Bigger oh sh!t.

[John Rumm]

ISTR, that some were simply under sized rather than less pure.

[John Rumm]

And?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

The point is you can't rely on a supplier not to rip you off. There have to be standards and quality checks controlled by the state.

[Handsome Jack]

Do you also complain when physics books tell you the speed of light is about 3*10^8 m/s instead of 2.99792458*10^8 m/s?

[John Rumm]

We had in place the Approved Cables Inititive (ACI) and British Approvals Service for Cables (BASEC) to assess, license and police these matters.

Routine testing of samples by ACI found that some of Atlas Kablo's cables were no longer meeting the BS requirements, and BASEC suspended their license. BASEC also did their own testing and concluded there was a serious decline in quality across its range of products.

Atlas was then required by BASEC to assist the market in locating and recovering the the affected cable from the supply chain. Atlas also published the batch numbers of the affected cables.

What else would you have liked to happen? A central government database of every reel of cable sold, and forms filled in quadruplicate identifying where every bit of it was used, policed by a whole new quango of cable usage data loggers?

[Tim Watts]

I had a heart attack until I managed to verify my "Atom Kablo" was totally unreleated to this "Atlas Kablo"

Anyway, sticking to British cable from now on...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

So Atlas were prosecuted for supplying BS marked cables that didn't comply?

If a vast amount of this fake cable managed to be sold, there is obviously something not working as intended.

[whisky-dave]

:-D, so that's what it means. ;-)

[whisky-dave]

But you can't check every product, what you can do is take a sample from a manufactirer, supplier or shipper and test a few products and base your results on that. Most people do rely on suppliers rightly or wrongly

[John Rumm]

Not sure why this has popped up again really, since this was all back in

2010...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Given how much of that cable ended up being sold, something needs tightening up.

It's likely the maker passed on at least some of the savings they made in materials to the UK supplier.

[Mike Clarke]

Although some reports claim that the CSA was below spec none of them say by how much. In the absence of supporting reports of lots of fires due to overheating cables in the last 7 years I'm inclined to assume that it wasn't seriously below spec.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Probably the BBC just digging up an old story on a slow news day.

[whisky-dave]

I agree weren't we 100% in the EU at the time. Did the cable have a valid CE mark ?

Perhaps, but that's not how it worked with the horse meat lasagne. Those making the food didn't get any discount, they were told it was beef so paid for beef.

[Chris J Dixon]

I recall a story told about one of the senior engineers at what was then the Railway Technical Centre in Derby.

Apparently an inspector, with time on his hands, whilst checking a vehicle build line, decided to count the strands in a heavy flexible power cable. He eventually determined that it was one short of the expected 905 strands.

The report was duly passed to Derby, and in the space on the form for action required, the engineer wrote "wrap one round the outside". Unfortunately, when this was returned, it wasn't realised that it shouldn't actually be taken seriously, and was forwarded to the supplier to implement.

Chris

[John Rumm]

I doubt it... they are based in Turkey, and the went t*ts up not long after IIRC.

I would guess compared to the total amount sold each year its a drop in the ocean.

[ARW]

And everyone at this time of the year is out looking for scraps of plasterboard for bonfire night. It gives the fire that extra something that wood never seems to do:-)

[ARW]

Most electrical wholesalers sold it.

[The Natural Philosopher]

WE had forgotten how clueless dennis actually was.

Hint for dennis. CaSO4 is already 'burnt' so you can't do it again.

>

[dennis]

Hint for the idiot TNP, get the attributions correct as I never mentioned plasterboard. But then the truth doesn't matter to you does it?