For those who made the conscious decision to spend more on free range or organic eggs, it was worth paying a premium to know the hens that laid them had been kept in ethical conditions.

But those people who ended up paying over the odds for Keith Owen’s eggs may feel a little less warm inside after it emerged the 44-year-old egg wholesaler had scammed all the major supermarkets and numerous small shops by passing off about 100m battery farmed eggs as free range or organic.

Owen, a married father-of-two from Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, was jailed for three years today and forced to surrender the £3m profit he had made by “dishonestly and systematically” mis-describing eggs over a two-year period. The fraud abused “well-intentioned public trust” by scamming innocent customers who had paid extra to ensure better animal welfare, Worcester crown court heard.

Defra, which brought the prosecution, said it was the biggest case of its kind it had ever investigated.

Owen ran Heart of England Eggs Unlimited, an egg-packing business that supplied bigger packing companies, which, in turn, provided the vast majority of eggs to the well-known supermarkets, including Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Tesco, as well as smaller retailers.

Last week he pleaded guilty to three charges of fraudulent accounting which involved him altering records to disguise the fact he was buying eggs laid by caged hens and selling them for a vast profit after “mis-describing” them in paperwork.

His barrister, John Kelsey-Fry QC, suggested his client was not alone in creating what he described as “mischief” in the egg industry.

“It’s not the case that all those to whom Mr Owen supplied eggs were concerned to ensure the provenance of the eggs was as described,” said Kelsey-Fry, adding it would be “inappropriate” to elaborate. Helen Pidd, The Guardian.

Why is it inappropriate for a barrister to provide evidence of widespread fraud – but then as we all know the law is an ass.

The simple answer is to buy your eggs from the farm gate – driving around the country side you’ll see many signs for free range eggs – here you can visit the chickens for yourself and see the conditions they live in – it’s the only way to be assured your eggs are cruelty free – not only that your eggs will be cheaper.

Fed up with the high cost of shaving and the need to continually buy blades? Then maybe Raz*War is for you – for as little as €27.50 you can get a year’s supply of razors delivered to your door – You can order a free discovery kit so you can try out their service – I’ve ordered mine and I’ll let you know how I get on.

Hat Tip: Springwise.

As long as it’s getting the money Google pays but lip service to the problem of sponsored links in its search results being all too often for scam websites which at best sell counterfeit goods or more likely take your money and fail to deliver anything at all.

In the words of Jaclyn Clarabut, of Which? Computing ‘If it seems too good to be true, it probably is’.

If it’s a sponsored link be it Google, MSN or AOL be on your guard it could be a fraud.

In 2006 Ben Edelman, an academic at Harvard University, conducted a study of the trustworthiness of sites with sponsored links at the five main search engines. He found that 5.93 per cent of Google’s sponsored links were untrustworthy, rising to 6.01 per cent for MSN and 7.2 per cent for AOL. This percentage increased for particular key words — 23.5 per cent of results for “digital music”, for example, were untrustworthy.

He concluded that search engine advertisements are “needlessly risky” and that consumers should simply click on the top free search result. Source: The Times.

And beware that these sites can look very professional indistinguishable from the real thing – it’s easy to say but always check a website before you use it for the first time. About.com has a pretty good guide aptly named Don’t be a sucker.

Meanwhile Google is collecting up to £5 a click a doing little other saying it doesn’t knowingly advertise these sites but claims it “can’t regulate the internet” and why it seems the vast profits it’s making from the scam don’t give it any inclination to solve the problem.

Money Saving Expert’s MegaShopBot.com is the first price check website you should visit – and it’s probably the only price check website you need. What MegaShopBot.com does is searches what it considers the best shopping comparison sites to find you the cheapest price.

For those of us who aren’t millionaires Martin Lewis’ Money Saving Expert website should be at the top of our bookmarks, and his Teenage Cash Class should be compulsory reading.

What’s in it?

Lesson 1: A company’s job is to make money

A company’s job is to make money; it is NOT there to help you, it is NOT your friend. They spend billions on advertising, marketing, and teaching their staff to sell; all to make you part with your cash, even when you shouldn’t!

Lesson 2: Debt isn’t bad, bad debt is bad

There’s very little chance you’ll be able to live your life without borrowing money at any point, whether it’s for university, a house or something else you need. Get it wrong and it’ll cost you a fortune. Unlike most other things we spend cash on, you can’t cancel debts, so you need to get it right the first time.

Lesson 3: Loyalty doesn’t pay

Loyalty is for losers, and doesn’t pay. The normal rules don’t apply here, stick with the same people longer and you’ll get less. Martin Lewis, Money Saving Expert.

A Dutch company 94 Wines sells well; 94 wines – no labels and no names, just 94 bottles numbered and coloured each listing the grape variety, region of origin and alcohol strength with brief tasting notes. You can answer six simple questions and 94 Wines will select three wines for you to purchase – I rather like the idea and design of the bottles. Now comes the clever/daft bit depending on your view.

Each bottle has a QR Code also know as a two dimensional bar code and what do theses do?

Users with a camera phone equipped with the correct reader software can scan the image of the QR Code causing the phone’s browser to launch and redirect to the programmed URL. This act of linking from physical world objects is known as a hard link or physical world hyperlinks. Wikipedia.

94 Wines allows you to load text, photo or even a video to their website so each bottle can have it’s own custom QR Code – all included in the price – trouble is I don’t know of many people who know what to do with a QR Code – maybe it’d different in Holland – I don’t know – personally I go with daft idea.

So what’s the wine taste like? I’ve no idea – I’ll have to buy some although I’m not sure they deliver to the UK – Oh Well.

According to research published by Consensus Action on Salt and Health (Cash), which examined the salt content of 190 jars, pots and packets of pasta, the highest salt product was in Jamie Oliver’s olive and garlic sauce, with 3g per 100g, or 5.3g of salt per recommended 175g portion of sauce. That is equivalent to 88% of an adult’s recommended limit of 6g of salt a day in just one serving and roughly the same as eating more than 10 packets of ready salted crisps.

His other tomato sauces also contained high amounts of salt, at 3g per portion of fiery tomato and chilli, 2.8g per portion of red onion and rosemary, and 2.6g per portion of tomato and basil. Jill Insley, The Guardian.

I never could stand the pseudo cockney fake Jamie Oliver and now it turns out he’s been flogging us not just unhealthy pasta sauces for years but the most unhealthy sauces on the market – and here’s a man who has campaigned endlessly on improving the health of children’s school dinners – but when it comes to his own profit Oliver seems to take a different line – profit first, health – who cares?

Cotton Traders Advert

How on earth can you be the first to buy our best selling raglan fleece? Surely if you’re the first it hasn’t sold anything yet – unless the truth is Cotton Traders don’t actually sell anything – daft advertising I suggest Cotton Traders employ a copywriter.

The Money Saving Expert website reckons we should use Zeezaw:

Amazon varies the price of goods, yet often when the price is low, the goods sell out at speed. There’s a new free tool that tells you when Amazon reduces the price of your goods, so you buy at the perfect moment.

Simply tell Zeezaw the max price you want to pay for any Amazon item, and e-mails you when the price drops to that amount. The site does not collect any of your details or passwords, it just works through your Amazon Wishlist. MSE Jenny, Money Saving Expert.

Well I’ve given it a whirl – too early to say how good it is – but it’s easy to set up.

I wouldn’t claim to be a wine buff – but I do like my wine and one of the best places to buy wine is Majestic – until now you’ve always had to purchase 12 bottles – which can be a little expensive but now when you visit a store you can purchase just 6 – good news – the 12 limit still applies to online and deliveries.