The Government’s plans to reward eco-friendly households, has received a muted welcome for not being generous enough.

The clean energy cash-back plan, known as “feed-in tariffs“, offers incentives from April onwards, for those who install small scale renewable on their homes such as solar panels. The UK gets about 5.5% of its electricity from renewable sources, and in order to hit green targets in 10 years’ time, this would have to rise to 30%, which I just can’t see happening.

“Ministers have been far too timid with a policy that could make a significant contribution to cutting emissions and boosting energy security,” said Dave Timms, of Friends of the Earth. The Solar Trade Association said the rate of return was half of that seen under other schemes.

To be fair to the government, more is on its way. Proposals for a second incentive scheme for renewable heat, with people being paid to install technology such as ground source heat pumps and biomass boilers are on the agenda for the 2010 Budget.

Another way the government could reduce Britain’s carbon footprint, is to insist on all new promotional products be eco friendly. One quality distributor of eco friendly promotional products is ecoproducts2order.

They are able to supply a complete solution to your promotional product needs, from traditional eco friendly cotton shoppers to more unusual green corporate gifts. Eco friendly promotional products don’t have to be the usual recycled pen and pencils. They can take many forms, my favourite being the eco friendly promotional piggy bank!

Did you see the British number 1; miss out on his first Grand Slam title yesterday? Despite being Fedorized, Andy Murray said his desire to win a Grand Slam title remained intact, despite a solid defeat at the Australian Open.

The Briton lost 6-3 6-4 7-6 (13-11) to Roger Federer in Sunday’s final. “I’m hungry to win one,” said the 22-year-old Scot. “I haven’t since I was 16, 17 years old when I started playing the junior Grand Slams.”I worked really, really hard to try to do it and give myself the opportunity. So far it’s not been good enough but I’m sure one day it will be.”

Andy Murray’s defeat means that the 74-year-wait for a British male Grand Slam singles champion continues, a British man hasn’t won a major tournament since Fred Perry lifted the US Open trophy back in 1936.

Despite all the grey skies, if all this Tennis has got you in the mood for a game, I’m sure you would appreciate some quality Tennis related promotional products from The Promostore. The Promostore can supply a great range of branded Tennis items including; branded tennis balls, branded tennis bags and Men’s and Ladies’ cool fit sport tops.

If you are looking for any promotional sports item in particular, contact the friendly team over at The Promostore, who will be able to source exact what you’re looking for.

Pop music is big business, but Blur’s manager recently issued a word of warning to musicians, against appearing in just any sort of promotion.

In particular Chris Morrison pointed out: “I think Duffy’s Coca-Cola ad was abysmal and I think Robbie Williams on T Mobile was terrible. I don’t think either of those two things did any favours to the artists’ careers or the way they’re perceived. I think you have to be very, very careful about how you associate with brands.

Brit Pop legends Blur themselves have allowed their tracks to be used in commercials, with their 1997 hit Song 2 earning more than 20 times as much money through use in ads, TV shows and film soundtracks than in actual record sales.

Musicians from all genres of the aural spectrum invest heavily in promotional products too. Manchester based DJ & producer Mr Scruff, well known for his love of tea, is one artist to created some promotional mugs from this quality corporate gift supplier.

You can buy all sorts of promotional merchandise direct from his site, including promotional tea cups, T shirts, USB sticks and badges to name just a few.

Retail giant Argos (not the Peloponnesian city)  is one business who is no stranger to investing in promotional products such as branded mugs. Tomorrow the Home Retail Group-owned business is to launch a new logo and shift in tone of voice over the coming weeks, beginning with its spring/summer 2010 catalogue – and lots of branded mugs.

Argos hired branding consultancy The Brand Union, to create an identity which would help to “modernise perceptions” of the brand. In other words, to stop Argos’s current association with chavs. Their new identity will roll out to its 750 stores over a three-year period.

Siobhan Fitzpatrick, head of brand marketing at Argos, said over the past 30 years the retailer had developed an extremely loyal customer base with its focus on “value, choice and convenience” but the time had come for a change. The last time their branding was looked at back in 1999 when Argos hired consultancy Interbrand Newell and Sorrell, to create a visual identity to reflect its new “brighter shopping” marketing strategy.

Branded cosmetic items are nothing new, a quality promotional product supplier like Gift Selection can offer a great range of branded beauty and grooming gifts. Recent research has shown that we would have appreciated some promotional make up, far longer ago then we first imagined.

Scientists in Murcia Southern Spain, claim to have found the first persuasive evidence that cave men, wore body paint and make up approximately 50,000 years ago. Their team reported their findings to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), showing that shells containing pigment residues were used as Neanderthal make-up containers.

The team said their findings end “the view of Neanderthals as half-wits” and shows they were capable of symbolic thinking. I’d like to mention that I’ve seen plenty of women in the Preston area wearing plenty of make up, which I wouldn’t say guaranteed any sort of thinking, symbolic or otherwise.

Professor Joao Zilhao from the Bristol University in the UK, told the BBC that; “this is the first secure evidence for their use of cosmetics… the use of these complex recipes is new. It’s more than body painting.”

A simple but effective promotional product relating to the cosmetic industry, would be a printed lip balm. My favourite style of printed Lip Balm, are the little round pots which can be branded in vibrant full colour. Printed lip balm pots can not only be printed in full colour, but are available in really vibrant and attractive colour ways too.

Whether you want branded lip balm sticks, branded lip balm balls, branded lip balm lanyards or branded lip balm boxes - Gift Selection in conjunction with Promostore can be of service.

Did you see the Golden Globe Awards the other night? It was the 67th year, but the first that the star-studded ceremony had seen a host for 15 years.

An unlikely choice of host was Briton’s own Ricky Gervais, who had the nerve racking honour of keeping banter levels high. His targets included Sir Paul McCartney, Angelina Jolie, Steve Carrell, TV network NBC and the Hollywood smart set in general.

My favourite line of the night was: “Looking at all the faces here makes me remember all the great work that’s been done this year by cosmetic surgeons,” he joked.

He went down a lot easier then fellow Brit, Russell Brand, who the American public did not warm to, after his attempt at hosting the MTV Music Awards. The Associated Press called Gervais “cheeky, silly and funny as heck” for his gentle jabs at the Hollywood A List.

If your organisation is handing out awards of its own, then going to a quality supplier like Gift Selection will ensure you can find exactly what you’re looking for. Personalised awards can look really impressive, if done in the right way, while a great choice of styles and materials are available.

If for example your business had links with the travel and tourism industry, handing out crystal globe awards would send out a real smart corporate image. Maybe you don’t have the same budget as the Golden Globes, but Gift Selection can still accommodate those on a lesser budget too.

Rather than a large crystal award, a smartly engraved crystal tumbler or even a paperweight would do the job nicely also. Remember, if you have any questions at all about engraved crystal, contact the friendly team over at Gift Selection.

You can’t catch us out on Prodir pens here, any little update and you’ll be the first to know…

The latest promotional Prodir tit-bit of information are the metal options available on the smart DS3 model. If you fancy making your branded Prodir pens a little luxurious, then why not try the new push button or nose cone in galvanized silver. If you want something a little more feminine then the serious looking galvanized silver, then the DS3 range is now available in a range of attractive gloss finishes.

Finally Prodir have finally come round to the idea of bringing out an eco friendly model, and have realized the corn starch based DS3 too.  Prodir are known for their relatively eco friendly business practices, but is only now that they have included a proper eco pen to their range.

To see some samples of the new promotional Prodir options, ask the friendly sales team nicely at pens2order, and they will be happy to help.

Yesterday it was banning smoking in Finland; today there are calls for tighter labelling of alcohol here in the UK. The Tories are proposing to swap the system of using units to tell consumers how much alcohol their drink contains, for one focused on the metric volume of alcohol and the calorie content.

What I want to know is, how come dingy pubs are full of thin and weary looking men, if they’re drinking calorie packed pints every minute they are open. Anyway, the Conservatives plan to negotiate a voluntary agreement with the drinks industry should it come to power this year, as part of its health manifesto laid out by shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley.

Their policy has arisen from Health Select Committee’s report on alcohol abuse last week. Several of the report’s recommendations could affect the drinks industry, including restrictions on advertising and sponsorship as well as a minimum price per unit.

If you’re looking for promotional products that may require special information by law, rest assured a quality corporate gift supplier like Gift Selection will have everything you need to know.

The paternal government of Finland has become the world’s first state to take the bold move to completely phase out smoking.

Anti-tobacco laws are being tightened further, in what anti-smoking campaigners have cleverly called a war on the cigarette industry. Their citizen’s reaction to the government’s plans has been mixed. Many people cite that they would prefer future children not to grow up around smokers, while other groups, namely smokers, would prefer to carry on smoking.

Marketing for tobacco companies around the world is getting tougher, one method however is to use branded lighters. Promotional cigarette lighters are an unusual promotional item, but they much more common on the continent then in the UK.

The same Bic who make your low cost promotional pens, also manufacture great value promotional cigarette lighters too. Quality corporate gift suppliers like Gift Selection, can organise great value Bic Lighters with your artwork and get them to you ASAP.

Google hasn’t been out of the news of late, their recent controversy surrounds their lack of patience with the ever suspicious China. The internet giant has said it may end its dealings in China, after a “sophisticated and targeted” cyber attack originating from the country.

Google’s David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, made the big announcement on the Google blog. As it turns out, Google discovered that what first appeared to be a random cyber attack on their company, was actually a concerted effort against various organisations. The story took a darker twist as, Google claims that the primary target of the attack was the GMail accounts of Chinese human rights activists from all over the world.

Google did not accuse the Chinese government directly, probably as they are nervous of being kidnapped, but said they have said they are no longer willing to censor its Chinese search engine - google.cn.

Google launched google.cn in 2006, agreeing to some censorship of the search results, as required by the Chinese government. It currently holds around a third of the Chinese search market, far behind Baidu with more than 60%.