Mildly Infuriating

Sounds like the problem is people leaving plugs lying on the ground? Otherwise known as user error.

There's also no real reason to unplug something, even if the plug isn't switched. Modern electrical appliances have idle power draws of less than a watt.

Rule of thumb: If a small electronic appliance (e.g. phone charger, power brick etc...) isn't warm to the touch, it's using less than 1 Watt of power, which at UK electric prices, is less than half a penny per 24 hours.

If you value your own time at UK minimum wage, and it takes you 5 seconds to unplug, and 5 seconds to replug, you won't break even unless you keep it unplugged for at least 7 days. So maybe worth it if you're going on holiday. As an everyday thing, unplugging idle electronics to save power is a complete waste of time.

As for electrical safety, generally speaking if something is unsafe whilst plugged in but switched off, it's typically not legal to sell in countries with properly enforced standards anyway. And with whole house RCD protection being relatively universal in western europe, even if something were to go wrong, chances are the RCD, or AFCI if the breaker panel is real fancy, will stop the bad thing happening real quick.

Oh and quick PSA: Regardless of it's whole house protection, or individual socket protection, you should test the function of your RCDs every now and again. Officially at least once a month. Every RCD breaker has a little button somewhere labeled "test", that connects L to GND across a resistor, to check if the breaker actually does it's job. If you've never done this (and haven't recently had the RCD trip for an actual fault) GO DO IT NOW. THOSE THINGS ARE LITERALLY LIFE SAVERS AND IT'S IMPORTANT TO MAKE SURE THEY'RE ACTUALLY WORKING.

They do some things right in the UK. But does every toilet need to be hidden in a basement labyrinth?

Yo, what’s wrong with your goats?

Oh look that's something ninjas spread on the road when they run.

a 110/220 auto sensing plug

There's no real need for a plug to be able to sense what voltage it's plugged into. That would be handled device side, not plug side. And for devices for which handling both 110 and 220 makes sense, well those pretty much universally already have a switch mode power supply that does so automatically, or at least a dip switch with which a user can manually select their grid voltage (check your phone or laptop charger, I can virtually guarantee it already supports both).

And the issue with devices that don't already do this, is generally that they are basic resistive or inductive loads (anything along the lines of heaters or motors), with little to nothing in the way of digital control electronics, which need to be designed for a specific input voltage in order to achieve a specific power output. Making these devices both 110V and 220V compatible would require either giving every single one of them a voltage transformer, or to include a 110V motor/heating coil, and a 220V one, that can be switched between. Both of which would massively increase the price of these devices.

https://xkcd.com/927/

Having switched outlets wouldn't make US plugs any safer, at least not in any meaningful way.

The individual switches on UK outlets don't really add significantly to safety, they're mostly just a convenience feature, because for an electrical plug/outlet to even be considered safe in the first place, it has to be always safe, whether it's powered or not. You can't rely on people switching off unused outlets instead of doing actual safety design.

The main factors that make US plugs less safe than UK ones is the potential for exposed metal contacts with a closed connection to the outlet, the lack of internal fuse and the lack of polarisation, and, particularly in combination with the first point, the comparatively weak grip strength and protruding design that make it easy for a plug to become (partially) unplugged by accident.