DIY question?

I'm sure I've seen videos on YT of that place or something very similar in the same neck of the woods. Horrifying!

Why do wall warts almost invariably have the output lead coming out of the top?

Well they don't meet BS1363-2 (not enough space round the pins), so they are certainly questionable. However they are much the same as so many others, and no one seems to care...

I have not tried those specific ones, but many I have seen only need to earth pin to open the shutters.

IME they don't - I see a mixture of styles, but with a bias toward lead out of the bottom.

Did they have an exposed "knife switch" to turn it on?

A lot of our standards were subsumed by inferior EC standards. Eg fridges that catch fire.

And of course there is global warming, which was actually caused by the EU, not human CO2 production as suggested by treasonous remainers.

So what was the previous standard and how did it change to make fridges more combustible?

John

Our previous (BS) standard had all metal cabinets and mineral wool insulation.

The UK decided that there was a hole in the ozone layer and convinced the EU to ban CFCs in fridges. So they were replaced with things like propane. Not that propane actually causes the fires in fridges in the first place.

The PIR foam used in the insulation is probably the worst bit and cheap manufacturers just cover it with a plastic skin so it burns quite well.

Its the same stuff they use in tower blocks and a lot of houses.

I would think the causes of ignition are the capacitors and the thermostat in the cheap fridges, followed by users damaging the cables.

Do you want to provide a reference to prove that?

They were made of cheap pressed steel because the machine tools to make them out of plastic weren't about.

As soon as they were manufacturers chose the cheaper option as did consumers.

Ah, lemme see. Soft sheet plastics have been with us since at least the 60s, along with the stamping machines to cut them to shape en masse. Yet the move from metal backs to plastic happened when?

NT