The Food Standards Agency has called for a ban on six artificial colours because they cause mood swings. Tartrazine (E102), quinoline yellow (E104), sunset yellow (E110), carmoisine (E122), ponceau 4R (E124) and allura read (E129) have been linked to hyperactivity in a study carried out by Southampton University. The researchers estimated that 30% of hyperactivity disorder would be prevented if compaies removed these colours from their products. The colours are found in products such as Sherbet Lemons, Minstrels, M&Ms, Cadbury’s Crème Egg, Haribo Jelly Beans and Irn Bru.

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.

Without our Dyson vacuum cleaner our house would just be completely covered in pet hair all the time. It’s great for cleaning all the fur off the sofas, and an invaluable piece of kit to have around the house if you, like us have four cats. It can, however, be a little bulky for carrying up the stairs and cleaning the car so I was interested to see that Dyson now do a compact version called the Dyson DC16. It is designed to be handheld and easily portable and is also bagless and like the bigger version is well suited to picking up pet hair. The advantage with this smaller version, however is that it can easily fit into all the gaps that its bigger brother can’t quite reach and is also great for cleaning the car as you don’t need to worry about trailing wires outside.

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The last UK lender to offer a deposit free loan has now withdrawn the deal in a move that appears to signal the end the 100% mortgage. Abbey withdrew its 100% mortgage yesterday making it the last lender to do so. Buyers will now need a deposit of at least 5% before they can purchase a home. The move is likely to make it harder for first time buyers to get a home loan and specialists are predicting that lenders will soon start to drop their 95% mortgages and perhaps even insist on a minimum deposit of 10%.

An environmental study has found that some bottles of wine from France are contaminated with pesticides. The survey analysed 40 bottles of wine and found that 34 bottles contained pesticides, some of which are classified by the EU as health threatening. Among the affected wines were three Bordeaux cru classé wines and a Burgundy Santenay. On average the bottles tested contained more than four different pesticides but they were found to exceed EU pesticide limits.

It appears that free range eggs are becoming more popular as sales have overtaken those from battery farms for the first time. The British Egg Information Service said that 51% of eggs brought last month were free range whilst 41% came from caged hens; the remainder came from a mixture of barn and organic farms. Some supermarkets such as Waitrose and Marks and Spencer now sell only free range eggs.

Just five months after putting 200 lines of clothing on its Tesco Direct website the group has abandoned the service. Tesco say that they only intended to sell clothing online for a trial period but will not say whether the service will resume.

Six cough syrups are being removed from sale after five children from overdoses. The medicines regulator has warned that the medicines should not be given to children under the age of two and has ordered that the products can be sold only under the supervision of a pharmacist until the labels are changed. The six medicines are Asda Children’s Chesty Cough Syrup, Boots Chesty Cough Syrup 1 Year Plus, Boots Sore Throat and Cough Linctus 1 Year Plus, Buttercup Infant Cough Syrup, CalCough Chesty and Bell’s Children’s Chesty Cough.