Don't apply for all of them. Apply for one of them and mention in your cover letter that you would like to be considered for the other positions as well if not successful for this one.

It's going to be difficult to get funding for a PhD in Germany if you already have a PhD.... Maybe try to apply for postdocs in Germany and just don't give your PhD advisor as a referee. You're going to have the same issue when applying for any job, PhD or postdoc - they will all ask for references from your last employer.

They may ask for a UK address. If you can give them one you will probably be ok.

If you didn't go to Oxbridge, you're an Oxbridge reject where ever you end up, right? They say the same about my university.

It's difficult to say really. Different places have different practices. In general though, you normally hear 1-2 days after the interview if you are successful, longer if not. I would email next week if you still haven't heard anything.

I've only ever used excel so can't help.

As I know, that is not correct. She is still Mrs Joan Smith. In formal letters addressed to both it would be Dr and Mrs Smith. Or Dr and Mrs Ian Lloyd Smith.

I didn't count mine in the word count, but I only rounded to the nearest 1000 words in the end anyway, so probably didn't make much difference, plus my uni weren't strict and I was 10,000 below word count anyway.

If your uni is that strict, I would expect them to detail exactly what they include in word counts somewhere.

Not that I've found, only these work-arounds:

Save document, delete all figures and tables and reference list, do word count, exit WITHOUT saving.

Or, copy and paste all paragraphs into new document.

I don't think it's necessarily about time management - there's not much point in spending time writing a thesis when you don't have many results!

But, now that you are in your third year, you need to see exactly what you need to do to finish your thesis and make sure you work towards your deadline.

Repeat things if you can or if you really need more replicates, but you can always just say in your thesis that you recognise that you should have done this or that.

6 months for writing up is fine if you have only writing to focus on. If you will still need to do lab work, or you will working part-time, then you will need a longer writing up time. I would say once you have a thesis plan, get the lab work done before starting serious writing.

This is a difficult situation. Can you get a reference from your PhD examiner maybe? Good references from your MSc supervisors are ok too. It will come up in interview why you don't have a reference from your PhD supervisor, and you will just have to be honest and say that your working styles were different and you didn't see eye to eye.

I just said Appendix B, and as I only had a few and I knew they weren't going to change I didn't hyperlink to them within the text, but if there were many then I would have referred to and hyperlinked to them as Table B.1 when I needed to, rather than saying Appendix B, Table B.1. This was what I did for the other chapters as well when I was referring to tables within different chapters.

I'm a bit confused by your post. What exactly is the problem here? Your advisor won't let you apply for your candidacy upgrade? Have you asked him why?