For your toaster or iron, yes. For your USB power supply, mobile charger, LED table lamp, game console, etc., which doesn’t even have an earth connection, not so much. But your power board takes up twice the space of a European one with a row of slender unearthed sockets for such devices.
The British standard is still stuck in 1947, where the expected use cases were kettles, washing machines, pre-transistor radios using high-voltage thermionic valves, and the domestic labour-saving devices of the midcentury that needed to be earthed. That and the shortage of copper that led to British houses being wired with a ring main, and each plug having its own fuse, rather than separately fused circuits as elsewhere.
And for kettles and washing machines we still have earth connections. Doesn’t make sense to make it mandatory so a 5W charger has to be bigger than the phone.
You can still have sockets that accept grounded appliances like washing machines without ALWAYS requiring a bulky third prong that’s not gonna get used anyways. And about the shutters you can have them open when both prongs are inserted at the same time
Fair point, thing is there just exists a better way of doing small ungrounded plugs like phone chargers, I honestly haven’t used a British phone charger but from what I saw they seem pretty bulky compared to what I have
For your toaster or iron, yes. For your USB power supply, mobile charger, LED table lamp, game console, etc., which doesn’t even have an earth connection, not so much. But your power board takes up twice the space of a European one with a row of slender unearthed sockets for such devices.
The British standard is still stuck in 1947, where the expected use cases were kettles, washing machines, pre-transistor radios using high-voltage thermionic valves, and the domestic labour-saving devices of the midcentury that needed to be earthed. That and the shortage of copper that led to British houses being wired with a ring main, and each plug having its own fuse, rather than separately fused circuits as elsewhere.
People still use kettles and washing machines.
You can get a USB power strip.
And for kettles and washing machines we still have earth connections. Doesn’t make sense to make it mandatory so a 5W charger has to be bigger than the phone.
Just use a usb charger
That was my complaint…
You can still have sockets that accept grounded appliances like washing machines without ALWAYS requiring a bulky third prong that’s not gonna get used anyways. And about the shutters you can have them open when both prongs are inserted at the same time
I have literally never felt that British plugs were bulky
Fair point, thing is there just exists a better way of doing small ungrounded plugs like phone chargers, I honestly haven’t used a British phone charger but from what I saw they seem pretty bulky compared to what I have
Most public places including buses have USB ports. And my mains phone charger folds the earth pin in anyway, so it’s not too bulky.