But the good news was soured when NG asked investors for £3.2 billion in a rights issue (due next month) to fund more capital expenditure in Britain…..and to retain its credit rating.

I’m sorry? Nearly two billion quid in profit and you need to shore up your credit rating? And while we’re at it, with earnings per share increasing from 50.2p to 57.4p, why aren’t the shareholders stumping up for a big chunk of the investment?

Ask this sort of stuff of contemporary Bourse capitalism, and the chances are the questions will earn you a patronising smile, followed by a laconic drawl along the lines of “You see, the thing is this sort of thing is immensely complex”.

Bollocks. The group has assigned £22 billion over the next five years to its capital investment programme. That’s £5.4 billion per annum, or rather more than £2 billion in profit. So then, pray tell us National Grid, how did you get to the stage of needing to spend that much in half a decade….after a decade of making Tsunamis of cash for very fat directors and shareholders? Could it be that – perish the thought – you thought ‘To hell with the infrastructure and the future, I wanna be rich NOW’?

There is the same assumption (in much of what former public sector utilities ask of us) that one sees in the press releases emanating from government: ‘these people are stupid, we can sell them any old cobblers and get away with it’. Equally, this seems to me be the plea of the man who didn’t fix the roof when the sun shone.

Well, you go ahead National Grid and try your rights issue. My guess is that you’ve got two chances of getting it subscribed….if there is any sense left at all in British investors.