kat, great I'll try a couple of those.
A ring main was nothing special, just that the end of the line was connected back to the beginning. They have a fuse at the outlet, in the plug, and a fuse or circuit breaker at the box. Don't know what the advantages of the ring main are though, that's just how they did it.

Ye Gods Spaw, you mean that there was more that ONE designer who was that stupid. If I had pulled trick like that as an apprentice I'd have got my arse kicked. You make the O-rings a LARGER diameter and everything works fine, sheesh and they actually PAID people to think up that crap.

Give me my old Ford truck anytime. half an hour to change the water pump and about two hours for the timing chain. The only design fault that I found was that the fuel filter was too small, but that was easily solved by buying a bigger one at Chequer. Pity the old thing just wore out. It was old when I got it and I drove it for years on gravel roads up in the mountains.