The phrase “Tables and chairs on the highway” has a uniformly accepted meaning in all of England and Wales. That meaning is legalistic, deriving, we are told, from part VIIA, section 115 (A to K) of the Highways Act 1980, a chunk of parliamentary prose that has the title Provision of Amenities on Certain Highways. In describing […]
Tag: UK
Buttock and breast ogling: Britain vs. Argentina
Sex clearly drives Britain and Argentina as they vie to dominate islands of interest. The two great nations are rivals in producing academic studies of whether and how people stare at women’s breasts or buttocks. Britain fired the first shot in this war. In 2007, Adrian Furnham [pictured here] and Viren Swami of University College London published […]
Why Britain Boasts So Many Pregnant Men
A letter in BMJ suggests a reason why so many men in Britain seem to be pregnant: “The Importance of Knowing Context of Hospital Episode Statistics When Reconfiguring the NHS,” Lauren Brennan, Mando Watson, Robert Klaber and Tagore Charles [three of whom are pictured here], BMJ 2012;344:e2432. The authors, at Imperial College London, write: “We were […]
Calculations: Insurance for clowns
Clown insurance is for clowns, not for persons potentially afflicted by them. Insurance companies offer it to clowns because clowns – no matter what you may thoughtlessly think of them – are people, and bad things can happen to anyone. Clown insurance exists, as a distinct product category, thanks to the mathematical discipline called risk assessment. […]