Seek Truth From Facts
seektruthfromfx.bsky.social
Seek Truth From Facts
@seektruthfromfx.bsky.social
Mainly here to learn about the Anglosphere, Sinosphere, politics, and theology. Not Chinese but I try to 实事求是. Anonymous for visa & sanity reasons.
Yes. A direct cause of the Post Office scandal was that the law was changed so that courts must assume computer output is correct. The Law Commission misunderstood an expert who argued the opposite. The MPs passing the law joked that their kids would have more chance of understanding it. 😡
July 13, 2025 at 10:56 PM
Reformed more or less as in the Articles of Religion (there's one line I'd quibble with): www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-w...
Statues and rituals are covered in Articles XXII and XXXIV.
Articles of Religion | The Church of England
Articles of Religion, from The Book of Common Prayer (1662). Cambridge University Press, 2006 edition.
www.churchofengland.org
July 12, 2025 at 9:42 PM
It's stopped on X as well.
July 12, 2025 at 10:18 AM
TIL that this account covers surrenders as well as sinkings.
Probably because there haven't been a lot of surrenders in RN history....
May 12, 2025 at 6:04 PM
Today's @yougov.co.uk Daily Poll asks whether immigration is rising or falling. The provisional, unweighted responses show people think it's rising, just as you say. The final weighted results will be interesting.
May 12, 2025 at 3:40 PM
This is Home Office brain, regardless of the party on power. They see everything in their responsibility as a form of crime that is resolved by tougher laws (even if they're never enforced). The UK has long needed a migration or integration department like Australia.
May 12, 2025 at 10:20 AM
The value of the tithes that funded the clergy. Except that most of those would go to the rector (who might be an abbey, lay landowner, etc.), rather than to the vicar who had the spiritual responsibilities. £12 is worth about £9,500 today, though many parishioners would have lived on much less.
May 4, 2025 at 1:09 PM
You could have said the same about the early Marxists or the early liberals in their coffeehouses or the Bloomsbury set. They went on to change the world. I'm not promising Blue Labour will, but it often takes a generation for big ideas to gain mass support.
May 4, 2025 at 12:55 PM
Surely the government isn't revisiting voter ID because it's trying to focus on a limited number of core missions, not get distracted into a battle on Tory territory. It would be easier to repeat voter ID as part of an electoral reform package including compulsory attendance.
May 4, 2025 at 12:51 PM
This might interest @mouseinthecourt.co.uk who lives this daily.
May 2, 2025 at 5:38 PM
It's so awful you have to put up with these Muppets, Mr Katwala. Thank you for your patience and continuing to offer insight here.
May 2, 2025 at 5:33 PM
But you don't have to do any maths beyond "1, 2, 3". The returning officer does it all for you! You just put who you like in order.

It's like when you get directions on Google Maps, etc., you just put in the place you want to go and they do the maths to get you there. Except with voting.
May 2, 2025 at 9:19 AM
Note that Victory Day is the Russians term for VE Day. Russia's soft power at the highest levels of the US government is absurdly high.
May 2, 2025 at 9:11 AM
It can be explained even more simply as: vote for the candidates/parties in order of how much you like them: 1, 2, 3, etc. The returning officer (chief vote counter) will do some maths to make sure your vote is used as effectively as possible and never wasted.
May 2, 2025 at 9:06 AM
I only discovered that my first digital camera had optical zoom after several months of wondering why all my pictures were so blurry. I also accidentally put it into Sepia Mode for a few weeks at a party. Though not as bad as the friend who dropped her camera into the hotpot at that same party.... 🤦
May 2, 2025 at 8:44 AM
Does that mean they are likely to go to the Constitutional Court seeking a ban?
May 2, 2025 at 8:26 AM
The Lib Dems and Reform need to pay more attention. Merkel's Law (after a coalition, "the little party always gets crushed") won yet another election.
April 29, 2025 at 3:03 PM
You're correct they the context but they doesn't change the fact that both companies are making poor choices. They could have shared the brand (common in Japan) or chosen a new once that wasn't the 'fake plastic trees' version of an old one.
March 29, 2025 at 9:01 AM
Ah, sorry, that's clearer. Normally the answer is the property, but IIRC Smith's sold that off long ago and it's all leased now. So I agree that they have got a tough challenge on their hands.
March 29, 2025 at 3:07 AM
They have bought the struggling High Street shops (that have to compete with Amazon), not the profitable ones in airports and railway stations (which have local monopolies, so even Smiths' management can't mess it up).
March 28, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Remember they would no longer be paying Council Tax or Stamp Duty. So instead of making a big payment up front, the same tax would be spread over their lifetimes. That's great for young people struggling to buy their own home!
March 28, 2025 at 1:54 PM
That would be another better-than-nothing solution, I agree. But it would discourage people from moving house, which further messes up the housing market, which is already abysmal. And it means local government would be messed up for another half-century. They're going bust right now....
March 28, 2025 at 1:52 PM
It's not depriving any offspring of even a single penny they own. And it's not like taxing pensions you paid into because the widow didn't pay anything personally to increase the value! If Cornwall is trendy, that's just a free gift to her. You should not be rewarded more for luck than work.
March 28, 2025 at 1:49 PM
Except that currently tenants are generally paying Council Tax anyway. So it will be added to rent, but they'll lose liability for an entire, regressive tax. OP calculates 75% will be better off and that sounds plausible.
March 28, 2025 at 1:44 PM