There are bargains to be had for netbook shoppers on a budget, says Marc Lockley

Last week's article regarding the Apple MacBook sparked a fiery debate about affordability and the usual battle between Apple and PCs. This week we are balancing the books, looking at a few netbooks which are a fraction of the cost of the Apple product.

Netbooks are a great alternative for the budget-conscious student who wants to do their work but not miss out on portability, affordability, sociability and surfability.

As there are a number of choices in this category, please feel free to add your own preferences or price updates below. For the sake of too much repetition the following all come with 1GB of RAM.

Less than £200

Student Computers are selling the Samsung N110 Netbook for £189 with a 250GB hard drive, Windows 7 starter pack and eight hours of battery life. They also offer an Asus Eee PC 1000H that has an 80GB hard drive and a two-year warranty for £182.13.

The Compaq Mini 110c-1010SA comes with a 160GB hard drive and a 1.6GHZ processor speed and runs on Windows XP and costs £198.99 with BT and Dabs.com. This netbook won the best budget laptop in a recent Reevoo survey of 1,000 students.

Meanwhile, the Acer Aspire One D250 AOD250-OBb netbook is best priced at £199 with Oyyy.co.uk. It comes with a 160GB hard drive and a 1.6GHz processor.

More than £200

The Acer Aspire One 533 with an Intel Atom N455 processor, 250GB hard drive and Windows 7 has eight hours battery life and costs £279.99 at Amazon and Argos, although the latter includes free Norton internet security until 28 September. However PC World are offering £50 off your old laptop/netbook thereby reducing it to £229.99.

If you are signing up to a mobile broadband deal you can get the Acer Aspire One 521 (160GB hard drive, Windows 7) for free with PC World, but the mobile deal with Vodafone will cost you £600 over two years.

Amazon are selling the new Asus 1005PE with an Intel Atom N450 1.66GHz processor and a huge 11-hour battery life and Windows 7 for £254.99.

Play.com lead the field for the Samsung N210 at £269.99, which has a battery life of up to 11 hours, Windows 7 and a 250GB hard drive with the Atom N450 processor.

As Investing for Good merges with Charity Bank, Caroline Mason describes her conversion from career banker to champion of social investment

Superheroes sparked Caroline Mason's conversion from career banker to champion of social investment. As the chief operating officer of Charity Bank, she now spends her time convincing people to put their money to good use, whether it is investing in Latin American farm co-operatives or funding vaccines in developing countries.

But five years ago, she was sitting in the flashy New York office of the managing director of a global finance company, 18 years into her life in banking, having an all too familiar meeting about making rich people richer.

As they talked, Mason's attention turned to the collection of superhero figures displayed around the MD's room, and the uncomfortable thought that she was stuck in an industry gripped by a "masters of the universe" complex.

"It was all symptomatic of someone who was paid obscene amounts of money for doing something really quite basic, which was pretty useless in terms of the general lives of most people. He was just an average guy. He was probably in the top 0.1% of earners globally and I remember thinking: 'This is out of control'," she says.

It was two years before the credit crunch would lay bare the failings of a sector increasingly oblivious to risk. Yet Mason says it was already apparent that banking was headed for disaster. After all, it had mutated from the simple purpose of supplying funding to businesses – what she likes to call a "utility" – to an industry obsessed with profit maximisation.

"It was really clear at the time how being in finance had changed. All the stories you hear about the excesses and the culture are actually true," she says.

"The rest of my life was pretty much aligned with my values and I realised what I spent a large number of hours doing was disconnected [from them]. All the time I was thinking, how do I extricate myself?"

When Mason realised her friend and fellow banker Geoff Burnand was feeling the same unease, they got together to found Investing for Good in 2005. It has gone from a backroom business to advising on £25m of investments, sealing partnerships with the likes of Standard Chartered, and this year merging with Charity Bank, which has pioneered lending to charities and social enterprises.

Beyond philanthropy

The venture started out with the basic premise that "ordinary people generally would like to see their money put to good use".

It was a time when figures such as Scottish tycoon Tom Hunter were hitting the headlines by giving away millions, and so the Investing for Good founders first looked into offering their financial know-how to philanthropists. But they soon realised philanthropy did not fit with their fundamental goal of helping social and environmental causes along the way.

"This concept of making as much as you possibly can, irrespective of what it does, and then giving it away to try and give something back was a two-dimensional view of the world," says Mason.

And so Investing for Good turned its attention to a new philosophy of building social and environmental benefits into investment. "Broadly, it's about positive use of money as an investment rather than as a gift," she explains.

The founders went about persuading banks and wealthy individuals to let them build up portfolios based around causes investors wanted to help. It was a decisive change from the "ethical" portfolios that many financial institutions were already offering.

"'Ethical' is a negative screen. So someone may not do arms but they may do child labour. They may not do child labour but they may be ripping up the planet. Whereas this is flipping that around and saying: 'What is it that an organisation does?'" says Mason.

It is a "positive story", she insists, but it was certainly not an easy one to tell in the early days. "Before the credit crunch it was a really hard slog.

"We are both very well connected. Opening doors wasn't hard. But explaining there is an alternative is quite hard, especially for an industry that is totally processed and geared down one path, and that is profit-maximisation irrespective of the consequences. We had lots of conversations like 'Well done, you. That sounds incredibly interesting. Do let us know how you get on.'"

After the crunch

The credit crunch changed everything. People were suddenly more open to social investments. It was a culture change that saw institutions take up Investing for Good's services and bankers flood Mason's inbox with requests to do pro bono work.

Her main business is helping big financial names offer social investment products to their clients, usually with returns between 3% and 5%.

Investing for Good is currently talking to Coutts and already has partnerships with Kleinwort Benson and the Rockefeller Foundation. It also advises high net worth investors directly, typically senior City people.

Along the way, the group has developed a complex model for rating the impacts of various investments. "If you are saying to an investor you are investing on the basis of impact, this is a differentiator," Mason points out, "you've got to have a way of showing that that is what is being delivered."

So the traditional benchmarks of risk and return are expanded to take in "impact", which Investing for Good rates using 120 criteria. It helps Mason and her colleagues pick who to go with and lets investors choose between recipients. One of the personal favourites for Brazil-born Mason is an organisation called Root Capital that works in Latin America funding sustainable agriculture – something she says has both social and environmental benefits. It gives communities alternatives to illegal logging, helps people start paying taxes, and funds hospitals and schools.

Merger with Charity Bank

As the merger with Charity Bank is completed this month, Investing for Good is looking to devise sector funds for investors who would like to put money into one area, such as healthcare, for example. It also wants to use its improved clout to create products such as charity bonds to help organisations develop new ways of tapping into financial markets.

The tie-up, says Mason, came after several years working together and at a point when both groups were ready to grow. Market conditions felt right, too. She is confident that demand will grow and make a difference.

"In the UK alone you have about £3.5 trillion invested and almost £3tn more in deposits, cash. Broadly, all of that money is invested without any consideration of what it is actually doing when it hits the ground, what it is actually financing and the consequences of that," she says. "If we are talking about just 1% of that, can you imagine?"

Ultimately, she wants Investing for Good to become redundant. Rather than have a separate institution that offers "impact" as an investment criteria, Mason wants impact to be a core measure alongside risk and return in every investment case.

"Surely the function of finance and banking is to finance things for the benefit of society. It's not a thing in itself. When did money become a thing in itself? Surely, it's just a mechanism and that's what banking and finance used to be about," she says.

But with mega-bonuses returning, a new wave of merger mania and signs of a fresh appetite for risk, will banking ever really change? Mason is optimistic: "I have to believe that it will. I think we all have to believe that it will."

By the turn of this year, the housing market was enjoying a very fragile recovery, but in the last few months it has begun to suffer a relapse

Let us start with two propositions. First, house prices are going down. And second, that is a very good thing.

The first proposition is riskier to make but rather more straightforward – because if you want to see what a double-dip recession actually looks like, just take a look at a graph of house prices over the last few years. From around the time Northern Rock collapsed in 2007, prices went a long way south. At the tail end of 2008, after governments had contained the financial crisis and put the economy on life support, prices began to come off the floor. By the turn of this year, the housing market was enjoying a very fragile recovery, but in the last few months it has begun to suffer a relapse. That trend was confirmed by yesterday's survey from Nationwide. Crash followed by recovery followed by relapse: the housing market provides practically a textbook definition of a double dip.

Nor is there likely to be a letup in the downturn. The coming spending cuts will cost both economic growth and hundreds of thousands of jobs – not the assertion of a newspaper, but the admission of this Conservative-led government in its budget red book. It would be a brave and possibly foolhardy person who took out a stonking great home loan if they were anxious about their job.

Sure enough, the surveys show that prospective new homebuyers are not registering with estate agents, even while surveyors report a big surge in sales instructions. That formula alone is enough to suggest that house prices are heading for a fall – but throw in the fact that homebuilders have seen a slump in sales and, crucially, that banks and building societies are still loth to give first-time buyers mortgages, and all ingredients are present and correct for a fall in house prices. That may not mean a plunge, at least not yet – that would probably only happen if droves of sellers had to flog their homes because of mass layoffs, say. What we are more likely to see over the next few months is an inching down in house prices as buyers cling to the sidelines and sellers refuse to do more than trim the asking price.

Contrary to what you might read in some newspapers, falling house prices would be a blessing. The house bubble of the noughties has handed billions of pounds to the older generation from young people who have had to take on giant mortgages to buy their homes. That was unsafe both for the purchasers and for the wider economy. But runaway prices also served to reinforce the wealth gap as rich parents were able to bung their kids big deposits, while middle- and working-class children got no such leg-up. An end to that unfair, unsafe regime can only be a good thing.

Rather than relying on billionaires why not yoke philanthropy to tax, and nudge us all into giving?

Sir Francis Bacon once said that money is like muck: no use unless it is spread. This is a view presumably taken by the American billionaires who recently proposed giving away half of their fortunes to charity. But these in some ways rather admirable proposals have nonetheless been attacked.

Some have argued that the very rich should pay their taxes instead (or as well) – through not engaging in tax avoidance schemes. It has also been pointed out that even if they were to give away all their money, there are too few of the very rich to make a significant dent in the public sector deficit, or to affect the massive cuts with which we are threatened.

But perhaps the biggest problem with the idea of leaving philanthropy to the billionaires is that it lets the rest of us off the hook. In fact people in Britain are not notably charitable. Overall we give a far lower proportion of income to charity than do people in the US, for instance, although the American figures are inflated by large donations going to well-off churches and universities. This is perhaps because we prefer to redistribute money through the tax system.

But that turns out also to be an unreliable instrument for reducing inequality. Taken together, taxes are broadly proportional to income, with most of the redistributive work of the public finances being done by social security benefits. In fact many of the middle classes say they would pay more in tax – if the system allowed them to do so, if they knew where the money was going to, and if they knew others were doing it too.

So here is one idea that combines these concerns with the recently fashionable "nudge" agenda (after the book Nudge, by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein – where the aim is to allow people the freedom to make choices but to change the context in which they make them so as to nudge them in a socially desirable direction).

Suppose in your tax return you were given the option of paying 1% extra income tax on condition that the extra revenue went into a poverty or inequality reduction fund. My personal favourite for this would be a restored child trust fund for low income groups, but others may have their own ideas. Further, this extra payment would happen automatically – unless you ticked a box in your tax return that said no.

This would permit those who say that they would willingly pay more tax than the system allows to do so. They would do so in the knowledge that the money would actually be used in ways that reduce poverty and inequality, and in the expectation that others were being "nudged", or encouraged by example, to do the same.

The "nudge" would be more powerful if tax returns were publicly accessible, as they are in Sweden. The fact that the decision to tick the refusal box could be public knowledge, and that those who did so would be named and perhaps shamed, might persuade more to contribute. However, even in the absence of overt public pressure of this kind, many middle-class people would find it hard to tick that no box. For that would mean admitting to yourself – and to the taxman – that one's professed concern for redistribution had an element of hypocrisy in it: a cognitive dissonance that would not be easy to accept.

The "nudge" agenda was originally called libertarian paternalism, a phrase many described as an oxymoron. And the idea of a voluntary tax such as this could also be viewed as oxymoronic (or, by the uncharitable, as plain moronic).

But this yoking together of philanthropy and tax could be fruitful, especially in a time of fiscal austerity. Its introduction would signal a shift in cultural attitudes towards taxation and inequality. And it could actually lead to the ultimate aim that many would happily endorse: a reduction in inequality itself.

Why Blackpool rocks, 'patronised' teenagers answer back – and (surprise) Iron Maiden prefer cricket to Satan

? Anyone familiar with Stephen Moss may find it hard to imagine him eating candy floss at the great British seaside. The Oval is more his scene, or a bookshop in Hay. But that was where last Friday's G2 found him, as he investigated Blackpool's bid to become a Unesco world heritage site. "As you stroll down the promenade," Moss wrote, "fighting against a wind that makes young women in nurses' outfits stagger, it's easy to join the ranks of those who are condescending. You pass boarded-up shops and horrible bars; garish rock and candy floss stores; pound shops, burger bars and tanning centres; and the Eden Club, 'Blackpool's premier lapdancing club'." But there was another Blackpool, he discovered. At the Tower Ballroom, between rhumbas, he met the delightful-sounding George and Joan Taylor, who have danced there since before the second world war. Elsewhere, he found a modern vision of the town that was "challenging, endlessly surprising, value-free in its judgment of art, attempting to revive the pride and independence of working-class life, refusing to accept second best, still dreaming . . ."

"Thanks for highlighting the real spirit of Blackpool," said seibu. "It is a place for people who are completely unashamed to have fun. It is a place where self-consciousness only makes you look more foolish! I'd say that condescension towards Blackpool tends to reveal something rather unpleasant, or at best somewhat ignorant and narrow-minded, about those taking part in it."

But was that the real spirit of the place? lovol had a very different view: "I lived in Blackpool for two years about 10 years ago. It may have changed but I doubt it. Shopping on a Saturday afternoon was memorable for the council workers dragging the drunks out of the gutter . . . I can't imagine ever going back there."

? On Monday, you wanted to talk about teenagers, as novelist Grace Dent summed up what she had learned, from the acceptability of cosmetic surgery to the enduring appeal of drugs. She even translated some mysterious expressions such as "tonk", "wack" and "va-jay-jay". Not for the first time, the kids complained that we just didn't get it. Thea Hawlin emailed to say she was "sick and tired of having to listen to articles that discuss young people as 'teens' as though we are some form of exotic bird that has come back from the brink of extinction . . . Why is it that all of us fall into some category or stereotype? Can we not just be people?"

On the website, MagicBenBlair concurred: "It's rather annoying when people patronise us, and stick labels on us. Not all teenagers are idiots, as the author would have you believe." Matteschoss, meanwhile, could not relate "one word of that article to myself or anyone I know. Honestly, if there's one thing that annoys me it's people who treat teenagers as if they're a separate, inferior species . . . Teenagers are far closer to adults than you realise and consequently they like to be treated as proper people."

Fortunately, norahollywood was there with the oldster's perspective: "Yeah! Like proper people! Proper people with not much sense of humour!"

? Tuesday's hot topic was the awfulness of work . "Our jobs are getting worse," claimed Aditya Chakrabortty. "More and more prized careers are becoming McDonaldised – more routine, less skilled, and with the workers subject to greater control from above. It becomes hard to bear, especially when you have the qualifications that entitle you to expect more."

"A cracking article," tweeted @brockleykate. "Wildly depressing," sighed @mrdanielweir. On the website, pinheadangel quoted that great thinker David Brent: "If work was so good, the rich would have kept more of it for themselves." But the 269 comments were soon hijacked by CJUnderwood. "I hate every hour of every day that I have to go to work in a supermarket pharmacy," he wrote. "The tedium is almost intolerable . . . Problem is I'm the wrong gender and class to do what I actually want to do." Your curiosity was well and truly piqued. "What would you like to do?" asked nuisverige and more than a dozen others. The knowledge would "brighten up our otherwise tedious days", said ch27. But CJUnderwood had gone coy.

The other commenters had some ideas, however. He wanted to be a Ruritanian princess, suggested JimPress. No, said KendoNagasaki: a footballer's wife. CharlesSurface favoured a lady in waiting, Watty145 a professional dominatrix and greendragon reprised Empress of Brazil. By the time the Readers' room went to press, the possibilities included Wonder Woman, the Tooth Fairy and the Queen. If you're reading this, CJUnderwood, do put us out of our misery.

? In the meantime, we could distract ourselves with some music: Iron Maiden, perhaps. As Michael Hann noted on Wednesday, even godfearing types are warming to supposedly immoral heavy metal. "Heavy metal offers us all lessons," Hann claimed. It encourages a love of poetry, for a start, and virtues such as loyalty.

On the website, DuaneAubin was singing from the same hymn sheet: "It's too easy to be distracted by the outward imagery that seems dark, or negative. Beneath the code of heavy metal language is a pathos and sensitivity to the issues of real life." NotSingingAnymore reckoned that some of the old guard were positively cuddly: "Having spent the odd evening in the company of the gentlemen from Iron Maiden, I can state that they are more interested in county cricket scores and getting a good insurance quote for a Volvo estate than they are in Satan and all his works."

Not everyone was convinced. "Metal engages with Christianity in the same way that gansta rappers engage with gender politics," claimed wellywearer2, while davros reckoned the article was "utter nonsense. The only religion that metal ever got me into was the occult. Metal is (with a few exceptions) anti-religion and sex- obsessed. That's why I like it." But Lavendercat had an answer to all that negativity – his own life story: "Joined my local church choir at the age of 10, discovered Iron Maiden in the 1980s and never looked back. I now run the choir, teaching medieval music in all its glory to the next generation of 10-year-olds, and drive home belting out all the Maiden classics at the end of rehearsal. God loves rock!!!"

? Does he love New Labour, though? Yesterday Deborah Orr was marvelling at David Miliband, Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair's attempts to save their project. "None of them," she wrote, "seems to be aware that New Labour collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions some while back, leaving behind it a frightening political and economic vacuum. New Labour ideas, such as they were, could only thrive in periods of strong economic growth . . . Blair may argue that Gordon Brown messed up because he abandoned New Labour principles. But the truth is Brown messed up because he believed in them too greatly."

"Spot on, said PeterS378. "There is no pain-free exit from a credit and asset bubble." whitesteps raised the ante with: "Absolutely spot-on. And it's refreshing to see not just a (wholly justifiable) attack on the Tories, but also an acknowledgment that Labour had partly messed it up long before, and now they have no answers either." Self wasn't going to disagree: "Great stuff from Deborah, as usual. Why can't other Guardian writers understand things as clearly as she (and we) do?"

Er . . . we'll get back to you on that. In the meantime, here's a bit of what-iffery from ThePaladin: "As hated as Blair was by the so-called true left, New Labour still connected with most of its loyal supporters. [Blair] would have skewered Cameron on a number of issues and would have made him look like a complete idiot on TV. I'm still convinced Clegg would have won those debates, but more importantly Labour would have held their own better. I reckon if Blair had been PM we would be staring at a Labour/Lib Dem coalition."

Tony Blair still in No 10? Don't have nightmares. Do keep commenting.

Briefly speaking

"Think yourself lucky you were not on Ryanair. You would still have been in Italy" – Exmainer on Alexander Chancellor's 32-hour trip home from Tuscany

"You can say what you like about the decline in British workmanship but when it comes to taxidermy, we bow to no one" - artfarmer on the ever-youthful Cliff Richard

"Vile photograph. Vile idea. In fact, children themselves are vile, and the fewer of them we have the better" - OakenGrove on the American phenomenon of the baby-sex-announcement party

"I can't believe these comments. Adult people admitting that they like potato chips! 150 packets a year per person! Chips are not food. Are the British turning into Americans?" - JuliaFraser refuses to name her favourite crisp

• The readers' room: If you would like to comment on any of the stories in G2, or just want to join in the debates, go to guardian.co.uk/g2 to add your comments, tweet us @guardiang2 or email us at g2feedback@guardian.co.uk. On Fridays the most interesting feedback will be printed on these pages.

Historic Royal Palaces apologises to Mark Sanders-Crook who was dismissed for alleged bullying of first female beefeater

The Tower of London has apologised and paid compensation to a beefeater who was sacked for alleged harassment of the first female yeoman warder in the tower's 1,000-year history.

Mark Sanders-Crook, 44, was dismissed last November after an investigation into allegations of a bullying campaign against Moira Cameron. Two other male beefeaters were investigated following Cameron's complaints.

Sanders-Crook subsequently launched employment tribunal proceedings against Historic Royal Palaces, an independent charity that runs the tower, Hampton Court and other historic sites.

The case was due to be heard by London Central employment tribunal last week but Historic Royal Palaces concluded that the dismissal was unjustified after a review and a subsequent internal appeal.

"We have therefore apologised to Mr Sanders-Crook and reached agreement on an appropriate settlement," it said in a statement.

"The parties are pleased that it has been possible to resolve their dispute and that employment tribunal proceedings have therefore been closed."

Sanders-Crook, a former non-commissioned officer with the Grenadier Guards, now works as a controller for a firm specialising in political and medical evacuation from places such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I had always expected to see out the rest of my working life at the Tower of London," he told the Evening Standard. "I've always strongly denied these allegations and I'm still in touch with the other warders who have been very supportive."

Historic Royal Palaces described as speculation reports that Sanders-Crook received a payout of £100,000.

Cameron, 45, qualified to be a yeoman warder – beating five men to the job – in July 2007 after completing the required minimum 22 years in the armed forces.

She described her appointment to work with 34 male colleagues as "magical".

"It's just a wonderful job and I'm very, very lucky to have it," she said at the time. "You wake up in the morning and you know you're going to have a good day."

But she also said that some of her colleagues were less than welcoming: "I've had some comments. I had one chap at the gate one day who said he was completely and utterly against me doing the job. I said to him, 'I would like to thank you for dismissing my 22 years' service in Her Majesty's armed forces.'"

Reports at the time that Cameron's uniform had been defaced and that hostile notes had been left in her locker turned out to be false.

Cameron is still working at the tower. A spokeswoman at Historic Royal Palaces declined to comment when asked whether the allegations of harassment were unfounded. "Lessons will be learned from this case that will ensure we deliver this commitment more effectively in the future," she said.

The tower's yeoman warders date back to 1485, and their nickname, beefeaters, is thought to derive from the daily ration of meat they received.

• This week's top news stories
• Virginia Wallis answers your homebuying questions
• Table-turning is bad manners, diners say

This week's top stories

• House prices fell by 0.9% in August, the second consecutive monthly fall following July's 0.5% decline, taking the average price of a home in the UK to £166,507, according to the Nationwide building society.

• Advertising rules being introduced today will make it harder for fee-charging debt management companies to mislead the public by advertising their services as "free".

• Barclays is to launch a range of loyalty mortgages offering current account customers reductions of up to 0.54 percentage points off tracker, fixed rate and offset mortgages.

• Do you have any feedback on any of these issues that you want to get off your chest? Email us at money.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk

Feature

Table-turning is bad manners, diners say

Second sittings at restaurants are increasingly common, and are increasingly annoying customers who want to to enjoy a relaxed meal. Should we accept this practice, asks Rebecca Smithers

The second sitting is an increasingly common wheeze used by restaurants to make more money. You ring to reserve a table at your favourite eaterie only to be told there is no question of lingering over a brandy or two at the end of your meal – you will be unceremoniously turfed out when the next set of ravenous diners come through the door. Read the article in full here

Ask the experts: Homebuying

Question of the week: "I am a first-time buyer in the process of buying a house, but hear that the market may fall further. Should I pull out?"

Our homebuying expert Virginia Wallis says: "I don't have a crystal ball so predicting the future is a bit of a problem. However, what is certain is that if you have already paid for a survey – and possibly a mortgage booking fee – you will lose that money by pulling out now …" Read the answer in full here

• Any questions? Email our panel of experts on financial concerns, consumer gripes, legal wrangles, debt worries and career-related problems at money.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk

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Shares in Royal Bank of Scotland rose after the bank confirmed it plans to axe 3,500 jobs in the UK.

Investors cheered the news on hopes that the cuts will lift profits at the tax-payer owned lender. The stock rose 0.7% to 46.1p at noon.

Unions had the opposite view.

Rob MacGregor, Unite national officer, said: "The news that The Royal Bank of Scotland is to cut another 3,500 staff from across the UK is a horror story."

The government owns 84% of RBS after the bank had to be bailed-out last year following multi-billion pound losses, following RBS's forays into investment banking.

The bank posted last week a first-half operating profit of £1.7bn, compared with a loss of £176m over the same period last year, because of lower impairment losses and a strengthening of the global economy.

Second sittings at restaurants are increasingly common, and are increasingly annoying customers who want to to enjoy a relaxed meal. Should we accept this practice, asks Rebecca Smithers

The second sitting is an increasingly common wheeze used by restaurants to make more money. You ring to reserve a table at your favourite eaterie only to be told there is no question of lingering over a brandy or two at the end of your meal – you will be unceremoniously turfed out when the next set of ravenous diners come through the door.

Table-turning, as it is known in the trade, is so unpopular among restaurant aficionados it has emerged as one of their most common gripes in a survey by lastminute.com, which says it handles more than 2m restaurant enquiries a year.

For cash-strapped diners understandably anxious to squeeze value for money from eating out, table-turning clearly rankles. Other practices getting the thumbs down are poor service – including the not-so-optional service charge – and being left waiting for the bill to arrive, even when it has been requested.

Restaurateurs with an eye on the bottom line should take note of the other moans published in today's Plate of the nation report, which surveyed more than 2,000 British diners and quizzed 100 of the country's biggest culinary names: almost two-thirds (64%) of diners say they are irritated by tables being packed too closely together, while half are annoyed by persistently wobbly tables. Of the well-known restaurants, 15% admitted they table-turn at peak times.

More than half of the diners quizzed said that being asked to sup up and ship out at specific times because others were waiting came towards the top of their list of restaurant bug-bears. Other moans which make diners see red are "incomprehensible" menus, and charging corkage on wine brought by diners.

The imposed time limit means gastronomes are being asked to spend £6.17 for every five minutes they spend at their table at London restaurant Hakkasan, which tops the list of table-turners, allowing eaters a mere two hours at a table and charging a couple on average £148 for their meal. Anglian foodie paradise, Midsummer House in Cambridge, came second in the list charging diners £5.80 for every five minutes at their table.

Mark Bower, lifestyle director at lastminute.com, says: "Diners understand that restaurants have got to make money, and that one way of doing that is by getting two or more sittings per night at each table. But we're urging diners to check table-turning policies when booking and to negotiate just how much time they have for their meal to avoid feeling rushed."

It advises that diners having trouble booking a table somewhere really special to consider Sunday lunch as an option, or to take advantage of an early, pre-theatre sitting.

What do you think? Is it reasonable to expect restaurants – particularly popular ones – to have more than one sitting, or is this just unfettered greed on their part? Do you think they take diners for granted and should they be doing more to make those who can still afford to eat out feel welcome?