Just a quick update... First off, thanks again to everyone who posted here, your advice was very welcome. I had surprising difficulty finding some proper soil/compost/stuff/whatever for the house plants. All the local garden centres had sold out, and I still haven't got any. However, I cut back on the watering quite drastically, and now only water when the plants look like they need it. The plants look as fine as they ever did, my chilli plants are all flowering, and the flies have basically gone. We still get the odd one or two, but nothing that would make me think twice. We don't see them around the plants any more, which makes me think that the few we see are either tough ones that haven't had the decency to die since we dried out there homes, or ones that have come from elsewhere. I still intend to repot as and when I can get some soil, but it's a lot less urgent now. Thanks again.

Get someone with a pick-up (and a strong bumper) to come over, back it up reasonably close to the rose, tie a chain or very strong rope to the bumper and around the base of the rose (after you have trimmed off all the top branches in about 1-2 ft lengths to be disposed of), and drive forward slow but steady to pull it out along with most of its roots. Now you can chop/saw it up some more into smaller, easily disposable pieces. You might have to repair the lawn a bit in a few places afterwards, but that is easy compared to digging up an old well-established big rose. I've never done that with a rose, but that is how we dislodged a stubborn Crepe myrtle tree/very tall bush--and that thing did not want to let go of the ground! (Don't worry--we dropped it into a big pre-dug hole at the back of the property, watered it generously--nearly excessively, in fact--and it is still growing and blooming 8 years later.) Kate

It is unfortunate that misinformation continues to be repeated about glyphosate. Denmark has not banned glyphosate, nor have "many European countries". Denmark at one point thought that some of the monitoring they were doing showed that glyphosate could move into agricultural field drainage water in autumn but once they looked at their data and related it to the methodology they used, they enacted no ban whatsoever. As the Danish Environmental Protection Agency specifically stated: http://www.egeis.org/home/main/Evaluation-GlyphosateDEPA.PDF "Against this background, the Danish Environmental Protection Agency believes that no unacceptable risk of pollution of the groundwater is associated with the currently approved agricultural use of glyphosate. The Agency thus does not consider that the updated state of our knowledge provides any technical grounds for the imposition of restrictions on the autumn application of glyphosate." Used properly, glyphosate will not pollute drinking water nor will it have adverse effects on humans. Once applied, it binds tightly to soil particles and is not herbicidally active. If it is applied to hard surfaces such as sidewalks it can move offsite of course. It can also move if there is active soil erosion carrying soil off site. It is of very low toxicity, and breaks down completely into natural constituents over time. It is of equal or lower toxicity than most household products such as detergent, soaps, shampoos, cleaners etc. and far less toxic than some of the "alternatives" often discussed such as bleach, kerosene, high strength vinegars and so on. There is so much misinformation being repeated on the web that it is difficult to get reliable information. This link provides an published overview of the available literature. Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology Volume 31, Issue 2, April 2000, Pages 117-165 Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1401479

Win 7 Antispyware 2012, Vista Antivirus 2012, and XP Security 2012 are all names for the same rogue anti-spyware program. This family of rogues is promoted in two ways. The first is through the use of fake online antivirus scanners that state that your computer is infected and then prompt you to download a file that will install the infection. The other method are hacked web sites that attempt to exploit vulnerabilities in programs that you are running on your computer to install the infection without your knowledge or permission. Regardless of how it is installed, once it is running on your computer it will install itself as a variety of different program names and graphical user interfaces depending on the version of Windows that is running. Regardless of the name, though, they are all ultimately the same program with just a different skin on it. I provided a self help link, but strongly recommend a malware removal forum lkie Landzdown. Here is a link that might be useful: removal/remove