Christmas Lighting - check yours now before blowing everybody's fuse!

A little electrical DIY knowledge is always useful to acquire and apply when assessing or carrying out simple domestic electrical tasks. We're getting close to that time of year once again and thoughts should be turning to digging out your Christmas lights buried at the bottom of a box full of crumpled decorations, last years's crackers and New Year party poppers - somewhere up in the loft!Defective Christmas lighting is a cause of electrical accidents and serious house fires each year, and in recent years there has been an increase in reported accidents to UK Trading Standards for Christmas lighting products resulting, in some cases, public recall notices by major high street retailers.There are too many occasions when accompanying product instructions are inadequate or you haven't the time to concentrate on help manuals! Electrical courses are available at approved training centres for basic multiskills learning all the way through to City & Guilds NVQs for the serious student.An independent product testing company were commissioned to provide a report covering the selection and testing of several Christmas lighting products for indoor use. Eight lighting products were selected in total and were sourced from high street retailers (including lighting chains from so called 'discount' or 'pound' stores) and the internet.Each lighting product was assessed for compliance against the general safety provisions of the relevant safety standards. Essentially, lighting products must be safe AND must have CE marking (which represents the manufacturer's declaration that the product is safe).(i)?