麻豆社

Now if you get your gas and electricity from one of the Big Six Energy suppliers - and most people do - then check if you're being charged their standard variable tariff. Most people are. If you are, you could almost certainly save between 拢159 and 拢234 a year. That's what the competition regulator, the Competitions and Markets Authority, has concluded so far in its investigation into the industry and whether competition works the way it should for customers. It's also looking at whether some of the rules imposed to try to get a grip on the Big Six energy companies have had unintended consequences and damaged competition.

The big 6 have more than 90 per cent of the market share. So how do smaller companies get a look in? One of them Spark energy has a tie in with letting agents. It pays them a fee in return for supplying power. The problem is some tenants then find it very difficult to swap to any other supplier. Our reporter Melanie Abbott has been looking into this

Some people who live in touristy places are making extra money renting out rooms or whole houses and flats through the website AirBNB.
There are 33,000 places in the UK offered for rent on AirBNB - two thirds of them are in London. Some councils in London thinks it's gone far enough and they're clamping down on it using old planning laws from the 1970s. These laws ban people renting their homes short term without planning permission. Not everyone is happy.

People don't use directory enquiries services much these days - they go online for numbers instead. But if you do have to telephone for help finding a number then beware because calling 118 can be extremely expensive. That's according to new research by Which? It's warned that some calls to 118 have cost people as much as seventy five pounds.

The budget for making public information films has shrunk drastically. They've been among the casualties of the downturn. The budget for all these films last year was a million pounds and you can't make many films for that.
Our reporter Bob Walker has been looking back at the heyday of the public information film with the help of Sue Woods, a curator with the British Film Institute and Dr Tessa Langley, assistant professor at University of Nottingham. And thanks to the BFI National Archive for allowing us to use those clips.

Parents in the UK spend a higher proportion of their income on childcare than parents in any other western country do.
Now some nurseries are adding to their costs by charging up to 拢125 for a place on their waiting lists. And the money is never refunded - even if the child never gets a place. It's really hard for parents in some areas where you have to get your name down on a lot of lists to have any hope of finding somewhere.

It's madness but house prices have continued to rise across the UK. They rose by nearly ten percent in 2014. The figures were released this morning by the Office for National Statistics. That's despite the fact that new mortgage lending rules are limiting the amount people borrow.
The prices are high because there are relatively few properties on offer. That's been the story since the start of the downturn and some market experts think it's the new norm.

Producer: Maire Devine
Editor: Chas Watkin.