I have had enough of how to save money articles says Adam Miller

With a headline like that, the article will almost certainly be among a national newspaper's most read of the month.

Only the wealthy are insulated from concerns about rising energy bills, and so there are millions of people currently looking for ways to cut back.

Those who did click on the story will have been helped no end by such suggestions as “Going into the office to save on heating during the day, five days a week saves about £23.85”.

I know your average Nepotism-Smugly journalist can’t be expected to understand such things, but offices don’t tend to be located in one’s conservatory.

If you can’t spot the glaring issue with that particular recommendation, congratulations on being in the tiny proportion of the British workforce who can commute to and from an office for less than £23.85 per week.

In 2022, we can’t move for cost-cutting recommendations. Some of these are well-intentioned and occasionally even helpful, but others are ill-informed, impractical and condescending.

The tone was set by major provider OVO Energy in January with a blog post which listed “10 simple and cost-effective ways” to avoid paying too much while not freezing.

“You don’t always need to rely on your central heating to stay warm,” insisted OVO. I checked, and there was no asterisk with ‘this advice does not apply to consumers in Scotland’ next to it.

Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and hear them out. “Have a cuddle with your pets and loved ones to help stay cosy.” Oh.

Of course, there’s not a single person in Britain who doesn’t share their home with either a pet or loved one. If you’re single, just buy a pet to keep you warm! The purchase and upkeep of a cat definitely won’t cost more than turning on the heating.

At least OVO are looking out for those pets. After advising customers to “keep your oven open after you’ve finished cooking”, they helpfully added: “Just be careful if there are pets or small children around.”

How much heat does teaching a granny to suck eggs generate?

They also suggested “challenging the kids to a hula-hoop contest or doing a few star jumps”. If you don’t have children, I guess you could always challenge the kids next door and steal some of their parents’ heat in the process.

The backlash was, ironically, heated. In response, OVO told a news organisation that their blog was “poorly judged and unhelpful”, adding: “We are embarrassed and sincerely apologise.”

The best you can say about them is that they had the self-awareness to say sorry. You’ll find none of that in a certain tribe online, whose members can be found lurking in the replies under every tweet from money-saving expert and one-man opposition party Martin Lewis.

Earlier this year, Scottish comedian Mark Nelson tweeted: “Always love the ‘should you be allowed to smack children’ debate. ‘I was smacked as a kid and it never did me any harm’. Yes it did. It turned you into a prick who beats up children.” This works just as well if you replace “I was smacked as a kid” with “I grew up in a home with no central heating”.

For certain middle-aged weirdos, difficult times seem to induce hardship stauners. You know the ones I’m talking about. The type who just can’t wait to tell you how much harder things were in their day and that they didn’t text TikTok about it on their iPod PlayStation because they were too busy kicking a ball on the street but now the PC Brigade won’t let eight-year-olds smoke Marlboro Lights because of Greta Thunberg.

One such poverty fetishist recently told Lewis: “I lived in the 40s, 50s and 60s with only one fire, no double-glazing loft insulation, no felt between slates, ice on the inside of windows, used hot water bottles, coats on beds. Why now should people be dying? Is it because we’ve gone soft?”

All of us will face hard times in the course of our lives. The test of our humanity is whether we want others to experience the same difficulties, or work towards ensuring that as few people as possible have to endure them.

This winter will be tough. We should be looking out for each other, not recreating Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen sketch minus the humour.

Former Tory MP Edwina Currie this week urged Lewis to “stop using words like ‘catastrophe’ and instead advise people to take sensible steps to reduce the effect on their families and business”. She also implored him to “stop pretending that governments can do everything”.

Obviously they can’t do everything, but something would be nice.

Despite what Currie believes, the onus shouldn’t be on you, me or even Martin Lewis to manage this crisis.

And yet, Westminster’s leadership vacuum means we’re left sifting through endless “How to reduce your energy bills” pieces.

If you’re struggling to stay warm, try reading that national newspaper article. The steam coming out of your ears will keep you going for months.