Smokers! Get a pocket ashtray - they're really cheap

Oi smokers! Smoke. Smoke as much as you like. I really don't care. But quit it with the littering why don't you. Get a portable ashtray and keep your butts off the pavement.  Thank you for listening.

I noticed Hercule Poirot that famous Belgian sleuth off the telly uses a rather smart silver pocket ashtray for his cigar butts. So if it's good enough for him... besides they're really not very expensive. Try these:

>> Posh pocket ashtray with free engraving £5.99

>> Even posher silver-plated pocket ashtray £11.00

>> And another silvery one £6.99

>> This boodi ashtray is biodegradable and only costs £3 for five (plus VAT)

>> Or a brass one for four quid

>> Obviously there's billions of them on ebay

>> And these sqaure metal ones are quite nice at only £2.29

>> Some come on keyrings for £1.99

>> And there are multi-coloured ones for £3.49

That enough? Good. There's really no excuse.

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British Airways low fare finder

Good grief, British Airways seems to be doing something right for a change - it's launched a helpful bit on its website for potential customers to find and book its lowest fares. European flights still look dearer than Easyjet but it's a start. Check out:

BA lowest fare finder

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>> Latest deals: Find a low-cost trravel insurance policy

10 ways to avoid paying penalty fares on trains

If you've ever been hounded by "revenue protection" monkeys, stung for £20 because there was a queue at the station ticket office and had to hop on the train without paying or you'd miss the train, have been bullied into paying unfair penalties by empty threats of prosecution and a criminal record... read this.

You may never have to pay another railway penalty fare again.

For example, says the piece by Andrew Gilligan in the Evening Standard, if you have to jump on a train with no ticket...

'This is where the most useful part of the Penalty Fares Rules comes in - Rule 7 (4), which states that a penalty fare must not be charged "if ... there were no facilities available for selling the appropriate ticket or other authority for the journey the person wanted to make".

The Rules themselves do not define what "no facilities available" means. But in separate guidance on penalty fares ("Penalty Fares Policy") issued by the Department for Transport, it is made quite clear, in clauses 4.2 and 4.11, that passengers must be given "sufficent opportunity" to buy a ticket and that regular queues over three minutes (off-peak) and five minutes (peak) breach the definition of what is "sufficient".

It is not clear whether this definition has any legal force - but if you quote it in your letter back to the train company, you are unlikely to be bothered again.'

Or you're threatened with a criminal record...

'Train companies often scare people into paying up by threatening prosecution and a criminal record. However, the legislation establishing penalty fares, the Railways Act 1993, section 130, states that apart from failing to give your right name and address, "nothing in this section creates, or authorises the creation of any [criminal] offence". The Penalty Fares Regulations 1994 state that "the recovery of a penalty fare is a civil debt". So even if after reading your letter the company still decides it wants the money, it has to sue you - probably not worthwhile for such a small sum.'

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>> How to cut your family rail fares

 

Walkit.com - free guide to getting around for free

If your idea of a pub is queueing up, I dunno, like in a methadone clinic, watched over by six bouncers and two policemen for a maximum of two drinks in a kind of binge drinkers' theme park then you need to head for Oldham, where such an establishment was featured in this week's Panorama - The Truth About Happy Hour.

And if you are heading to Oldham you'll be delighted to know that the brilliant walkit.com website has just added it to the walking routes on its growing list of destinations.

It's a site where you type in destination A and destination B and it will show you how to walk between the two with times for fast, medium and slow walkers and show how many calories you'll burn off depending on your speed.

Other cities include Birmingham, Sheffield, Cambridge, Manchester, Leeds, Bolton, Norwich and Glasgow. But it really comes into its own in London, where the execrable Underground rail system increasingly feels like a mobile sanatorium for swine flu victims.

Check out walkit.com  - we love it.

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Check out the best of This is Not Work - time and money saving tips  

 

Get thin with the Frankie Dettori diet

A while back I showed how you could save £1bn, ok slight exaggeration, by following my dad's diet of not eating bread. It works. Promise. 'Bread kills.'

So I was delighted to see that famous thin man Frankie Dettori uses the same method to keep the pounds off and the trophies galloping in.

He told Metro: 'Bread is a killer. Because of the yeast and the way it slows everything down. And try to avoid sugar. Simple tips but very hard to follow. Try living without bread – it’s very difficult.'
Read the interview here.

Now read

>> Save £1bn with my dad's diet

 

 

Free Big Chill album download

The Big Chill festival, according the the army of festival-goers in the building, is one of the better ones. It's big but not too big, it's chilled yet warm and it's family friendly.

And for a taster of what it's like you could do worse than download a free album from the Big Issue website.

>> Free Big Chill album download

And if you want tickets, get them here

http://www.bigissue.com/news.php?newsid=33

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Compare music download prices

Welcome to 'Stuff the music industry should have been doing 15 years ago, part 994'.

Finally, a site is here that compares legal music downloads.

Even if the prices can be pretty much the same across various sites, this one saves you the hours it can take to trawl through the myriad scammers before working out which site to trust with your 79p.

Find out more about comparedownload.com

It's great for more esoteric stuff. I got a Kathleen Battle spiritual I've been looking for ever since the version I had on cassette melted.

 

I just won a lottery I didn't enter again

'We officially announce to you the result of VW Motors Email Lottery Promotion of £950,000.00GBP. Contact James Haggin for further details: james_haggins@sify.com'

Feel free to contact James on my behalf. Apparently I won a Volkwagen, a literal of a car if ever there was one.

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Buy props from West End flop Too Close To The Sun

 

If owning 1950s memorabilia as featured in unloved London West End musical theatre about fictional suicides of famous authors is your thing... quick! You only have three days left to snap this little lot up.

Too Close To The Sun hasn't been a success.

The Guardian called it unnecessary and implausible and gave it one star. It also earned but one star from the Independent. And The Times, and the Telegraph. And the Evening Standard.

Show-and-Stay recalls the audience clapping with relief when the lead character, one Ernest Hemingway (pictured above), blew his head off. The Daily Mail also mentions the audible 'Thank God for that' when he finally pulls the trigger.

As predicted, the show is closing early. But here's the thing.

You can now buy some of the props including chairs, tables, lights, glasses, fishing rods and resin bull skulls. Here:

http://shop.ebay.co.uk/merchant/alohastokey

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