There is however one point i have been thinking of which you haven't mentioned. Plan and do it during a recession and not during good times!
It might be stating the obvious and you may have already come to this conclusion but down turns are sharp and painful, and the recoveries are long and tortuous. My advice would be not to get drawn in by companies with large marketing departments who pressurise you to start trainning as soon as possible claiming you need to be ready for a boom in recruitment, the recovery will long and protracted and we haven't yet hit the bottom. Any boom is a long way off.
To be perfectly honest i'd be very wary of any company with a large marketing department, fancy glossy brochures and an impressive website, it's your 70K that is paying for that.
Look for good first time pass rates and recommendations from past students and ignore carefully manipulated statistics from companies who claim they are more likely to get you into a job because of their connections with the airlines.
There are only two FTOs that are really worth their salt and neither seem to appear with any regularity on this discussion board, (probably mainly due to the fact nobody ever has any complaints about them).
Regarding Modular and Intergrated, having done the CPL and IR alongside intergrated students, I can tell you that there is NO difference between the two. Same aircraft, same instructors, same tests, same licence, NO DIFFERENCE.
Right now the modular route is the way to go as it has the advantage of allowing you to time when you finish your trainning and in the future I can see the integrated route being replaced by the MPL.