Skeptics Forum.

I've been wondering whether some form of split membership might have advantages for the UK: most of the seats being constituency ones won on an FPTP basis as now (but fewer of them), but in addition a smaller number of seats allocated to parties on a straight PR basis, possibly with a 10% qualifica...

Among the newspaper observations concerning BoJo's tribulations I came across a comment that after frequent rows with the girlfriend, he would like a reconciliation with his wife: as "a friend" put it, he would like everything to go back to the way it was before. I assume that means with ...

Well, once candidate A scores more votes than Candidate B, then any further votes for Candidate A are wasted, as they have no effect on the outcome (same applies between B and C etc). Only some form of proportional representation ensures that all of the votes count. But even with pure PR the same i...

At the risk of falling for the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, I would suggest that anyone who believes in "at least one supernatural ... entity" is not an atheist. I appreciate that some people are complicated. My mother used to say that she was Church of England but that she didn't...

12 hours is a long time in politics, these days. Five years is obviously so long that you can say or do anything and forget it five years later! Chuka Umunna, 4 June 2014: "Lib Dem supporters: Please stop asking me to join. I wouldn't be caught dead in a yellow rosette, and that's a #chukaprom...

Matt wrote: ↑Mon Jun 10, 2019 4:49 pm He's campaigning to the party. The nation doesn't get a say on who leads us out of the undemocratic EU, just the party....

True, but I very much noticed what Chaggle did. It was all about saving the Tories not the country. Hopefully floating voters will be noticing the same thing.

I know how to keep an idiot in suspense.

https://phys.org/news/2019-05-bristol-academic-voynich-code-century-old.html Yet again someone is claiming to have translated the Voynich manuscript and yet again the international press have picked up the story and are repeating it uncritically. My prediction: Another loony, it will all prove to be...

Smug wankstain Farage launched his new party by encouraging his supporters to commit criminal offenses against MPs and then resigned as leader. But social media seem more interested in two of his fans: https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2019/04/15/frank-reactions-to-the-couple-who-flew-over-from-benidorm-to-...

An interesting blog post, dated January 29, 2019, but still relevant to the current situation. "Brexit cannot break the Iron Triangle." https://heterocephalusgabler.wordpress.com/2019/01/28/brexit-cannot-break-the-iron-triangle/ This is very popular on social media at the moment. If it is...

I gather that the government has instructed the civil service to cease planning for 'no deal' forthwith. I don't know how significant that is. Preparing for the no deal exit scenario has cost the country £billions. One Govt Department alone has spent at least £4b, every penny of which is now wasted...

17.4 million people knew what they were voting for! Which was, it seems, endless temporary extensions to our EU membership.

Anyone got any good Halloween jokes?

We still get fog in London, but not much. My memory tells me that there used to be more and that it used to be worse. I'd like to see statistics.