This article suggests that balance transfer deals are disappearing in what appears to be a clamp down on easy credit. Research has shown that there are only nine credit companies offering a long term 0% balance transfer deal. This is compared with over 200 companies a year ago. The research which was carried out by www.fool.co.uk found there are now only 20 cards from 9 providers that offer a 0% balance transfer for a minimum of 10 months. It looks like it could be time to pay off that credit card balance.

Nationwide have increased the minimum deposit required to secure its best interest rate. Previously anyone putting down a 10% deposit could secure its best rate but this has now been increased to 25% of the value of the property. The move will mean that anyone with less than a 25% deposit will pay 0.2% more interest.

I thought I was seeing things when I came across the headline “Tony Blair launches artistic career”. It gets much stranger than that, however, when you learn that the Tony Blair to whom the article refers, is a rat. The artistic rat has been causing quite a stir in art circles with his masterpiece which is made entirely out of avocado. The rat has also produced another piece which features a gnawed four leaf clover which he calls “Am I still Lucky?” Tony’s owner says "I first noticed his creative potential when he walked across some clay tiles and left his paw prints and it went from there." I must see whether any of my cats are hiding an artistic talent.

A house in Kensington has sold for £80 million making it London’s most expensive home. The previous record was £67 million for a property in Kensington Palace Gardens. This property is five storeys high and has an underground swimming pool, a sauna and a gym.

I came across this really cute article about a boxer dog called Billy who has adopted a goat called Lilly. Billy has become Lilly’s constant companion, sleeping with her, cleaning her and protecting her from danger. How cute is that?

We have been talking about moving house for a long time and are finally starting to do something about it. Whilst I love our house, it is starting to get a little small for our needs and with four cats and running a business from home it’s definitely time to move on. We made the first step by getting an estate agent around to value our property the other day and were surprised to find it is worth quite a bit more than we expected. Over the next few weeks we will be moving all of our stuff into storage in a major effort to declutter the house. Then we plan to replace the carpets and do a bit of painting, before putting the house on the market. We will also be looking at other properties over the next few weeks and months to try and get an idea of the sort of house we are looking to move to. We have two houses to see at the weekend as well as a meeting with Lok’nStore where we plan to store the contents of our house whilst we are trying to sell it. It’s all very exciting and there are sure to be many property related post over the next few months. If it all goes to plan, hopefully we will soon be settled in a new home.

It’s interesting that the elephant population in South Africa has now got so large they will have to start culling the population. The elephant appears to have become a victim of its own success with numbers growing from just 8,000 to nearly 20,000 in just over ten years since culling was banned. An elephant herd at the Kruger National Park now has 12,500 elephants which according to park officials is 5,000 elephants too many. A new conservation plan will include killing the excess animals as well as other methods such as contraception and translocation. Culling the animals will only be allowed once the other options have been ruled out.

Supporters of culling say that the growing numbers of elephants are reducing forests to flatland and threatening the biodiversity of national parks. Conservationists on the other hand say that the environmental impact is less severe than claimed and that culling is deeply inhumane. To be able cull its elephants a national park or private reserves will need the approval of the authorities and an elephant management specialist. They must also show that they have first explored all the other options. With the elephant population still growing at a rate of 6% if no solution is found there could be 34,000 elephants by 2020, a number that wildlife officials say is unsustainable.

PC2Paper, the website that allows you to send real letters from the internet has just launched a new and easier way to use their service. It is called the PC2Paper Virtual Printer and basically allows you to print your letters as you would do to a normal desktop printer. The letters are then passed to PC2Paper who print and mail them for you. To use the service you need to have a PC2Paper account with credit in it. Then you simply download the PC2Paper printer from the website and install the driver. When you have a document that you want to mail, you just select the PC2Paper printer from the list of printers on your computer. Then just enter what sort of paper you require, what class of postage and what printing station you want it mailed from. You will then be asked for your PC2Paper user name and password. Once you input these, the letter is passed to the PC2Paper printing station and they take care of the rest for you. It has currently only been launched as a beta but it seems like a really good idea. There is more detail on how to use it on their blog.

Facebook saw its first drop in users during January prompting the question of whether it is starting to lose its appeal. Users fell by 5% to 8.9 million from 8.5 million according to data from Nielsen Online. All the indications show that the site is simply not as popular as it used to be. An internet analyst at Nielsen Online said that it was inevitable that growth rates could not be sustained and that numbers were likely to level out. Personally, whilst I used to log in to Facebook daily I  found that the amount of applications now available make it very distracting and time consuming. I now tend to spend just a few minutes a week on the site and ignore all new application requests.