We definitely have a safety-focused culture (for now - it's eroding). And sometimes that can be overbearing. But I disagree in the context of DYI. The culture that makes DYI intimidating is, "you don't know what you don't know - you are going to fuck something up". Physical danger is only one possible consequence.
And to be fair, there is a good reason this warning developed. I think a better solution than simply saying something like "don't worry about what eggheads say, it's safe", or, "man up and do it yourself", is to instead focus on giving people the confidence to try things via better access to quality information, and, crucially, teaching the basics in school. Shop class needs to make a comeback in a big way. We've lost the engine of generational teaching, so we need to kickstart it again.
This. I want to (and sometimes try) to fix more things myself, but web search is so full of SEO garbage that I dread trawling through the results. I think part of the solution is similar to what I did for cooking: lean on a couple of high-quality sites and older printed books.
Try DIY books, especially published before LLMs. There are several almanacs that focus on all types of household, car, and electronics work. Look for the thick comprehensive ones.
Jokes aside. Some things are definitely too high consequence for DIY - like a lot of electrical work. Even a proper sparky here wired the earth into the neutral, which makes the entire house a death trap.
I assume you're in the UK based on your use of the term "sparky"? How are things supposed to be wired there? In the US, we have neutral bonded to ground inside our mains panels.
(I'm not an electrician, but I'll do most of my home electrical work myself. My dad taught me this stuff when I was 12, and I've only learned more and more since. I won't do everything, but it's honestly not as scary as some seem to think.)
In the end for both the professionals and the amateurs, the key is the time invested in learning and the practical experience accumulated. If you did lots of wiring and properly learned for it, are you even a DIY anymore? Getting your license would probably be a formality by now. So I think the difference should be made between competent people with or without license, and gung-ho DIY who'd start everything by themselves with a philips driver and a 5 minute YouTube video. And I don't think anybody here advocates for the latter.
Disagree. Most, but not all, electrical is not that complicated. It's a bit like plumbing where the access and the physicality are the harder part, but the tools and connections are relatively simple.
It's nothing like plumbing. The risk of doing it wrong is not a leak. With electrical, the stuff you don't even know you don't know can kill you or start a fire. It's not always intuitive.
So many safety systems and so much of "code" is stuff that most DIYers don't understand and they just get away with it. Until they don't. Until their kitchen catches fire because they've overloaded a feed or they've had a fatal shock in their shed because it's too far from the house to have tripped in time. People who trusted "IP66" certification on the crap they're getting off Amazon and Ali. DIYers lack real knowledge, real experience.
Some of the most dangerous work you'll ever see comes from people who are handy with tools, thought they knew enough, but didn't. Of course there are "professionals" who deliver poor work too and when they do that, you can lean on their insurance, their certifying body (eg NICEIC in the UK) and get it fixed.
Stick to stuff that doesn't need the work to be inspected to code/regs, unless you're having a pro check and certify your work.
Ah yes, a licensed electrician advising 'amateurs' to hire hire licenced electricians. I live in Sweden where the guilds (they call themselves unions now) have too much say in the laws around electrical installations which means legally we're not allowed to do anything ourselves. Of course those laws are ignored by many and with reason: many electricians produce shoddy and sometimes outright dangerous work. The law allows companies who have a single licensed electrician on staff to send unlicenced trainees out to customers to do the work with the licenced electrician signing off but without the requirement for inspections. Even 'real' licenced electricians sometimes make a mess of things where a gifted 'hempulare' - the Swedish term for someone who works on his own electrical installation without having the required licences - would do a better job because he has skin in the game. I'm one of those who ignores these laws and (re)built my installation from the ground up, correcting faulty wiring done by 'professionals', adding missing lightning/overcurrent suppression, installing a 15 kW stolar installation, etc. When done with the latter I had the work inspected and signed off by a licenced electrician - otherwise I could not have registered my installation for feed-in - who did not find a single flaw and commented that he never had the time to deliver such a neat installation. I do because I live here on this farm and have skin in the game.
> legally we're not allowed to do anything ourselves
This isn't true. Avoid hyperbole when describing your laws.
You can change fittings, switches, lights, like-for-like. You may even be able to extend a circuit. And anything that would require certification you can do but you cannot self-certify, so you have to pay a qualified electrician to check your work. As you have done.
I won't disagree that even professionals can be lazy or incompetent but if they mess up, it's their insurance, their career on the line. If you did uncertified work on your home and it burned down yours and your neighbours' houses, who do you think the insurance companies are going after?
And to be fair, there is a good reason this warning developed. I think a better solution than simply saying something like "don't worry about what eggheads say, it's safe", or, "man up and do it yourself", is to instead focus on giving people the confidence to try things via better access to quality information, and, crucially, teaching the basics in school. Shop class needs to make a comeback in a big way. We've lost the engine of generational teaching, so we need to kickstart it again.