Re: [OT] DIY electrical work

"Just zis Guy, you know?" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

On Tue, 07 Dec 2004 22:36:09 +0000, Trevor Barton
<[email hidden]> wrote in message
<u8b5pc.luv.ln@ahahahooey>:

Quoted message said:

Many house fires are started as a result
of shoddy DIY electrical wiring.

- Fires started by cigarettes kill more people than any other kind of
fire - accounting for one third of all fatal fires in the home.

- On average, 140 deaths and over 1,800 injuries each year occur as a
result of fires caused by smoking.

- The number of deaths caused by cigarette fires increased by 11% in
the UK, or nearly 30% in England and Wales.

- You are almost 5 times more likely to die and twice as likely to be
injured in a fire caused by a cigarette than you are with other fires.

One of the facctors behind cigarette fires is additives to cigarettes by
tobacco company which make them 'stay alight', this ensures an unattended
cigarette continues to burn (right down to the filter) and hence boots the
cigarette companies profits and governments tax revenues.

One particular aspect of this is when a cigarette is left in an ash tray,
as the unattended cigarette burns down its centre of mass changes and
it will often fall out of the ash tray and onto the floor/carpet/sofa
resulting in a fire whilst the smoker (and familly) have gone to bed.

However given that both the government and tobacco companies
both benefit from these deaths it is unlikely that anything will be done
about it.
Tobacco companies profits appear on balance sheets not childrens
(or anyones lives).

One aspect perhaps over looked by both the tobacco companies
and the government (in their greed) is that smokers who die in
such fires don't buy any more cigarettes. OR maybe they
figure the revenue from wasting the cigarettes of smokers who are not
killed in this manner outweights former revenue lost.

Quoted message said:

Top 4 sources of fire:

Cooking activities 55% of fires (15% deaths)
Smokers' materials and matches 11% (34% of deaths)
Electric, gas and open fires 5% (10% of deaths)
Candles 3% (2.5% of deaths)

So, in response to special pleading from industry bodies "they" are
"doing something" about the "menace" of shoddy electrical work while
quietly ignoring the major causes.

It's déja-vu all over again...

Guy
--
"then came ye chavves, theyre cartes girded wyth candels
blue, and theyre beastes wyth straynge horn-lyke thyngs
onn theyre arses that theyre fartes be herde from myles
around." Chaucer, the Sheppey Tales

you know? said:

On Tue, 07 Dec 2004 22:36:09 +0000, Trevor Barton
<[email hidden]> wrote in message
<u8b5pc.luv.ln@ahahahooey>:

Quoted message said:

Many house fires are started as a result
of shoddy DIY electrical wiring.

- Fires started by cigarettes kill more people than any other kind of
fire - accounting for one third of all fatal fires in the home.

- On average, 140 deaths and over 1,800 injuries each year occur as a
result of fires caused by smoking.

- The number of deaths caused by cigarette fires increased by 11% in
the UK, or nearly 30% in England and Wales.

- You are almost 5 times more likely to die and twice as likely to be
injured in a fire caused by a cigarette than you are with other fires.

Top 4 sources of fire:

Cooking activities 55% of fires (15% deaths)
Smokers’ materials and matches 11% (34% of deaths)
Electric, gas and open fires 5% (10% of deaths)
Candles 3% (2.5% of deaths)

So, in response to special pleading from industry bodies "they" are
"doing something" about the "menace" of shoddy electrical work while
quietly ignoring the major causes.

I'm not sure that it's a case of the major causes being ignored so much
as there's not a great deal that can be done about the major causes,
other than perhaps greater public awareness and more asinine public
information films.

However, something can be done in principle about electrical wiring,
and seems to be being done.

There seems to be a great deal of misapprehension about the changes.
Noone is forbidden from doing any electrical work they like in their
houses. All that's changing is that *certain types* of electrical
work require inspection afterwards by a building inspector *unless*
you are registered for self-certification, and in general only "fully
qualified" electricians can become registered. Most jobs that people
do in their own homes, like changing light fitting, remain perfectly
legal.

Quoted message said:

It's déja-vu all over again...

Well no it's not, I don't see any parallel with the H-work. Wether
or not you wear an H affects potentially only your safety, and no
matter your point of view it would be difficult to argue cogently
that either wearing one or not wearing one affects anyone else's.

The electrical work you do on your house does affect others, both
other people in the house and future occupants, and I'm quite happy
that it should be subject to regulation and inspection. The same is
true for work you do on your car (although you could argue that an
annual MOT won't pick up many bodged DIY brake-jobs, too).

See eg one of the first googles I found, it matches my understanding
although I can't vouch for it's authority:

<http://www.safetynews.co.uk/we110704/Change%20to%20law%20on
%20domestic%20electrical%20work%20in%20England%20and%20Wales.htm>

(I'm sorry, slrn is a good newsreader otherwise, but refuses to let
me post lines longer than 80 chars, so you'll have to reconstruct
it properly yourself or try <http://tinyurl.com/5vg6k> if I did
it properly)

--
Trevor Barton

half_pint said:

"Just zis Guy, you know?" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

On Tue, 07 Dec 2004 22:36:09 +0000, Trevor Barton
<[email hidden]> wrote in message
<u8b5pc.luv.ln@ahahahooey>:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Many house fires are started as a result
of shoddy DIY electrical wiring.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

- Fires started by cigarettes kill more people than any other kind of
fire - accounting for one third of all fatal fires in the home.

- On average, 140 deaths and over 1,800 injuries each year occur as a
result of fires caused by smoking.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

- You are almost 5 times more likely to die and twice as likely to be
injured in a fire caused by a cigarette than you are with other fires.

Quoted message said:

One of the facctors behind cigarette fires is additives to cigarettes by
tobacco company which make them 'stay alight', this ensures an unattended
cigarette continues to burn (right down to the filter) and hence boots the
cigarette companies profits and governments tax revenues.

Quoted message said:

One particular aspect of this is when a cigarette is left in an ash tray,
as the unattended cigarette burns down its centre of mass changes and
it will often fall out of the ash tray and onto the floor/carpet/sofa
resulting in a fire whilst the smoker (and familly) have gone to bed.

Another overlooked point is that fresh smoke from burning tobacco is
far more carcinogenic etc. than smoke which has alreay been filtered
through the lungs of a smoker. So these "smoke themselves" cigarettes
are also responsible for the toxicity of passive smoking.

It's quite an unecessary piece of profiteering: roll your own tobacco
doesn't burn by itself, it goes out when you stop smoking it. That's
one of the reasons it's much cheaper to smoke your own roll-ups, and
the economy-conscious roll-up market simply wouldn't stand for a
tobacco that smoked itself. With cigarettes that went out when you
stopped smoking, you could even smoke half a [censored], and come back later
to smoke the other half, as lots of smokers would actually do if they
weren't sold [censored] which smoke themselves once lit.

One of the strange paradoxes of smoking is not why people smoke, but
why they actually buy the rubbish that the big tobacco companies
advertise so assiduously.

--
Chris Malcolm [email hidden] +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]