Recent content by MyOwnSockPuppet

The statement doesn't necessarily match the question (at least in my mind - the equivalent title to Ambassador (in terms of diplomatic rank and privilege) for representatives of the Holy See is an Apostolic or Papal Nuncio. They don't have to hold the position of Cardinal as well (I think only...

Do we do those here? When there are political points to be scored?

It's a candidate for the shortest measure of time, the other being the New York Second, which is the length of time between the light turning green and the taxi behind you honking it's horn.

I think all of the paintings at the National Gallery are, as the result of a previous generation of frankly rather unpleasant people using indefensible or pointless methods to campaign for a worthy cause (only with a less than worthy spin). Specifically one Mary Richardson who, wanting to get...

One of my favourite ways of tweaking people who at this point truly deserve it is pointing out Ben Kingsley played Gandhi, while failing to mention that while it's been his stage name since the 1960s he only changed it legally relatively recently.

Brain bleach to aisle 3 please...

It's definitely possible that they'd attack Kyiv. It's possible that the attack could've killed Biden (although given the Russian standards of accuracy I think it would be reasonably described as "inadvertently" rather than "intentionally") I'd imagine that the death, by a foreign missile, of a...

I'd say that this is a prime example of college education (I've worked as staff (not faculty) in universities for almost 20 years) - they clearly know what the book is about better than the guy who wrote it. I wouldn't trust them to tell me the colour of an orange without checking...

The obvious one is you need someone to wield the ceremonial rubber stamp that turns a parliamentary bill that's been through all the committees and votes into an act of parliament.

And replace the role with what? Another *redacted* politician? A former/current actor/TV "personality"? One of the major unwritten rules in the UK is that the monarch expresses no opinion that can be seen as political (given that Elizabeth II had a grand total of 179 Prime Ministers across 32...

Oddly not - exactly the same legal freedoms and restrictions of speech (i.e, no causing a breach of the peace, no incitement to commit criminal acts, no glorifying terrorism etc) apply at Speakers' Corner as do everywhere else in the country,

I'd query "highest they have ever been" (I'm not saying that the Guardian is deliberately picking a metric to make things sound superlatively bad because they aren't politically aligned, but...), I'm sure I remember reading about the top levels personal income tax rate peaking at 99,25% and...

It was only made illegal to own a slave in England in April 2010. Although this was mostly because the legal status of being a slave had never existed in English law.

True enough, but you'd have thought that several British C-17 strategic airlifters doing shuttle runs from Brize Norton to Kyiv (scrupulously avoiding German airspace, as the paperwork for flying live ammunition over Germany is apparently a nightmare) for a reasonably large chunk of mid-January...

This is one area that the UK has actually gotten it's act together and has definitions in law (I'd imagine Ireland also has definitions in law, just not necessarily the same definitions). An Electrically Assisted Pedal Cycle (EAPC) is exempt from the requirement to be registered (and thus by...