And how do you distinguish between a cable with a 3A fuse and a 13A one? If you are going to use the wrong cable, then either it blows the fuse, or, the fuse doesn't really make sense imho.
The fuses are colour coded. You set the fuse to the rating of the cable that is on that plug, and obviously the cable should have a rating equal or higher than the connector on the other end (e.g. IEC connector). The fuses are there to protect the cable, not the equipment. The equipment should have its own appropriately rated fuse.
Yes, I understand this. But what I am curious about is: how does every Tom, Dick and Harry to get on with this? Does it happen, that soembody is whacking a 10A fuse into a 1A rated cable because they are all black and/or the proper fuse wasn't available? I do not expect that anybody here in this forum will have any problems at all to handle this correctly.
But for safety reasons it should also get on with the more "average" part of the people.
The truth is that the uninitiated will just stick a 13A fuse in everything, but thankfully the manufacturers of the equipment who fit the leads with the moulded on plug tops will automatically fit the correct fuse for the cable and load. Example, they might fit a 1.5mm cable not because of the loading of the appliance, but because of the improved mechanical rating of that cable, and that cable might be fitted to say a small fridge, or a hoover etc and then they would fit a fuse to protect the appliance, say a 3A or 5A one etc according to the actually loading of the appliance itself.
Proper BS rated plug top fuses should be colour coded 13A has Brown text, 3A has Red text as these are the normal fuses, the others are normally Black text although I have seen Black, Blue and Green on some ratings of the unusual ones such as 1A, 5A and 10A.