Hope all is settling down now...

If these fires are such a problem, why do house builders always insist on putting wall sockets at ankle height or tucked in stupid corners? If you can't reach the sockets, how you going to switch them off?

And why are electrical items designed to be left on? How many items does a person need with a clock on it? We have time display on the video, the DVD, the stereo, and microwave. You can even get them on fridges, freezers and printers. Turn these off and you have to spend ages resetting all the clocks before the damn stuff will record what you want at the time you want it, or else live with those annoying flashing signals telling you to set the time again.

I once read that more monitor fires were caused by dust and debris (for this, read pet hair, paper dust and coffee spills) in the back of the unit, than by any power surge. My workfriend in IT certainly seems to think so... he's in charge of about 3,000 computers (1,000 in my building alone) and never had a fire in any that weren't caused by some twit spilling coffee, covering the vents with paper piles or by dropping it whilst still plugged in.

LTS