Dave Firman 〓〓 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧 🖖

ALL Social Media is toxic: leave. (Grand)Father, husband, bad golfer, curmudgeon, Anglophile. Retired IFA. *Frequently* sweary. Churchill knew what to do #KBO

[Dave Firman 〓〓 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧 🖖 @DFirman]

Somewhere in the future, your older self is watching you through memories. Whether it's with regret or nostalgia depends on what you do now.

[Dave Firman 〓〓 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧 🖖 @DFirman]

@exRAF_Al Just as well we’re not Al, just as well. As to tech keeping them safe…. nah, no thanks, I’ll trust my own ability to drive rather than some AI generated coding - have you seen the Tesla scene in “Leave the World Behind”?

[Dave Firman 〓〓 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧 🖖 @DFirman]

@BurnsideWasTosh “Shibboleth” Bloody hell, the last time I heard that word I was wearing an apron on the square.
Bravo DCI, bravo.

[Dave Firman 〓〓 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧 🖖 @DFirman]

@TheSimonEvansX An excellent piece Mr Evans, the “headmaster” image being particularly good. Bravo, Sir, bravo!

[TheSimonEvansX @TheSimonEvansX]

“After he left the House of Commons, Ashdown was a plausible candidate for the secretary-general of NATO. Davey would hardly be credible as a candidate for moderator on Mumsnet. His main experience of the North Atlantic would be falling in it.”

[Dave Firman 〓〓 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧 🖖 @DFirman]

This is superb…. and the comments are hilarious.

[Dr Helen Ingram @drhingram]

The album cover of an 80s synth-pop band

[Dave Firman 〓〓 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧 🖖 @DFirman]

@FXTraderPaul Bloody hell! How can it be 49 years?

[Dr Helen Fry | WWII Historian @DrHelenFry]

In April 1945, with Axis defeat looming, Britain sent General Sir Andrew Thorne to Trent Park with a dramatic proposal:

Would captured German generals broadcast a surrender appeal to end the war and save lives?

Their response was astonishing:
(🧵)

[Dave Firman 〓〓 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧 🖖 @DFirman]

Today is Battle of Britain Day.

86 years ago, in 1940, Nazi Germany launched what it hoped would be a final battle of annihilation.

We can never repay our debt to these men who surrendered their lives so we might live ours in freedom.

#LestWeForget #TheFew

[Dave Firman 〓〓 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧 🖖 @DFirman]

c/o @dailystoic
Seneca, writing about people who dread the future or linger on what has already happened, said they rob themselves of what is in front of them right now. We deprive ourselves, he said, of “the ability to enjoy present things.”

[Andy Paul @RakeBedlam667]

This

[Dave Firman 〓〓 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧 🖖 @DFirman]

@NickLincoln I noticed the same at Ibiza airport in June, queued for maybe one minute then straight through immigration on the way in. Security on the way out was even quicker - no queue at all. This was at peak times (just before noon on a Saturday).

[Dave Firman 〓〓 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧 🖖 @DFirman]

@MarcherReborn @Mazza6069 My grandfather was one of Orde Wingate’s Chindits and fought the Japanese in Burma. Having seen, first hand, their actions he described them as despicably cruel and sadistic and wouldn’t have anything marked “Made in Japan” in his house.

[Dave Firman 〓〓 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧 🖖 @DFirman]

@andyrayner9 Ditto. Beaufort Ink blue-black is my current favourite, along with the hard to get hold of Conway Stewart Tavy. I bemoan Pure Pens stopping making Windermere - it had a glorious sheen with a wet nib and Oxford Optik paper.

[Dave Firman 〓〓 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧 🖖 @DFirman]

Achtung! Spitfire!
(Look closely, they were over a mile away)

[Dave Firman 〓〓 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧 🖖 @DFirman]

@AvonandsomerRob Casio for quartz accuracy, especially if paired with solar and MSF signal reception (see picture, also has titanium case and bracelet, £120 from Japan). Seiko Sport range if you want an automatic.

[Dave Firman 〓〓 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧 🖖 @DFirman]

“our politicians refuse to govern the country that *actually exists* but instead the country they want to exist.”
A brilliant and to the point summary.

[Jake Weston @JakeRWeston]

Politics in the UK is incredibly strange - you have this ecosystem of, in my opinion, reality, where people worry about and talk about genuine issues - just a few highlights in the last week...

- Information that *literally* the worst people -murderers and rapists - may be released having served *half* their sentences.
- Irrefutable evidence businesses all over the nation are essentially immigration fraud fronts, each sponsoring dozens of 'skilled visas'. (This is after we discovered thousands of businesses profit through the black market)
- A major political figure murdered amidst an obviously incompetent investigation from the police (again).
- A new foreign sec who signed off on Assad chemically poisoning his own citizens in Syria, whilst embarrassing both this nation and the leader of the free world in the US.

And in response our new PM is going to lower bus fares to two pounds? Oh, and it's unfunded?

We're basically 5 minutes from midnight in the UK, and our politicians refuse to govern the country that *actually exists* but instead the country they want to exist.

Burnham would love for the nation to effectively be a mayoralty - cheaper buses, clean up some rough sleeping, a few quid of energy bills and voilà you've got 5 more years (because demographically its impossible for you to lose anyway).

Starmer wanted to govern a Sims world where he could manage, control and ban our problems away.

Sunak wanted to govern California where he could have spent his entire time in Silicon Valley.

Johnson didn't even really want to govern - especially not during a pandemic.

And May didn't want to do Brexit - I'm yet to work out what she did want to do.

We're stuck with politicians who simply don't want to get with the times, they're uninterested in the problems of the day - partially because they're too hard to deal with and partially because they still don't really think those problems are real.

God help us.

[Dave Firman 〓〓 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧 🖖 @DFirman]

@TheSimonEvansX Although possibly not ‘the best’ it’s certainly very profound:

“A man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest.”

The Boxer - Simon and Garfunkel

[Dave Firman 〓〓 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧 🖖 @DFirman]

@CharlieH29 Well said Charlie. The best (and cleanest) side won. Cheating bastards don’t prosper.

[Dave Firman 〓〓 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧 🖖 @DFirman]

@CharlieH29 @England Ditto - although not quite as old as you (you ancient fossil! 😉).