A study of advertising on American TV has found that a diet based on the food products featured is profoundly unhealthy.

The diet contains 25 times more sugar and 20 times more fat than is healthy.

Consumer watchdog Which? has criticised Ryanair for charging £5 per passenger per flight for using a credit card, rather than charging the fee per booking, like other vendors do.

The system costs a family of four an additional £40 on a return flight with Ryanair, compared with £3.50 with easyJet and others.

Mugs commemorating the visit of US prezz Obama have been withdrawn from sale at the parliamentary gift shop in Canberra after it was discovered that his name had been mis-spelt as “Barrack”

Sadly Mr Obama cancelled his trip to the Antipodes, which could be just as well.

Reportedly just two had already been sold and will no doubt be appearing on auction sites for a lot of dollars any time now.

A seafood risotto recipe produced by celebrity cook Delia Smith as part of her completely impartial tie-up with Waitrose has been sharply criticised by those who have tried to cook it.

These include the team from BBC’s Watchdog, who pronounced it “disgusting” and “horrible” and consumer affairs journalist Harry Wallop, who noted in the Daily Telegraph that the ingredients, bought at Waitrose prices, cost £16, “congealed into a rather nasty and acrid, thick blob of rice, studded with rubbery bits of seafood”, and had his kitchen “smelling like a cheap Marseilles brothel”, a description for which those unfamiliar with such establishments will have to take Mr Wallop’s word.

Interesting to note that Tesco’s retiring CEO Terry Leahy is such a supporter of price measures to curb the consumption of alcohol.

And that a few months ago his group was selling a 70 cl bottle of 40% ABV vodka for just £5, around 35% lower than any other retailer.

UK discount clothes retailer Primark has withdrawn padded bikini tops aimed at girls as young as seven, amid concerns that they were sexualising children for a profit.

The retailer has also been reportedly selling knickers for seven-year-old girls emblazoned “You’ve scored” and joins a growing list of retailers censured for marketing sexualising products to kids. This includes Tesco for its pole-dancing kit, sold as a toy in 2006 with the slogan “Unleash the sex kitten inside”, and Next for its T-shirt for girls under six printed with the slogan “So Many Boys . . . So Little Time”

Marketeers have also been criticised for their reliance on the colour pink to sell to very young girls. A discussion website, PinkStinks, has been set up.

A report in the Daily Telegraph indicates that, just three years after Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) lost the confidential details of 25 million taxpayers another serious breach of security has occurred.

The concerns follow after a woman in Bedfordshire received mailings from seven different organisations all duplicating the same mistake that had been made in her name by HMRC. Susan Jones from Bedford began to receive letters from HMRC addressed to “Susan Margaret Margaret” and shortly afterwards received mailings addressed the same way from Direct Line insurance, Churchill Home Insurance, Sun Life Direct funeral care, the Dog’s Trust, Macmillan cancer support and the Salvation Army, all of whom would have bought the data, unaware of its source, from suppliers in the direct marketing sector. Continue reading →

The Chinese public are staying away in their hundreds of thousands from the Shanghai World Expo, which showcases China’s rising influence on the world stage.

Visitor figures are down from the expected 380,000 a day to less than 220,000, a shortfall of more than 40%.

The poor response has raised questions over the appeal of events which are really propaganda dressed up as a leisure opportunity, something that increasingly cynical consumers are getting better at spotting.

The use of discount vouchers is up by 25% from last year, according to some recent research from moneysupermarket.com.

Apparently we scour the internet on average six times a week to save an average of £55 a month, with one in seven adults claiming to save more than £100 a month by using vouchers, and the total saving is estimated at £30 billion a year.