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> presumably to prevent a kid with a butter knife or paper-clip touching the hot conductor on a half-inserted plug

Correct! That said, I don’t know how regulated it is since I have quite a few IEC cables without that insulation.

Having just read about this a bit more, it looks like it is also to prevent something falling onto a half-inserted plug and causing *sparks*. China's "upside-down" version is also a solution to this, in that something falling would fall onto the earth pin first. Not sure how that works for two-pin plugs.

The standard was changed around 20 years ago to require the insulation. Before that, it wasn't required. Those IEC cables are probably just older than that.

A couple of other things they also did away with are non-moulded plugs supplied with appliances new, and piggy-back plugs.

Piggy-back is OK (you can still buy piggy-back extension leads), except for the case of a DIY piggy-back plug - this runs the risk of someone wiring two of them together, or a piggy-back plug to a male plug, resulting in danger.

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