So, instead of saving $249 by not buying it, I am only saving $199? Give me my $50 back!
I’ve clearly been listening to the BBC Today programme too much. This read like the start of one of their ‘puzzle for the day’ slots.
I was expecting the next sentence to be something along the lines of:
“If I used all the bricks I have for this tree and I decide I want to make two trees the same size and another one two-thirds the size, how many bricks will I need and how many years will I have to wait if I don’t buy any more bricks and my wife gives me the same amount of bricks each year plus 15%?”
Thanks for ruining my perfectly fine daydreaming with facts!
TBH, I never though about this before, but it of course makes perfect sense.
One would presume incorrectly - that website is far from definitive - but in this instance their statement is fair enough: Big Ben is solely the bell, but the name is often applied - incorrectly - to the tower (and clock, though I don’t recall that being so common).
No, UK history.
I’m not sure whether to put at the end of that. I understand it’s amusing to criticise criticism of pedantry with pedantry, but I really do get annoyed - even slightly offended, TBH - when ‘England’ is conflated with the entire UK. I’m British, from the UK, but that does NOT make me English.
That the English plotters intended to blow up a Scottish monarch is part of the whole point.
It tickles me how James I/VI upped sticks and moved to London. I wonder if this was to keep a better eye on the English, or because Edinburgh* is a bit drafty.
*I’m assuming his capital was Edinburgh, though I may well be wrong.
I wonder if the model comes with a mini fig of the Sergeant-at-Arms and another of Ted Kramer carrying a briefcase?
Yeah, but, you say they got these facts right. So what did I presume incorrectly about? Can you point to another “fact” in the history section of the website that is incorrect?
And for that matter, something can surely be both English and UK history. After all Parliament is not only in London, but also in England, on Great Britain, in the UK, on Earth, in the Solar System, in the Milky Way, in the Known Universe, and so forth, thus part of the history of all of those. Don’t fence me in!
Is that in pounds or Euros?
I thought it was more that Catholic plotters intended to blow up a Protestant monarch.
If it’s so often applied that the vast majority of people think it is called Big Ben, does that make them wrong, or does it make your sentence wrong?
Nope. The “vast majority” (and I’m not sure they are - plenty of people have no problem getting it right) of people are wrong. We don’t get to vote on facts.
Oh, absolutely - that’s why I said “part of the whole point”. Sectarianism was a major reason, but not the sole one.
Arguably, it’s a synecdoche, and thus no more wrong than calling the USA “America” (but pars pro toto rather than totum pro parte).
I knocked over my nephew’s 346 piece Big Ben while dusting. It took me hours and curses galore to reassemble it, granted a lot of that time was spent before I realized the instructions would be online. Seeing this, I now know that I got off easy.
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