Questions tagged [united-kingdom]
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain) is a sovereign state located off the north-western coast of continental Europe.
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Do trucks cause disproportionate pedestrian and cyclist fatalities for the distance travelled?
In an interview with Autonomy, Volta Trucks founder, Carl-Magnus Norden, said:
in London trucks constituted only 4% of road miles but 26% of pedestrian fatalities and 78% of cyclist fatalities.
I've ...
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Are razor blades tax-free in the UK?
A comic by artist Naoise Dolan published March 2015 has been circulating heavily on social media:
The world according to the UK government:
Men’s razors are taxed as necessities because you need to ...
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Are half of transgender women inmates (in England and Wales) sex offenders or category A prisoners?
The group Fair Play for Women published a report in Oct 2017 claiming that
Half of all trans-identifying males (transwomen) in prison are convicted sex offenders or dangerous Category A prisoners.
...
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Did UK hospital tell the police that a patient was not raped because the alleged attacker was transgender?
The Daily Telegraph wrote in 2022 (archive.is link):
Hospital told police patient was not raped because alleged attacker was transgender
...
Lady Nicholson said that the case had arisen as a direct ...
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Were over 3000 persons arrested in Britain for social media posts in 2018?
In 2019, John Anderson interviewed Konstantin Kisin. The discussion is transcribed by me. I is the interviewer and K is for Konstantin.
K: In Russia last year 400 people were arrested for things that ...
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Does an official UK government report show 'Hope Not Hate' as a radical extremist hate group?
On the 12th of February 2023 Douglas Murray, Author and political commentator, wrote the following tweet:
Evidence from official UK government report shows radical far-left group ‘Hope Not Hate’ (@...
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Did the husbands of Theresa May and Victoria Atkins (then British PM and drugs minister) profit from the sale of medicinal cannabis?
As read in this link:
RT
The cannabis for Epidiolex is being provided from a 45-acre cannabis farm in the UK operated by British Sugar, whose links to Tory ministers were exposed in February when ...
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Do 1 in 4 of us experience mental health problems each year?
I have seen this quote before but today I received an internal company email with this quote.
The ratio is also cited on page 7 of this 2014 report by Boris Johnson, then Mayor of London:
In any ...
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Is there a significant number of people who claim benefits when they could work instead?
The Home Secretary of the United Kingdom Suella Braverman recently claimed that there is a "stubborn core of our population that sees welfare as the go-to option [and] is not motivated... to get ...
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Did there use to be a law that made attempted suicide a capital offence punishable by hanging in Britain?
This one seem to be all over trivia lists, but I'm having trouble finding a reference to anything credible. The claim goes something like this:
According to a British law passed in 1845, [attempted]...
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Does an “average-sized” power station pay over a quarter billion pounds per day when unable to generate electricity?
Given the war in Ukraine and associated sanctions on Russia and reciprocal withholding of supply, Europe is facing a gas shortage.
The UK imports very little Russian gas, but because of the reduced ...
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Is participating in competitive sport harmful to young children?
There is a proposal for all primary school children (ages 4 to 11) in England to play competitive team sports:
Competitive team sports will be made compulsory for all primary age children, David ...
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Did the No. 303 Polish Fighter Squadron score the most kills in the Battle of Britain?
It's often claimed in Polish media that No. 303 Polish Fighter Squadron scored the most kills in the whole Battle of Britain. This claim is repeated in Wikipedia, although with annotation [citation ...
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Did UK police agree to drop sex-offense charges in exchange for an apology?
In the United Kingdom, Community Resolution Orders give the police the powers to deal with minor offences in which the offender pleads guilty and agrees to reparations, without using the court systems ...
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In 1936, did brothers Mark and David Ferrow transition?
The story of transgender brothers Mark and David Ferrow has become popular on Tumblr and Twitter in recent weeks. It claims
In 1934-1936, trans brothers Mark and David Ferrow of Yarmouth, UK both ...
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Is their tax bill the single biggest cost of living for most households in the UK?
Mark Littlewood wrote an opinion article in The Telegraph [unpaywalled alternative] atacking the UK's Conservative Party.
He claimed:
For most households, the single biggest cost of living is their ...
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Was 17 the average life expectancy in Liverpool in the 1850s?
DK History of Britain and Ireland: The Definitive Visual Guide (2011) claims:
17 The average life expectancy in years in Liverpool during the 1850s. High infant mortality depressed the figure, as did ...
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Were staff at Bletchley Park predominantly male?
In The Imitation Game, most of the staff portrayed on-screen were male, and Joan Clarke faced sexist assumptions that because she was a woman, she was in the wrong room when she tried to go into the ...
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Is the "Dutch reach" standard practice in the Netherlands?
The United Kingdom is introducing a new traffic rule. According to this BBC article,
A method known as the "Dutch reach" is to be introduced to the Highway Code in the UK after years of ...
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Does England devote as much land to Golf as housing?
England is, apparently, one of the most "crowded" countries in the world with a high population density and the population is growing quite quickly. This has prompted a variety of concerns ...
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Is it probable that the UK COVID-19 death count will eclipse China's? [closed]
The BBC News on March 25 cited a "best case" projected death-count for COVID-19 as 20,000:
it is hoped the steps which have been taken, which are essentially about suppressing the virus, ...
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Was Wentworth Woodhouse, Yorkshire, the largest private house in the UK?
Wentworth Woodhouse is a large country house in South Yorkshire, England.
In 2016, Mansions Global describe it as:
the largest private house in the UK
In 2014, Yorkshire Life described it as
the ...
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Was "their" a singular pronoun in English before the 16th century?
I saw this meme on facebook:
So, was "their" truly a genderless 3rd person singular pronoun prior to some change in the 16th/17th century?
This Wikipedia article indicates that the ...
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Is the UK lorry driver shortage unrelated to Brexit? Do EU countries have equal or greater shortages?
UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps claims that Brexit is not one of the causes of the UK lorry driver shortage which is causing shortages of food in supermarkets and shortages of fuel in petrol ...
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Is the UK experiencing wage growth for people on low incomes?
In a TV interview with Andrew Marr on 3 Oct 2021, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed that UK wages were growing for people on low incomes. The interviewer (Marr) said that wasn't true - Johnson ...
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Did a 'Black History Month website' call white people ‘genetically defective descendants of albino mutants’?
Telegraph.co.uk reports that 'A Black History Month website' has made claims such as :
[white people are the] genetically defective descendants of albino mutants
[white man can] “fantasise that he ...
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Why does PHE data indicate higher death numbers for vaccinated than unvaccinated persons?
INTRODUCTION:
The Public Health England technical briefings are technical documents indicating specific statistics and their breakdowns regarding COVID.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/...
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Is there a breeding population of big cats living wild in the UK?
In an October 2020 Daily Mail article, a 'big cat tracker', Rhoda Watkins claims the UK has a healthy wild population of leopards and pumas.
However, when I search on Wikipedia and other wildlife/...
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Was the UK's drive to acquire civilian metals to use in WW2 necessary for the war effort?
This question was asked here recently:
Were World War II scrap drives in the United States truly necessary for the procurement of raw materials?
And it has produced some very solid analysis and ...
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Are 85% of autistic college grads unemployed?
In 2016, a paper entitled Autism in the Workplace: Assessing the Transition
Needs of Young Adults with Autism Spectrum
Disorder claimed:
The most recent unemployment statistics for adults with ASD ...
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Were fathers arrested while trying to rescue their daughters from rape in Britain at least on two occasions?
Front Page Mag (a blog for the conservative David Horowitz Freedom Center) quotes an unnamed report that UK authorities were complicit in the support of sexually abusive Muslims:
The police did ...
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Is most intermediate level radioactive waste according to UK regulations barely radioactive?
Lester Haines writes in Sellafield's nuclear waste measured in El Reg units:
Most intermediate level waste is barely radioactive at all. If you put
a completely legal luminous watch in a barrel ...
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Is only 13% of the UK economy and only 8% of its businesses involved with european Union trade?
CAPX recently published a pro-Brexit opinion piece by John Longworth who headed a pro-Brexit pressure group. He argued that the UK were being held to ransom and were being treated like a "vassal ...
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Was the UK the third poorest member of the EU despite being the second biggest net contributor in 1979?
This video on YouTube of Margaret Thatcher at the EU Dublin Council on the 29th of November 1979 seems to suggest that the UK was the second biggest net contributor to the EU and also the third ...
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Could a foreign head of government be inadmissible to the US because of past drug use?
From the Guardian:
Michael Gove’s admission that he took cocaine 20 years ago has triggered speculation that if he were to become the next British prime minister, he could be banned from visiting the ...
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Are the "DHSC Communications Team" using bots to flood social media with posts showing NHS workers supportive of government policy?
The image below seems to be circulating on Facebook along with a text
To give you an idea of the times we are living in, Twitter has been
flooded with hundreds of new accounts today.
All ...
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Were elderly patients denied dialysis in the UK during the 70s?
During a news broadcast by the Israeli public channel on March 15th, prof. Jonathan Halevy, the manager of the Shaare Zedek Medical Center said:
לבריטניה יש היסטוריה עם בעניין הזה. בשנות ה-70 לא עשו ...
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Did British homes increase greenhouse gas emissions by 4% in 2018?
According to this report from The Times,
Greenhouse gas emissions fell in every sector — including transport, industry and energy — in 2018, but emissions from homes went up 4 per cent, government ...
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Do 30 year old Millennials have lower average household income than Gen X did?
A 2017 Business Insider article claims that, in the UK:
for the first time in more than 100 years the current generation of workers — millennials — are doing worse than the generation before them, ...
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Was it traditional for MPs to fully recline on a House of Commons bench?
At 1:09 of this Sep 18 2019 the Telegraph interview, Jacob Rees-Mogg proclaims
JRM: It's very traditional to sit like that in the House of Commons, it has to be said.
Christopher Hope, ...
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Was a four year-old forced to sleep on the floor of Leeds General Infirmary?
I'm referring to this article, where a four year old with suspected pneumonia was, due to overcrowding after the NHS cuts, forced to sleep on the floor of the hospital.
Numerous Twitter accounts, all ...
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Was the UK forced to use burgundy passports by the EU? [closed]
According to Theresa May's Twitter:
The UK passport is an expression of our independence and sovereignty – symbolising our citizenship of a proud, great nation. That's why we have announced that ...
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Was the Obama administration responsible for the decision to move the US embassy in London and the sale of the old location?
President Donald Trump claims that moving the US embassy in the United Kingdom to a different location was a bad decision and a "bad deal". He puts the blame on the Obama administration.
Reason I ...
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Has the Labour Party in Tottenham required in-home visits for Jews to join, at least in the instances described below?
In this tweet, Stephen Canning, a representative of Bocking, Essex is claiming that 25 Jewish applicants had their membership request into Labour pended dependent upon a home visit.
STAGGERING: If ...
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Did an Irish teen accidentally fire a bottle rocket at Queen Elizabeth IIs Motorcade during her 1977 Silver Jubilee visit to the Isle of Man?
I just came across this screenshot of a Tumblr conversation on Twitter:
In the story, the author describes how his father took part of a scouting jamboree on the Isle of Man in 1977 and set off some ...
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Did Yuri Gagarin eat a lemon out a cup of tea when dining with the English Queen?
There is an anecdote, popular in Russia, about Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, who was served tea with lemon when dining with the English Queen.
After he had had the tea, he reached into the ...
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Did Bercow say he would have sent the EU extension-request letter himself, had Johnson not done so?
The Express claims:
Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow said if Mr Johnson will not send the letter to the EU to request a delay, he would.
Did Bercow actually say this?
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Has Boris Johnson ever referred to any of his opponents as "traitors"?
Yesterday Paula Sherriff said (quote from Hansard, emphasis mine):
We stand here, Mr Speaker, under the shield of our departed friend. Many of us in this place are subject to death threats and ...
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Is Boris Johnson the only politician in British history to set up a photoshoot of the signing of their own resignation letter?
Tom Watson, deputy leader of the British Labour party, said this about outgoing foreign secretary Boris Johnson in an interview on radio station LBC:
[Boris Johnson is] the only politician in UK ...
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Correlation between BSE/CJD and Brexit vote
This image is currently doing the rounds on social media:
The implications and associated text with it is usually around how uncanny (and amusing) the correlation is. What's the source of this data ...
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