[emeritus]

Shortly after the sleeved plug requirement came in, I ordered some stuff from one of the advertisers in one of the hobby magazines (Practical Wireless or Television), and included a couple of 13A plugs in my order. Well they did have sleeves, but the sleeving consisted of rather thin-walled plastic tubing that had evidently been pushed (or shrunk) over the pins of Hong Kong-manufactured unsleeved plugs, as the metal of the pins was of uniform cross-section over their entire lengths. The sleeving soon split and broke off, but as the plugs were cheap it wasn't worth complaining. I just bought some proper UK-made ones from a local high street shop.

When my son modernised his kitchen some 5 years ago, I replaced the original bulky (and not properly recessed) cooker point and 13A socket with a compact MK one (with neons), the size of a conventional double socket. I was disappointed by the quality: the neons didn't line up with their transparent red windows, there was complete absence of any means for positively keeping them in position, and the act of pushing on their leads to position them, made the red windows ping out: the windows were simply snapped into position and were only retained by ridiculously-small detents. A bit over-value-engineered methinks.