Didn’t he post an “OK I was wrong about British plugs” follow up (apologies if that is the 2nd link - don’t have time to watch YT vids at the moment).
Yes, he did a video recently about all the times he’s been wrong… fair play to him 
Nah, the second one is from a rather vocal Australian guy.
I’ll add the lack of an on/off switch as well 
OK…
Safety…
The possibility to fit any value of fuse is a bad thing. Someone with no electrical knowledge can fit a 13A fuse ('cos that’s all they could find the drawer…) to the plug of an item fitted with a tiny mains flex (i.e. your average table lamp). You now have a 0,5mm² conductor protected by a fuse that will allow enough current to flow to melt the insulation/start a fire etc.
There’s also the possibility that someone can bypass the fuse & then you have a mighty 30A current available for your tiny flex, thanks to the UK ring main system.
This argument does fall apart when you look the system here in France where that same table lamp may have a 20A disjoncteur protecting the tiny flex, but that’s one reason why interdiffs are obligatory here.
Size…
The UK 13A plug is massive for the the job it does.
That’s not the same subject.
And… the debate on french plugs isn’t really to do with French TV compatibly to work in the UK 
Could you explain this for non-techies please?
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Although I know where you are coming from but I think that’s barely a criticism of BS1363 - the fact that it has a fuse is certainly a strength and a 13A fuse on a weedy cable is not actually worse than no fuse which is the case for most mains plug standards (including EU CEE 7).
I don’t think I’d even agree that the fact that a ring main can supply 30A to the socket is actually a criticism of the plug/socket itself (but it is something of a criticism of the choice to go with ring mains in the first place).
It’s not much bigger than CEE 7
BS1363 dates to the 1940’s - at the time most appliances would be supplied without a plug and the householder would be expected to fit their own, and the same plug applied to 100W lights as well high power appliances, some flexibility was needed hence allowing different fuses. Yes this can be abused or fitted incorrectly but (standards compliant) moulded plugs with pre-fitted fuses should deal with the problem of getting the fuse wrong or terminating the cables incorrectly (another “weakness” of BS1363).
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Can’t believe nobody has yet mentioned stepping barefoot on a UK plug… I’ve done that before - it’s worse than standing on Lego! - but never once have I stood on a European plug. Therefore I declare UK plugs = bad, EU plugs = better.
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Well, yes, the problem with BS1363 plugs is that the flat back does mean that left to its own devices an umplugged cable on the floor will tend to orient itself with pins facing up, waiting to trap any incautious barefooted individuals.
Whereas a CEE 7/7 will tend to lie on its side with pins parallel to the floor.
I’m not sure it was a design consideration though.
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Compared to American two-prong plugs UK plugs are a paragon of virtue.
I use "interdiff’ as shorthand for “interuppteur différentiel”.
In the world of electricity a différentiel (or RCD - Residual Current Device - in English) is a device that detects the difference between the current flowing into a circuit & that returning via the neutral. Those current flows should be equal.
However, in the event of a fault, such as a live part of a washing machine touching the earthed metal casing then the current finds somewhere else to flow (which could be via a human touching a live part). If that circuit is supplied via a différentiel then that device notices the difference between the inflow of current & the outflow; once that value exceeds the fault current rating of the device it will break the circuit i.e. it “trips”.
In order to protect the human body against a harmful flow of current the value of 30mA (milliAmperes) has been settled on as a value suitable to provide adequate protection whilst not being so low that you end up with nuisance tripping caused by the sum of the small leakages that do occur in many electronic devices.
In France NF C 15-100 requires all final circuits (e.g. sockets, lights, dedicated feeds to heaters, cookers etc.) to be protected via a 30mA différentiel in some way. Due to cost & physical considerations this is usually achieved by a group of circuits being protected via a master interrupteur différentiel (ID). The current normes allow a maximum of eight circuits per ID (which has to be correctly sized to cope with the overall group load, but if you fit 63A that calculation goes away).
Normes also demand any installation to have at least two IDs, one of which must be Type A to deal with the kind of loads that require such (pulsing DC faults caused by washing motor speed controls being one of them). Clearly, the final amount of IDs will relate to the number of circuits in the installation e.g. if you have 24 circuits you need at least three IDs; if you have 25 circuits then that rises to at least four IDs, & so on.
Another option is to fit an individual circuit with a “disjoncteur différentiel” (DD) which combines fault protection with overload protection. The UK equivalent is called an RCBO - Residual Current Breaker with Overload protection. In an ideal world every circuit would be run that way but, as mentioned above, cost & the physical space that such an arrangement would entail means that DDs tend to be reserved for more mission critical circuits such as freezers, where you don’t want a fault on another circuit sharing the same ID causing that important thing to go off.
N.B. All the obligations above only apply to new installations & major renovations. However, I would urge anyone who doesn’t have any kind of 30mA différentiel protection to address that lack a.s.a.p.
If in doubt consult a competent person.
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Many thanks for the info. Can you tell us since when this applies please?
Hello Michael,
We bought our Toshiba TV from Leclerc, France in 2020 and brought it back to the UK.
OH did a full factory reset (full reinstallation) and it’s working well including the freeview.
I hope this helps. Good luck !
Thank you all for your input.
Mike
Are the different broadcast standards of SECAM in France and PAL in the UK obsolete in the digital world?
Yes, completely.
The use of différentiels for all socket circuits came in 1991 & I think that the obligation to protect all final circuits in 2002.
There’s more info here.
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