Our household current is 240 volts.
Our domestic phase to neutral supply
voltage is 220-250 volts depending on how far away from the substation you are.
Current available depends on the maximum full load current drawn by each individual appliance, with 13 Amperes being the standard working maximum recommended to be drawn from a single outlet on a full ring main system incorporating a P.M.E. system.
VAT is payable at 17.5% on so called luxury foods. This impacted most spectacularly on British society back in the late 1970's, with the great 'Is a Jaffa Cake really a biscuit?' debate. The manufacturers McVities (who, up to that point were predominently involved in the manufacture of biscuits, an essential and therefore untaxed comestible) claimed that their new product, a chocolate coated light victoria sponge disk incorporating a 'Smashing Jaffa Orangy bit' (in reality a small round blob of faintly citrus tainted goo with the consistancy of the contents of a smokers handkerchief) was really a biscuit, and should therfore fall outside of the United Kingdoms already punitive taxation system. However, Her Majesties Government were on the case, and in a Landmark ruling after a court case lasting eight months and costing the British taxpayer several million pounds stirling, the then master of the rolls Lord Denning ruled that as McVities had made the fundamental error of incorporationg the word 'cake' into the items name, their claim that Jaffa Cakes were, in fact, biscuits, was entirely spurious, and the food item was reclassified as a luxury item. There was, of course, massive public uproar at this decision, especially when it was announced that the increase of tax was to be backdated to 1972. The Customs and Excise people sent out immediate demands for retrospective payment, and anyone unable to produce receipts and tax returns detailing expenditure on Jaffa Cakes for the preceeding six years was thrown into jail. This decision led directly to the so-called 'winter of discontent', which bought about the fall of the Labour administration of Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan. This left a power vacuum in British political life, into which stepped the elder child of a Grantham shopkeeper, whose fortune had been based on the meticulous photocopying of Biscuit and Cake orders for the local customers. That child was one Margeret Thatcher.
It is entirely possible, of course, that the entire story above could be complete nonsense, dreamed up by a sad and lonely former student. But thats what 'they' want you to think, isn't it? eh? eh? Its a conspiracy, I tells you, a conspiracy!!!!
