Rod writes:

Which made me think, I'd quite like electric fires to switch
off entirely of the power fails. I can imagine a situation
in which a fire is just left but something is put
on/near/dropped onto such a fire during a failure - and
forgotten/missed in the dark that often accompanies power
cuts. Even just the waste of power that could occur might be
a reason!

You want one of these:
http://www.poolewood.co.uk/acatalog/..._Switches.html

And the styling is so in tune with the domestic setting!

--
Jón Fairbairn
http://www.chaos.org.uk/~jf/Stuff-I-dont-want.html (updated 2009-01-31)