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Gareth Rubin

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Lady Gaga in trouble as fans complain of ticket price rip-off

Filed under: Entertainment

Poor Lady Gaga. The girl can't even afford to buy clothes that cover her knickers. Perhaps that's why she has sent ticket prices for her new tour into the stratosphere.

And Lady Gaga's ticket-buying fans aren't happy. Actually, they're furious.

The scantily clad singer's next set of UK shows will cost up to three times as much as the current series, even though they are part of the same tour and could be almost identical performances.

Seats for the current set of dates on the Monster Ball tour cost £27.50-£35. But Lady Gaga's new shows in May and June, which go on sale this week, will cost £50-£75.

Some fans have said it is unfair and that Trading Standards should look into it.

Cadbury's Flake TV ad banned for being too sexy

Filed under: Entertainment, Food and Drink

A TV advert for Cadbury's Flake has been banned because it is just too sexy for our screens.

Executives from the chocolate company apparently thought it was so racy it would either corrupt our nation's morals, or portray Flake eaters as some kind of free-love hedonists with lives of wild abandon.

The commercial featured a gorgeous, pouting young model seduced by a Devil-like character, with the suggestion that a Flake was as tempting as Lucifer himself.

The company blew no less than £1 million on the ad. It had been planned for a prime-time slot but will never now be seen. According to the company, research showed it polarised opinion in focus groups.

It happened at the same time that the American company Kraft bought Cadbury.

A spokesman for Cadbury said: "Having researched it, we felt it wasn't working for our core target audience. You try things, but don't always pull it off and that's what happened here."

Fans warned of scams at South Africa World Cup 2010

Filed under: Fraud , Travel

Fans travelling to the South Africa 2010 World Cup are being targeted by a range of scams and cons. So if you're considering travelling to the tournament, what should you watch for?

Tickets
Auction and small-ads websites such as Gumtree are listing many tickets to World Cup 2010 games which are either fakes or invalid. If you want a valid ticket, you must buy it from Fifa at Fifa.com or as part of a travel package sold by a Fifa-approved travel company.

You can now send money to your Facebook friends

Filed under: Technology and Online

You can now send money through Facebook. A new application, Buxter, allows you to send small amounts of cash in Euros or US Dollars.

In the next few weeks, you will be able to send pounds to your Facebook friends.

Sending money with Buxter from one Facebook account to another is free, but if you withdraw the money to a bank account you pay 1.9% commission, with a minimum fee of £2, €2 or $3.

Get what you want by complaining

Filed under: House and Home, Families

No one gets through this life experiencing universally wonderful standards of service. But being British, we don't like to make a fuss when our toasters break within a week, or our charming rented cottages on the outskirts of Rome turn out to be a flat in a high-rise in Milan.

But if you know your rights and go about it in a determined, efficient manner, you should get the money back and compensation you deserve.

It's worth following this checklist to make sure you are covering your bases:

1. Check what you were promised. Look at the contract if you have one, or description on the box/catalogue. Write down specifically how you have been failed

2. Check your legal rights. Go to Consumer Direct for a low-down on your rights under the Sale of Goods Act and various other statutes. You probably have more rights than you realise.

Drivers v The Law: The battle commences as couples swap penalty points

Filed under: Travel

Drivers are increasingly swapping penalty points with partners to avoid one of them getting a ban. Up and down the country, dodgy couples are illegally colluding, but the worst offenders are in London, where 7% of drivers admitted it.

We know this from a survey by motor insurance company Direct Line, in which 2% nationally admitted talking a spouse into taking the rap for some dodgy driving. Three years ago, only 1.5% said they did it.

Drivers aged 18-35 are the most likely to go in for it, with 4% owning up.

Andy Goldby, director of motor underwriting at Direct Line, said: "Motorists are increasingly risking perverting the course of justice in order to maintain a clean licence, as well as to avoid a driving ban.However, trying to escape convictions by swapping points with another person is illegal and can lead to prosecution. Quite simply, it is not worth the risk."

But this isn't the only battle line being drawn between the authorities and motorists at the moment.

Free iPad scam spreads through Facebook and Twitter

Filed under: Fraud , Technology and Online

A scam claiming to give away free iPads is spreading through Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook groups appear with eye-catching names such as 'Free iPad'. The Facebook groups claim that they are giving away iPads to be tested.

When you join you are told to invite all your friends to join the group too. You then have to complete some sort of quiz and enter your date of birth and mobile phone number.

That's where they get you, because you are then signed up to a premium-rate phone service.

Make a fortune in these British property hotspots

Filed under: Property

How brave are you feeling? If you're feeling shockproof, then you may be thinking about getting back into the property game. With the recession all but over (possible double-dips looking pretty unlikely), buyers are stalking the estate agents' windows like the days of old.

Many investors came a cropper a couple of years back when they piled into anything made of bricks, not caring where it was. Avoid making the same mistake with this guide to the British property hotspots of tomorrow, and look out soon for our guide to the hotspots in the overseas market.

Want a weird home? Then why not convert a weird building?

Filed under: Property, Weird and Wonderful

You don't have to be homeless to sleep in a church. In fact, for many people, it is a dream. Across the country, people are converting places of worship, pubs, old schools, stables and cricket pavilions into homes.

The draw of a unique dwelling place, and the ability to boast about it to friends, is stronger than any known force of nature, but just finding one can be a task.

Probably the best place to look is at a property auction. Rural auctions will offer barns and old village schools for conversion, urban auctions can include the disused pubs and shops. The website Zoopla.com carries details of auction.

But there are some alternatives.

What men want in a house - ghosts, treehouses and self-cleaning kitchens

Filed under: Property, House and Home

It's not true that men are only after one thing. We also want really big TVs. Because a man's home is his castle we should be allowed to deck it out however we want. And if that means with a moat and drawbridge, then so be it.

But in the meantime, there are a few other things we would like about the place:

A flatscreen TV the size of a house
OK, not the whole house, just a wall will do. After all, Arnold Schwarzenegger
IS 183cm tall, so he should LOOK 183cm tall. Anything else is actually a bit insulting to him. And if he kicks those aliens back to the planet Kwork in anything but life-size, it completely loses the impact and makes a mockery of his otherwise admirable artistic endeavours.


 


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