On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 18:53:06 +0100, a particular chimpanzee named
"Dave Plowman (News)" randomly hit the keyboard
and produced:

Only a fool would run cables diagonally across a wall. I can't think of
any real reason ever to do it - apart from to 'save' cable.

My first taste of "work experience" was labouring for a week with a
couple of electricians on a barn conversion in Derbyshire (admittedly
in the 1970's). My jobs included chasing out the walls for the
sockets in as straight a line as I could from one corner of the wall
to the diagonally opposite one, and mixing the plaster for the
'professionals' to plaster straight over them when they'd wired the
sockets up.

Don't know why they did it that way, but one has to wonder why someone
doing a barn conversion in the Peak District would employ electricians
from over fifty miles away at a time of high unemployment, unless they
were exceedingly cheap.
--
Hugo Nebula
'What you have to ask yourself is, "if no-one on the internet wants
a piece of this, just how far from the pack have you strayed?"'