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I’d love to know what it is that makes some men and women survey a job – say, for example, varnishing a door or painting a window – with a glint of optimism and a confident, can-do, no-fear attitude.

Whatever it is, I’d like some.

Every single job to do with building, maintenance or decorating that I’ve ever attempted has been doomed from the start. I have always known this and yet still I, eventually, have made the attempt, imagining I’m saving money but building up a nice bank of stress-related illnesses for the NHS to expensively deal with in years to come.

It’s not as if the gung-ho really fare that much better. I can’t think of a single job around our house that hasn’t had some attendant, unforeseen crisis, small or large, for the experts involved. They’re just better equipped at putting it straight, that’s all. Oh, and they don’t suffer the stress because it’s not their gaff and it’s not their money. Yet.

Of course I admire people who can do skilful things by hand. I can’t, not even nearly. I was lent some clamps last week with which I attacked a couple of loose doors, glueing the gaps that had appeared in them so we could close them again. You need make no guesses at all as to how closing the doors went when the clamps were removed. How we chuckled.

But there’s a thing: you pay a couple of hundred quid for a few doors, and then you pay a couple of hundred quid to get them equipped with their latches and handles and hung, and then you spend a fortnight of your life glueing them back together again, and taking the handles off to oil them so the latches actually move. You are several hundred pounds poorer and you’re still working – and failing.

This is the engine of our economy, of course. And for the DIY enthusiast, his or her raison d’etre: if everything worked, they’d have nothing to talk about. In that nasal whiny voice they use.

Without cheap doors that need re-glueing I wouldn’t have doors; without being able to pay for carpentry skills the doors I didn’t have would still be stuck in the garage. But nevertheless, why is it that everything you buy needs some sort of attention?

Self-assembly furniture is the masterpiece of the art, of course. You pay several hundred pounds to be permitted to do the manufacturer’s job and stick things together, and then you find out that what you’ve just bodged into one piece is a pile of crap anyway.

This is also a driver of the modern metrosexual male, of course. The inability of men like me to function as a hunter, gatherer or builder diminishes me in my own eyes: it fosters my sense of inadequacy.

It’s no good being an internationally famous raconteur with prodigious sexual powers. I’m sure Brother Fiddle will back me up on this. It’s no good having a far-ranging knowledge of the metaphysical poets, or wide-ranging tastes in music and literature about which you are able to discourse in an interesting manner. It doesn’t matter how much rugby you watch. It’s no good knowing precisely how much salt to use with asparagus, or how to give a King Edward a jolly good roasting. If you cannot do it yourself, as it were, hoist a drill, shin up a ladder, crack a nail on the head, you’re not much of a man.

At least, that’s what Management says.

Huntin’ and shootin’

There are circumstances in which I could hunt, two to be precise.

One, the Great Linkinhorne Boxing Day Laptop Shoot, which Brother Bertie and Brother Hamster are sorting out. Any donations of unwanted technology deserving of a salvo from a 12-bore gratefully accepted. I will be contributing several items of DIY equipment.

Two, if I were to sight a board member or a shareholder from one of the big six energy companies, I would be delighted to hunt them mercilessly. They deserve no mercy.

You will have heard a lot of justification from the big six energy companies about the recent rises in their prices.

You should not believe a word. They are liars and crooks.

Here are some facts:

The big six paid out £6.2bn to shareholders in 2010. No, that’s not investment in alternative or future energies, that’s dividends paid out to people who own shares in their companies and are happy to accept that money even though….

7,800 people are estimated to have died in their homes of cold-related illness last winter (estimated by Professor Christine Liddell of the University of Ulster, using World Health Organisation data and models. If you prefer the Office of National Statistics, that estimates there were 25,700 excess winter deaths in this country in the winter of 2010. The government has previously estimated a figure of cold-related death in winter at below 3,000).

Whatever the number, what sort of person would accept a dividend knowing that the money was founded on the deaths of anybody, poor and sick? Liar and crook doesn’t seem strong enough, does it?

According to the Government’s Chief Medical Officer, illnesses caused by cold homes cost the NHS £850m a year. What sort of person is happy to accept money knowing that poor, elderly folk are queuing up in casualty because of them? Liar and crook still not strong enough?

The big six energy companies paid a total of £7.3m to their chief executives in basic wages (not including bonuses) in 2011. That’s not investment in alternative or future energies, that’s cold hard cash.

Total pre-tax profits of the big six in 2010: £8.55bn.

Profits in the first half for this year for one of them, EDF, who have put up prices by 10.8%: £1.58billion.

Now those are facts. And here is another one.

Anybody permitting the big six energy companies to abuse the massive power which they were corruptly gifted , whether as board member or shareholder or dividend accepter, is a criminal. They are perpetrating crimes against society. There is nothing in any way acceptable about a person who would accept profits from companies that are willing to see people die in order to make that money. Such a person should be in prison.

Is that clear enough, do you think?

Every one of us should be writing to their power supply companies in protest. I am. Everybody should refuse to pay the rise. And everybody should demand the re-nationalisation of the energy utilities.

Mass protest worked against the lunacy of the poll tax. It could work in forcing our corrupt government to act responsibly. Energy is heat and food to all. Placing that power in the hands of profiteering criminals is not the act of a society that cares or a government that looks after its people.

Write to your energy company and copy it to your MP. Go on, do it today.

And then watch tonight’s documentary about private firms being gifted profitable openings in the health service (Dispatches: Getting Rich on the NHS, Channel 4, 8pm) and prepare to write another letter.

If we don’t take action – whatever that is, whether writing or belonging to a trade union or using every opportunity we get to argue against these injustices –  we’ll be part of a society that allows people to die in the name of profit. How would that feel?

It’s no good saying politics doesn’t matter or that you’re not political. Politics isn’t Labour or Tory or Liberal or anything else. Politics is trying to ensure we live a decent happy life together. Politics is ensuring people don’t die of want or hunger or cold.

And finally

People like me, of course, shouldn’t eat, drink and be merry or even be warm. We should sit in sackcloth and ashes to show that we’re not political hypocrites.

Well that’s always been a pathetic argument, and so I went off with a happy heart to dinner with Brother Fiddle and the Brother Who Must Not Be Named, with Mrs Fiddle and Mrs Who Must Not Be Named, assorted junior Fiddles, various dogs and the fattest ginger tom on which I have ever clapped eyes. If it could move fast enough to catch mice it would administer the coup de grace by sitting on them.

How nice it is to say that while the world heads to hell in its handcart, there will, hopefully, always be red wine, civilised discourse, banter, laughter, good food and company to see us through. 

And finally, finally, I really do apologise about the mess the comments have got into. Since my service was improved for me and not at my request, I’ve been deluged by hundreds and hundreds of spam e-mails I never used to get before the improvement, and asking you to sign in is one of the ways I am told I can combat this. I gather it’s pretty straightforward. Not knowing how to return things to the way we were I am rather obliged to carry on. Isn’t that a perfect metaphor for life, sometimes?