Watching the apprentice this evening and seeing all the obese brides to be trying to squeeze into expensive weding dresses must make designers quail at the thought of one of their dresses waddling down the aisle. there was even a wedding dress design company that specialised in wedding dresses for brides size 16 to 32.

Whatever happened to taking pride in ones appearance and wanting to look good on your wedding day? the photographs are going to record the facts for posterity.

If you are worried about the cost of food and want to lose weight, La Feytaud Diet can help you lose weight and cut your food bills by up to 50%. It is based on French cuisine, the thinnest nation in Europe yet recommends eating 3/4 and sometimes five courses for lunch and dinner.

It is based on preparing and eating healthy meals that make you feel like you have eaten well and are not on a diet. The French also call it the sex diet because it apparently increases both the mans and the womans sexual libido and started a baby boom in France. Maybe it is all that sex combined with the diet that helps you lose weight.

Users have also reported feeling more energetic and healthier with many claiming it improved their skin tone. It also claims to help prevent stretch marks during pregnancy.   

To take advantage of this offer, click here to visit their site and use the following discount voucher code

Voucher ID: EM4610
Username: edsave

Do not press enter/return once the code & username have been entered; click on the checkout button for the discount to be applied.

Exclusions: The 5% discount only applies to LCD & Plasma products but excludes packages. Delivery charges, EdXtra cards & Warranties are excluded from the promotion.

Empire Direct is the largest independent electrical retailer in the UK with 12 National Electrical Warehouses across the country. Their huge buying power means they can purchase stock at discounted prices. This allows them to provide you with a huge choice of top brand Electrical Appliances at truly unbeatable prices.

This is not the kind of news which is going to do much for the mortgage industry or the UK housing market.

As I talked about in a post earlier this week, there are already far fewer mortgages available now than there were a year or so ago. According to an article I read this week, there were over 15,599 different mortgages available this time last year. Now the number of different mortgage products has fallen to 4,679.

More and more mortgage borrowers are now realising the vital role that a professional mortgage advisor can play in helping them find and secure a suitable mortgage. With deals changing all the time and lending criteria shifting almost daily, a mortgage broker who knows where to go for a decent mortgage can be worth his weight in gold.

Sites such as this mortgage website are worth checking out if you want to get access to a qualified mortgage specialist with access to a range of mortgage deals.

The Woolwich (owned by Barclays Bank) is the latest lender to tighten up its mortgage lending criteria and is now insisting on a minimum mortgage deposit of 10% from all new borrowers. Prior to this, Woolwich had three mortgages which were available for up to 95% of the property value (i.e. with only a 5% deposit). These were a five year fixed rate mortgage, a lifetime tracker mortgage, and the bank’s standard variable rate mortgage.

The Nationwide applied a similar 10% deposit restriction to all but two of its mortgages last week, echoing steps already taken by Britannia, Co-op, Alliance & Leicester, and Cheltenham & Gloucester.

Whilst all this is going on, house prices carrying on falling. For the sixth month in a row, property prices fell in April - this time by over 1%. The average UK home is now worth £178,555, which is a drop of £1,759 since April last year.

Just as well, some would say, given that more and more mortgage borrowers are going to need to stump up 10% or even 15% of the value of the house as a deposit……

Broadly speaking, there are two reasons why someone might want to sell an existing website. It might be because the website has grown into a proper internet business which is now worth a considerable sum to the right buyer.

Or (and this is more often the case) you may want to sell a website because it is failing to give you any kind of decent income and is becoming more trouble than it is worth.

If you have got a site that is of no use to you, you’re probably thinking that no-one in their right mind would want to buy it. But, the good news is that there are actually people who go out of their way to buy websites from people - especially websites that are no performing very well.

Why is this? Are they mad?

Well, perhaps it might seem that way. But, don’t forget that people have been buying failing or ailing businesses from other people for years and certainly long before the birth of the internet.

The truth of the matter is that just because a website or any other business is unsuccessful under its current ownership, that is not to say that a chance of management might not be all that is needed to turn things around.

Making money from a website is a skilled art and it is not something that any old Tom Dick or Harry can turn his hand to overnight. The kind of people who make money from the internet do so because they know what they are doing and have had years of practice.

So, if you have a website that you want to sell because it is not making you any money, there is a good chance that someone who is in the business of buying websites might be prepared ot make you an offer for your site - knowing that there is a good chance they can turn it around into a money-making operation to either keep or sell on.

This practice is so common that there is actually a name for the process of buying a poorly performing website, improving it and then selling it on for a profit: it’s called website flipping.

The members of The Where On Earth Group have launched or help launch various successful online businesses and also regularly buy second hand websites.

If you have got a website that you want to sell, why not talk to them. They may be willing to make you an offer or alternatively help you turn the site into a profit making business in return for a share of future revenues. Either way, if your website is making no money for you at the moment, you have nothing to lose and potentially everything to gain.

They also claim to be able to offer a better deal than 90% of all home insurance quotes via their links with leading household insurers such as Churchill, esure, More Than, Endsleigh, and many others.

To get a no-obligation quote, just click here.

The idea of BANS is that you use the highly successful eBay affiliate scheme to make money via the internet.

Like may big companies, eBay has an affiliate scheme whereby they pay commissions to affiliates based on the revenue generated by visitors that you send to their site. So, if someone visits your website, clicks one of your affiliate links to go to the eBay site and then wins an auction, then you will get a percentage of the fees that eBay earns from that auction.

The simplest way to do this would be to have one or more webpages that explain what eBay is and how it works and then have affiliate banners on those pages which promote eBay and allow your site visitors to click through to eBay and hopefully bid and win an auction.

To be honest, the chances of such a haphazard approach actually working are slim. But that is where BANS comes to the rescue.

What BANS does is allow you to create your own online shop promoting items that are currently for sale on eBay. And here’s the best bit - you don’t need to to be a web designer or programmer as the BANS software does all the hard work for you. All you have to do is decide what kind of products you want to sell.

Over the past couple of weeks, my wife and I have each set up a BANS site. My one is all about golf equipment. You can see it by clicking here. As you can see, there is a left hand menu which lists all the products categories and then there are subsections within quite a lot of those categories. Whatever category you select, the page displays relevant items currently being auctioned on eBay.

And remember - I didn’t have to spend hours designing and building this site. All I had to do was install the BANS software, tell it what eBay category (i.e. Golf) I wanted to promote and it did the rest.

Since setting up the site I have done some basic search engine optimisation work on it which took about four hours and now the site just runs itself bringing in a steady income.

My wife decided to focus on baby products and her BANS site can be seen at www.baby-world.biz.

To find out more about the Build a Niche Store software and to try it risk free, just click here to visit the BANS site.

For those companies working in the commercial and private housing sectors its looks slightly bleaker with a sharp drop in people buying properties and with banks offering less attractive mortgage products they will do well to escape the current conditions unscathed.

On the other hand a plus side for property maintenance companies as more and more people opt for rented accommodation. With landlords having to keep up maintenance on all their properties we could see a sharp rise in this sector.

Most at risk are Subcontractors that have paid for materials and labour up front and are awaiting payments from companies. Banks are not lending money as freely as they have been, so will be reluctant to lend money to bridge this gap.

Subcontractors who are keen to ensure they don’t end up short of work can sign up to Subdirect and gain themselves maximum exposure on the web for just £10 a year.

For a start it offers an interest free credit card balance transfer facility for 10 months. So, if you have got debts on your existing credit cards, you can transfer the balance to the Post Office card and not pay any interest on the transferred balance for 10 months.

Usually a credit card is either good news for purchasers or good news for people doing balance transfers - but seldom good for both types of credit card user.

But the Post Office credit card scores well on both counts. Because as well as the 0% balance transfer feature, it also offers an interest-free deal for new purchases for the first three months. After the three month introductory period, the interest rate is 1.385% per month (unless of course you clear the balance each month in which case there is no interest to pay).

And if that wasn’t enough, the card also offers a great deal if you use it abroad. Most credit card companies charge fees or commission if you use your credit card when you are overseas on holiday or on business. But with the Post Office credit card you pay no commission on purchases that you make abroad using your card.

Sounds good so far: 0% interest on balance transfers for 10 months, 0% interest on purchases for three months, and a permanent 0% commission on purchases made outside the UK.

Is there a catch? Well, not as far as I can see. The only bits of smallprint I can find are that the balance transfers are subject to a handling fee, which seems to be the case with all credit cards these days. In the case of the Post Office card the balance transfer handling fee is 2.75% of the amount transferred. The only other point to note about the transfer offer is that for the 10 months interest free offer you have to make the transfer within three months of first getting the card.

On the plus side, though, the 0% balance transfer offer becomes available again on new transfers for a five month period once you have had the card for a year and again when you reach your second anniversary.

And if you are making large purchases, there is a separate payment plan offer that means you can have a lower interest rate for one-off purchases of items costing from £500 to £2000.

As a final bonus, almost everything you buy on your Post Office credit card is insured against accidental damage, loss and theft for up to 90 days from the date of purchase.

If you want to apply or find out more, just click here.

The credit crunch has far reaching consequences and affects all sorts of different businesses to a greater or lesser extent.

One sector that is suffering badly is the mortgage market. Of course we have all heard the high profile stories on the news about the effects of the credit crunch on this country’s banks and building societies. After all, it was the Northern Rock story which first brought the problems in the financial services industry to the public’s attention.

But what about the smaller companies involved in the mortgage business - the one or two man band financial advisers and mortgage brokers who help arrange mortgages for large numbers of the UK’s homeowners?

Well, they certainly are not short of enquiries. I’m involved in the running of a number of websites that give information on mortgages and provide leads to mortgage brokers. Visitor numbers to these sites are at an all time high as more and more people take to the internet in search of the best mortgages.

The problem is that often the mortgage advisers have little or nothing to offer these people. A year or so ago there were something like 8,500 different mortgage products to choose from. Over the past 12 months that figure has shrunk dramatically. The borrowing criteria have got much stricter too. So, whereas last year someone with credit problems might well have been able to borrow up to 90% of the value of their home, the lenders will now only look at a maximum of 75% or 80% in many cases.

So, the choice of products that a mortgage adviser can recommend to his clients is often severely limited.

What makes it worse is that the mortgage market is changing from one day to the next with products being withdrawn left, right and centre. One mortgage broker I was speaking to the other day told me it is not uncommon to help a client pick a suitable mortgage in the morning and then find that by the time they go to put the application form in the post later that day, the mortgage product has been withdrawn by the lender.

These problems are not just affecting borrowers who have got credit problems from previous late payments, CCJs, etc. increasingly, borrowers with a steady job and no history of bad credit are finding it tougher to get a mortgage.

Traditionally, these are the people who would be more likely to wander into their local bank for a mortgage than to use the services of a mortgage broker. But now that is not nearly so easy and even experts who previously cautioned people against paying fees to mortgage advisers are now going on national TV and saying that a broker’s expertise is worth paying for after all - even for borrowers who do not have any black marks on their credit file.

So, that’s another stream of new enquiries for the average mortgage broker. But that doesn’t mean he is necessarily able to do anything with those enquiries or make an easy buck.

In the past, once a borrower was given a formal mortgage offer by the bank, it was valid for typically six months or more and that was set in stone. So long as the buyer completed on their house purchase or remortgage within that time then they were assured of the promised funds.

But according to those in the industry that I have spoken to, those rules are now out of the window. What happens now is that some of the biggest lenders are re-underwriting the cases every month and making sure they still fit any new lending criteria that may have been introduced since the original mortgage offer was made. If the new criteria are not met, then the offer gets withdrawn.

What does that mean in practice? Well, let’s suppose that tomorrow you put in an offer on a house for £200,000 based on being able to get a mortgage of £180,000. That’s a loan to value of 90%. Once the survey is done and the paperwork completed, you would then expect to get a formal offer from the lender.

Then suppose it takes three or four months to get to exchange of contracts (which, let’s face it, is not uncommon when you are moving house and their is a chain of buyers, vendors and solicitors involved). And now suppose that a week or so before exchange, your bank that liked to say “yes” suddenly decides that it is reducing what it will lend people to a maximum of 85% - not just for all new applicants but also for people like you who have been offered a mortgage but not yet completed.

That means you can now only borrow £170,000 instead of the £180,000 you need. As a result, there is a very good chance that the whole chain will collapse leaving several people in the lurch.

Once that starts to happen on a regular basis then what chance is there for the UK housing market - which, let’s be honest, is already looking pretty knackered?

A business that is struggling has two options. It can attempt to increase the amount of trade that it does or it can try to reduce its costs. The wise business owner will attempt to do both.

But for mortgage brokers at the moment, they don’t seem to be able to do either of those things. They have no shortage of enquiries, but their hands are tied by the fact that their suppliers (the banks) are not providing the products for them to sell to their clients.

I know of two or three mortgage brokers who are looking like they may go under shortly or who are attempting to diversify into other things - such as helping people reclaim unfair bank charges or unfair mortgage fees (poachers and gamekeepers anyone?).

The upshot is that even if the mortgage marketplace sorts itself out (which it must surely do eventually) then by the time it does there may not be many mortgage advisers left. So, as has already happened with other areas of financial services such as pensions, investments, or life insurance, there will end up being too few advisers left in the industry and the ultimate loser will be the consumer who finds he now has less access to the help and advice he needs ot make an informed financial decision.

Of course most people don’t refer to them as Neanderthals nowadays; they are more commonly known as “Scum” or “low lifes”. You only need to look at the facial features of these low life life scum to recognise the enormous similarities; projecting mid face, elongated, low, flat skull, projecting brow, lack of protruding chin and broad projecting nose to realise my theory has substance.

They are the people you see and would prefer to cross the road rather than pass in close quarters. Their children are resposnible for most of the vandalism, car theft and petty crime, whilst their parent(s) laze around at home with no care about what they are doing. These are the Neanderthals who choose to live on benefits rather than work. They have no respect for society or other people’s property, burning cars they have stolen, empty property and genrally complaining that those who are better off are simply lucky.

Neanderthal man has been living and breeding amongst us all the time. They breed amongst one another, rarely making the transition across to marry a Homo Sapien, although they are often known to rape them. this is why Neanderthal man has not died out; most people realised they were different but simply put this down to social circumstances.

The police are powerless to stop them because the courts dish out ridiculously low penalties allowing them back onto the streets to commit more crime. They laugh at the police and courts because they know they will be free to roam within a few days.

It is time that we took these people to task and put them on ring fenced estates where they would be unable to mix with the rest of decent humanity. They should be permanently contained in an environment where they can do as much damage as they like because they will have to live in the squalor of their own making.

By removing them permanently from society, the crime rate in the UK would drop considerably. we already have to pay for their social benefits and rent so the cost of putting up barbed wire fences around some of the worst estates would be more than recovered in the reduction in crime.

There was a time when infant mortalitity rates kept these Neanderthals down to a manageable level. Now they breed to qualify for housing and other benefits and the NHS makes sure they survive. By putting males in one ring fenced estate and females in another, it would ensure that they were unable to continue to populate.

Of course the PC brigade will argue that this is against their human rights and it is not their fault and that society has forgotten these people and let them down. However, what about the human rights of the people who are the victims of these scum? As for it being their fault, they are given every opportunity regarding schooling and employment as everyone else. They simply do not want to better themselves if it takes even a modicum of effort.

All that is required is to move the decent people out of a few estates to the houses where the scum have been removed and move the Neanderthals into the worst estates where they can commit as much mayhem as they like because it won’t affect any decent human beings.

The crime rate would drop, policing costs would fall, our streets would be safer, social security and unemployment costs would plunge and we could all walk the streets at night feeling far safer.