From the hotdesk of economics editor Sir Howard Elston.

Sources deep within the City have disclosed to me in a hush-hush top secret interview that the Big Six energy companies that supply 98% of our home juice will purchase the whole of the country as a fight back plan.

The source told me: ‘We got the dough and we’re ready to go. First up, we’ll snap up Leicestershire, which will go for a bloody song.’

‘Then we’ll flash the cash for Wales which has had a big For Sale sign hanging on it for years now anyway.’

The energy consortium includes Centrica (£27bn profits in 2012), Scottish Power (£712m pre tax profits), EDF (£903m half year profits) SSE (£14bn profits and a £10m fine for mis-selling), nPower (£206m half year profit and an inability to properly use capital letters), and E.ON (£273m half year profits with an inability to use punctuation properly)

Nigel,Tyneside property tycoon and energy expert, commented:’ Whoar…those boys are going for broke. I can get Staffordshire for them with a 10% discount and I’ll throw in Middlesbrough as a sweetener’