Facts Not Opinions

We are in the habit of attending several performances at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse each year. It is our normal routine to walk from Waterloo Station to the theatres, a walk which takes us past 99 Southwark Street, the site of the Kirkaldy Testing Museum. Above the entrance to the museum is the motto "Facts, Not Opinions".

The machines housed in the museum were used to test all manner of construction materials, so creating de facto standards for such materials whereby engineers could know their strengths, not just guesstimate them. In these days of "post fact truth" this is, perhaps, a museum that should be visited regularly by every politician in the land. They then might appreciate what every engineer knows: if you let opinions take the place of facts whatever you build is liable to fall down.