I’m going to say something which will, I know, raise the ire of certain of our contributors, but first I wish to relate a personal anecdote. It does have a bearing on things, but initially it may not seem so.
50 or more years ago I casually mentioned at work that I was doing something either at home or at the church I attended in those days, and promptly got verbally jumped on by one of my colleagues. He claimed that I was taking work from someone else, and how would I like it if someone off the street came in and started doing my job? A silly argument because for anyone else to do my job presupposes that the “comer-in” knew what he/she was doing, that he/she had spent some considerable time being trained.
Interestingly, work in the home for that particular job, although reserved at that time to the company, may now be done by anyone, but that is unimportant at the present time.
Fairly obviously, my colleague was a union man through & through, and we all know about the stranglehold the unions had over industry back then, ie, pick up the nut you’ve just dropped, and cause an all-out strike!
So, back to today. I wonder how much of the present restrictions on home electrics has been caused by electrician unions persuading polititians, who are not necessarily the best technical people in the world, that electricity is too dangerous to be left to people who do not have the requisite pieces of paper to show that they have attended some sort of course. I’m sure we all know the stories of the house holder, someone with a degree in high voltage electrical planning, but did not have the requisite piece of paper, so wasn’t allowed to rewire his own house, or the polititian who got himself shocked by a faulty washing machine, etc., whilst there is a story of a qualified electrician who could not find the fault, and had to rely on the householder to do the faultfinding. Ok, maybe exaggerated perhaps, but like a lot of things, perhaps with a grain of truth therein.
It does seem to me that more and more we are being told to leave it to the experts, when in reality, anyone with even just a smidgeon of common sense could do the job easily and more cheaply.
Regards,
Peter G. Shaw
Edited to remove a superfluous postscript.
Edited By Peter G. Shaw on 16/07/2020 11:48:35