> P.S. I've never heard of sparky being used as slang for an electrician, sounds very aussie.

When I moved into a new house in Australia I asked the real estate agent if I could extend the fence, and he said I'd need a cheapie to do that.

I said ok but scratched my head as to why it needs to be cheap, only to find out later what he actually said was chippy, slang for a carpenter.

Chippies are also known as "wood butchers" apparently. Amused me ;)

Yeah, it's all fun and games until you're at Macca's and someone says, "Oi, can you pass me a chippy?" and they get real confused when you go find a carpenter.

Maccas is nz, maccies is Aus

It's definitely Maccas in AU. Maccies must be a UK thing.

Next you’ll need a roofie

Why, though? Is there some kind of requirement that only fully trained carpenters can build fences?

Just about everything in Australia needs a license to do. Even down to network cabling.

The rule is - if it's going inside the wall, only a licenced electrician can do it. Yes it also extends to things like speaker or HDMI cables. It's mad.

Mad, indeed. It's hard to imagine those rules are followed, especially for speaker wires and HDMI cables.

HDMI cables? Sounds like protectionism. Invent rules to make yourself more work.

Aren't there power delivery versions of HDMI?

I can understand requiring a license for any power wires behind walls.

I could also see the possibility that it's just an old law that doesn't consider data-only cables which don't have the safety issues that wires carrying power do.

It's definitely an old law that never took data cables into account, but the current interpretation is that any cable that carries electrical current has to be installed and certified by an electrician.

While HDMI can provide a tiny bit of power and there are active cables for signal boosting, HDMI was never meant for power delivery. You might be mixing it with HDMI with Ethetnet.

Sparky=electrician is common in the US too. I had previously thought of it as meaning a radio operator e.g. on a ship.

in Spain we call them “chispas”, which literally means sparks. An electrician is someone who knows the home electrical wiring stuff, while a chispas is someone who is skilled in repairing home appliances.

We use sparky in the UK for an electrician too.

> P.S. I've never heard of sparky being used as slang for an electrician, sounds very aussie.

I'm surprised to find out it's aussie slang; I always thought it was slang local to South Africa :-/

We say the chippie in the UK too.

We also use sparkie for electrician.

It's local to UK and more recent British colonies

ZA and AUS included. USA less so.

In the US, sparky is common slang electrician among the trades, but far loss-so for end customers who are looking to hire one.