"generator style plugs both ends"

"Apprentice's Roulette", anyone?

About this product Product Information The PIFCO 25m 4-Way Extension Reel is a heavy-duty cable reel with 4 power sockets. The PIFCO 4-Way Reel features a safety cutout, a cable winder, and is designed to be free standing. The 4-Way sockets and

That's not what the picture shows!

That's more like it! A Widowmaker cable.

In article snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com, snipped-for-privacy@gowanhill.com scribeth thus

Also known as a Jesus cord;-(...

I've often thought that the e standard types of lamp holders were pretty dangerous things to have in the home too. both les and bayonet would seem to have easy access to getting to contact both terminals easily. When you think back how we all used to take the bulbs out and power the Iron from the lamp circuit. I remember my grandmother doing it all the time. Brian

I suspect that if the wiring regs were written ab initio then each light fitting would need its own isolator. The cost and complexity of rows of labelled isolating switches in each room mean that this will probably not happen now.

I already have eight light switches in the lounge, each controlling one ceiling light or a pair of wall lights, or a table lamp.

Owain

Don't some bayonet fittings have a built-in isolator these days? One I have on a table lamp certainly does, a little red plastic button between the two contact terminals. Less important for pendant lights perhaps.

Seems a waste (bearing in mind even a DP isolator is no bloody good if it's not used to isolate a circuit) when LEDs mean you could mandate ELV for new/replacement domestic lighting circuits (with tightly drawn exceptions for special purposes). Of course that means more copper than if we stuck with LV and used thinner cable/flex (spec'd to give adequate mechanical strength). So comes down to what price you put on the risk to users compared with the risk to insects/birds/fish/other mammals from mining?

I only fit bayonet fittings like that. Some have contacts that depress and make contact with the feed when you insert a bulb. The bigger ones (e.g. some MK) have a switch that operates when you rotate the bulb.

My father used to run the design office and test lab for Volex in Hindley Green and, prior to that, in Salford (formerly Ward & Goldstone) in the '80s and '90s. Even then, their bayonet light fittings self-isolated when you took out the bulb.

SteveW

But since you might want two way switches and conventional light switches are not two pole then you would need another eight isolating switches with appropriate levels of reliability and contact separation. And if conventional switches were two pole wiring would be much more complicated and two way switches rather difficult to organise without also having a box of relays.

Yep, my first belt from the mains was courtesy of a bayonet lamp holder and the curiosity of a 6 or 7 year old.

Aka a "Jesus H. Christ! cord" :-)