Thanks for those replies!
What had happened is the cieling had come down. Jim rang me & explianed the above.
The first thing I said was to turn off the lighting circuit & use table lamps plugged into the wall sockets for light.
So they obviously just turned off the light switches & taped them down. Not awear the kitchen fluro was double-switched !! Meanwhile his mate had come in the back door, turned on the fluro (which did not light because the neutral loop was disconnected in the next room)so he probably left it on, which energised the open neutral in the next room!!
At least they were awear of the "live" conductor.
Just goes to show the juction box set up is a lot safer in these situations, where the loop remains intact, & just each fitting can be removed (with the supply off of course!) but you never know what's happened in the past ie. some one may have decided to connect in a neutral from a different circuit. (Good old multimeter saves the day again!!)
Texas Ranger: are they (L+N) the standard cicuit breakers in USA?
Cheers, 2Rivers.
