things the masses of people seem to believe that aren't true.

[shortroundd]

I am not talking about conspiracies here that can't be proven with a bit of digging but more false stuff that seems to stick in the minds of the general population as truths.

1. All/majority of lotto winners go broke after 5 years. I have seen this touted out a lot yet there is no known source of it as no such research exists. There is the handful of bad stories that are circulated but this is only a minority out of 1000s of big winners worldwide. Infact, I recall the tabloids doing a feature with winners to celebrate Camelot's 20th anniversary or so and many winners had said their lives were better.

1. Marriage means all assets are split 50/50. Another huge misconception.

1. Prenups will protect 1 in divorce- again I think 2 and 3 come from people watching tv shows and movies that use this as factual when it's not.

1. Elvis sings 'Lonely this Christmas.'

1. The capital of Brazil is Rio.

@DrSbaitso Mark Twain did some actually quite funny jokes about the German language, that might have contributed to the idea but were obviously not meant as really critical. But after 30 years in Germany I've heard it quite often!

Paul Theroux, of Great Railway Bazaar fame and dad to Louis

Puffalicious

That Hitler was a librarian- so many people have told me this- he was, in fact, a newspaper cartoonist.

Wasn't he painter?

Hitler wasn't German and Henry Tandey should have squeezed the trigger when he had the chance.

@Echobelly
“That any historical figure came out with some glurgy 'inspirational' quote in 21st-century self-help language.”
So true. George Eliot, for example, never wrote the cringeworthy “It is never too late to be the person you want to be” and variations on that drivel.

That you have to let your landlord arrange viewings if you are still living as a tenant because it says in your contract. (Unenforceable clause)

@nationwde
"Our neighbours think the land registry is wrong and won't replace their fence. Right... but they haven't tried to tell the land registry. Just refuse to replace the fence."

another misconception I am afraid. Ownership of a fence doesn't imply any requirement to maintain or replace it unless there is a covenant on the land to this effect. They may be responsible for injury or damage caused by the fence being in a poor state but they don't have to repair it and if they want to they can completely remove it. Unless covenanted otherwise, its up to the person who wants the fence to erect it and it must be on their land....

Or here:
"The British comedian Stuart Lee points to how German has more compound words than homophones, offering fewer options for wordplay. The elastic sentence structure of English, meanwhile, allows comedians to arrange words to hold the punchline until the end of the sentence." www.irishtimes.com/culture/stage/2.816/jokes-don-t-travel-germans-aren-t-funny-don-t-make-me-laugh-1.1708513
Total nonsense!

If you're spitting feathers, you are thirsty. It seems a fairly recent development that it means angry.

Oh yes! Honey bee penises (penii?), you can hear the pop.

I’m always surprised by how many MNers think employers still provide highly detailed, personalised references and would have no qualms about slating you to future employers if you took the piss with long lunches in your notice period. The reality is you’ll be lucky to get ‘I can confirm Joe Bloggs was employed in the position of Turd Polisher from January 2019 to January 2022’ from most firms.

^This x100000000 so many threads saying "be careful you don't get a bad reference" etc - really out of date advice and pointless.

@PotatoGoblins

Bit of nichè one…but it’s my field of study so don’t go thinking I’m a psycho killer or anything But lots of people seem to believe that pigs are a great way to dispose of a body. They really aren’t

Morbid curiosity - why? What would happen? Presumably they wouldn't eat all the bones and some other bits?

that it is called great Britain because it is great as in good/excellent/powerful

@WomanStanleyWoman

I’m always surprised by how many MNers think employers still provide highly detailed, personalised references and would have no qualms about slating you to future employers if you took the piss with long lunches in your notice period. The reality is you’ll be lucky to get ‘I can confirm Joe Bloggs was employed in the position of Turd Polisher from January 2019 to January 2022’ from most firms.

The Royal Family are ‘a bunch of Germans’. Of course they have a lot of German heritage, but it’s so simplistic. For a start, the Queen and Prince William both have British mothers, so our current and future monarch are both at least half-British. Prince Charles has Greek and Danish heritage from his father. Also, it implies that the Hanoverians were just some random Germans given the British crown on a whim - like Sophia of Hanover was some old dear having a walk in the park one afternoon who was suddenly asked if she fancied heading an empire and had to quickly run into Ye Olde Lidl to see if they had any cheap crowns in the middle aisle. Rather than being, you know, the granddaughter of a king.

Similarly, I’m amazed at how many people think the Norman Conquest completely severed any link with the Saxons. I remember being laughed at and told ‘You clearly don’t know much about history’ on one forum because I said The Queen was descended from Alfred the Great. I thought anyone with even basic knowledge would know that William the Conqueror and his son deliberately married into the Saxon royal family.

‘The proof is in the pudding’. No no NO!!! It’s ‘The proof of the pudding is in the eating’!

Pretty much the whole King Arthur legend about his being a leader of all England who beat back the Saxon invaders winning massive battle after massive battle until he was finally defeated and the Dark Ages happened. No evidence of massive battlegrounds has ever been found but plenty of mixed design/materials items and evidence of intermarriage and mixed nationality settlements. Not saying there was no fighting at all but not the massive effort of legend.

@Leftbutcameback

That it's illegal to drive barefoot / in flipflops

A couple of years ago I was with an off-duty GNR officer friend in a supermarket carpark in Portugal who spotted a Brit getting into the driver's seat of a Range Rover in flip flops. The polite suggestion to wear something with a rear strap next time was met with something along the lines of "Fuck off Pedro. I'll wear what I want." Well Pedro (his real name is actually Luïs, but that's by the by) waited long enough to see which way he turned out of the car park before calling a colleague making routine traffic stops at a roundabout about 500m away. Mr Range Rover got a €200 fine and a police escort back to the supermarket to draw the cash from the ATM, plus a nice big wave from Luïs and me in the café when he got there.

In many places in Europe the requirement is to wear 'proper footwear' which would not diminish the ability to control the vehicle. So while flip flops are not specifically outlawed you can be fined up to €200 at the police's discretion in places like Spain or Portugal if an officer believes yours are dangerous (or, indeed, if you piss an officer off.)

Which leads to the other thing that far too many people believe is true - that when abroad you can simply opt out of local laws from traffic regulations to paying taxes, simply because you're British.

@StyxBankDweller I explained in more detail a few pages back….
They will clear the majority of a body, but teeth, hair and large, hard pieces of bone like shoulder blades and kneecaps are too much like hard work for them.
And a human shoulder blade is pretty identifiable…particularly if found in a pig pen

[quote PotatoGoblins]@StyxBankDweller I explained in more detail a few pages back….
They will clear the majority of a body, but teeth, hair and large, hard pieces of bone like shoulder blades and kneecaps are too much like hard work for them.
And a human shoulder blade is pretty identifiable…particularly if found in a pig pen [/quote]
Thanks, sorry, I hadn't got that far.

@daimbarsatemydogsbone

I’m always surprised by how many MNers think employers still provide highly detailed, personalised references and would have no qualms about slating you to future employers if you took the piss with long lunches in your notice period. The reality is you’ll be lucky to get ‘I can confirm Joe Bloggs was employed in the position of Turd Polisher from January 2019 to January 2022’ from most firms.

^This x100000000 so many threads saying "be careful you don't get a bad reference" etc - really out of date advice and pointless.

There are still telephones, though. Nothing to stop someone having a quick chat!

@Interviewdisaster - yes, that does seem to be the reality, if it impacts your life. So by that token not everyone can be on the autistic spectrum because for the vast, vast majority of people, having an autistic trait or two doesn't have a negative impact on their life.

When I think about how difficult 'ordinary' things can be for my dc, I get so cross when I hear that bleated. A day in the life of a NT person is nothing like a day in the life of an autistic person.

@sweetbellyhigh - NX? I'm in the UK.

@Porridgeislife I think you are not understanding what a stress test is.

There has to be a point that you stop someone exercising because either they are showing symptoms of heart disease, their ECG is showing certain changes and a maximum HR.

It's not like your heart is going to suddenly stop if you go over that maximum, just that it is a place to stop.

You can catch a cold by being cold.... Out your jumper or you'll catch a cold. Drives me insane

you can catch a chill and I suppose if you get really cold your immune system might be weakened.

I have definitely caught chills, once by sitting underneath a cold aircon unit. But you don't for example get a cold by going out with wet hair!

I can quite comfortably exercise beyond my max heart rate (running and spinning) and I know that’s not particularly unusual in women. I spent the London marathon pretty much at my “scientific” max heart rate and I was fit & well prepared

I have quite a fast heart rate too. When I walk or cycle it goes up to about 135. That is normal for me and I can talk normally. If I try to do low heart rate training I just tend up walking, I can't run slowly enough to bring my HR down to the "correct" level. If I am running fast eg at parkrun it will go closer to 180 which is above the 220-age for me.

That the UK switching to Metric measurements was because of the EU and that reintroducing Imperial measures would be a good thing.

The story goes back to 1856 with the International Organization of Legal Metrology (OIML) which aimed to ensure a level playing field and reduce technical barriers to international trade.

The UK signed the OIML treaty in 1856 and agreed to move to a single system of measurement (S.I. units). Metric measures have been lawful in the UK since 1875.

A Weights and Measures Inspector has explained here why moving back to Imperial measures is beyond daft. threadreaderapp.com/thread/1438559713604608003.html

@CatJumperTwat

That flu is always a terrible illness and if you can get out of bed (or post on MN) you can't possibly have flu and it must be a mere cold. When in reality a good proportion of people with flu are completely asymptomatic (anywhere from 40-80% depending on which study) and many of the rest have mild symptoms.

Evidence? When covid first started the German Robert Koch Institute made it very clear that flu IS serious (when people kept saying covid was just like flu). I'd trust their judgment more than someone on MN who wants to claim they've had flu when they really have had a cold (mild or otherwise).

How would you know if you had flu asymptomatically? We don't test for it routinely.

GiantHaystacks2021I don't think any of these are common beliefs!

The RKI were not claiming that flu is ALWAYS serious, presumably? That is the misconception CatJumperTwat was referring to.

That the Tories are worth voting for.

That the way to cure obesity in society is to tell overweight people to eat less and exercise more.