>Australia for a couple of years and being scared to
>death that there were no fuses and hardly and sockets
>actually had grounds on them

Well the Australian ones certainly have a ground pin, because they use the
same ones NZ uses (I'm a Kiwi), and the fuses are on the fuse board, wired
out to the room sockets in a star configuration.

The English wiring system is to run a ring main around all the sockets with
a single large circuit breaker or fuse, which has the horrible effect that a
faulty appliance can still take out the whole ring main instead of just the
faulty appliance. Hope your fridge or freezer is not on the same circuit
when the TV set blows the fuse.

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