It's rare that a press release will leave me so stunned that I sit with mouth agape but it happened this morning.

Unable to sleep I thought I'd come down to the office and finish the issue. My daughter had been the last one to go to bed and had carelessly left the dining room lights on. That's five on the fitting - only 40 Watts each and dimmed fairly low but wasting energy nevertheless and further on the road to wearing out. A few years ago this wouldn't have been too much of a problem but with energy prices what they are now and our masters at the EU decreeing that we now have to buy those horrid energy saving ones, (which are incredibly expensive if you need the type compatible with dimmer switches) we need to preserve them as best we can. I noticed the porch light had been left on too and I wasn't best pleased.

It so happened that a press release from uSwitch, the body that helps us find the best energy supplier for our needs, had arrived in the short time I'd been away from my desk. It offered some energy saving tips, which I scanned through dismissively without learning anything, but some of the results of a recent survey had me aghast so I read further...

...Things like people believing that as long as they don't use an electrical item, it doesn't use electricity even if it is still plugged in and turned on, or thinking that switching an item off by remote control means it's off so won't be using electricity.

"Idiots!" I thought. "Where do they get these people from?"

Then I got to the bit about how 59% admitted to occasionally leaving their set top boxes on when they're not in use. This is when I noticed my reflection in the window (yes I would have saved energy had I bothered to draw the curtains!) clearly aghast as the realisation dawned on me. No - I'm not one of the 59%. I'm one of the 26.2% that never, ever turns it off! Wonder how much that's cost me over the years?

And if you find it practical to charge your mobile phone overnight, make sure you read the release which I've included further down this page...