"Peter Parry" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 2 Jun 2005 23:44:42 +0100, "Mike" wrote:

"Peter Parry" wrote

And you want to propose ideas from this lot of clowns to the rest of
Europe

Do not confuse technical competence with the ability to convince a
bunch of Euroclown committee functionaries.

Well I do regularly see IEE imcompetance in my area of expertise so I don't
expect it to be different in wiring regulations.


one cannot have
harmonisation on one countries existing standard.

Why not? (Apart from it not being acceptable to the French).

Because all the current systems have problems and to give all existing
manufacturers an equal opportunity in what will be a huge market
(rewiring
half of Western Europe and most of Eastern Europe) they need to have a
new
design with rights to manufacture.

I thought the idea was to produce a better system , not to design a
feeding trough for German industry? Also do you seriously think any
significant _rewiring_ would take place?

There is significant rewiring required - the whole of eastern Europe plus
most of France, low countries and a lot of Spain and Portugal, Greece and so
on. All this is waiting for a harmonised EU standard. I don't see this as
a feeding trough for German industry - our own companies should be able to
compete well if we are part of the initiative. If we aren't then they won't
be able to of course as happens so often with European initiatives.




Standards have nothing to do with quality.

Of course they do - that's the main job of the EN standards after all (or
BSI if you prefer them in that format).

The main aim of standards is to ensure things are standard, not that
they are of good quality.

That is totally incorrect. I have been contributing to standards groups
worldwide (IETF, ETSI, IEEE, ANSI, ATM Forum, ADSL Forum, DAVIC, 3PPP, etc)
for thirty years and I can assure you all had the goal of producing high
quality standards that would stand the test of time.