I wasn't having a go at you Col, I was replying to Lurch's comment about me being vocal about exams, as you said in your post, there are a lot of people who have the right bits of paper and still get it wrong.
Personally I don't really care what anyone else does, and that's being honest! When I joined the trade many years ago there was only one type of electrician, you went to college and you learned about the whole package. Now for whatever reason, you have what I call "real" electricians, who've been trained properly, then you have the short course brigade, which the NI laughingly call Domestic Installers.
Now I'd be fine with these DI's if they'd stick to what they were trained at, unfortunately too many of them decide to venture into area's about which they have little or no knowledge, and about as much experience, this is what I have issues with.
I was speaking to a bloke recently, he was in his 40's and had decided to become an electrician, he'd never worked in any associated industry, but, he had the money to do a short course, which he had indeed done. He came out with a worrying comment which showed the level of his knowledge, "I love forums, if I come across anything I don't know how to do then I go on a forum and ask".
Now I'm not being funny, I know how to do first aid, but going by his attitude, then it would be fine for me to go on a forum, or watch a few video's then go out and start performing major surgery!
If a member of the public, such as yourself, decides to start altering his wiring at home and makes a complete B of it, there are a few possible outcomes, such as, burning the house down, or killing yourself or a member of your family!
If however someone with little or no experience however decides to set up as an electrician and start doing work for others, then that's a whole different dynamic, you are potentially risking the lives of other people who happen to be paying for being put at risk.
In recent years there's been an increase in problems caused by poorly tightened terminals, predominantly I may add in the London area, now is this down to shoddy equipment, or is it down to people who don't actually know how to tighten a terminal?
There's a lot of talk of using torque screwdrivers nowadays (unheard of when I started out), Same with RCD's, they used to be a form of secondary protection, now they seem to have become a primary device, why? Because in my opinion people cannot work out if one is really needed or not, it's the same with a rodded earth, hardly a week goes by without someone asking whether they should use the supplied earth, to a shed, or stick a rod in. If they did rod it the chances are they'd bang a short thin one in and leave it at that.
If the likes of the NI,IET et al wanted to do something useful then a good start would be to stop changing the regs every five minutes just to make money, the 18th are a disaster from what I've heard.
There's a great deal of stuff put in which may not be relevant to a lot of people, now there's a good idea for a course, make it like a driving licence, you pass your initial test, then if you want to or need to you can add extra classes such as LGV,PSV, etc.Why not make the electrical regs like that, you do a basic regs course covering the usual stuff, then add extra modules for the likes of EV chargers or solar. That way there'd be no need for A) changing regs just to make money, and B) people spending money on books and courses which deal with stuff they will never work on.
