Cheers. Im clearly not an electrician and sort of assume ill end up being the earth if there isnt one present! Good to know that isnt the case and ill get a heavy duty replacement plug. thanks all
If you think about it, you're closer to death when you're moving a plugged-in cable than at most other times in your life, as there is maybe a millimetre of plastic separating your hand from 240v of heart stopper
I've had comments from people that wouldn't dare go near the main electricity incomer board to switch the main isolator off ("because it's dangerous and electricity can kill"), yet they've wandered round the house hoovering with a coil of flex in their hand for years..
The presence of an Earth core in the cable doesn't save them if it's just the live core that's nicked, the electric shock curling their muscles around the cable such that they can't let go no matter how much their brain wills their fingers to open up, so instead protective devices have evolved to the point where they measure the electricity flow out and back and any imbalance is assumed to be a leakage, potentially through a person, and a disconnect occurs. It's thus actually safer to have one of these than it is to have Earth at all, which as a safety system is supposed to be a parallel-with-the-live network of connections meaty enough to blow a fuse/trip upon any failure that results in a short circuit (the washing machine leaking into the motor for example, bridging live to the metal case, which is earthed) of large enough current (and it needs to be a sizeable current; 14A won't blow a 13A fuse particularly quickly, if at all, but 1A is enough to kill a person)
The double square box Harry refers to is an indication that an appliance has been designed in such a way that even if some failure occurs that breaches one layer of insulation inside, there still isn't any touchable part of the outer casing that can become live. That metal screw you see holding the motor case on? There isn't a single failure point that mrans it could shock you. In the old days your metal/cased drill had to have Earth connected to that case just in case it failed in some way, say the bearings fell apart, the armature dislodged, it ended up bridging live to the case and a huge current flows to Earth (which hopefully is well connected all the way back to its earthing point, possibly a metal spike in the ground that hopefully hadn't rotted away to nothing over the years) blowing the fuse If the earth system had silently failed, well.. it's never tested until the point that it's called upon is it? (And you became the Earth connection)
In summary; Earth doesn't offer you anything like the protection you think it does, and there are better methods these days. If your supply to the saw doesn't have an RCD anywhere along it you would be strongly advised to fit one (and it can be in a plug on the saw - Screfix code 63731 - between saw plug and socket - 44855, in the socket it's plugged into - 3133J, into a sub consumer unit feeding the workshop - 453VF etc) just because of risk of damage to eg that millimetre of plastic on the cable that power tools "enjoy"
