blonde poker forum

Complete rip off of Radio 1 this morning, the idea is simple and i personally found it hilarious.

You basically just say things that are common knowledge to most, but you yourself have never known or thought to be something different.

A few personal examples:

Like many others i always thought Orangutan was OrangaTANG.

I had a friend called Emma who i always called Emu and one day she turned around to me and said why have you named me after an imaginary bird...

I genuinely believed my Grandad was a cowboy until the age of 16. sigh.

 My fav this morning from the radio was from a lorry driver, he thought this sign:

(http://us.cdn4.123rf.com/168nwm/thorsten/thorsten0804/thorsten080400027/2814746-round-traffic-sign-with-a-car-and-motorbike.jpg)

meant no motorbikes to jump over cars....wow

Also apparently a lot of people didn't know raisins were dried grapes???

Anyways, surely a few people have little stories like this!? if not i will just keep the rest of mine quiet.

I come out with that sort of thing all the time much to peoples amusement. I can't think of any specific examples at the minute though. Probably because i'm stupid :(

Until relatively recently, I didn't know the Marx Brothers were actual brothers. I assumed that was just the name of their act (like the Walker Brothers) and that they were not actually related.

I once believed in psychics.



OK, actually, I didn't...but that would have been pretty stupid.

Whilst watching the news  I pointed out to a Angie, my friend, how I found it hard to understand that a small jet didn't just hand down vertically but stayed horizontal whilst being towed by a larger plane. Angie kindly pointed out that it was being refueled.  ;ashamed; I was 25 at the time.

Continuing the plane theme, when i was a kid, I asked my Dad why it was quicker going one way than the other, he told me on the way back it was downhill... obv i thought this to be true for a good decade of my life.

I used to believe that there was a big sky fairy who lived in the clouds and his work was accurately documented in a book called the bible.  My teachers at school also taught me this.

I always thought that eritrea and somalia shared a land border. only recently was I introduced to djibouti

 rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao

[ ] real lorry driver
[X] real lorry driver on a windup

I used to believe that the world would end on May 21 2011, now i think I may be six months out

I thought rain water was salt water until i was about 25, i have absolutely no idea why as I'm reasonably sharp and fully aware of the process that creates rain. I'm still reminded of this stupidity occasionally by my lovely friends.

This is the type of stuff i wanted to see. Haha. Quality.

I thought oral sex was talking about it.

[X] Enjoyed finding out I was wrong a LOT more than the other misapprehensions.

Have told this one before, but still


About 10 years ago I bought my then wife a number plate for her birthday. Bought it through Reg transfers etc

Birthday comes, number plate has not arrived. Wife is ok, but obviously the surprise is spoiled

A few months pass, and I remember the number plate

I ring up Reg transfers asking when the number plate will arrive?

to be told that I have to get them made up at a local garage, and I have merely bought the registration


The marriage ended soon after.

D1V 0RC3

By the time he went to the garage:

(http://www.acme.com/licensemaker/licenses/license_20110526070143_56333.jpg)

as a child everytime i choked my nan said it had gone down the wrong hole... spent years trying to swallow to the right of my mouth so i could get it in the right hole...sigh GG nan

This is genuine...  watching a program about religion... i turned to my ex wife and said ' you know jesus was a chippy don't you ' she thought he had a fish and chip shop... ffs i bred with this woman

I find it very freaky that you mentioned that.

As I drove to DTD on Friday, I took a photo of the car in front of me as I thought the registration number was a clever bit of advertising for the company logo shown.

I've attached the photo.

When I was young and would watch the news I used to hear about guerrillas fighting in foreign countries. I was convinced that the reports meant gorillas and I always wondered how they managed to get guns, ammunition and learnt how to use them.

Hahahaha superb.

When I was a kid the lady next-door told me the rag and bone man took naughty children. As a naughty child this was rather disturbing news and very scary. Even now as an adult if I hear the horn coming down the street I think shit it's the rag and bone man. I can fight the urge to hide nowadays by using meditation and humming but it aint easy.

When I was small I had tight curly hair, a man once said to me " My,  look at those curls, was your mam chased by a black man? ". For years after I could never understand why woman had perms when all they needed to do was to be chased by a black man.

I found out that the numbers on a toaster are not different heat settings but that they correspond to minutes of cooking time.

what?

Really??

Blew my frikkin mind so it did.

We keep our pillows in a locker under the bunk.

When, age 6, I did my one and only stint at school, the teacher asked us to draw a pillar box.

My drawing was not the same as everyone else's.

Level?

I set my toast at 4. Surely that's not 4 mins?

I refused  to drink Coca Cola as a kid because I was convinced it had cocaine in it.  Was also convinced half the neighbourhood were drug addicts.  They weren't...but the loved their coke.

Just googled this...apparently Tank is right.

F'ing hell, this just turned my world upside down.

+1

How could such a fundamental piece of information about the world we live in have been kept secret for so long, and yet super-injunctions last 5 minutes before everyone knows.

Tell me about it, (although i thought the toaster was common knowledge) but Orangutans... i think you mean OranguTANGs!

well F*&k a duck. my world has changed forever. The setting is universal and makes perfect sense, why on earth would we think it was different for each toaster.

I think tanks post needs to be moved from this thread, it's more of a revelation than stupid is.......

And possibly in a similar vein to tanks, you know when you are in an unfamiliar car, and you pull up at the petrol pumps and you are craneing  your neck trying to see which side the fuel cap is on, if you look at the fuel gauge on the dash, there will be a little pump logo, and whichever side the pump handle is on (sometimes now a triangle) this is the side the fuel cap is on....... Simples!

???? What? I will have to check this out when I get in my car.

I am scared to leave the house now ffs.....and the Walker Brothers weren't really brothers???? This is all getting too much.

officially not true.

I was cocky as fook in a minibus full a lads when we pulled up to a petrol pump in a massive minibus in rural scotland, driver said he didn't know which side it was on. I stopped them jumping out to look with my brilliant bit of knowledge, he messes around for ages getting into the spot by the right petrol pump.  He got out it was on the other side.  i got ripped to shreds.

that is the only time i've seen it disproved though, i've looked like a proper geezer at other times...

the fuel thing is BS


http://www.hoax-slayer.com/fuel-tank-filler-icon-secret.shtml

Yeh i was told this, got a hire car one day and pulled up to the pump only to find that it was BS.

modern petrol pumps sure dont reach the other side of the car

My daughter asked me years ago what I did at work....I told her

After several years passed,she asked what colour I did at work....I looked at her non-plussed and answered yellow,only yellow darling...

Well she asked who repairs all the other broken crayons?

I fix cranes for a living.......

I still laugh at that...

Punctuation needed

Something I never knew either - and I was about to nominate Tank for a Nobel Prize (or something) for this discovery. 

However, I thought I'd better validate this hypothesis - starting with my own toaster.

Here it is:
(http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc43/kinboshi/l_06874805.jpg)
(that's not actually mine, but it's the same model, obviously)

It's a four-slice toaster, but with two independent controls - so it's like two two-slice toasters stuck together.  Anyway, I set the left pair to setting '1' and the right one to setting '3'.  Started them both at the same time, and a stop-watch.

The first one 'popped' at 1:14, and the second one at 2:46.


So my first experiment doesn't back up the hypothesis, but it's obviously not conclusive:

1.  The toaster is a few years old now, so could have lost its accuracy.
2.  Having both pairs on at once might affect the timing.
3.  Delonghi might not have been told about this international toaster standard - and so they are an anomaly.
4.  I need to do the experiment a number of times, running each side independently before any final conclusions can be made.

It's a good job I like toast.

;carlocitrone;

Is it an analogue or digital dial 'boshi?

I reckon the test would still work without bread in it??

Until I was about 24 I thought the expression to say someone looked like a 'dogs dinner' meant to look good. I found out the truth after telling a female friend who was dressed up really nicely on her birthday that thats what she looked like.

if you set the timer on my microwave to 4 it runs for exactly 4 minutes. I haven't tested any other numbers

Until about the age of 21 i thought last night and yesterday night were interchangable. Apparently yesterday night doesn't make sense.

Is it digital or analogue?

The analogue timer on my microwave runs slow, so to cook things properly I have to start it by turning the timer, but then time the actual cooking time on my watch.

Don't want to be controversial regarding tanks toaster revelation....but it isn't
 a timer....not in the imperical sense....

It works using a bi-metallic strip,which opens/closes the electrical current to the heater coils....the dial actually adjusts the pressure on the switch,which in effect alters the time the bread is toasted...albeit it is the accumulation of heat which disconnects the electrical supply


Simples
..

PENFOLD IS A HAMSTER, not a Mole, he doesn't like toast though.

ZOMG.

http://www.seethroughtoasters.co.uk/

Reminds me of this video I saw where a guy built his own toaster:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toaster_from_scratch.html

See, all I hear is "Tank is right".

Oh, and the use of "not in the empirical sense" confuses me a bit. It just doesn't sound right. (Not saying there's anything wrong with it...it just sounds wrong.)

analogue. if you want it to run for 2 mins or less then it's wildly innacurate and just shuts of at a random point in the last 30 seconds. any longer though and it's all good

Even if you do toast in it?

my sister unplugs the kettle and toaster when not in use to save money

Yeah, I can't believe people still think that.

It was on Oprah as well (She really is a massive BS peddler)

This article explains it quite clearly

http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/01/30/oprah-plug-in-your-toaster-most-appliances-dont-use-energy-when-turned-off/

As this seems to be going down a toaster theme:

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dgXqZtYmKA

My mate told me his uncle had a ferrari toaster but i can't find any evidence.

Also one on youtube which claims to do it in 6 seconds but it looks fake to me as you never see the bread go in.

My mothers toaster has a countdown timer on it.

Hmmm....I don't see this having any economic advantage or reducing her carbon footprint...in other words.....it is a fruitless exercise....and you tell her so imo

Hmmmm....in addition to the main knob/s...

I would doubt it only has a timer...

Pre set time options which then countdown on digi display.

Someone mentioned carbon footprint.

What's all that off-setting your carbon footprint about? I don't understand how it's meant to work. Can someone explain so I can add it as my stupid thing?

But I'm also guessing that this is an added extra has no bearing on the heating
of the bread...

Taking the bike to work instead of your car....might be one example..

However,the carbon production in producing both machines must be taken into account

A carbon footprint is when Santa Claus doesn't wipe his feet before walking round your house after coming down the chimney.

my understanding of it is, someone plants a tree!

No, I understand a carbon footprint and recognise that walking would give me a smaller carbon footprint than driving a Bentley.

But I don't understand this "off-setting" business people talk about.

My mate codename "bon bundy" wouldn't put his fan on even in the blazing heat because he thought it blew away his wireless internet

That's the thing I don't get.

I sort of get the idea that if you fly over to Vegas you feel guilty about all those bunnies you've killed with your needless pollution, so you invest some money in a wind farm somewhere that helps to reduce future carbon emissions.  That sort of nearly makes sense.

But this idea of planting a tree?  How does that help?  The tree is planted and grows, converting the carbon dioxide in the air into the stuff that makes the tree, so that removes some carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for a while.  But then when the tree dies that carbon is released as.... carbon dioxide as it decomposes or is burnt, etc.  So how does that reduce my carbon footprint?  Or is it a credit thing, and I'm reducing my carbon footprint on credit, but when the crunch comes - someone has to pay a bit down the line?

And as a by-product it produces Oxygen which we find quite handy

but we're not short of oxygen. no-one's going to suffocate if kinboshi doesn't plant a tree

i think your mate got married recently coz his maiden name used to be donut. well thats what they chinese mafia used to call him in hull napoleons....Jonny Donut

no; but what a great idea for a game show!!

So I'm not carbon offsetting, I'm oxygen generating.  I still don't see how that reduces my carbon footprint?

Also, the oxygen will be used up when the tree dies as the carbon is converted back into carbon dioxide.  So effectively I'm stealing oxygen from my children and their children?

I can honestly say that Kinboshi has blown me away in this thread.  Firstly, he has tested the toast hypothesis and found it to be not totally correct but then outlined, in some detail, the reasons why the hypothesis could still be correct.  Then he has thought about carbon offsetting right up until the point where the tree dies and then becomes carbon dioxide.  Such level of detail is clearly wasted on a poker forum.  Have you thought about applying for the job at the IMF???

rotflmfao

warning - slightly hysterical mini-rant to follow.

ha! i can't wait to tell my little brother about the toaster thing, yeah, coz we both like our toast done the same and I always do it on number 3, but he says i'm a loser coz it's much better to save time by doing it on number 5 and stopping it early.  who's the loser now? eh? eh?

I think you should probably wait until Boshi completes his extensive work into this subject first Claw....you wouldn't want to look silly.

i'm going to time my toaster now.  I would encourage as many people as possible to do the same so we can work out an average time for each setting and get a reasonable sample size.

ok phase one of experiment complete:

setting 1 popped at 1min 15secs

setting 2 popped at 1min 57secs

I think this is a reasonable margin of error given that my toaster has a dial setting and it might not have been 100% accurately lined up with the numbers.

I'm now going to toast a piece of bread for 3 minutes on setting 3, then toast another piece of bread for 3 minutes on setting 6 and compare the density of colour.

I am then going to put butter and marmite on the toast and eat it.

Claire, have you made allowances for the differing moisture contents in the bread slices?

i am using adjacent slices from the middle of the loaf to ensure as similar texture and consistency as possible.

First slice is in now.  I am scrapping the final step due to some blue stuff on the crusts.

Also, I hope you have let the toaster cool down to the ambient room temperature before starting another test?

Hmmm - slight hiccup.  setting 3 on my toaster only went for 2mins 23seconds which seems a bit too far off the 3 minutes mark to be a reasonable margin of error.  I might be ready to call bullshit on thetank, but will wait til the second slice has been in at number 6 for 2mins 23seconds first.

considered that, but decided that it still being a bit warm isn't going to make that much difference.

right, i'm deffo calling bullshit.  pic to follow in a min.

so glad i didn't call my brother to stick it in his eye.

makes a big difference!

Start again

Toaster experiment - Claire MacGregor

Aim
To investigate whether the number settings on a toaster correspond to times (in minutes) or to different heat settings.

Hypothesis
I believe that this experiment will prove that, contrary to popular opinion, the numbers on the toaster dial relate to the number of minutes the toaster will run before 'popping', rather than the heat at which it will operate.  This belief is based on the fact that thetank on blondepoker said it was so and he is like really clever and stuff.

Method
For the first stage of my experiment I will operate the toaster on settings '1' and '2' and time the interval between starting the toasting process and 'popping'. 

I will then toast two slices of bread, separately, for the same length of time on 2 different settings (I have chosen settings '3' and '6') and will then compare and contrast the hue of the resulting toast.

results

Part 1
Setting 1 produced a toasting cycle of 1 minute 15 seconds

Setting 2 produced a toasting cycle of 1 minute 57 seconds

Part 2
diagram a, below, shows the toast that was produced during the second half of my experiment.  The slice on the left was toasted for exactly 2minutes and 23 seconds on setting 3 (which, relevantly, was the entire duration of the toasting cycle at that setting).  The slice on the right was toasted for exactly 2 minutes and 23 seconds on setting 6

diagram a - toast produced during experiment
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v248/clairep75/034-1.jpg)

Conclusion
thetank is wrong.

ok - toaster has cooled down now so gonna do one more slice at 2mins 23secs on setting 6 as a control measure.

fyp

my brother always pwns me - just this one I thought i had him :(

oh
oh - it really does make a massive difference.  control piece of toast has thrown a spanner in the works by actually being slightly paler on one side than the setting 3 slice from the original experiment, and slight darker on the other.  I am giving up being a scientist.

Does burning toast increase your carbon footprint? Environmentalists should avoid setting 6 imo.

Right here's my method.

We're going to take a slab of bread and slap it in the toaster on the 3 setting for exactly 2 minutes.

Then we'll wait 24 hours to allow all components of the toaster to cool to pre 1997 levels.

Next we take another slab and stick it in for exactly 2 minutes on the 6 setting.

Lastly we look at photos of the two and compare and contrast the umbilical evidence.

Here's what 120 seconds of '3' does to bread

Dorsal
(http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii177/tigmong/13.jpg)

Ventral
 
(http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii177/tigmong/12.jpg)

Tomorrow night, 120 seconds of '6'

My hypothesis... tension.

Good luck tank.  I hope your right here.  If you're wrong it will make me question my "no to AV" vote.

Does ventral mean mouldy?

presume so - it's worse than my bread ffs.  and stick it in sideways ffs thomas - the top looks completely untouched by heat

Serious thread derailment here, I was enjoying it until all this toaster talk!

It's not about being right or wrong, it's about advancing the sum total of human knowledge by mistoasting moldy bread.

I luv this thread.......toasty toppers springs to mind...can u still buy those?

nope, its about being right or wrong.

Alright then, science is about not being bothered if you're right or wrong.

Unless you're right.

Leptoceratops - meaning 'lean-horned face' was a primitive ceratopsian dinosaur genus from the Late Cretaceous Period of what is now Western North America, at the same time as its giant relatives Triceratops and Torosaurus. Its skulls have been found in Alberta, Canada and in Wyoming. It could probably stand and run on its hind legs. Analysis of its forelimb function indicates that even though it couldn't pronate its hands, it could also walk on four legs.  Leptoceratops was around 2 metres (6.6 ft) long and could have weighed anywhere between 68 to 200 kilograms (150 to 440 lb).

(http://www.search4dinosaurs.com/srnka_300_lepto.jpg)

See! ^^^^^^^^^^^^  I rest my case.

(Case made elsewhere).

So Leptoceratops was 2m long. I hate how they always talk about how long something is as if that matters.

It should always be about height, even if you're a frikkin millipede. If you can't stand up, that's your problem. None of this length bullshit, it's laziness.

This fella sometimes stood on his hind legs tho, could even run on them.  Doesnt that make it more important?

is that even a real animal? I went to the natural history museum and they've got all these dinosaur skeletons but apparently 3 of them are just made up

I made it up and drew the picture.  Also posted some stuff on wikipedia and got mates to confirm it.  its pretty easy to make stuff up these days.

I'm cool to measure his height while he's standing on his hind legs, so long as he doesn't use tippy toes, that would be cheating.

Best way to measure dinosaurs is to have them stand back to back.

obv women write the dinosaur books

Cannot complete experiment this evening, the wife threw away the moldy bread. An enemy of science.

Most Toasters use a bi-metalic strip to control the time the toaster cooks for, as a kid I used to repair toasters etc for my dads company.
The actual elements are a set wattage, the control knob does not effect the voltage/wattage of the elements. SO Claws brothers theory is wrong.
On older toasters you could adjust (calibrate) the bi metallic strip to be more accurate ie 1=1 minute,2=2 minutes.
The only toaster I know that has a timer knob, which actually counts down rather than using the bi metallic strip method is the Dualit range of toasters. Dualit mark a dot at 2.20 (iirc) which is there recomended setting.

Now my knowledge is out of date by 20 years or so, and I would imagine newer toasters may be controlled by electronics, in which case makes all of the above information obsolete.

so my brother and thetank are both wrong?

If your brothers theory is correct you would be able to physically see the elements glowing more/ getting hotter as you turn the dial. Maybe newer toasters use this method ( i have not checked..lol)? As I said old toasters in the 80s generally worked on Tanks method.

I am now going to have to check our current toaster, will report back later.

ok, up until now I assumed that everyone was levelling itt but then I found that at least another 32, 855 people also thought the same http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-always-thought-numbers-on-the-toaster-were-a-heat-setting-and-not-minutes/113163365388652

http://www.thetoasterproject.org/

I think the bit you are missing is probably in the "etc." bit. There is quite a lot you can do with a tree that doesn't release the carbon dioxide- if you use the wood to build a house, or turn it into paper, that carbon is locked up until your house burns down or you burn the paper. I imagine most of these offsetting plans are planting commercially useful trees.

Or, supposing you imagine a wild tree. Sure, that tree might die and decompose, but it will in general try to dump a load of seeds and make another tree on the same spot. Most of the time your carbon will be locked up in some sort of tree- either the one you plant, or its successors.

I knew this, I feel smart, although I'm not convinced its minutes just a longer time.  :P

It's still only 'holding' the carbon temporarily though, be it ten, fifty or a hundred years. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for planting trees, I just don't think it offsets any carbon footprint. Offsetting by investing in wind-farms or solar technology, etc. makes sense as it helps to generate energy without burning carbon.  The tree-planting doesn't achieve this.

Sigh this thread has defo not gone down the direction I intended. Surely someone has done something stupid or realised something they thought was stupid recently?

If you have a 4 slice toaster (Like Boshi), and you only want to have 2 slices of toast, you would normally use the 2 slots on the left or the 2 slots on the right, then the slice of toast that is nearest to the 2 empty slots, does not get cooked to the same level of browness as the slice that is nearest the sidewall of the toaster.  It pops up with one side under-done...!!! The other side of that slice is fine.  This is because the heat that should be directed towards the bread loses some because there is no toast in the empty slots. :)

I used to think that Duck A L'Orange was named because of that nice little French town called "Orange"

blonde threads are famous for their unsteerability.

i had a Chinese on Friday that was pretty stupid

When I was little, and went to bed, the sheets were cold, and my mum used to go into another room and turn a switch that would warm up my sheets for me..!!  It worked as well..!!

I used to believe that Don Quixote's first name was Donkey..!!

for starters it was pretty stupid of you to start a thread and not expect it to end as a toast convo

i only recently clicked after years of watching it that nickelodeon isn't just some made up nonsense word.

I only just realised it has nothing to do with knickers.

906 for you Mr Dog

???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/906

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_906

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_code_906

http://www.maltronint.com/popup_pages/BF-906.htm

http://www.mordauntshort.com/summary.php?PID=15&Title=Avant+906


Am I getting warm?

Obv. Completely my fault. What was i thinking? Peanut butter and jam on toast. Amazing! Only tried it for the first time last year. So so good.

I posted about that pages ago...

Also if you burn something with Oxygen and create CO2 and then make something containing Carbon and releasing Oxygen then you have sort of put things back to how they were before you started.

Found out today that if Whiskey is made in Ireland then it is called Whiskey but if it is made in Scotland it is called Whisky.

I feel kinda dirty getting this thread back on topic but 5 minutes ago I found out that when blue peter presenters say sticky back plastic they're talking about sellotape

kinda in a state of shock at this, it'd never occurred to me. I assumed they had sheets of plastic with glue on one side or something

Wow!! I always thought it was some special item that "Better off" children got to use.

?

Sticky back plastic is those sheets of plastic with, er, a sticky back that you used to cover your books in - like mini-wallpaper rolls.

Blue Peter used to call Sellotape 'sticky tape'.

Welllllll - I have sticky back plastic a a sort of sellotape, but, not the sort of 1 inch wide stuff on a roll...  more like sheets like A2 ish size and they cut bits off it for their projects..  Sometimes not clear, but coloured too..

i used to get the sellotape fold it over on itself so both sides were sticky. I thought thats what everyone did?

Noooo, got to call bullshit on this one.  Surely not.  News to me too.

Wouldn't that be for double sided tape?

Me too

They definitely used double side tape in the Singleton heyday

what's double sided got to do with it? obv everyone knew what that was

there's an awful lot of stuff online to support that sticky back plastic is sellotape though

sticky back plastic was double sided tape, no?

one and the same?

I thought it was "sticky backed plastic".

I also tried not to watch Blue Peter. Is it still going?

I had the exact same thing, saw the "towing/ re-fueling" and said very aloud to work colleague, "look at that, never seen a plance being towed before"

Guy spat out his coffee, and reminds me everytime we bump into each other - I was younger than 25, but old enough to know better!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peter

The programme maintains its long-standing practice of avoiding using commercial names on air. Most famously, this policy led to the invention of the phrase "sticky-backed plastic" back in the 1970s for the products marketed under the trade names Fablon and Coverlon. Sellotape was often referred to by the term "sticky tape".

that's even more confusing. coverlon is a swimming pool cover

sticky tape = sellotape

double sided sticky tape = double sided sellotape

sticky-back plastic = what Andrew said

About 3 minutes ago I just found out that there is no such thing as 'Common Law Marriage' in the UK.

Only got married because i thought the missus was already entitled to half my stuff... sigh.

Really?

"Cohabitation - living together

There are over four million couples living together in England and Wales in cohabitation. Although cohabitants are now given legal protection in several areas, they and their families have significantly fewer rights and responsibilities than people who are married or who have formed a civil partnership.

Most people think that, after they've been living with their partner for a couple of years, they become 'common law husband and wife' with the same rights as married couples. This is not the case. In fact, couples who live together have hardly any of the same rights as married couples or civil partners.

There is no such thing as ‘common law marriage’.

If you are living together as a couple, there are steps you can take to protect yourself and your partner. There are also ways to minimise the legal and financial problems which may arise if, as can happen, you decide to separate, or if one of you dies.

You can find out about the current rights of cohabiting couples from Advicenow – an independent website offering information on rights and legal issues. Their ‘Living Together’ campaign is intended to make both opposite and same-sex cohabitants more aware of their legal status. The campaign also provides advice on how to protect yourself and your family, should you wish to do so.

If you would like more information about the differences in the legal position of married and unmarried couples, the ‘Married or Not’ section of the One Plus One website provides an overview."

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/governmentcitizensandrights/yourrightsandresponsibilities/dg_10026937

how do you know this crap. if you spent the same amount of time learning about poker then god knows where it could take you ;)

I didn't know that.  I merely stuck a search into Google and found a site that did know it!

Please teach me how to play poker better.

oh ffs...and why lol

FYP.

Google is our friend. I looked like a bit of a dick as i argued the toss that there was such a thing... (my uncle had a missus, with a kid, not married, split up and she got 1/2 the house... thought that was why. lol. clearly not)