I have seen multiple-use plastic bottles which were washed and refilled by the drinks company. They were made out of far thicker plastic and had reinforcement on the base to protect them from damage.

These bottles would have to be reused many times to use the same amount of plastic as thin single-use bottles.

For new releases movie theatres tend to pay the distributers a percentage of the box office revenue. It is in the interest of the distributor for the cinema to show the film more often so that more people have the opportunity to buy tickets.

If the theatre wanted to cheat the distributed it would simply under-report the box office takings. Distributors and the audit departments of the cinema chains will investigate if the box office figures seem to be abnormal. This is not a new problem- systems like the electro-mechanical Automaticket machines were developed to reduce the ability of staff to under-report takings.

I have seen ballots being found and extracted (removed) using the serial number where there was a case of suspected personation at a UK general election. This did not take a lot of time since they only had to search through one ballot box rather than all the ballots in the constituency.

The extraction of the ballot was carried out by the count staff with police supervison (the ballot was taken as evidence). Representatives for the candidates in the election were also able to witness the process.

In the UK it is a criminal offence to reveal how somebody voted in an election.

The vast majority of UK elections are single candidate/party per ballot. If two or more elections are taking place on the same day then multiple ballots are used. Elections tend to be held at different times so it is less likley to have multiple contests on the same day.

For the Scottish Parliament elections, each voter is given two ballots- one for a named candidate, the other for a top up proportional represantation list candidate (where they vote for a single party).

There are some elections where multiple candidates are chosen. Scottish local government elections use multi member single transferable vote so voters rank the candidates in order of preference. The London Mayrol election uses suplimentory vote where the voters put down a first and second preference. The ballots for these elections are paper based and then scanned into a computer system for counting.

This was a test installation to test the concept of an underwater datacentre. A larger scale impemtation would be designed to allow the more economic instalation and retreval of the submerged modules.

I was tested in the UK (NHS drive-through test) and the swab was taken by the centre staff. They swabbed for longer than I was expecting. I suspect that most people who administer the test themselves would not swab for long enough and would therefore have a higher chance of getting a false negative result.

The UK testers were are not all fully trained medics, who are needed elsewhere, but from related professions such as opticians (who were closed at the start of the pandemic).

I would expect the refund to take place once the machine has been serviced and the uncollected cash vault emptied and counted.

There would still be an issue if multiple people did this and the bank was unable to determine who took some of the money and who did not.

How long are polling places open in the US? In the UK you can vote in person from 7am until 10pm. Most people should be able to vote before or after work.

I don't see how getting time off work would be particularly helpful- I have to vote at a designated polling place, allocated by registered address. I can leave my house, vote and return home in less than 20 minutes. With the exception of a few people who live near their places of work getting time off during the day would require them to commute to and from work twice in a day.

The annual vaccination may be due to the effect of the vaccine fading over time rather that the virus mutating. If it does mutate then a annual shot containing the most common strains of the vaccine may be required (the flu vaccine typically has 4 or 5 of the strains that are thought to be circulating the most).

The WHO is just listing the vaccines in development and stating which ones are in clinical trials. The three currently undergoing clinical trials are not necessarily the best vaccines merely the ones which have been developed enough to enter the trial stage. It may turn out that none of the three are effective and one of the slower to be developed ones works a lot better.

That would have been a former Police Box (of which the Tardis is modelled on a variant of) not a Phone Box which would not be big enough.

Have you looked at the in room phone costs in five-star resorts? It seems prisons have at least something in common.

In the UK it depends on which country you are in.

In Scotland the only legal tender for high value debts is £1 and £2 coins. Bank notes are accepted tender- but not strictly legal tender.

Pneumatic tubes are still common today in cash heavy businesses to move money from front to back of house securely. In hospitals they are used for transport of blood samples.

I would have thought the need for them is less essential in airports which mostly deal with card transactions.

The MS situation would have been to avoid temp workers becoming permanent after 2 years (which happens automatically under UK law).

Minimum wage and holiday pay happen from the start of employment.