Ingenious British Plugs

I learned something quite amazing today about British wall outlets.

It all started when my boss gave me my new phone today. I got one of those snazzy PDA/Phone combo things so I can get rid of what little life I had remaining by signing up for "push" email. For some reason, they shipped us the European versions of the phone, with a European charger.

Now, I have a lot of different adapters - US to UK, UK to US, UK to Europe, US to Europe - but I don't have any Europe to UK...it just doesn't seem necessary. So, my boss said, until I get the proper adapter, I could just stick a screwdriver in the top of the socket and then plug the two prongs in the bottom.

I was horrified. Here my boss was asking me to stick a metal object in the power outlet?? Is my performance really that bad? So I made him prove it to me - basically the top outlet is the ground (he called it earth, btw) - and if you stick something in it, it opens up the bottom two holes so you can stick the rest of the plug in. Basically, this means that in addition to having a built in on-off switch (pictured right) - that all of our plugs are inherently child proof. Brilliant!

I guess it is a good thing - 220v is a whole lot more than 110....twice as much, even.