Talks aimed at stopping industrial action by airport staff have failed. Seven of Britain’s airports will now be closed by industrial action next month. The first 24 hour walkout will take place on January 7th with more strikes taking place on January 14th and January 17th. Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Southampton, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen will be affected. If the strikes go ahead the airports will close because they will involve crucial workers such as firefighters, maintenance workers and security staff.

Around 40,000 customers of Travelscope have been told that their holiday bookings can no longer be honoured after the company went into administration. All customers will get a refund but many who were due to depart in the next few weeks are angry that they have not been given time to make other arrangements.

This weeks Travel Blog of the week is Cheapest Destinations written by Tim Leffel who has also written a book with the same title. Tim is a regular columnist for Transitions Abroad magazine and is also editor of the online magazine Perceptive Travel.

His most recent post talks about how the expansion of The Schengen Zone will mean it will now be easier for travellers to move around Europe with just a passport. Basically the agreement means that you can now travel from Tallinn in Estonia to Lisbon in Portugal without any border controls.

Another post highlights six travel gifts that can you purchase for $30 or less, perfect for those last minute Christmas presents. Among the gift ideas are the REI vacuum coffee mug which can keep your coffee hot for several hours and a mini shortwave radio perfect for journeys to remote locations and camping trips.

The blog also contains lots of useful information that should help save you a bit of cash whilst travelling, as well as links to other sites that can help you with planning your trip. In particular this article about Honduras provides a wealth of useful information from sites that have information on local events to links to good hotel guides and dive shops.

Union members at BAA have voted for strike action in a dispute over changes to pension rights. The Unite union has called for 24 hour strikes starting at 06.00 on 7 and 14 of January and a 48 hour strike starting at 06.00 on the 17th of January. The strikes will take place at seven of the UK’s airports including Heathrow, Gatwick and Edinburgh and are expected to affect around 1.3 million passengers.

Work has begun on a new transport system for Heathrow Airport. The system will include a Personal Rapid Transit System with low energy battery produced vehicles. Initially there will be 18 of the driverless guided vehicles which will take people from the new Terminal Five to the business car park. The system will be on trial before it is rolled out across the rest of the airport.

If you were hoping to get tickets for next years Isle of Wight festival you are likely to be disappointed. The tickets which went on sale last week have now completely sold out. Around 50,000 tickets have been sold for the show. The show last threes days and will include acts such as The Police, the Sex Pistols and the Kaiser Chiefs.

Todays travel blog of the week is really a travel journal from Worldnomads.com. One journal entry I found of particular interest was "Through Siberia". Part of three stories on our writers journey through the Russian Federation.

I've always been interested in Russia but sadly have never had the chance to go, the journal entry covers one of the types of trips I've always wanted to take. Traveling through the Russian Federation by train, getting to see parts of the country side and sleeping on the train. Our writer starts off with three friends sharing a "kupe cabin" from Moscow to Listvyanka which is on the south west banks of the biggest fresh water lake in the world, Lake Baikal. He notes quite a few interesting quirks about the locals such as their encounter with the "self named crazy football hooligans" who were told by the lady in the restaurant car not to steal anything. Other things I found amusing was the train being delayed because they had hit a cow on the tracks or how they painstakingly tied up their rubbish in bags while the other passengers on the train just throw it out of the windows!

I read this article that suggests millions of presents will be lost by delivery companies in the run up to Christmas. The article suggests that if the failure rate remains same as last year around 5.6 million parcels will either be returned to the sender or disposed of by the carrier. One of the main problems is carriers delivering to the wrong address either because the details are entered incorrectly or the information is out of date. Last posting dates this year are December 17 for 2-class items, December 20 for 1st-class and December 22 for special delivery.

A committee has recommended that airlines should be forced to increase the amount of leg room on board passenger jets. The study was carried out by the Lords committee on science and technology which accused the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) of ignoring its own research that suggested the amount of leg room should be increased.  CAA research found that for a passenger to adopt a safe brace position they needed a minimum distance between seats of 35ins instead of the current 26ins. The lack of leg room on planes also leads to deep vein thrombosis which can cause fatal blood clots, although this is more common on long flights.

National Express is to launch a new online train booking website. The service will allow customers to automatically find the lowest train fares for any rail services in the UK and is expected to challenge thetrainline.com which already has a similar service.

This weeks travel blog is thebeergeek.com - ramblings of beer travelers. The beergeek.com is written by Chris Nelson and his wife Merideth Canham-Nelson. It focuses on their passion for good beer and charts their visits to numerous breweries, Chris has visited an impressive 300 to date and Merideth is trying her best to catch up and beat his total.

The most recent blog post is about a trip to Chico where they visited the Sierra Nevada brewery. The brewery has the advantage of allowing you to drink beers that are only served there. Among the delights on offer are Kolsch a brewery only version of the world famous pale ale and 20th Street Fresh Hop Ale, a beer that is made with hops grown on the brewery property, although the highlight of the trip for Chris was "brewery fresh Celebration Ale".

Another recent post by Merideth covers Oktoberfest where Merideth was brave enough to wear a dirndle and challenge the elements. Although she did try to warm up by drinking beer, she did unfortunately have to change into something warmer, still full marks for the brave effort. This blog is full of many interesting gems and makes an interesting read for beer lovers everywhere.

The last recommended posting dates for sending mail to South America and the Middle East from the UK have now passed. Any mail received for South and Central America, Caribbean, Africa, Middle East, Asia, Far East, Australia and New Zealand can no longer be guaranteed for Christmas delivery.

Mail posted to the USA Canada, Japan and Eastern Europe from the UK should be posted by Monday 10th of December. Please note letters received for the USA are posted from our US based printing station and should be received by the 20th of December.

Mail posted to Western Europe should be posted by Thursday 13th of December.

Second class mail to the UK should be posted by Monday 17th of December.

First class mail to the UK should be posted by Thursday 20th of December.

Any mail received after these dates will still be processed and posted as normal but cannot be guaranteed for delivery before Christmas.

St Andrews will lose it main Post Office after a deal was reached to move the service into WH Smith. Despite a long running campaign to save the Post Office it is due to close next June. A spokesman has said that the decision will not result in a reduction in services.

Figures released by the Department for Transport show that there has been a rise in the number of flights that are polluted with contaminated air. This year there were 72 recorded cases in the first six months of the year, compared to 109 cases for the whole of 2006. Scientists have estimated that 200,000 passengers a year are exposed to air contaminated with fuel vapours. The worst record is with the Boeing 757 which had 43 cases.

This Weeks Travel Blog is India Travel Blog by Arun a blog dedicated to his travels around India in his spare time. What makes things interesting is the brilliant photos he has taken of all the places he has been with his Canon EOS 350D.

An article I found of particular interest was "An eventful trip to Melukote", all  about a two day trip to the temple town of Melukote, a place hardly touched by the passage of time. Because the town is so old and untouched there is generally no place to stay so it is usually visited as a day trip from Bangalore. However Arun was able to stay for 2 days by accepting the hospitality of one of the kind locals who allowed them to stay and fed them! Melokote is described as quiet, pleasant and easygoing  where most of the inhabitants are friendly and mainly priests. It has some breath taking views of temples that just have to be seen, to find out more you can read the rest of the article here.