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.

The Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn has said that he wants to see traditional lightbulbs phased out by 2011. He wants to see 150 watt bulbs withdrawn from sale from next January, with a plan to phase out less powerful bulbs in stages. It is estimated this would save five million tonnes of CO2 a year.

Tesco have been selling New Zealand lamb packaged as British Lamb. One customer brought a product labelled as British slow cooked lamb shanks only to find when she opened the packet that the small print described them as tender lamb shanks of marinated New Zealand lamb. New Zealand lamb is around half the price of British lamb, so it seems this is a cost cutting exercise by Tesco. Tesco said the meal was described as British to indicate the type of cuisine rather than the origins of the ingredients. This seems a rather poor excuse for misleading packaging.

Following the launch of the Barclaycard OnePulse card, other banks are also going to offer tap and go payment cards. The cards allow you pay for cheap items with a tap of a card rather than having to look for loose change. Halifax and Barclays are expected to launch tap and go debit cards next month, followed closely by the Royal Bank of Scotland.

You might find the price of your Christmas dinner will be more like year after turkey farmers have announced they will need to increase their prices. The move comes because there has been a huge increase in costs recently, with the price of poultry feed going up from £181 a tonne to £240 a tonne. This increase is likely to put around 10 to 20% extra on the cost of your Christmas turkey.

Barclaycard has been reviewing the spending limits for many of their customers. They have also been rejecting more applications for new cards, in what could signal a crackdown on consumer credit. About half of all applications for new Barclaycards are now being rejected. Barclaycard have also seen a 17% fall in profits due to problems with bad debt.

A McDonalds customer in the West Midlands had an unpleasant surprise on finding a bolt in their sausage and egg McMuffin. The bolt had apparently come away from a kitchen grill and ended up in the food. McDonalds pleaded guilty to producing food that did not meet the required standards and were ordered to pay £3, 578 in costs.

PayPerPost are hosting an event called PostieCon on the 10th of November. It is basically a one of a kind blog conference in Las Vegas Nevada at the Las Vegas Convention Center. It has targeted sessions aimed at helping bloggers to market themselves, as well as how best to use the PayPerPost website to their advantage. The conference will have a host of experienced bloggers who are willing to share their knowledge with you. Topics will includes things issues such as how to build traffic, how to monetise your blog and how to build up readership.

Among the bloggers attending are Shirley Frazier who will talk about building your niche blog; David Ponce who will discuss turning visits into cash; Sherry Heyl who will talk about why you should live your life online and Paul Lewis who will do a session on connecting with advertisers. All of these talks sound like really useful stuff that should help anyone who has a blog make a success of it. The session I think would be of most interest to me is one by Jim Kukral on the secrets to long-term blog success. Registration for PostieCon is free but places are limited so if you want to go, you need to register your place soon. If you are one of the first 100 people to register you can also get into BlogWorld for free.

Unfortunately for me being in the United Kingdom it is a little far to go for the event. I wonder whether PayPerPost might make the main points of the conference sessions available online for people such as myself that are too far away to attend. It would be also be interesting to see if PayPerPost might think about arranging some United Kingdom or European PostieCon events for their international base of bloggers.

If you are trying to eat healthier food but feel you need a bit of help you might want to try mysupermarket.co.uk In addition to their price comparison service they have now launched a service that allows you see nutritional information about your shop including the calories and fat and salt content. It then asks you if you want to switch any of the foods that are high in calories for a lower calorie alternative. They claim that using the service could knock around 4,000 calories off a families consumption.

Tesco are to launch a comparison website called tescocompare.com. The website will allow users to compare insurance from a range of providers. Whilst initially geared towards car insurance, the website will also cover other financial services such as mortgages, homes loans and credit cards in the future.