A light has gone on at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, but it isn't burning very brightly.

The department admits, reports the Daily Telegraph, that British households have been bombarded with low-energy lightbulbs by gas and electricity companies as a way of meeting a Government obligation to help their customers save energy. These are overwhemingly the old-style "stick-type" compact fluorescent bulbs that nobody much likes.

The average UK household has already received eight of them. And, in a flash of illumination that makes you despair for the department's numeracy, it adds: "We also understand that some households have received more than an average number".

And some fewer, one might add. That's the nature of averages.