Moving to france

[ban-all-sheds]

But won't it be fun if we can claim compliance with Part P by wiring according to the regulations of another country.

"No no, Mr Inspector - you may not fail this installation as it would be perfectly legal in <insert filthy-foreign-country-of-choice>."

 

[IanDB]

In the UK the death rate is around 10 killed directly, 60% of these will kids climbing on Pylons and into sub-stations

So 4 people are killed every year in the UK due to other reasons, perhaps faulty housewiring, and Part P is going to be introduced to reduce this to........? Lies, damned lies and statistics?

 

[ban-all-sheds]

They reckon it'll save 10% of those deaths - about 1 life every 2 years.

On average, 20 people a year drown in garden ponds.......

 

[IanDB]

Only one answer to this:-

BAN EVERYTHING!

 

[AdamW]

As well as sheds?

I reckon that come the next general election, Jim should stand for Prime Minister. No policies on immigration, health or employment, but he will ensure that Europe has to dance to our tune on electrical regs.

Ban, with comments such as "<insert filthy-foreign-country-of-choice>." you should be the foreign minister.

IanDB "BAN EVERYTHING": you can be minister for political correctness and entertainment

Of course, if we all start using the French wiring standards then it will make our lives a lot more colourful. I mean, don't you ever get bored of standardised colours such as red, black and green/yellow? Wouldn't it be far more fun to have all different colours, not always meaning what you expect them to? You see a purple wire: is it live, neutral or earth? Such a thrill! And to double the fun, non-polarised sockets!

I suppose to try and normalise the death-by-avoidable-accident figures across Europe, we could bump ours up by fitting sparking units to give petrol pumps a 1 in 1000 chance of exploding each time we use them?

While we're at it, can we remove the ban on curved bananas? Straight ones look plain wrong to me. And the whole everything being written in kg before lb? I asked for 100g of roast beef at the deli counter and got funny looks from everyone in the queue. Didn't see the price in ounces on the ticket in tiny writing underneath.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Ban, with comments such as "<insert filthy-foreign-country-of-choice>." you should be the foreign minister.

Only if it's OK to take bribes from the tourist authorities in said countries to get me to say how marvellous they are....

 

[AdamW]

Well you would hardly be a proper minister without accepting "gifts" now, would you?!

But that would mean going to said country and staying in a hotel with death-trap electrics.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Well, then I'd just have to have "assistants" to turn everything on and off for me, and, as they are particularly hazardous areas, come into the shower with me and work that on my behalf....

Alternatively I could make FWL Minister In Charge of Pre-emptive Strikes on Filthy Foreign Electrics, and he could deploy a crack team of Para-trained REME engineers to parachute in and rip out all the dodgy stuff before it has a chance to become a danger to us.

But I think I prefer the idea of shower assistants. Talking of which, the Minster for Employment would have to agree that equal opportunities laws would not apply when recruiting to fill those positions

 

[Big_Spark]

Don't know about France specifically, but one of the papers cited in the Part P proposals as a justification was

Bromley,K & Riley,J. Electrical accidents and regulations in the UK and other countries. BRE Report No. 76348 prepared for DETR, August 1999.

which apparently claims that the incidence of electrical casualties (both fatal and non-fatal) at work and in the home per million population appears much higher in the UK than in a number of other European countries. Cant find it on the DTI or BRE websites though.

Well BRE are talking rubbish, the ODPM are aware the report is inaccurate. Between October 2002 and October 2003, 44 died of electric shock in the UK, 42 of these were DIY electricians or people messing with electric equipment in the home they were not qualified to interfere with (Note this figure excluded children killed on supply infra-structure and those killed by fire). The remaining two deaths were electricians killed in Industrial Installations.

These Figures come from the ODPM.

According to the EU, the figures for various countries, when broken down the same..to direct contact.

France = 1382
Germany = 531
Holland = 118
Itlay = 983
Spain = 896
Portugal = 769
Denmark = 16
Norway = 12
Belgium = 43
England & Wales = 44 Nthn Ireland = 73
Scotland = 31
Eire = 67
Channel Islands = 2

From the above you can see that the UK is not the worst in Europe, it is in fact France.

Now you take the same states for death caused by Indirect contact or Electrical Fault, this includes falling from heigth as a result of shock, Fire and other similar causes lumped together, and is for the same period.

France = 9562
Germany = 2781
Holland = 434
Itlay = 2045
Spain = 6782
Portugal = 2157
Denmark = 178
Norway = 56
Belgium = 189
England & Wales = 2273 Nthn Ireland = 452
Scotland = 231
Eire = 435
Channel Islands = 46

You can see from these Figures that the UK has a way to go to be the worst, and if population is taken into account, we are bettre than most EU states.

There is still room for improvement though.

 

[AdamW]

England & Wales = 44 Nthn Ireland = 73

That one surprises me, seeing as we all work to the same regs and NI has less than 2 million inhabitants compared with 52 million for England and Wales. Which means that per capita the figures are more than 40 times higher for NI!

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Surely the BRE didn't try to make things here look grim in order to bolster the case for Part P, did they??

 

[plugwash]

someone suggested an iec to 4 gang extention lead

because iecs are only rated at 10A yet are frequently connected to higher rated cuircuits with no fuseing i would use a fued extention socket and fit a 10A fuse

 

[journeyman]

I have created some new figures based on FWL's data and the latest population data that I could find.

Assuming that UK is 1, then the information shows how many more or how many less people are killed per head of population than the UK.

Direct

UK = 1.00
france = 31.23 4.18
germany = 8.64
holland = 9.69
italy = 23.54
spain = 28.75
portugal = 99.51
denmark = 3.98
norway = 3.60
belguim = 5.58
scotland = 8.23

Indirect

UK = 1.00
france = 4.18
germany = 0.88
holland = 0.69
italy = 0.95
spain 4.21
portugal = 5.40
denmark = 0.86
norway = 0.33
belguim = 0.47
scotland = 1.19

It showes that we are the best for direct contact but worse off for the indirect causes.

 

[AdamW]

Geography was never my strong point (I always feel Pontefract should be in Wales), but last time I checked Scotland was in the UK! Or were you separating Scotland from England + Wales + NI in order to highlight the 8.23 figure? Well I knew a Scots lass who always exclaimed that Scotland was part of the EU more than it was the UK, perhaps this feeling is universal north of the border and they have taken to EU-style wiring?

Now, I wonder why Spain and France have such abismal electrical safety... I hope their electrical safety attitudes don't extend to their nuclear power stations seeing as France produces most nuclear electricity per capita IN THE WORLD, and Spain produces a pretty hefty portion of theirs by nuclear plants too.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

What intrigues me about the fact that the Scottish figures are worse than the rest of the UK is that the Scots have had the same rules as Part P for some time now....