Despite record breaking temperatures in July in the UK we now enter into August which is traditionally hotter only to find it is so cold I have had to put the central heating on!

The forecast for the rest of the week is just as bad with rain, rain and more rain. At least we won’t have to break the hosepipe ban watering the grass.

Maybe I should move to a country with a more predictable and better climate.

It seems that not a day goes by when I don’t get an email telling me I’ve won a lottery that I haven’t even entered. How lucky am I?

Of course these are all scams and all there after is your money. Below is the latest one I got.

“Dear Beneficiary,

We happily notify you of the draw of the Email Lottery Ballot – World Gaming Board Sweepstakes program held on the 1st of Aug, 2006. Your email address attached to our Lottery payment order, had the following particulars:(i) Ticket Nr. DZNL 492 – 714 – 027 / 2006; (ii) Lucky Nrs. 09, 22, 36, 61, 63, 79, 84; (iii) Reference Nr. NUWL / DZNL / 48326MST; (iv) Batch Nr.:DTOW 1396 62U7A; which consequently won you this lottery in the 1st category. You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of One Million Euro only, in cash credited to your File Reference number as quoted above. This is from a total cash prize of Fifty Million Euro only, shared amongst the fifty winners in this category.

All participants were selected randomly from the internet through the computer draw system, extracted from over 140 countries that are listed, online. Microsoft Corporation, to encourage some individuals with websites and email addresses promoted this lottery which takes place at this time, of every three years.

The payment authority of your prize – One Million Euro only – already paid and insured in your name with our Paying bank will be issued to effect immediate/swift transfer in the mode you will prefer and nominate, upon satisfactory report on your identity verification and validation recommendation by our Claims Department.

We are proud to inform you that, over 200 million Euro are won annually in more than 140 countries worldwide, as a result of our promotional programmes.

Due to the mixup of certain names, you are advised to keep your winning information confidential until your claim has been processed and your money paid to you. All winnings must be claimed not later than 30th of Sept, 2006. After this date, all unclaimed funds will be withdrawn.“

The sad thing is though that people do fall for these emails and can end up loosing a lot of money. If you ever get one of these emails just forward it to scams@fraudwatchinternational.com and then delete the email. 

I did a search on Google today for funny ringtones. Out of the top 10 results 1 was a page not found and the cached version was a page of keyword spam, 5 redirected to what looked like pay per click pages, and 1 had no content. which leaves just 3 results for genuine pages. The next 10 results there were 7 redirects to what looked like pay per click pages.

That means for this search term out of the Top 20 results 70% is spam.

Now I’m not knocking Google as I think generally they do a pretty good job. I just wish they could detect redirects better so we can have better search results.

With ever increasing energy prices in the UK we are encouraged now to switch suppliers in order to get a better rate. One of the most popular ways of doing this is by visiting uSwitch.com. They offer a service where you enter in your existing supplier and how much you spend and they will compare all the prices of the different suppliers and tell you if you can get a better deal.

Now I did this a couple of months ago when I was with British Gas and the savings I made were quite considerable and I switched to Atlantic Electric and Gas. It all went through pretty smoothly and I was happy to save the money.

Being an affiliate marketer myself I know how these things work. Each time a customer switches suppliers uSwitch are paid a commission by your new supplier. They don’t hide this fact on their website and do tell you this and after all they are not a charity and need to cover their expenses somehow. I don’t have a problem with this.

My concern is though today I visited their site and input my existing supplier as Atlantic Electric and Gas, how much I spent, size of house and how many people live there and it told me that npower was cheaper. But, when I entered all my details again but this time told them that npower was my existing supplier and gave details of the plan they had told me was cheaper it tells me that Atlantic Electric and Gas was cheaper.

So once again I enter my details with the plan from Atlantic Electric and Gas that they tell me was cheaper and guess what? They tell me that npower is cheaper.

Confused about this I telephoned their customer services department to ask why this would be. The lady on the end of the phone tried to skirt the question and asked me things like are you happy with your existing supplier etc, to which I said yes but my concern was why their system kept telling me that another supplier was cheaper all the time. To this she said bear with me and the phone went dead. I guess I’ll never know.

I love the summer holidays. Not because I’m a student but because for 6 weeks whole of the year the roads are so much quieter. No Mums taking the kids to school in their big 4 x 4′s clogging up our already congested roads and adding to all the greenhouse gasses. On a journey that would normally take me 30 minutes now only takes 20. Think of how much extra time you have on your hands over the course of the holidays.

Whatever happened to kids walking to school? When I went was younger we all used to walk to school, rain shine or snow. It was about 1.5 miles each way and took about 30 minutes. Now the furthest most kids walk is to the car. No wonder there are so many fat kids around nowadays. They just don’t get the exercise anymore.