This is Miss Ellie the winner of this years ugliest dog competition. She is a pure breed Chinese created hairless and her unique feature include only having a few teeth, cataracts in both eyes and only limited hair. She definitely does deserve her title.

A man in Liverpool had a welcome surprise when he was undertaking work to insulate his loft. He came across some forgotten paintings which turned out to be worth £100,000. The collection of 100 painting by artist Erich Wolfsfeld has been in the loft for about 20 years. They were left to him by his late mother and were family heirlooms created by his stepfather. The painting are now due to be auctioned on the 7th of July. Unfortunately a recent clear out of my loft revealed only junk and no priceless antiques.

Further to yesterdays post about the batch of 20p coins that were produced without a date it appears you might be able to get a good price for them online. One has recently gone on sale on eBay for £20,000. Experts had originally predicted that the coins could be worth as much as £50 but it appears some people are willing to pay a lot more to get their hands on one. Sadly, having gone through all my change I don’t have one, but will certainly be keeping an eye out. I could certainly use an extra £20,000.

According to this article some supermarket salads contain more fat and calories than you would find in a Big Mac and fries. The consumer group Which? looked at a number of salads on sale in supermarkets. It founds that a Smedleys Atlantic prawn marie rose salad from Morrisons contained 855 calories and 66.3g of fat. A Sainsbury’s tomato and basil chicken salad also had a high fat content with 27.7g of fat and 595 calories. In comparison a Big Mac and medium fries contains 820 calories and 40g of fat. The reason for the high fat content of most of the salads was the fact that they contained a large amount of mayonnaise, creamy sauces or pasta all of which are high in fat.

According to this article a batch of coins have been minted that contain no date. The error is thought to have affected between 50,000 and 200,000 of 20p coins and is the first time in 300 years that coins have been minted without a date. The date on the 20p coin was moved last year from the tails side of the coin to the heads side. The coins with no date were created accidentally by pairing up the new tails side with the old heads side meaning they had no date on them at all. If you are lucky enough to find any they could be worth as much as £50, quite a bit more that the face value.

According to this article Waitrose shoppers are increasingly choosing the supermarkets budget range as they try to save money. Their essential range of products are packaged in simple white boxes and packets are similar to the basics range of products produced by Sainsbury’s. Sales of the range are up 11 per cent compared to a year ago and the supermarket expects to sell £600 million of essential products over the next 12 months. Sainsbury’s have also recently published figures that suggest shoppers are choosing the budget range of products. What do you think? Are you cutting back?

If you are unemployed and are able to leave the country for a while then this job might be for you. Described as a Globe Trotter it is the opportunity to travel around the world for a year and have it all paid for. The job is being offered by lastminute.com and all of the £20,000 travel expenses will be covered. The successful applicant needs no specific qualifications but they will need to write reviews on the hotels, restaurants and attractions that they visit. They will not receive a salary but the entire cost of the trip will be covered. If you want to apply you have until the 15th of July and need to send a photo of yourself having a good time on holiday and a 200 word review describing your experience.

The Tate have recently paid £30,000 for a till receipt from a little known artist. The receipt is supposedly a piece of conceptual art. Entitles Monochrome Till Receipt (white) it is simply a receipt for £70.32 worth of grocery items all of which happen to be white. It contains 36 items all of which are white, including boil in the bag rice and Andrex toilet tissue. The artist described the work as a modern still life where objects are imagined rather than shown. The receipt also comes with a list of instructions from the artist which state that a new receipt must be used every time the work is shown because till receipts are light sensitive and fall apart. Each time a new receipt is produced it must be based upon the original which is now archived by the Tate. This certainly isn’t my idea of art.

For those who thought they had seen the end of Woolworths the good news is that is back but in an online form. The new website has recently been launched and is proving to be popular according to this article which says nearly 100,000 people logged on in the first few hours. Much loved brands such as Ladybird clothing and pic ’n’ mix sweets can still be found on the site. The new owner Shop Direct brought the brand name in February and has kept the red logo that customers will recognise from the stores. The online stores will sell much the same things that you would expect to have found in a Woolworths shop but they will also sell some larger items that were to big to sell in store.

This is interesting its an idea for laser guided cars that do all the driving for you. The cars would allow the driver to do something else whilst still being behind the wheel meaning you could sleep, read or perhaps catch up on some work. They would work using sensors and wireless technology which would lock the cars together in a convoy with each vehicle following the one ahead. The car at the very front would be manned by a professional driver and all the other cars would simply follow. Drivers would pay a subscription for the service and would need to book ahead in order to secure a place in the convoy. They would then join the end of the convoy at the allotted time via a slip road and when they choose to leave their car would be guided off onto their chosen slip road. I’m not sure I fancy it, it seems to bring back memories off getting stuck behind a tractor for some strange reason.

This is one of the more bizarre stories I have come across recently. It suggests that stoned wallabies are responsible for making crop circles in parts of  Tasmania. Apparently the wallabies have been getting into fields of poppies which are being grown for medicine. The problem is that they quickly become intoxicated by the legally grown opium which makes them run around in circles creating the crop circles in the fields. Other animals such as sheep have also been spotted acting unusually in the fields so it appears the effect is not restricted to the kangaroos.

Sainsbury’s will be the first of the major supermarkets to scrap cereal boxes on its own brands. The supermarket will stop using cereal boxes and will instead use recyclable plastic bags. Sainsbury’s have already started selling milk in polythene bags in an attempt to cut down on packaging. Scrapping cereal boxes should mean that they cut down on packaging by a third. They have already started stocking basics Rice Pops in the new packaging and eventually hope to scrap boxes for all of their own brand cereals. They have also reduced packaging on soft fruit by replacing the plastic punnet with a lid with a heat seal wrap and are looking at reducing packaging on meat.

This cute little guy is one of three baby Fennec fox cubs that have been born at a zoo in Tokyo. They are only a few months old and are being raised in human care as their parents were unable to raise them. The cubs will grow up to 75cm long when they mature. Unfortunately the article has unhelpfully compared them to the Pokemon character Pikachu, I can see there are going to be a lot of children wanting one of these but although they are meant to make good pets I think they are better off in the zoo or even better in the wild.

According to this article the English wine industry is increasing significantly with an increase of 45 per cent over the last four years. There are now 416 vineyards in England, a total of 2,732 acres on vines under cultivation. Most English grapes are currently used to make sparkling wine and it is estimated that around 5 million bottles will be made a year. In comparison to other countries such as France whose Champagne region alone produces 50 million bottles, this is still a small amount but is a huge increase from ten years ago. As English wine becomes more popular some supermarkets such as Waitrose have started planting vines. They are growing chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier grapes at their Leckford Estate in Hampshire. Despite the claims that English wine is becoming more widely produced I don’t think I have seen any on the shelf in the supermarket yet, although I will continue to look out for it.

This is interesting its one woman's project to wear the same dress for a year. Its a year long fundraising project devised by Akanksha Foundation to raise money for uniforms and other expenses for slum children in India. For a year Akanksha will wear the same dress but will reinvent it every day by adding different accessories. She actually has 7 of the same dress, I guess having just the one would make keeping it clean rather difficult but it is still an interesting project. So far she is two months into the project and has come up with lots of different combinations. I’m not sure I could be so imaginative, I would probably run out of ideas after the first few days.