Andrew Gabriel wrote:

By the way, an interesting excersise is to work out what the
safest order of cable pulling out is on a trailing socket...

I've always reasoned it's the same as for a plug: live shortest, so that
a yank will cut power (and prompt investigation), neutral slightly
longer, and E with a loop so that any casing etc. stays earthed
"longest". I s'pose you could argue swapping the lengths of N and L, so
that a "small" yank will provoke investigation (thing stops working, L
still reaches but E continuity still in place).

I'm pretty sure the idea of E-longest is/was documented in something
fairly widely accessible in the d-i-y/simple-trade electrics line:
Reader's Digest Repair Manual (mid-70s vintage ;-)? or something
reliably Regs-based wot I read not much later? Don't think anything as
sensible as this figures in current pubs, since we live in the world of
pre-moulded plugs by and large...

Stefek