Combining the health benefits of cherries and the sweet and sour taste has seen health food producers jump at the chance to launch new products. Tart cherries have long-since been connected to pain relief but only now is that fact been spread around on a much larger scale. The fact that tart cherries contain 19 times more vitamin A than strawberries and blueberries as well as being packed with many more minerals and other vitamins. This news of the health benefits of cherries has seen gyms, health clubs and diet supplements incorporate cherries and cherry juice into their ingredients. The fact that cherry juice tastes so great and can mixed with other superfruits is a bonus!

More and more people in the UK are becoming more knowledgeable about their health and what’s good and not to eat and drink. With more people looking after their bodies, going to the gym, joining fitness camps and groups, and shunning fast-food for fruit and vegetables, it seems that they are more inclined to opt for healthy drinks and superfruit products instead of reaching for bad food. As the health risks of fast-food and prepackaged food is being seen on the TV from celebrity chefs and health programmes, the future of cherries and cherry juice is liking to be seen more often.

This has caused £37bn in scammed money over the years and it is through gifts, aeroplane tickets, perfume, clothing and if they are struggling to repay their debts. It’s not just money that the scammer takes, they force the victim into stripping on the webcam, which then gets sold to adult sites and will do anything just to stay in the e-relationship. Both men and women are being scammed by dating site scammers, and it’s often people that live abroad that genuinely cannot meet up with the other. This means that the con-artist can work their magic in taking as much money as possible for bills, hospital costs and other sob-stories that make the victim pay up.

The victims are often so ashamed of the ordeal that they don’t report the crime but the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) is clamping down on the scammers and helping those that have fallen foul to the scams. Many people don’t realise they are falling for the scam until they are told or it’s too late and they themselves are lounging serious debt.

Self-esteem is being rocked from all angles due to TV adverts, social media, reality TV shows and makeover shows that are rocking women’s views of themselves, which in turn makes them focus on only their appearance and not making a career for themselves. The lack of confidence in looks rolls over to the confidence to chase dreams and aspirations of being a future prime minister, an Olympic athlete or a chief executive. Young girls aged 11-16 are already struggling to maintain a positive attitude about their figures and feel that the way they look is more important to them than their future career.

The Government have already introduced self-esteem classes, which has seen 800,000 children involved and 1,400 classes from Beat, the eating-disorder charity, helping children feel better about what they eat. Even high-achieving girls have low self-esteem and we could see potential leaders fall by the wayside as deep-seated anxieties are becoming a major factor in women reaching their full potential. It’s thought that childhood trauma, bullying and obesity is the biggest factor in stopping women from going on to lead healthy, happy and prosperous lives, and this is something that the Government are trying to address as there is already a generation of females that are depressed due to their appearance.

The results from research suggested that 50% of students, up to 60% in some cases, would struggle to use English skills, such as writing, reading, punctuation, grammar, spelling and be able to study on their own without some sort of help. Undergraduates are therefore being given independent learning skills to help them boost their overall stature as a student, and many blame the diluted A-Levels that are being taught to the test, which means that college students simply have to remember what has been taught when it comes to exam time. When it comes to starting university, students do not have the skills to form arguments, think for themselves and think critically, and will therefore struggle unless they are given help.

Teachers are being forced to give advanced coaching to students so that they can pass the exams, which would then make the university look better in the rankings, but this is not providing a true case of the calibre of graduates that complete the course. Calls for a limit of the number of resits is also being pushed forward as more and more students are taking advantage of having three or four bites at the cherry, and this is taking its toll on the number of graduates that are still unemployed after they leave.

With a lot of legal-wrangling from Attorney Generals and privacy campaigners stating that their use of the data is troubling, only around 12% of people have actually read the new policy changes – although that data was only found from accessing user’s activity! Slightly less than half of the people questioned did not know that the changes were going to be so big, and that the privacy policies were too difficult to understand exactly what was changing.

There are fears that the search engine giants are putting their advertisers before their customers and despite efforts from the Europe as some of the policies need to comply with various different laws across the continent, the company is going ahead with the changes anyway. Arguments from Google state that they are merely making the search experience more accurate for their users, for example if a user watches a video on YouTube then their web history will be accounted for when they search for something relevant from then on.

Using a variety of Google Apps, including mobile apps and smartphone usage, the company can deliver results based on the movements and interests of their target market for their advertisers so that the results are much more focused than any other form of advertising in the world. Google also states that users can increase their privacy before the new policy begins.

This is great news for pubs around the country that were thinking of adding more to the menu rather than just different ales and spirits. It was found that only 14% of people head to a pub for a drink only, while 31% go to socialise with their friends and 36% tend to go for a meal and a drink. However, added to those figures if a pub has a wide range of drinks and rare bottles of beer and exotic cocktails then they would be more likely to be chosen.

The pub is not just seen as somewhere to drink away the night any more, it seems, as it’s more of a social event and somewhere to spend a few hours with your close friends and enjoy a good, hearty British meal. Many people suggest to their friends and family to go to a pub based on the quality of the meal and service they experience, so for a pub thinking of going into the food industry, getting the menu and the right atmosphere right in their establishment can have startling effects on their earnings.

It’s also been reported that the level of service and expectations for a pub has changed dramatically over the past five years and now that people want to spend more time in the pub and socialise, it’s more geared around comfort and a friendly place to be rather than a drab, traditional public house.

Overall, the annual cost of nurseries and child minders rose by an astonishing 4% for children under two years old and with the tax credits from the Government coming under fire, low income families are struggling to cope and even think it’s easier to quit their jobs to look after their children and fend off the benefits system.

Although 44,000 less families are receiving help from the tax credits system, which has impacted across the board with around £500 less being given per year, the average costs of day care are £100 per week, or around £5,000 per year, and this has seen families forced into debt. With regional prices of childcare differing, for example it costs around £300 per week in London for childcare in a part-time place, and as the inflation-busting costs of childcare has made family’s budgets even more stretched.

To combat this, the Government are encouraging employers to allow flexible working hours for their staff to take the burden off tax credits and people struggling to stay in work so that they can look after their young children. With the childcare tax credits coming into place in 2015, which will give free education to 2-4 year olds, this should help reduce the struggle that low-income families have.

The new rules, regulations and tax system will mean that parents in low-paid jobs will be able to give their children a fair start in life with free education and free childcare from an early age. There is a £300 million investment into childcare costs to help families coming into place soon.

The Liverpool girls are so confident in their appearance that they will happily wear rollers in their hair outside and dress down in public. Although the city’s inhabitants sells more false eye-lashes, the boisterous girls are happy to wander around the city without any make-up on throughout the day then go all out for a night on the tiles. It’s this drastic change in looks that makes women in Liverpool feel happy about being seen without make-up or eye-lashes on, as they know that they can completely transform their look in a few hours for their night out in Liverpool city centre.

The news comes as a positive message to others around the country as it shows there is an inner-confidence in women that needs to be uncovered before the real beauty can shine through. However, most women in Liverpool feel that using a very good moisturiser helps their skin look great even when they don’t have make-up on so they feel better within themselves.

The survey also found that the next most confident girls who would be happy to be seen without make-up on were in Norwich, Cambridge, Portsmouth and Edinburgh. The general consensus from women around the UK thought that the best looking natural celebrities were Keira Knightley, Kate Winslet, Emma Watson, Holly Willoughby and the Duchess of Cambridge.

The respondents were also asked which of the biggest names in the world they would be more likely to listen to, and Bill Gates was at number two, while Sir Alan Sugar came in at 6th place. One of Hollywood’s most committed stars to eco-friendliness, Leonardo DiCaprio, came in at number 19 and was no more influential than Cheryl Cole or David Beckham. The results also showed that US politicians would have more of an impact, with Al Gore in 4th place, President Obama in 5th place, and Nick Clegg in 9th, while Boris Johnson the London Mayor was in 10th place. Prince Charles came in third place, showing that our royal family still carries influence.

With Climate Week approaching from the 12-18th March, the world is gearing up to promote changes in our lifestyle to help climate change, and will urge everyone to do their bit. After the success of last year’s Climate Week, where over 500,000 people attended events around the country, this year will hopefully be bigger and better, as more people understand and are aware of the problems that affect our climate. By communicating scientific facts about the effects of climate change to the masses, this will hopefully have more of an impact on the way people lead their lives.

Comparing all of the financial products in the mainstream marketplace, only pensions were lower at 31% of people claimed they did not understand the differences of pensions and what they were entitled to. However, on the flip-side, the respondents were quite comfortable in understanding and having knowledge of car or van insurance, which seven out of ten people knew what they were getting, but with critical illness, mortgage payment protection insurance, annuities and pensions were found to be the most misunderstood. The news could account for those consumers that feel they have been mis-sold insurance or bought insurance and not realised the implications of the policy they have bought. It might also be the case for people not buying PPIs as they simply can’t see the benefit of the insurance.

The results come at a time of a possible economic double-dip, which could see insurance claims being filed and if the consumer doesn’t realise exactly what they are covered for it could have serious financial implications. On the other side of the coin, consumers without PPI protection could find they would have benefited from it, as more and more redundancies are being made in the UK. With the UK unemployment rate soaring, it’s about time financial institutions explained protection policies more thoroughly so that consumers can make informed decisions in whether to buy it or not.