British Gas has increased the cost of gas and electricity by 14.2 per cent for around 16 million homes - a move expected to add some £100 to the typical annual energy bill.Powergen raised its electricity prices by 7.2 per cent and gas by 11.9 per cent, while Scottish Power has pushed its gas prices up by 12 per cent and its electricity by up to 8 per cent.These companies have blamed the high oil price and an increase in wholesale energy costs, but consumer groups say these are not going up to the same extent as domestic bills."A staggering 91 per cent of all customers are now paying an average of £91 more for their gas than they were at the start of this year," says Alan Tattersall at the price-comparison service uSwitch .However, with plenty of pro- viders competing for your custom, one of the easiest ways to cut costs is change your supplier.If you have never switched, you could be paying around £230 a year more than you need to for your energy, according to figures from uSwitch.Making use of the calculators on the internet sites listed below, you can work out how much you could save by doing so. The presenter, who is 62, made the decision to leave to pursue other interests now that her two daughters from her marriage to the late cartoonist Mark Boxer have grown up "I've done it for 27 years," she said. She will make her final appearance on the BBC1's One O' Clock News, when her current contract expires in April. Anna Ford, the newsreader who has always battled to be appreciated for her brains rather than her beauty, is to give up presenting the news after 27 years. you can be assured that we will hold Montgomery and his partners to these promises." The cv 1970 Graduate trainee in Mirror Group1982-1984 Assistant editor, Sunday People1980-1982, Chief sub-editor, The Sun1985-1987 Editor, News of the World1987-1991 Managing director and editor of Today1992 Chief executive of Mirror Group1995 Oversees launch of Mirror's Group's Live TV venture.1999 Ousted from Mirror Group after shareholder revolt.2000 forms Mecom media investment company2004 Fails in bid to buy The Daily Telegraph. Vork?r (who is still in his job) has written a new editorial, where he tells readers that he remains "sceptical" but liked the promises that Montgomery gave."Something has changed," Vork?r wrote. "His [Montgomery's] statements read very differently from what we and you would have expected from financial investors interested in short-term profits and short-term profits only - more restrained, more responsible...

"The reality does not match the controversy." And Montgomery has managed now to win the benefit of the doubt from his new German employees. Pat McArt, a Catholic and a socialist who is the editor of the Derry Journal, which was bought by the Mirror Group under Montgomery, says he found Monty to be "affable", with a dry sense of humour (which in itself will be a revelation to Montgomery's detractors, who paint him as a colourless, unsmiling, despot)."We'd heard all the stories about David Montgomery but I found him to be totally fair, totally honest and totally decent," McArt says. It's something we don't give too much thought to, at the moment," he says.By no means everybody who has worked under Montgomery is a die-hard opponent. The market is artificially small because of that large portion of broadcasting that the BBC controls It makes opportunities fairly thin on the ground in the UK. Most of our live projects are in Europe at the moment." But does he not hanker after the Mirror, which is regularly rumoured to be on the block? "The Mirror - as far as I know - is not available and, secondly, it has some of its own challenges.

He is no longer keen, he says, citing the high price that media assets command in the UK, as well as the more developed nature of the market."We would monitor everything in the UK. But don't forget, it is largely consolidated in terms of regional publishing And broadcasting is dominated by the BBC. I hope that I will be able to prove that to you." The German newspaper market is highly fragmented, with titles regionally based and lying in the hands of some 300 different owners, many of which are family-run businesses. It is understood that Montgomery is already in talks about further deals to buy more German papers, though he won't comment on that."I think newspapers in Germany, and elsewhere, are going to have to huddle together to get maximum efficiency and the benefits of scale to be ever-more creative and to evolve their products so they can compete effectively with new media," he says.And what of the UK? Does he not still want to pull off a big deal here? He has, after all, tried unsuccessfully in recent years to buy The Daily Telegraph, the Express and Glasgow's Herald title, as well as the ITV Digital licences when it went bust.