Why is UK so cautious about electrical sockets and wiring? Perhaps they used to be, but lately they have thrown their caution to the wind: Look! (I love this KAL)
I would be incredibly surprised at a fridge with a 3 amp fuse in it, I would have expected at least 7 amp - but what would I know, only been electrician for 20 years or so.
The fact that there is a fuse does not necessarily stop ALL fires - around 1/3 of household fires are electrically initiated, and once the fire has started then disconnection is unlikely to extinguish it.
This of course is to utterly miss the real problem which is that the cladding on Grenfell Towers was completely unsuitable and that there is a serious deficiency in our Building regulations for fire prevention and testing of materials - you aimed at a target and missed it so badly
Next, death rates from workplace accidents have fallen from around 700 per year just before the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) was passed to just under 100 per year in 2018.
Much more significant is the reduction in deaths from workplace illness, there was a huge toll from long term exposure to various dusts, such as stone dust, coal dust and of course asbestos. Together the costs in claims alone run into many billions and then you have to add in the costs to health services, insurance claims, lost production - the scale of it is truly staggering.
Do you actually think we should go the way of Mexico and allow our employers to poison us, or make us terminally ill? Do you really think that this reduction in cost to industry is worth it? If you do then you are a complete fool - those costs have to be borne by society through the taxpayer, increased insurance and massive personal costs.
I really and truly despise those who complain there is too much health and safety and are completely ill-equipped to understand the total costs of work related accidents and ill health - yes it might just reduce immediate costs on the bottom line for shareholders, but when you look at the long term costs there is simply no comparison, we have around 2500 people a year dying from asbestos that was used long ago, and this will only slowly decline because there are so many workers carrying the precursors to asbestos is into their later years when cancer is more likely to develop.
You really need to wake up somewhat and dispel some of your ignorance, I will give you a hand
http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/history/index.htm
My post may seem terse, but as a person who has had to represent workers who are suffering workplace illness against intransigent employers it really grinds my gears to find such complacent ignorance in relation to costs of Health and Safety, not to mention the personal tragedies that are the frequent outcome of breaches of safety law.
Who decides what constitutes a regulation and what’s just a “regulation”?
anyone with a bit of common sense.
casdave
relax mate,
I told you before: we don’t give a rat’s ass about your “considerate” opinion.
You are one of those useless jobsworths who are a big part of the problem.
People like you cost the country in general and each individual a lot of money.
Your parasitic well-being depends on this nonsense you’re preaching,
meanwhile hard-working union members are paying your salary.
This is just disgusting.
Yup, met your type before, representatives of workers are parasites yadda yadda yadda.
As for my salary paid by union members, well no it isn’t and never has been - which is true for around 99% of trade union reps - but never let the truth get in the way of your assumptions, in addition reps tend to spend far more of their union time completely unpaid, and lastly, union members are perfectly free to either leave a union or not join - you tone is actually insulting and condescending to all adults of working age who have the absolute right to make their choice.
I note the ‘anyone with a bit of common sense’ jibe, methinks you are just jangling the strings, you have not cited any facts, or reports and instead you simply pull rubbish from your backside - to be expected from a person who is deliberately trying to be provocative.
I notice that you have not actually responded to my reply in relation to Grenfell Towers - could it be that you have decided to vacate your position because you know jack about Electrical Wiring Regulations, Building Safety, Material Safety or Fire Regulatory Reform Acts? I suspect you are a person who knows very little in this regard because to date you have not presented any meaningful facts - just wild assed opinions.
I also note, I have not seen any post here that refutes the points I have made in relation to the OP. There are pros and cons in relation to our electrical wiring regulations, however I haven’t seen any of the cons discussed factually, but once a system has been rolled out with installed protective earth return conductors it is very difficult to change this to a system that removes that third conductor
The town where I live used to be the world’s largest manufacturer of needles. A century or more ago, this was largely a cottage industry, with the various stages done in small workshops. The highest paid workers were the men who ground points into the blanks before they were polished. This was done on a grindstone and it was hard, dirty work.
These men earned good wages but they didn’t tend to live much beyond 30, because of the dust they were inhaling. Someone came up with the idea of using a fan to extract the dust and they went on strike because they could see that people would soon be prepared to do the job for less money.
Okay. So “anyone with a bit of common sense” should be able to ignore regulations they don’t approve of? What?
Some may disapprove certain rules and/or regulations but still comply with them.
In other cases people can ignore them if they can get away with it,
which is not always possible …then it becomes an unnecessary burden.
In any case common sense is a keyword.
For example,
some idiotic “health and safety” rules that should be ignored:
-
To hold a handrail while climbing / walking down the stairs
(actual regulation in some companies) -
to wear hard hats for repair man working on the phone cabinets on the ground level or on the pavements ( saw it few times)
-children using jumping castles, because it might be potentially (!) unsafe
If you think requiring people to use handrails is idiotic, you may not be qualified to arbitrate “common sense regulation” yourself.
Well, that certainly sounds like a workable policy.
So how do you judge who has “common sense”?
Yeah right,
define “has”…
As for those new regulations on vacuum, cleaners - you are aware that this is not related to safety at all, these are based upon a EU directive that all member states must incorporate into their legislation and is (supposedly) related to reducing energy consumption for sustainable energy use - its basically part of the EU ‘green policy’
So you score zero points for not being able to recognise the difference between safety and environmental considerations - yet you would like us to accept your ‘common sense’ when your reading comprehension is so poor
Except that it is not green in the slightest because it does not take into account that one of the largest energy inputs of any product is that of manufacture itself - so by encouraging consumers to ditch their older appliances this has the effect of actually increasing total energy consumption.
The EU rulemakers are not stupid and are aware of this, its just another trade barrier to keep us consuming more, and keep out non EU manufacturing through the use of a CE standards barrier.
As it happens, quite a few years of my working time were in a Combined Heat and Power Station (CHPS) and as a result we got a lot of useless interference from the EU and from the environmental agency so we had to keep abreast of the latest crazy EU directives.
Much of the safety legislation you deride comes from EU directives and is not passed by our representatives through parliament - around 80-90% of our legislation is imposed upon us in this way, EU directives compel all member nations to incorporate them into national laws - and this happens without the populations of those nations demanding such changes.
It is this undemocratic imposition of rules from outside our country, rules which are frequently at odds with their stated intention, that has led me to vote BREXIT just to free us up from all the nonsense - so that we can get laws that we want debated through our parliament, submitted by our population.
It take it that you would be in agreement with my position.
Before the thread devolves into another Brexit debate, a related question if I may: when using my electric lawnmower on a circuit protected by RCD, can I assume that using an additional ‘circuit breaker’ device between the plug for the mower and the socket is redundant?
I’m talking about ALL stupid regulations not just your Healts & Safety obsession.
The difference is irrelevant.I don’t like useless rules in general… safety related orotherwise.
Totally agree with the following ,though:
it depends on the tripping current (rating) of the breaker on your lawnmower.
If this rating is lower than rating on the fuse board (typically 32 amp) it may trip before the one on the board and it won’t interfere with any other electrical appliances.
Or it may not , it’s called *breaker discrimination
- depends on the length / cross-section of the power cord (resistance) as well.
Hi DeadCat
The benefit of using an RCD on your electric lawnmower is that when you chop the cable it will trip just the lawnmower off, and not the one in your distribution board that likely also controls a load of other circuits in your house. It is also likely to trip a wee bit faster 50mS is a long time to be part of a current path until the RCD disconnects - so any time you can reduce it is a good thing.
Thank you both, that’s clear.
And that was the problem. The fridge should have had a 13 amp fuse. A 3 A fuse is intended for shaver adapters.
240V x 3A = 0.75KW.
I’ll be charitable and assume you’re talking about American voltages levels, and power levels from big 20 year old refrigerators 
They do, of course, draw much more power at every start up, but that 3 amp fuse is good for more than a moment of 10A current.
The UK uses those large plugs with built-in cartridge fuses and and earth pin. Plus switched sockets, which can be very useful at times. The rest of Europe uses round pin connectors, mainly with 2 pins but increasingly with a third one for earth. No switched sockets. You can pull out the plug with relatively low power devices, but for an iron or a fire a switch would be much better. Fires usually have switches, irons don’t (some switch off if you turn the dial far enough, and they do switch off internally once they have reached the correct heat).