Tesco has been ordered to pay £74,000 in fines after mice were found in one of its stores. Members of the public had reported seeing mice running around the aisles at the store in Martlesham near Ipswich. Poor cleaning and inadequate procedures were blamed for the failings. Tesco was convicted of eight hygiene related offences following a trial. Magistrates in Ipswich fined the store £17,000 and ordered it to pay £57,000 towards the council's costs.

If this article is correct then online food shopping is set to double within the next five years. That’s according to new estimates from the Institute of Grocery Distribution. Their research shows that customers will spend nearly £7.2bn on grocery shopping online by 2014, that’s nearly double the figure spent last year. Personally I do most of food shopping online. It allows me to shop for the whole month without worrying about getting it in my small car and I find I budget better and am less likely to overspend.

According to this article online retailer Amazon is considering a move into the high street. The move comes as Amazon has started to stock larger products which can be problematic and expensive to deliver. If it goes ahead Amazon would have outlets where customers could pick up purchases that they have ordered online. The article suggests that Amazon is currently looking for high profile sites across the UK to pilot the scheme. The move would not only allow Amazon to supply those larger items but also allow customers to pick up their purchases at a time to suit them rather than relying on being in to sign for a delivery.

If you fancy doing some shopping on Boxing Day then its looks like you might in luck this year as a record number of supermarkets will be open. More than 300 large supermarkets are due to open this Boxing Day  compared with only a handful two years ago. Both Tesco and Sainsbury’s are doubling the amount of stores that will open in response to customer demand. Tesco will open 252 stores and Sainsbury will open 94. Supermarkets will also open later on Christmas Eve with some stores being open until 10pm meaning some stores will be closed for less than 24 hours over the Christmas period.

It seems the recession is good news for the restaurant chain Taybarns which runs all you can eat restaurants. The chain offers a choice of food including fish and chips, carvery, pizza, pasta and Mexican all for a fixed price. Customers pay £5.99 during the day or £7.99 in the evening and can take a plate and help themselves to whatever they fancy as many times as want. The business model appears to working, whilst other restaurants are closing at a rate of a 100 a month Tayburns has seen a 3% increase in sales in the last six months and serves around 10,000 people a a week in their most popular branches. They are planning to open 30 new branches to take advantage in the growing popularity. I can see how the restaurant might appeal to cash strapped families who are struggling with the bills. It is certainly interesting to see that even during a recession it is possible to capitalise on certain markets.

It seems that business is booming at McDonald’s despite the recession. According to this article many McDonald’s drive through outlets are struggling to cope with increasing demand as the recession fuels a boom in fast food sales and a move towards more expensive meals. In order to deal with the increase in business the company will be installing an extra lane to many of its drive through restaurants. This will enable two drivers to order their food at the same time thus increasing capacity. The two lane system will be trialled at outlets in Telford, Shropshire, Kent and Edinburgh, and if successful will later be rolled out across the country.

According to this article Marks and Spencer are now selling more British cheeses than they are French cheeses. They are now selling two British cheeses for every French one with sales of British cheese increasing by 30%. The figures were considerably different five years ago with French cheese being much more popular. It appears the rise in popularity may be down to the fact that during the recession consumers are more inclined to buy British to support British businesses and farmers. However, British cheeses such as cheddar and stilton are also becoming more popular abroad with Neal’s Yard Dairy now exporting about 35 tons of cheese every year to France.

According to this article some high street chains are starting to see an increase in sales and profits. Four of Britain’s largest retailers have seen rising earnings suggesting that consumer spending night be starting to improve. Sports Direct, House of Fraser, Laura Ashley and Thorntons have all seen and increase in half year sales. Industry experts are still cautious about the outlook for Christmas and the new year due to the VAT rise in January and rising unemployment but perhaps we are starting to see those elusive “green shoots”.

Waitrose has come to the rescue of the Duchy Originals brand which has been struggling during the recession. The brand which was founded by Prince Charles in 1990 to promote organic food and farming has seen a slump in profits during the last two years. It is thought that customers have been put off buying the brand due its high prices. Waitrose is the biggest stockist of the brand and have now struck a new licensing agreement which will give them the exclusive right to make and distribute the product across its 214 branches. Waitrose will also sell the products wholesale but will only allow independent stores and restaurants to stock them. They also have plans to extend the range from 200 to 500 products.

Several major shoe brands have demanded a moratorium on the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Clark, Adidas, Nike and Timberland are among the brands that are putting pressure on suppliers to make changes. According to this article around 65 to 75% of deforestation is linked to the growth of ranching. As well as the moratorium on leather from newly deforested areas the footwear makers want suppliers to bring in a traceability system which will guarantee the source of all leather. Currently some Brazilian companies linked to rainforest destruction export products to blue chip companies across the world. The three major processors Bertin, JBS and Marfrig have now agreed to reject cattle from illegally deforested land. The footwear companies will also refuse to buy leather which is sourced from farms on both legally and illegally deforested land.

For those who thought they had seen the end of Woolworths the good news is that is back but in an online form. The new website has recently been launched and is proving to be popular according to this article which says nearly 100,000 people logged on in the first few hours. Much loved brands such as Ladybird clothing and pic ’n’ mix sweets can still be found on the site. The new owner Shop Direct brought the brand name in February and has kept the red logo that customers will recognise from the stores. The online stores will sell much the same things that you would expect to have found in a Woolworths shop but they will also sell some larger items that were to big to sell in store.

Millions of Setanta customers have been left without their sports channels after Setanta went into administration and the channel was switched off. Customers who have paid £12.99 for the service which included being able to watch Premier League football are likely to be left without compensation. In addition more than 200 people have lost their jobs and 950 more jobs are at risk in call centres which are connected to the firm. The broadcaster recently lost the rights to continue showing the Premier League matched, something which appears to have instrumental in the companies demise. It all seems very similar to when ITV digital went under about 7 years ago. They also relied heavily on their sports channels to bring in the money. I think the problem is relying on one prime channel to make money rather than concentrating on providing quality content across several channels.

Shoppers in Germany will soon be able to buy something a little more high end from vending machines as machines selling precious metals are introduced across the country. The machines are being introduced by TG Gold Super Mart at 500 locations across Germany including train stations and airports. The aim is to tap into increasing interest in the buying of gold and the prices will be updated every few minutes, although they will be around 30 per cent higher than the current market prices. The prototype machine offered the choice of purchasing a 1g wafer of gold for 30 Euros, a 10g bar for 245 Euros and gold coins. It appears the aim is to take advantage of people that want an investment they can put in their pocket rather than something that is invested in markets you can’t see. It will be interesting to see if the machines prove to be popular.

According to this article online fraud is at its highest ever level with seven out of ten internet users regularly seeing so called e-scams in their inboxes over the last twelve months. Around 80 per cent of users have received fake banking emails or fake online shopping emails. 70 per cent have been targeted by fake requests for money and 67 per cent have been told they have won a competition only to find out it is a scam. Personally I get so many of all of these types of emails that I automatically assume they are all fraudulent. If I ever did receive a genuine email from my bank or informing me I had won something it would be deleted along with the rest.

Royal Mail has launched a tamper proof stamp which should stop people pealing off old stamps and reusing them. The problem whilst it might seem minor costs Royal Mail tens of thousands of pounds every year. Although stamps are franked when they go through the sorting office, the markings on them are not always noticeable and often stamps with little markings on them are peeled off and used again. The new stamps, however, should make it impossible to reuse them. They have two oblong strips on either side of the stamp so that when the stamp is peeled off the strips are left behind. This leaves a useless stamp with two holes in it which should now be unusable.

It looks as thought it might be all over for Setanta as an emergency meeting has taken place to try and secure a rescue package. The sports broadcaster could face going into administration within days unless backers provide more funds. The company owes the English Premier League a total of £30 million, money that it does not appear to have. It has also failed to pay the Scottish Premier League £3 million which it owes them in television rights money. It is estimated that Sentanta is currently losing up to £100 million a year. 

If you are a landlord and are currently struggling to manage your rental properties yourself then you might want to look into using a property management company like Real Property Management. They specialise in the management of single family homes, apartment buildings and homeowners associations. They offer services such as tenant placement, credit and criminal background screening, accounting, project management, collections, evictions and maintenance services so they can basically do all of the hard work for you. In addition all of their property maintenance is done by their own people so you don’t have to pay overinflated charges and they have a 24 hour emergency service which is available seven days a week. If you want to see how they help you, you can contact a representative through the website. 

According to this article exports of Champagne have dropped by a third. The news comes as people cut back on luxury products during the recession. Some of the biggest Champagne houses such as Laurent-Perrier have seen a drop of 27 per cent in the 2008/2009 financial year with net profits down by 45 per cent. It’s not just Champagne exports that are suffering it appears that people are buying less high end wines and moving towards more lower priced bottles as they try to save money.

PC maker Dell has seen a decline of 63% in its profits. The decline of almost two-thirds means that they made a net profit of $290m in the three months to 1 May down 63% from $784m a year ago. Although revenues at the firm fell 23% to $12.3bn the results were better than analysts had expected during the current recession. Dell has already cut costs because of falling sales by reducing its global workforce by more than 9,000 people over the past year. Although no further cuts have been announced Dell have said they are continuing cost reduction efforts. The results come a week after Hewlett Packard announced a quarterly profit decline of 17% and that it was cutting 2% per cent of its workforce, a total of 6,000 jobs.

Sainsbury’s have posted better than expected profits with a 11.3% rise to £543 million. The supermarket has said that like for like sales rose by 4.5% in the year to the 21st of March. The rise is put down to the increasing population of their Basics range and the Jamie Oliver Feed Your Family For a Fiver campaign which has been running on TV. The profits mean that Sainsbury’s staff will share a bonus pot of £60 million, compared to last year’s £47 million.

According to this article Sales of beer in the UK have fallen at their fastest rate since the recession of the early 1990s. The British Beer and Pub Association have said that off trade beer sales fell by 11 per cent in the first quarter of 2009 contributing to a total decline of 8.2 per cent in total beer sales. On trade beer sales (those in bars and restaurants) also fell by 6.3 per cent that’s around 753,000 fewer pints every day over the first three months of 2009. The message here is clear, your local pub needs you to drink more beer.

Bay Trading has announced that it is to go into administration. The decision was taken after credit insurance was withdrawn following the release of it results last week. The move puts 1,000 jobs in 268 branches at risk. The accountants Deloitte will be the administrators, they intend to keep the chain trading whilst they try to find a buyer. Bay Trading’s parent company Alexon operates two separate businesses Epcoscan which trades as Bay Trading and Alexon Brands which runs Ann Harvey, Kaliko, Eastex and Alex and Co. Alexon has said that Bay Trading has been making a loss and has been relying on the rest of the group to survive. It has also said that its other brands will be unaffected by the administration.

This is an interesting idea, its a pizza vending machine. The machine called Let’s Pizza has been invented by Claudio Torghele and has recently been launched in Italy. It can make a pizza from scratch in just three minutes whipping the flour into dough, squashing in into a disc and adding the topping before cooking it and serving it in a cardboard box. The machine includes clear plastic windows so that customers can watch the ingredients being mixed and cooked. It costs 3.50 Euros, approx £3.30 for a pizza which is about half what you would expect to pay in a restaurant. The inventor hopes that in the current difficult economic times his three minute pizzas will grab a share of the takeaway market. However, traditional Italian pizza makers are far from impressed with the head of the Association of Italian Pizzerias saying "Pizza that comes out of an automatic machine has nothing to do with Italian pizza."

Virgin America have introduced a charge to check in a single bag. The move brings them in line with other US carriers and means that passengers will now pay a $15 fee to check a single bag. Previously the airline charged nothing for the first bag, $25 for the second and $50 for the third. The airline has also lowered its fee for ticket changes and cancellations from $75 to $50.

The Co-operative Group will complete it's takeover of the grocery chain Somerfield next week. Under the £1.6bn takeover the Co-op will close Somerfield's Bristol head quarters and move the staff to Manchester. The Co-op has said that it hopes to relocate as many as possible of the 750 employees that will be affected by the move. The takeover means that the Co-op will take on more than 650 Somerfield stores across the UK making it the fifth largest food retailer behind Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisions.

It appears that one company at least is yet to feel the effects of the recession. Whilst many other businesses are struggling business is booming at Domino's Pizza. Profits for the last 12 months were up 25% to £23 million with like for like sales rising by 10%. There were also 52 new store openings last year. The company appears to benefiting not only from the fact that people are choosing to eat in rather than go out but also from the recent bad weather which has kept many people at home.

Live Nation and Ticketmaster are to join forces in a move that will see the world's largest concert promoter and the biggest ticket seller becoming one. The planned merger which is worth about $800m has sparked competition concerns within the US with come saying it will create a near monopoly situation in music ticketing. The deal with be scrutinised closely by regulators but if it does go ahead the combined group would have revenues of $6bn and would sell more than 150m concert tickets a year. Under the merger, Ticketmaster investors would get 1.384 Live Nation shares for each Ticketmaster share. The Live Nation shareholders would be left with 49.99% of the combined group which would be called Live Nation Entertainment and Ticketmaster shareholders would hold 50.01%.

It appears that Woolworth's is not completely dead. This article suggests that the name will live again but as an online only brand. The brand has been purchased by Sir David and Frederick Barclay who specialise in buying up home delivery retail groups. They already own Littlewoods and some home delivery divisions of Argos including Kays, Marshall Wards and Great Universal and expect woolworths.co.uk to be running by the summer. It's good to see the Woolworths name will not disappear completely, and will be interesting to see what the online version is like.

Tesco are planning to launch an online clothing store to sell it own labels. The website would offer thousands of item including the Florence and Fred, Cherokee and My Favourite Things ranges. It is expected to be launched in the autumn and is part of Tesco plan to try and grab a slice of the internet clothing business which currently accounts for around 4% of the total clothing market. Although Tesco enjoys strong sales of its clothing ranges instore, it is currently not possible to purchase these online, but it looks like this is soon going to change.

I think you will find that's legal tender is a phase usually heard in England when businesses refuse to accept Scottish banknotes. Although the tender is indeed legal, traders south of the border can refuse to accept Scottish banknotes. However, they may soon have to accept them if a private member's bill is successful. The bill is being launched by Shadow Scottish Secretary David Mundell, it would require all providers of goods or services in the UK which accept Bank of England notes to also accept Scottish banknotes on an equal basis.  Three Scottish banks retain the right to print their own money - the Royal Bank of Scotland, the Bank of Scotland and the Clydesdale Bank but currently these notes are not backed by force of law anywhere in the UK.

Iceland have brought 51 of the former Woolworths stores that closed recently after Woolworths went into administration. The announcement comes only a few days after the last 200 Woolworths stores closed. The move will add to Iceland's existing 682 outlets and is likely to create 2,500 new jobs. A full list of the 51 stores is below.

Alton, Barnsley, Belper, Bethnal Green, Bexhill On Sea, Bicester, Billericay, Blandford Forum, Bodmin, Boreham Wood, Bow, Braintree, Broadstairs, Devizes, Exmouth, Fraserburgh, Frome, Greenford, Hackney, Hailsham, Harold Hill, Haverhill, Herne Bay, Hexham, Highgate, Honiton, Kilburn High Road, Leyton, Malvern, Matlock, Mill Hill, Minehead, Monmouth, Morpeth, Morriston, Newtownards, Palmers Green, Pinner (Rayner's Lane), Palmers Green, Plumstead, Pontypool, Poplar, Portslade, Ringwood, St Neots, Stoke Newington, Strood, Sudbury, Swaffham, Wakefield, Wallington, Whitstable

MCDonald's will become the UK's leading apprenticeship provider within two years offering a total of 10,000 places. The company will offer an on the job qualification which will be equivalent to achieving five A to C grades at GCSE. The qualification will not only teach people how to cook burgers but will also concentrate on developing young people's maths and English ability. A trial which started at 80 restaurants will be extended across all of the UK's 1,200 restaurants with six thousand places being available this year. The courses will also be monitored by Ofsted inspectors.

This article suggests that 38% of small business owners do not expect to survive 2009 because of the current economic downturn. Research which was carried out by the Financial Mail and This is Money found that over half of small business owners had cut back on credit and 66% would be making staff redundant. The results show that small business owners are pessimistic about the coming year but it thought that the reality could be much worse. The Forum of Private Business estimates that as many as 200,000 firms could close next year.

Woolworths went into administration yesterday after negotiations to try to avert the collapse failed. The chain which opened its first shop in Britain nearly 100 years ago, now has debts of £385 million. The chain has 800 outlets employing almost 30,000 people, most of whom are likely to lose their jobs. Negotiations are now under way to try and ensure that the stores stay open over the Christmas trading period. The administration of Woolworths includes its shops and EUK a DVD distribution business. Many companies including Asda, Sainsbury's and Zavi rely upon Woolworths' Entertainment arm for stock of CDs, DVDs and games, deliveries of these have now collapsed, hitting the entertainment sector.

BHS has reported a fall in pre tax profits for the year end of March. Profits are down from 34% to £32.6m from £49.4m 12 months earlier. Total sales at BHS were down 1.4% to £860m. Mr Green who owns the chain said the results were "a solid performance in an exceptionally challenging market". Other retailers such as Marks and Spencer have also recently reported its worst quarterly sales performance for more than three years.

Gordon Brown intends to increase the Treasury's guarantee to savers from £35,000 to £50,000. He is also considering issuing a blanket guarantee to savers to protect all of their money in the event of their bank failing. Such a guarantee would reassure banks that they could continue to trade without the fear of a sudden collapse. The proposal could insure around £1.9 trillion in deposits.

Sales are up at Domino's Pizza as more customers choose to eat in. Sales across 535 UK Domino outlets in the UK and Ireland rose by 17.8% to £83.3m in the last 13 weeks. Over the past 39 weeks sales have increased by 18.9% to £253.5m. During the last recession in the 1990's Dominos eventually saw its sales flatten out but this time the company appears to be showing reliance leading analysts to increase their profit forecasts for the company.

This is interesting, its a firm that allows companies to produce pictures of their advertising in space. What the company called JP Aerospace does, is launch a billboard into space that contains the advertisers logo and message and then take pictures of it. They use specially constructed balloons to send the billboard 20 miles into the air. Then they take hundreds of pictures of it and return it to Earth by parachute. The result is something like the picture on the left.

The pub group Mitchells & Butlers has acquired 44 restaurants from Whitbread in return for 21 hotel sites. The group whose brands include Harvester and All Bar One currently owns around 2,000 pubs nationwide. The outlets it is gaining currently operate under the Brewers Fayre and Beefeater brands. In exchange Whitbread will get some of its Express by Holiday Inn hotels.

Sony have announced a fall in profits with the net profit down 66.5bn yen from a year ago. The news comes due a strong yen and price competition and is despite the fact that Playstation sales are still strong. Sony have said that that its net profit in the year to March 31 2009 is likely to total 240bn yen down from an earlier forecast made in May of 290bn.

Well, maybe not world domination but lots more coffee shops. Whitbread plans to double the number of Costa coffee shops and increase the number of Premier Inn rooms by 50%. The company announced the plans after it unveiled better than expected profits. There are currently 992 Costa coffee outlets worldwide but Whitbread will increase this to 2,000 in the next five years with half of the new shops being in Britain.

JJB Sports has announced that it is shutting 72 stores with the loss of 800 jobs. JJB currently has around 400 outlets in the UK. The closure plan comes after a business review by the new management which found the stores are unlikely to make a contribution to profits and that many are close to newer and larger stores. The stores will close by the end of this month.

Tesco are due to announce record profits. They have managed to make a £5,300 profit for every minute of last year, a total profit of around £2.8bn. This is 6% more that their profits for the previous year and about the same as the combined profits of Sainsbury’s and Asda. They have benefitted from growth within the UK and the expansion into international businesses in Poland, Hungary and South Korea.

HSBC are latest company to admit to losing customers’ personal data. The information was on a disk that was password protected but was not encrypted. The disk contained the personal details of 370,000 customers including names, dates of birth, policy numbers and details about their insurance cover. The disk was lost after being sent by courier to the groups Southampton office.

BT has been named as the worst landline provider in a customer satisfaction poll. In a survey of 11,000 customers BT got the lowest score for all but two categories for home phones. uSwitch.com claims that around three million of BT’s 10 million landline customers are dissatisfied. Other surveys have found that BT offer poor value fro money and fail to sort out problems. Citizens Advice also found that 89% of all landline complaints are about BT.

The high street pub chain which owns the Slug and Lettuce and Litten Tree chain has gone into administration after failing to find a buyer. The group currently has 90 loss making bars within the 330 site group. 239 of the pubs and restaurants were immediately brought from the administrators but 90 sites will remain under their control.

The fashion chain Morgan will close all 40 of its UK stores because of losses. The chain has suffered because of competition from cheaper rivals and the slowdown in consumer spending.

A new biomass power station has just been opened near Lockerbie. The power station which is owned and operated by E.ON is the largest wood fired power station of its kind in the UK. The plant converts waste from the wood industry into energy and will provide enough power to supply up to 70,000 homes. The power station will also create 50 jobs.

Scottish and Southern Energy will raise its domestic energy prices by an average of 14.2% for electricity and 15.8% for gas. The company is the last of the big energy suppliers to announce a price increase, following announcements by Npower, EDF Energy, Scottish Power, British Gas and E.On. They blame the increases on the rise in wholesale energy prices. The increases mean an average electricity bill will rise by £50 whilst a gas bill will increase by around £85.

BA shares have fallen after they issued a warning on profits. They have said that its profits could fall by 25% over the next year because of rising oil prices. The price of crude has hit an all time high of $105.97 a barrel meaning that the airline will have to abandon its target of making profit margins of 10%.

As someone who uses my car rarely I have not really noticed a rise in fuel costs. This article, however, suggests that drivers are now paying around £18.84 a month more for fuel. Petrol now costs 17p a litre more than it did this last year with the average price at £1.04p a litre. This means that a driver with an average 50 litre fuel tank pays £8.79 more every time they fill up with petrol. Diesel is up too, having soared to an average price of £110.3p a litre compared with 91.1p a year ago. The huge rises have been blamed on the weak dollar and unrest in oil producing countries. The situation however, is likely to get worse, if Alistair Darling goes ahead with his plans to add an extra 2p per litre to fuel duty. Business groups and the motoring lobby are currently calling for the government to scrap the planned rise in the light of rising prices.

npower are the latest energy company to report a massive rise in profits. The firm has reported a 41% rise in profits making £724m last year. The news comes after British Gas reported a fivefold increase in profits. The consumer group energywatch have launched an investigation into household bills amid concerns that companies are profiteering at the expense of their customers. News of npower's profits came only weeks after it raised electricity bills by 12.7% and gas bills by 17.2%.

PC2Paper have just launched their virtual printer. The product has launched initially at a beta version but if early indications are anything to go by, it should make sending a letter from your computer much easier. Previously you had to log in and go through the process of uploading your letter or writing it online. The virtual printer, however, acts just like a desktop printer. Once you have installed it you simply select the PC2Paper printer option from your list of printers, add the address you want the letter to go to and choose your print options from the different types of paper and formats available. Then just enter your user name and password and the letter is automatically transferred to PC2Paper who take care of the printing and posting for you. What a great idea.

Weather balloons could be used to provide mobile phone and broadband services to rural Britain. An American company called Space Data has already used small phone masts attached to balloons to provide wireless internet access to remote areas. The group has supplied military and commercial clients for four years but is now preparing to link with broadband companies to offer services to residential customers. Space Data has patented the service in 41 countries and is now considering the US as a potential market. The service uses a small transceiver attached to a balloon which then rises to an altitude of 30,500m after it has been released. The company says that one balloon can beam a signal to an area equivalent to 80 mobile phone towers. The service does have one drawback, the balloons only last for 24 hours before bursting which means a constant supply has to be released to maintain the connection and the radio equipment on the burst balloon has to be retrieved by a team using location devices.

Northern Rock has scrapped its Together home loan which was launched in 1999. The loan was the first of its kind and allowed homeowners to borrow up to 125% of the value of their property. It worked by securing a maximum of 95% on the value of the property and the other 30% on an unsecured loan which was payable at the same rate as the mortgage. Other big lenders have also recently moved away from offering 100% loans with only one in every ten lenders still offering the product.

Asda will start large scale expansion this year in a plan that will open 22 new stores. The plans will create around 9,000 new jobs both in store and as part of its home delivery service. The first of the new stores will open at Andover in March. Other new stores will open at Dalgety Bay in Scotland and Brigend in Mid-Glamorgan. Several stores will also be extended as part of the plans.

Vodafone and Orange have announced a plan to share mast sites. The deal will see the two companies working together to ensure better coverage for their customers. Sites across the UK will host both Orange and Vodafone equipment. Both 2G and 3G coverage will be involved in the scheme which is likely to mean that the total site numbers are cut by about 15% meaning 3,000 fewer masts. The move is not a merger and both companies will continue to compete with each other.

British Gas has put up its prices by more than 18% meaning it is no longer the cheapest energy supplier. The British Gas Click Energy 4 tariff was the cheapest tariff for many people in the UK. This will now be replaced with Click Energy 5. This new tariff works out about £138 a year more expensive for the average customer.

Scottish and Newcastle are to close its largest UK brewery. The Berkshire Brewery in Reading currently employs 360 people and produces Foster’s and Kronenbourg. It is expected the company will save 13 million a year by closing the site and moving capacity to its other UK sites.

T-Mobile and Orange are to launch a new service that will give customers a live TV service on their mobile phone. They aim to start a trial service in west London in the summer. They plan to broadcast 24 TV channels and 10 digital radio stations although have not yet said what sort of tariff customers would pay for the service. The service will offer both conventional TV channels and some premium channels.

If you need some extra cash to expand your small business you might want to try ezunsercured.com. They specialise in offering small business lines of credit. They offer loans with no collateral and provide a fast approvals process. In fact you can usually have your small business line of credit approved in just 1-3 days with the money reaching your checking account in 3-14 days. All you need to do to apply is fill in the easy to use online form.

Nintendo have sold more then 5 million Wii consoles in Japan. The console has reached the 5 million mark six weeks earlier than it took the PS2 to sell the same amount although surprisingly not as quickly as the Nintendo DS which sold 5 million in just 56 weeks, as opposed to the Wii taking 60 weeks. Figures are currently not available for the PS3 and the Xbox 360

I came across this website that offers small business loans. Called SFS they are based in the US and offer unsecured loans. Unlike most other companies that offer small business loans AFS have no application fees or hidden charges. You can fill in their quick five minute application and one of their advisors will contact you to help you to arrange your small business loan. The process is confidential and secure and your loan will often be approved within 24 to 48 hours so all you have to do is decide how you want to spend it.

EDF have announced a 12.9% price rise for gas and a 7.9% increase in electricity prices. They are the second firm to announce they will raise prices, following npower’s announcement that will raise prices by up to 27%. EDF blame the increasing wholesale and distribution costs for the rise which it says will add about £1.92 each week to the average fuel bill. Other energy providers are not expected to follow suit with similar announcements.

EMI have confirmed that thousands of staff will lose their jobs in cuts proposed the new owners. Terra Firma who now own EMI have said that they will cut the worldwide headcount by between 1,500 and 2,000 in a drive to cut costs. EMI have also recently issued a number of profit warnings and have also undergone a management reshuffle.

If you own a small business and are based in the US, you might want to have a look at Crest Capital. They offer help for small businesses including financing and business equipment leasing. Their aim is to help small companies finance equipment or software that is essential to the growth of their business. They offer a number of solutions including loans and leases, refinances and working capital. The advantage of their solutions is that they can be processed very quickly and can cut out a lot of the red tape which is often associated with getting a loan from a bank.

I was looking around at web hosting and found this company that specialise in small business web hosting. Their plans include hosting, email, virus protection, DNS manager, a blog and a wiki. Their basis plan starts at $13.50 a month and includes 2,000 MB of disk space, 40 GB of traffic, 80 email addresses, 10 domain aliases and $35 of Google Adwords credit. If you require more disk  space you can get 5,000 MB for $37.25 a month or 10,000 for $67.95 a month. These more expensive plans also offer more email address and domain aliases and increased amounts of Adwords credit.

BT has claimed its place as the UK broadband market leader. It has added double the amount of new customers that its nearest rival the Carphone Warehouse has in the last three months. BT now has over 4 million broadband customers compared to the Carphone Warhouse which now has around 2.5 million.

Nintendo has managed to double its profits in six months due to the success of the Wii. The Wii console is still outselling both the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360. Nintendo are also doing well with sales of the DS console. They are currently expecting to sell around 17.5 million Wii consoles this year.

Microsoft has recently paid $240m for a 1.6% stake in Facebook. This puts the current value of the website at $15bn. Facebook reportedly turned down an offer from Google before agreeing the Microsoft deal.

The Post Office is due to launch a broadband service. The service is aimed mainly at first time users and will be targeted at home phone customers. The service will be launched with a £10m advertising campaign featuring Westlife. The Post Office currently has around 400,000 home phone customers and makes around 10% of its earnings from this side of the business. It will be interesting to see whether this takes off.

Virgin Media are testing a new fast broadband connection that could be twice as fast as BT. Customers in Folkestone, Ashford and Dover are taking part in a pilot scheme that provides a connection at 50 megabits per second. Virgin Media are able to use their cable network to handle more information than traditional phone lines, therefore providing a much faster connection.

Travelodge is offering rewards to members of the public that suggest new sites for development. To suggest a site you can visit their website and fill in a form with your contact details and your proposed location. If your tip results in a new opening they will then pay you £500 per bedroom up to a maximum payout of £150,000.

If you are looking to further your career in finance, you want to take a look at www.accountancyjobsabroad.com They specialise in placing candidates in lucrative tax free locations such as Bermuda, Dubai and the Cayman Islands. The business is run by two qualified accountants who have extensive contacts in the industry and in particular in dealing with offshore locations. So whether you are newly qualified and looking to gain further experience or have many of years and simply want to relocate, they are sure to be able to help.

I seem to be running out of most of stationary at the moment, so thought it might be a good time to stock before things get busy at Christmas. As usual I thought it might be an idea to head down to couponchief.com to see if there were any special offers I could take advantage of. They currently have some Dell coupons which should help save a bit of cash, especially as I seem to get through toner at an alarming rate these days. I also found some Staples coupons that offer amongst other things free shipping and some cheap deals on paper.

I have reading with interest the news surrounding Northern Rock and the fact that is has recently had to ask for the Bank of England for emergency funding. As a result its shares have now fallen by 25%. Customers have also been unable to access their accounts on the website to increased demand. There have been reassurances that the business is stable but in some areas worried customers have been queuing outside branches.

I found this really interesting website that supplies 3D artwork and floorplans. The website www.locationmaps.com has specialised in online digital mapping and map printing services since 1989. Initially they supplied quality maps for organisations throughout the UK and digital mapping to a global market but they have now also moved into providing 3D maps. Their 3D maps go one step further than a normal printed map. They are hand drawn to give an artists impression of your premises so are great for promoting a business.

To produce a 3D map they start by conducting a full photographic survey of your premises. They take hundreds of photographs of the establishment. From this they agree create some rough drawings based on the photographs. They then agree a rough perspective with you. The next step is producing a proof of the map for your approval so you can see what the final product will look like. The final illustration is then created by working both from the rough designs and the photographs to help ensure the colour is applied correctly and that all the detail is correct. The finished article is something like you see below, in the example of a map created for Worth School.

TCA is a company that specialises in computer cables, network cabling and power cords. They have USB cables, Firewire cables, DVI and HDMI cables and also have a range of peripherals including keyboards, mice and graphics tablets. All items are shipped the same day by UPS as long as you order before Noon, otherwise they are shipped the next business day.

Ashop offer ecommerce software so you can create your own online store. They provide a shopping cart that is fully integrated with all most major banks as well as Paypal. This includes built in SSL protection so you can make sure your customer’s details are secure. The software allows you to customise your storefront with your company information and sales information through a website interface which requires no knowledge of HTML. They host the online store for you and provide a daily backup as part of the service. They also provide free unlimited tech support. You can look at a demo store on their website to see exactly how it all works but even better then that, they offer a ten day free trial. There are four different packages available depending on how much storage space you require. Prices start at £19.95 for the light package which gives you 50MB of web space and go up to £99.95 a month for 300MB of space with no limit on the number of products.

If you dabble in the stock market you might want to have a look at Wizetrade. They have an interesting blog that has some useful tips on the stock market and securities. The blog covers issues you might come across such as creating a trading plan. Much of the blog is focused towards helping you get the most out of their Wizetrade stock trading software. Looking at the blog the software seems like a really useful tool. The programme allows you to conduct stock market analysis and chart potential entry and exit signals on any stock symbol. They also provide a Wizetrade Trading Workshop in a city near you, so you can find out how to get the most out of their software.

It can be hard to organise your business cards, and if you are anything like me, I often find I have piles of them lying around and can never find contact details when I need them. That’s where a business card scanner could come in useful. Basically what it does is scans the business card and provides you with an images of the card as well as the text information. The scanned image can be saved in several formats including JPG, TIFF and BMP. The extracted text can then be saved or exported to other applications such as email and the web.

You can also use it to scan photos and cheques and it takes media up to A6 size. The scanner is portable and requires no power supply. One useful feature is that you can fully integrate the scanner with Microsoft outlook so that it automatically creates a new contact record for you with the scanned information. It also features a Live Update feature so that when you are connected to the internet it scans for updated software and update automatically with the most recent version. It comes with a 30 day money back guarantee and free technical support is also available.

Starting a business can be stressful and confusing, that’s why it’s often best to get some advice from an expert. IncParadise.com is a Texas business that specialises in doing just that. Their website is a useful source of information for anyone who is thinking of setting up a business in the US. It has a useful article explaining the difference between a Corporation (INC) and a Limited Liability Company (LLC). The information is designed to help you to figure out which is the best solution for your business. Their small business blog also contains a wealth of information related to setting up your small business. If you can’t find the answer to your question, you can always just drop them an email.

Once you have decided what sort of business you want to set up, IncParadise can help you by checking the name availability, preparing the state approved Articles of incorporation, filing Articles with state and pretty much everything else you need to get your business up and running. They offer incorporation in over 50 states including Tennessee Incorporation. They can also provide you with corporate kits to help get you organised. Once you have set your business up they can also help guide you through the taxation process, helping you with your annual tax returns.

If you are looking you promote a small business it’s useful to carry business cards with you. I came across this website that provides professional looking business cards. You can either design your business card online or alternatively if you already have a design that you want to use you can simply upload it.

If you choose to design a business card online you are provided with several options. You can choose whether you require glossy or raised print cards. You can then choose what printing method you require, whether you want both sides of the card to be printed or just the front of the card. The site then allows you a background from a range of designs and allows you to fully customise the business card with the text and font of your choice. You can also change the layout of the text and upload your business logo before being directed going on to choose the paper type.

The website also offers other items such as card holders, letterheads and envelopes which can also be fully customised online with your own design and logo.