Hello dear reader. Before we go any further let me clear a little something up.

I’m not Barry Gibson. Your eyes are not playing tricks on you.

I used to be in your Examiner on a Saturday but now I’ve been moved to a Wednesday.

Who’s going to be on a Saturday now, watching you dunk your soldiers into your egg as you contemplate what to do with your weekend after reading your Examiner.

Well, I’m not allowed to tell you. But let me just say it’s not Denise Welch. That’ll perk some of you up.

Rather than some erudite political point scoring as per previous weeks, today I am going to take you on a trip.

A trip through time (wiggles hands in front of face).

We’re in the 80s. The decade where braying red brace-sporting halfwits managed to spill more  expensive champagne in a night than most of us earned in a week.

There’s Maggie over there with her trademark handbag – it contained Michael Foot’s severed head I’m led to believe.

We’re in 1986 and Morrissey and his chums in The Smiths were top of the pop charts.

Anyway, the band released their third album The Queen is Dead. And on that record (remember those?) was There is a Light that Never Goes Out.

Well the album title has been proved false so far – and now the song which could put even the cheeriest of us into a dark funk has also been proved to be no more than a common or garden lie.

This week the National Grid has warned us that if you turn on a kettle at the wrong time this winter you could plunge the country into icy darkness.

There’s no overstatement here, no sir.

The National Grid (basically the blokes who look after the wires and the pylons) has said that energy consumption has risen and energy creation has fallen, narrowing the gap between what we use and what’s left in the socket.

Which is definitely how it works.

Frankly I’m mystified. Every house in Britain is festooned with low energy bulbs showering us in a murky light that is reminiscent of being two foot under the surface of the River Colne.

We’re all saving energy aren’t we?

Our rush to be green has seen our coal fuelled power stations shut off.

Some gas fuelled plants have also been mothballed due to financial pressures (ie the energy companies don’t fancy paying for them).

During the summer, energy watchdog Ofgem said that the security of our electricity supply – that means the light in the fridge coming on when you open it – had decreased

All the energy companies are reporting fantasmagorical profits, so why should there be a problem.

Well here’s a spokesperson for Energy UK.

Basically this group is the mouthpiece for the big energy companies. You know the ones who put the gas prices up when it gets cold.

Anyway, this fine upstanding member of society who has no problem looking at themselves in the mirror said: “This is not scaremongering. What we need right now is clear, pragmatic energy policy to keep energy affordable, long-term certainty to attract vital investment and the necessary back-up to ensure we have energy security when and where it’s needed.”

I agree that we need a pragmatic energy policy. I agree we need long term certainty to attract vital investment.

The trouble is I don’t trust the big energy companies to deliver it. Basically they want you and I to pay our energy bills to them and then out of our taxes they want the Government to give them some dosh to build new power stations so they can charge us to buy more energy from them.

It’s like the barman who sells you a pint and then wants you to nip round and serve yourself plus buy him a drink and then hand over your cash again.

It seems that rather than the Smiths we could have to settle for The Darkness – and who wants to see them return?