Hi John. I think 'black sheep' is a bit strong, implying that there is malice in play when a mistake is made. I never stated, nor implied, that everybody involved in the electrical installation industry was perfect.
Hi there, we can argue about semantics as much as you wish, but, as you imply, in every trade/profession there is an entire spectrum between 'excellent'/'perfect' and "shouldn't really be doing the job" - and I think that the great majority of people (both within and outside of the trades/professions concerned) would refer to extreme examples of the latter as "black sheep" (not just incompetent, but "likely to bring the trade/profession into disrepute").
However, I would say that, even at that 'bottom extreme' of the spectrum, true malice is extremely rare. In context, I would think that there are incredibly few, if any, electricians (or 'electricians') who have true 'malice', in the sense that they deliberately, or even knowingly, set out to create danger or to do harm.
Maybe I have been lucky when I've met members of the IET, HSE, NICEIC but I have found they actually know a bit about electrical installation.
I would say 'typical', rather than 'lucky', since the people 'at the bottom of the spectrum' are, fortunately, a small minority, so one would expect that most of the people that anyone 'met' would be at least "OK", often better.
However, as always, we only really hear about the exceptions (the "black sheep") - just as we don't switch on the 6 o'clock news and hear about all the planes that haven't crashed, all the people who haven't been murdered, all the police officers who have done their jobs impeccably etc. etc. The fact that we don't usually hear about, or discuss, any of the 'good' things in the world (like excellent electricians) in no way alters the fact that the great majority of things (including electricians)
are 'good'.
Having said that, I do agree with bernard that it seems that in many trades/professions (including those we are discussing), there seems to be an increasing tendency for people not to know/understand (maybe because they haven't been taught) the basic/fundamental principles and concepts underlying the discipline in which they are practising.
That tends to create a "Jobsworth" situation, with people (sometimes 'blindly') learning and applying sets of rules/regulations, without an ideal degree of understanding of why those rules/regs exist, or necessarily an ability to apply discretion and common sense or to be able to deal with situations which are 'out of the ordinary' (a common example being that of people who think that various things 'are not allowed' because they do not appear in the (non-exhaustive) examples shown in Appendix 15 of BS7671).
From the viewpoint of the individuals concerned, this will also make life more difficult for them, since it's much easier to learn about things when one understands their basis that if one has to learn them as one would a poem!
Kind Regards, John