The UK 3-pin plug has always impressed me as the clunkiest thing in common usage. The adapter I use to make my MacBook charger UK-compliant is bigger than anything else in the "power adapter" pocket of my backpack ... it's even bigger than the Australia/NZ one. Anyway, Min-Kyu Choi of the Royal College of Art (!) has come up with a remarkably improved version that is both backward compatible (with some clever twisting and folding) and perhaps defining a completely new format that could be adopted. (The distance between one of the live pins and the ground is a bit close, but no worse than we use in the US ... although our line voltage is 110V, not 220V).