Need a number? Phone a friend...

EVEN a dinosaur can deliver a nasty bite. The 118 118 telephone directory service is a prehistoric beast: in these days of smartphones and tablets those who are well-connected digitally have no use for the dial-up service to find a phone number.

The only people who use it are those who are excluded or alienated from the digital age – the poor and the elderly.

For the operators of 118 118 these consumers are fish in a barrel. The profits from the service are by any measure extraordinary. The profit margin for this company is almost 90 per cent. Even a pre-crash banker would goggle at such a margin.

It is perhaps no surprise that a couple of years ago 118 118 decided to enter the personal loans business. With hindsight, it was a mistake to deregulate the directory enquiry service in the way that it was. It is also a lesson in how rapidly changing technology can create huge inequalities which even the most open market can do little to mitigate. Eventually dialup directory enquiry services will die out, but not before they have milked the poor and elderly with sky-high charges.

If you have a smartphone or tablet think about that 90 per cent profit margin before you dial 118 118. And if you have friends or relatives who don’t have a computer or a smartphone, suggest that when they need a number they should call you and ask you to look it up online. AS every year passes Britain edges closer to an energy crisis. The amount of spare capacity in our electricity generating systems is lower every winter. It will be less than 2 per cent this winter, a report from National Grid is expected to say this week. In theory, it could fall below zero next year after three coal-fuelled power stations close early in 2016.

Environmental demands are pushing us away from coal and other carbon-hungry forms of energy. Meanwhile, subsidies are being cut for renewable energy.

Nuclear energy, which could be a partial solution, is mired in controversy over the huge cost and the frankly ridiculous price guarantees the Government has granted France’s EDF to build a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point.

We should never have sold off our state-owned nuclear reactor building company Westinghouse – ironically the act of a Labour government. Then perhaps we would not be buying nuclear power stations from a French stateowned nuclear power company.

The failure of governments for 20 years to take a long-term view, often because of an ever-changing set of environmental or political postures, means we are heading closer to the day when power cuts become a reality.