I don't live in Somerset, but I can assure you that's nothing like reality in the UK - it's certainly NOT common for live and neutral to be wrongly connected, or for the earth screw to be lose - and I've been in thousands of homes installing electrical items and never found one like that.
The sockets are perfectly fine for 13A, and a double socket often feeds two 13A loads at the same time - that's why we have ring mains in the UK.
I have seen occasional plugs on 3KW heaters burnt and brown, but that's normally because the plug was fitted poorly (not correctly tightening the screws, making a 'high' resistance connection that gets hot) - and the heat from the plug pins can also damage the socket.
Yes, common was the wrong word, not unknown would have been better. There is no need to use scare caps and bold, I can read just fine. By the way, I was talking about the mains cable from the user device being reversed, not the house wiring- I have never come across that.
I do not agree that a twin socket would be OK with both pasing 13A- maybe when properly installed with matching high end plugs but that is seldom the case. Also it is common for the screws in the plug and socket terminals not to be adequately tight and also for the cable entry to be badly formed. There is a design flaw with the terminals on all sockets because of the use of a single small screw, made of soft brass as the only clamp for the cable.
A ring main is just a convienience. This is made worse, if I remember corectly, because with a ring you need to twist the two 20A solid cores together and then stuff those in the connector. The twisting weakens the core and the little screw also damages the copper, often, and I mean often, the wires are not twisted and one or the other core is not properly secured. It's often said that a ring capacity is twice the value of a single cable, but this is not true for most installations because of the different cable lenths and other risistances in the separate circuits. this means that one ring will pass more current than the other depending on the position of the socket in the ring. By the way, if you really want to see some disaters take a look at emmersion heater wiring.
A star arrangement is the propper approach. A normal domestic ring is done with 2.5 mm2 20 A cable and a 32A fuse. That means that only two sockets in on the whole ring can be used at full power (26A). (by the way, I do know about diversity)
I'm not sure what area you work in, perhaps industrial. I should have clarified that I was talking about domestic and then fairly old. But In 1972, we moved into a brand new house and got an electrical certificate. None of the earth terminals were tight: the earth wires were just dangling in the receptacles. I measured and there was no connection to the earth terminal on the wall sockets.
You do agree that mains plugs and sockets with high currents get hot and brown. The main line manufacturer's sockets and plugs are ok but not the second line stuff.
An older lady lives next door and I seem to have been appointed Mr fixit it. Around nine months ago she knocked on our door in a panic and said that her mains kept going off- I won’t bore you with what I found! Also, last year I bought an 1878 house- I won't tell you what I found with the electrics either in case it upsets you
Just to put things in perspective, I know quite a few electricians who are very good, and in the main that is the case. But there are a few others who are not so good and also there is the DIY squad. It is just the same in any profession from road sweepers, through estate agents, through solicitors, through doctors, and so on right up to design engineers.
Don’t take things personally.
PS: there is a mantra that says: In an organisation 20% of the members do the work and the rest are just members- you are probably one of the 20%
