The Saturday briefing
IS THERE anything you are desperately yearning to know? Are there any pressing factual disputes you would like us to help resolve?
This is the page where we shall do our best to answer any questions you throw at us, whatever the subject.
AS an amateur dabbler on the ukulele I’m confused by film footage of George Formby who is usually described as a ukulele player. His instrument looks more like a banjo to me. I’d appreciate clarification.
A Douglas, Wallasey, Merseyside IT’S very confusing, I agree. Ukuleles originated in Hawaii in the 19th century as small guitar-like instruments.
Banjos are larger and older, originating in Africa and were brought to the US via the West Indies.
Traditionally ukuleles have four nylon strings while banjos had four or five steel strings. But the biggest difference was the shape of the drum: ukuleles looked like guitars while banjos had round drums.
The instrument popularised by George Formby was a hybrid four nylon stringed banjo-ukulele known as a “banjolele” which sounded like a ukulele but looked more like a banjo.
WHICH political party has won most UK general elections: Conservative or Labour?
P Rhodes, Leeds SINCE 1900, the year the Labour Party was founded, our general elections have resulted in 12 Conservative governments, nine Labour governments, two Liberal governments (back in 1906 and 1910), three Conservative-Liberal coalitions, one Labour-Liberal coalition and one National Government (which lasted from 1931 to 1945).
Since 1945 there is a dead heat between Conservative and Labour with nine wins apiece. I RECALL during the early 1960s an American spoof on the radio of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar performed by two comedians with very comical American accents. Any ideas on who they were? Bruce Morrison, Ashford, Kent THE nearest I can find is a radio play called Rinse The Blood Off My Toga, written and performed by the Canadian comic duo Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster in the 1950s.
It told the story of Julius Caesar in the style of a US cop drama.
We shouldn’t laugh too much at it though as there is a school of thought that says the US accent is closer to the way we spoke in Shakespeare’s time than modern British-English.
IT’S now generally accepted that the Universe is expanding but what is it expanding into? If you blow up a balloon it expands into the space around it so it would be logical to assume the Universe is exactly the same.
DON’T think of the balloon, think of its surface and an ant living on that surface. As far as the ant is concerned the balloon’s surface is its Universe and other ants on the balloon are getting Finding Dory radio projector alarm clock, £19.99. 03456 402020/ argos.co.uk Fans of the Finding Dory film will love this FM tuner and alarm clock which will wake the kids up gently.
It also has a projection plate which displays the film’s characters on to the ceiling.
Note that this requires use of the Apple Lighting Connector. Alan Dearly, Kilkeel, Co Down by further away as the balloon expands.
It knows nothing about the air inside the balloon or the space outside it, it just knows that its Universe, the surface of the balloon, is getting bigger. It’s not getting bigger “into” anything, it’s just expanding.
Our Universe is much the same: talking of a space outside it is meaningless, the Universe is everything there is. It’s just growing bigger, making its own space.
You could say it is expanding “into” another dimension (like the poor ant’s balloon surface) but that dimension is not part of our four-dimensional space-time Universe.
WITH the withdrawal of the old £5 notes on Friday May 5 I tried to tender my last one at 3pm that day at three different shops but they all refused to take it for their goods.
Do retailers have a legal requirement to accept such money or can they opt out when they choose to?
Roger Hodson, Bournville, West Midlands THE term “legal tender” has a very narrow legal meaning, according to the Bank of England, and “has little use in ordinary everyday transactions”.
In fact, the only real use involves paying a debt. If you offer “legal tender” in coins or banknotes then you cannot be sued for non-payment however much the recipient may dislike the money.
Shops, on the other hand, are not legally obliged to accept legal tender and, as the bank says, “payment is a decision between you and the other person involved in the transaction”.
So the shops were within their rights refusing your old fivers.
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