Options for ridding records of static electricity

@slaw  Let's see if the OP wants to diminish his SQ or wants to diminish just his static. I think maybe you misunderstood some of my points.

IF the OP wants to continue using the Linn's stock felt mat, the Furutech DeStat III is imo the best solution for static. Much better than the Zerostat, but considerably more dough. Not ridiculous though---under $300 I believe (I got mine for less on ebay).

I wish you well @daveyf  

All I can contribute at this point is, no matter who you choose to believe, you should try stuff for yourself.

Here we go again. Masi, static electricity is created by the stylus rubbing the groove of a material (PVC) that falls at the very bottom of the triboelectric series. Within 30 seconds of the stylus rubbing the groove thousands of volts of static electricity are created. Yes, the Zerostat will neutralize static but you would have to continually squirt the record while it was playing, a bit impractical. The problems with static electricity are that it can discharge into the cartridge causing snaps and pops while playing but worse it pulls dust and pollution deep into the groove where your stylus runs over it and with a total of about 20,000 PSI grinds the stuff right into the vinyl permanently. The absolute best way to deal with this problem is to use a conductive sweep arm that is connected to ground. This discharges the record during play so static does not build up and it clears any incidental dust away from the stylus. Along with the conductive sweep a dust cover that can be used during play is crucial. Most dust covers are unfortunately awful which is why they have such a bad rep. The dust cover can not be attached directly to any structure that the platter and tone arm are attached to. Examples of good dust covers are the SOTA suspended turntables, the Linn and the suspended Thorens tables. The dust covers are attached to the plinth. The platter and the tonearm are mounted on a suspended sub chassis inside. In this case the dust cover makes a sonic improvement as it attenuates the volume of sound getting to the record and tonearm and any resonance from the dust cover can not be passed through to the platter and tonearm. With odd shaped turntables and turntables that are not suspended the best way to create a dust cover is to make a platform of glass or plexi just larger than the turntable and hinge a dust cover to it then just place the turntable inside. This assumes that the turntable has decent feet. There are several companies that will do this for you. 
How does this work? I never have to clean a record I bought new and I do not buy used records. The only record cleaning device I have is a spin clean. I use it on records people bring to listen on my system. 
I also use anti static inner sleeves on all my records. I never leave records out. There is no smoking anything inside my house.