With a 48-hour strike starting at 7pm on Tuesday, there has been a community-based rash of online advice on how best to travel

With two days notice of the London Underground stike, there has been time for the micro-blogging community and official transport bodies to react.

(Trouble started early, with the DLR breaking down before 6pm – see photo at Canary Wharf from @hey_dahl)

Contrary to what you might have read in the papers, the mood at Downing Street these days is pretty tranquil – you might even say bucolic. The Prime Minister and his wife did, admittedly, get into in a state of “great excitement” a few days ago, when they discovered that their strawberry plants were bearing fruit. But otherwise, the Browns pass their days quietly enough, “gardening, baking cakes and cookies”, going to the cinema and strolling in the garden with friendly Gurkhas.

More than half of Britain’s young adults are planning to holiday with their parents this summer in a bid to save money during the recession, according to new research.

In a recent survey, 52 per cent of Britons aged between 20 and 30 said that they were considering taking a break with their parents this year, while almost a third admitted that they plan to do so because they know their parents will meet the cost of the holiday.

Looking for something to do this weekend? You could try visiting Twitter for travel inspiration. Many of the UK’s local and regional boards are using the micro-blogging site to update visitors with news of local events and provide links to photos, videos and booking sites.

Some tourist boards are doing a great job of using Twitter to provide fun updates and useful information – but others aren’t. In fact, some could be accused of wasting public money.

The popular areas are followed by the Yorkshire Dales and the Scottish Highlands for those having breaks close to home.

The number of Britons going abroad has fallen from 33 per cent in 2008 to 27 per cent in 2009 with nearly a third of holidaymakers now planning to stay in their own country.

The average price of a home rose 1.2pc to £154,016 this month, figures from the building society showed today. The rise – only the second in the past 12 months – leaves house prices 11.3pc lower than they were a year ago.

The figures provide some evidence that the sustained declines seen in the market since late 2007 are easing. The Bank of England and the Government have introduced a blitz of measures to try to revive the once-booming market.

The primary benefit is that anyone who is planning on buying a house worth less than £175,000 between now and December 31 will not have to pay any stamp duty, after Alistair Darling extended the exemption for properties up to this value until the end of the year. After this, the threshold for one per cent Stamp Duty will return to £125,000.

British authorities have launched a campaign in the popular tourist destinations of the Costa del Sol and the Canary islands urging residents to call a dedicated hotline to report suspected benefit thieves.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) claims that so-called “abroad fraud” costs the UK taxpayer £63m a year. Officials do not know how many people are making illegal claims or where they all live, but they believe the majority are in Spain, where an estimated one million Britons have homes.

“A contraction of at least 4% is much more likely,” said Benjamin Williamson at the Centre for Economic and Business Research.

“Our latest forecast is for a 4.5% contraction this year, making 2009 the steepest single year contraction in economic activity since the 5.1% fall in 1931.”

The International Monetary Funds predicted a 4.1% decline for 2009.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Yvette Cooper said the government stood by its forecasts.

The budget hotel chain Travelodge is offering rooms for as little as £9 per night in an effort to keep Britons travelling during the economic downturn.

From Thursday morning it will cut the price of 50,000 rooms across the country to £9 per night, while a further 100,000 rooms will go on sale for £19.

The UK-based operator is the latest hotel chain to announce a sale as Britain’s accommodation industry comes to terms with the effects of the recession.

The plans will also see cities become testing grounds for how drivers will use and charge their new vehicles.

The proposals are part of a £250million strategy to be launched today by Geoff Hoon, the Transport Secretary and Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary.

US fast-food chain Burger King promised Wednesday to withdraw an advertisement in Spain and Britain featuring a wrestler wrapped in a Mexican flag, after Mexico’s ambassador to Madrid slammed it as offensive.

In the television and poster advertisements for Burger King’s Texican Whopper burger, a short, paunchy Mexican appears alongside a tall, slim and handsome American cowboy to symbolise the cross-border mix of flavours of the product.

Luton airport is to introduce a £1 charge for dropping off passengers at the terminal.

Luton airport

Dropping passengers off can be a stressful experience, says the airport

Motorists will have to pay the charge to spend up to 10 minutes in a refurbished drop-off zone.

The levy, which will come into force shortly after April 29, will be enforced at barriers at the exit of the zone.

The 2008 annual survey recorded and removed some 385,659 items of rubbish including plastic bags, sanitary items, fishing nets, cigarette butts and cotton bud sticks from beaches across the UK.

The average amount of rubbish found was 2,195 items per kilometre (0.6 miles) – more than two pieces for every metre (3.3ft) of beach, and more than double the 1,045 items per kilometre picked up during the first annual survey in 1994.

Surly locals are being taught how to be friendlier to holidaymakers in a desperate attempt to help Spain’s tourism under a new initiative introduced in the Canary Islands this week.

A combination of the recession and the falling value of the pound against the euro has seen fewer Britons travelling to the Spanish sunshine – but tourism executives hope the friendly campaign will help stem the tide.

Vodafone and Telefonica, which trades as O2 in the UK, have signed a massive network sharing deal to work together across Europe.

The two will share networks in Germany, Spain, Ireland and the UK. Talks are still going on to finalise a similar deal in the Czech Republic as well as looking at other areas of possible collaboration like transmission services.

UK unemployment has risen above two million for the first time since 1997, official figures have shown.

During the three months to January, the number of people unemployed totalled 2.03 million, up by 165,000, said the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

For February, the number of people getting jobseeker’s allowance added a record 138,400 to reach 1.39 million.

There are now 10 jobseekers for every vacancy advertised in UK jobcentres, the TUC claimed earlier this week.

Cosmos Holidays is offering a seven-night holiday in Cyprus for two in June for £1,091 – a saving of £470.

Thomas Cook, a leading holiday company, has said that their summer holiday targets will only be met if they enjoy a last-minute surge of bookings, according to The Daily Mail.

Meanwhile Thomson, the country’s biggest holiday company, is offering hundreds of pounds off the price of foreign trips, the newspaper said.

The Stop Stansted Expansion (SSE) group was opposing proposals for an additional 10 million passengers a year to use the single, existing runway at the Essex airport.

The SSE accused the Government of unlawfully “steamrollering these plans every step of the way”.

But High Court judge Sir Thayne Forbes dismissed the legal challenge and said criticisms of the way the matter had been handled were “unjustified and without substance”.

David Cameron has come a step closer to fulfilling his pledge that the Tories will leave the centre-right grouping in the European Parliament.

The Conservatives earlier informed the European People’s Party (EPP) that they intend to leave it.

The BBC understands they are likely to leave in May and seek to form a new grouping after the European elections.

Labour and the Lib Dems said the decision put the Conservatives on the “fringe” of European politics.