I read this article the other day that suggests its worth shopping around for your car insurance. Apparently lots of people fall into the trap of staying with the same insurer rather than looking for a better rate. The problem is that often the insurance company will only offer its best rate to new customers so people, who stick with the same insurer year after year, tend to lose out and often end up paying more. The only problem I have is finding the time to look around for a better deal. Comparison websites such as www.autoinsurance-4u.com can save quite a lot of time. You just have to enter your zip code and the website brings up a whole list of cheap auto insurance companies in your area. Then you just fill in the online form to complete your quote.

Scientists are trialling a drug that could cure sleep apnoea syndrome. The condition causes people to stop breathing during sleep and also causes them to snore heavily. The pill called BGC20-0166 has so far been successful and had shown a 40% reduction in symptoms of people who have taken part in the trial.

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.

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.