Surely it would be possible to draft either legislation or best practice rules for nominet to prevent cyber/domain-squatting? It really pisses me off that just about every domain name I tried recently had been "acquired" by a company which simply set the price according to how many people enquired about that name. They wanted to sell me one domain name for £10,000 when the small business I was buying for has a turnover currently less than £5000!!!

It should be LAW that only nominet can sell domains; that domain reselling is simply not permitted. The price wouldn't matter then; you'd get the domain name you wanted from nominet and use it how you see fit; only downside is that you'd be stuck with it until it ran out. They should also allow registrants to extend their registration near the end of the two years if the business/web site was still up and running.