’s really cool!”

If you are in the first category – then I’m sorry for wasting your time, click a topic from the tag cloud and I’m sure you will find something more interesting. If you are in the second category, welcome to my world, generate your own weird messages at http://funicode.pirillo.com/

Meantime my message is that:

Pimlico Flats have London Flats to Rent

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Tags: Fun
Posted in General on March 13th, 2010 |

Pimlico Art Gallery Henry Moore Exhibition

Tate Britain

Starting today in Pimlico’s Tate Britain Art Gallery – an exhibition of the works of radical, experimental and avant-garde, Henry Moore (1898–1986), one of Britain’s greatest artists. The exhibition takes a fresh look at his work and legacy, presenting over 150 stone sculptures, wood carvings, bronzes and drawings.

Moore rebelled against his teachers’ traditional views of sculpture, instead taking inspiration from non-Western works he saw in museums. He pioneered carving directly from materials, evolving his signature abstract forms derived from the human body. This exhibition presents examples of the defining subjects of his work, such as the reclining figure, mother and child, abstract compositions and drawings of wartime London. The works are situated in the turbulent ebb and flow of twentieth-century history, sometimes uncovering a dark and erotically charged dimension that makes us look at them in a new light. Exhibition Tickets cost £12.50p.

An additional date for your diary could be Thursday 11 March 2010, 13.00–14.00 when Chris Stephens, curator of the Henry Moore exhibition, discusses Moore’s work in the context of twentieth-century history. Situated in relation to the trauma of war, the advent of psychoanalysis, new ideas of sexuality, primitive art and Surrealism. Tickets are £5.

Londonist has prepared a map of Moore sculptures to be seen for free around London generally, with blue pins representing outdoor works and red indicating indoor pieces

View Henry Moore’s London in a larger map

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Posted in General on February 24th, 2010 |

The Long Tail Search Bites Back! or The Strange Story of How You Got Here

Long Tail Search

This article isn’t to teach you about Internet marketing, but to share my amusement at some of the searches which have brought people to my site this week.

The long tail is a type of statistical distribution where a high-frequency population is followed by a low-frequency population which gradually “tails off”. The idea of blogging for Internet Marketing is to provide articles which will attract readers who are not undertaking obvious searches to your website where hopefully they will click on your advertising or buy your product (please take that as a hint!). These phrases individually are unlikely to account for a great deal of searches, but when taken as a whole, can provide significant traffic.

Here are some of the searches which I found amusing and brought people to this site this week:

put+laminate+floor+in+the+wrong++way
venting from a bathroom
pimlico flats screaming headline
? qns eqbt
where to get cement from in pimlico
victorian style flats that need work london
weird lettings london
address of sex place in london
anyone got frauded renting house in pimlico
best places to have sex in london
how much does it cost to run a vent axia kitchen fan
leaking radiator lamiate floor
letting agents+indian
pimlico plumbers sexual harassment case
residential backwater westminster
the renting of the flat of immobility
thermal expansion of carpet tiles

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Tags: Blog, Internet, Internet marketing, Long Tail, Marketing and Advertising, Website
Posted in General on February 18th, 2010 |

3 Responses to “The Long Tail Search Bites Back! or The Strange Story of How You Got Here”

Richard says:

March 11, 2010 at 9:04 pm

Thanks for clearing that up Nick. I had assumed the ‘long tail’ referred to a long tail of posts going back in time. Probably others assume the same thing.

Rich

Reply
Sam says:

March 24, 2010 at 5:22 pm

“The idea of blogging for Internet Marketing is to provide articles which will attract readers who are not undertaking obvious searches to your website”
But Nick, I thought you excelled in “weird lettings london” Sam

Reply
Nick Parkin (Pimlico Flats) says:

March 24, 2010 at 11:23 pm

A local lettings agent secretly confessed that their best tenants come from Craigs List – “a bit wacky”.

Reply

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Fire Prevention.

3 Responses to “Fire Prevention.”

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Labour Party Election Manifesto on Housing (1945)

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Rent a Flat near Westminster Parliament from Pimlico Flats

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Rooms to Rent in Buckingham Palace

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Bin Laden Blue Plaque Threatens Diplomatic Row

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Debden is the only place you can’t rent Pimlico Flats

Debden is the only place you can’t rent Pimlico Flats

Pimlico is the only Underground station which does not contain any of the letters in the word ‘badger’

The only tube station not to have any of the letters “Tesco iSold” in it’s name is Bank

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Pimlico Flats have London Flats to Rent

London Flats to Rent

Pimlico Flats have London Flats to Rent

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Pimlico Art Gallery Henry Moore Exhibition

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The Long Tail Search Bites Back! or The Strange Story of How You Got Here

3 Responses to “The Long Tail Search Bites Back! or The Strange Story of How You Got Here”

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