Electricity

[Rita Winston]

There is always so much talk about how Americans are wasteful of 
energy. At the moment (I'm in California -- I'm not in danger of 
rolling blackouts because I live in a DWP area, DWP is a 
municipal utility rather than an investor-owned utility and 
therefore has plenty of electricity, but the price might go up), the 
talk is about Americans being wasteful of electricity.

So I want to ask all the Brits and Europeans and so on, are people 
where you live always careful to turn off the lights when leaving a 
room? Do you avoid applicances with remote controls (because the 
device that listens for signals from the remote is always on (it has 
to be on while the machine is off, or it couldn't receive the ON 
command from the remote) and consuming a trickle of electricity? 
Do you make a point of unplugging always-on appliances (like PCs) 
when turning them off?