Those who are happy to pay a lot of money to hire a push-bike in London but less happy to ride around on it promoting one of the UK’s deservedly most criticised banks will be relieved to hear that Barclays is dropping out of the sponsorship deal it made with its good friend and current London Mayor, Boris Johnson.

Barclays, voted the most unethical bank in a list of 46 by Ethical Consumer magazine, is also tipped to drop its £40 million a year sponsorship of the football Premier League, leaving the field open for another rich but flawed firm that the League won’t be too fussy about associating with.

Last year Barclays also awarded senior staff almost £2.4 billion in bonuses, 10% up on 2012, as it prepared to sack 12,000 mostly junior members of staff, and amid falling profits and a high incidence of misselling.

The rubbish customer service of the Big Six energy companies has recently been highlighted in the press.

o They are holding onto more than £400 million of customer’s money, after those customers have switched supplier or moved house.

o More than 10 million customers have suddenly found themselves owing their energy company an average amount of £146, due to discrepancies between the energy companies estimates and actual usage. Some 7% have had sudden demands for more than £400 and 14% for £200 – £400.

o It now takes twice as long for energy companies to sort out customer billing complaints, an average of two months.

The American actor who appeared as the rugged Marlboro smoking cowboy in the cigarette company’s advertising in the 70’s and 80’s has died of lung disease at the age of 72.

Eric Lawson, the sixth Marlboro man to die of smoking related diseases, later appeared in anti-smoking commercials and TV discussion programmes on the negative effects of smoking, a habit Lawson picked up aged 14 and one he continued until he was diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) last year.

It is understood that cigarette manufacturers cement the smoking habit with a cocktail of addictive additives to augment the nicotine.

Marketeers in America are having to cope with increasingly stupid decisions by the courts there, we hear from reader Steve in Sarasota. Examples of stupidity follow.

o Camper van firm Winnebago was forced to pay an Olklahoma woman $1.75 million and give her a new vehicle after she’d set the cruise control to 70 mph on the freeway and left the wheel to go to the back of the van and make herself a sandwich. The van crashed and the court accepted that its makers were at fault for not making it clear in its owner manual that such an action was potentially hazardous, an omission that the company has now corrected

o A restaurant in Pennsylvania was forced to pay $113,000 to a woman who threw a soft drink at her boyfriend during an argument and then slipped on the floor she’d made wet, breaking her tailbone.

o A woman in Texas won $80,000 from a furniture store after she tripped over a toddler running around inside and broke her ankle. The toddler was her son.

o A burglar in Pennsylvania won $500,000 from an insurance company for “undue mental anguish” after a door malfunction trapped him for eight days in the garage of a house he had just robbed, forcing him to survive on a bag of dry dog food and a case of fizzy drink.

The promised efforts of London’s mayor Boris Johnson to “bear down on travel costs” are having little effect, it seems.

All his bearing down during his 6 year tenure has resulted in the cost of a Zone 1-6 Travelcard increasing from £1,779 in 2008 to £2,288 today, a £509 increase of 28.6%, or an above-inflation increase of nearly 5% every year.

Keep up the good work Boris, for your good friends at Transport for London that is……….

Bottles of Extra Virgin Olive Oil labelled “Tuscan” by Harrods and sold for £12.95 for 500ml have been withdrawn from sale by the store after it emerged that the oil was bought from Tuscany but bottled in the UK.

Under Italian government rules protecting Italian brands the oil must also be bottled in the region in order to classify as Tuscan.

Five out of every six jars of honey labelled “Manuka” are fake.

This has been inferred from the total amount produced of 1,700 tons and the amount of 10,000 tons sold worldwide, 1,800 in the UK alone.

Manuka is a dark, viscous honey produced mainly in New Zealand by bees feeding on the flowers of the manuka or tea tree. It commands a high price of up to £25 a jar for its perceived medicinal properties, hence the high incidence of counterfeiting, and shoplifting.

Supermarkets continue to make money from shoppers who assume that bigger packs = better value, without actually working it out.

Asda have sold packs of 12 Andrex toilet rolls labelled “GREAT VALUE” while their packs of 4 were less per roll, according to Which? researchers. And the writer’s own local Asda were recently selling 750gm gammon roasting joints for £4.50 (£6 a kilo), 1.4 kilo joints for £6.00 (£4.30 a kilo) and 2 kilo joints for £10 (£5 a kilo), making the middle weight the best buy.

Those marketeers looking for a very useful business gift for clients could consider the Water-to-Go bottle.

This is a 75cl re-usable plastic bottle developed for NASA that has a built-in filter which removes 99.9% of viruses, bacteria, chemicals including chlorine, heavy metals and water-borne diseases, giving 75cl of pure filtered water from any water source, excluding salt water. Each filter will cleanse around 200 litres for a cost of around 3-4 pence per litre.

Some users, noting the exploitative £12 a litre for bottled water charged by airside airport shops and airlines, are filling their bottles in the airside washrooms and saving themselves £9 a fill-up. Travellers not wanting to get nasty tummy bugs, or worse on their travels will also find it useful.

The full retail price of the bottles is £24.95 and for quantities over 250 they can be printed in up to eight colours on the silicone sleeve for a total price of £10 per bottle.

Tel 01582 841412 watertogo.eu