Thought I'd share some good news on the potty training front. Having read some of the discussions on this web site we invested in the Gina Ford Confident child book and followed her potty training suggestions. She is very prescriptive so we didn't follow everything exactly to the letter but close enough (for instance my son just wasn't interested in the star chart so we stopped that after a couple of days)- and it worked! After a couple of days my 2.5 year old was dry and clean all day with only the odd accident. By the end of the first week we had no accidents and by the end of the second we he was doing all the asking for the toilet for himself...and we haven't looked back.
We started things off one weekend and then passed all the instructions over to the nursery and childminder. (Slight hick up with the childminder as she didn't follow our instructions and so had lots of wet trousers....but don't get me started on that moan!). Otherwise all went very smoothly.
I'd definitely recommend her method in this area.