"Jerry" wrote

The great advantage of radial circuits is that idiots find it a
little more difficult to bridge out the breaker in the panel,
unlike the silly fuse fitted in BS1363 plugs (which for some
silly reason is the same shape and diameter as many screws, bolts
and any other round bar) -

Well the BS1362 fuse certainly isn't the same shape as any screw, since
screws taper to a point, nor is it the shape of any bolt, unless you cut the
head off the bolt. As for round bar, well it would have to be the same
diameter and length, how many people have bits of round bar just exactly the
right size hanging around the house? not many.

For the last 20 years I have PAT tested every mains electrical item
submitted to a charity auction that is held twice a year in the village
where I live. In that time I met a fair few horrors: flexes so damaged that
the bare live wire shows through, a standard lamp (with a brass fitting)
wired up with two-core bell-wire, flexes extended using a bit of choc-block
wrapped in insulating tape, broken plugs, mis-wired plugs, plugs with the
cord-grip either missing or incorrectly used etc. But I've only ever had one
example of a plug with anything other than a BS1362 fuse in it, and that had
a few turns of 5A fuse-wire wrapped round the prongs of the fuse-holder. So
I don't buy this idea that people are putting screws, bolts or bits of metal
rod into plugs in any significant numbers at all. Its *so* much easier to
nick a fuse from another appliance than to start looking for bits of metal
that will fit!

David.