Luke Davies

I barely represent my own opinions, let alone anyone else's

[frostandfurious @Nick_Frost]

Nelly Furtado claimed she was "like a bird", however she also claimed to be a "maneater", so it doesn't take a paleontologist or ornithologist to deduce that Nelly Furtado is in fact a Velociraptor

[Dr Sanjoy Kumar @drsanjoykumar]

My beautiful and brave daughter

[GMan | GMan’s Chronicle @FAB87F]

ChuckPfarrer: AMERICAN HERO: This is Coast Guard Petty Officer 3rd Class Scott Ruskan. This 26-year-old U.S. Coast Guard rescue swimmer saved 165 lives during the deadly Texas floods. Semper Paratus!

[Jeremiah Johnson 🌐 @JeremiahDJohns]

One of my all-time favorite type of videos is pre-fame bands playing their extremely famous songs to a tiny room of people, because they're not yet known.

A thread of some examples:

Bastille playing Pompeii in what looks like someone's living room:

[Sandford Police Commentary @Sandford_Police]

The best policing documentary ever made is now 18 years old

Hot Fuzz

[Joezempic 💉 @JoeWritesThings]

Me getting thrown out of the Chinese buffet #TheTraitors

[Brick Cop©️ @Brick_Cop]

Ok so how has @metpoliceuk recruited 1465 Police Officers, but lost 1381 Police Officers in the last financial year?

Let’s take a little deep dive and look into multiple contributing factors that have led us to this point…🤷🏼‍♂️

We’ll go back just over a decade to the year 2012. ⌚️

London is hosting the @Olympics 🇬🇧

In the build up The Met has deployed a team of Officers to escort the Olympic Torch safely around the country until it reaches the opening ceremony. It goes off without a hitch, in fact the only security issue for the Olympics is the company selected by The Government paid to provide security; @G4S have been a complete shambles and the military have to be brought in to supplement what is otherwise an excellent Policing plan.

Police Officers numbers are so good, you can’t join The Met in 2011 or 2012 and you can only just become a Special Constable.

The workforce is motivated as it has a big task ahead of it which everyone understands; protect the Olympic Games. We’re in a world prior to Social Media hysteria and whilst pay is still disputed, the Pension hasn’t been messed with.

The Met Police’s the countries most iconic event in decades without incident and is proud of itself. But not for long. Change is coming.

Somehow The Met owes the Government £450 Million, then Home Secretary Theresa May tells Policing nationally they are ‘Crying Wolf’ about Officer numbers and public safety and a short time later the pension is meddled with.

The retention problem begins. Those on the old pension realise if they stay, they’re going to lose money - drastically, so they begin to leave in their droves. Leadership aren’t worried though, there is a huge back log of applications from before and during the Olympics.

Numbers dip, but they’re bolstered quickly, however training isn’t what it used to be. Hendon has been sold, as are other ‘regional learning centres’. The training is sped up and delivered mostly on digital platforms - mandated by @CollegeofPolice 👀

Across London 2/3rds of Police Stations are shut, thousands of Police Staff; shift roster builders, case file builders, communications staff are all laid off, but their work still needs doing. So Police Officers step into the void. Taking more and more Police Officers off the streets.

To save more money, instead of 32 Policing Boroughs, they are merged into 12 super boroughs or ‘Basic Command Units’. The trials for this are catastrophic, but it achieves the objective of saving money, so it carries on.

Years of history and identity for those Policing London’s boroughs have been eradicated in the name of ‘efficiency’.

Retention is terrible. Thousands more leave and those that are joining are not all vetted properly.

Those who have stayed mostly leave Frontline Policing and move anywhere away from it that they can. The demand is ridiculous and stress off the scale.

The only reprieve comes briefly in the days after Terror attacks, where the public remember what we do so admirably.

Then a global pandemic hits. The Met must enforce garbled and complicated social distancing legislation that quite rightly inflames tensions with communities.

During this period, one of our own, not vetted properly; Kidnaps, Rapes and Murders Sarah Everard.

Every decent, hard working, Police Officer in The Met questions how the public will trust us again.

Then Commissioner Ma’am Cressida Dick is bullied out of Office.

Everything becomes a priority. The cost of living in London is a joke and Police Officers are overloaded with work to breaking point. @policeconduct too have taken it upon themselves to destroy faith in the disciplinary process.

And we wonder why we have a retention crisis when we’ve just been told to save £450 Million all over again…

#ThinBlueLine 🚨

[Susie Dent @susie_dent]

Word of the day is ‘apanthropist’ (18th century): someone who dislikes company and desires to be left alone.

[Brick Cop©️ @Brick_Cop]

Policing has been referred to as ‘The Thin Blue Line’ for a very long time.

The blue, refers to the colour of our uniforms, in a post war era where we moved from black; to dark and then lighter blue to differentiate us from Naval or Air Force uniforms.

The thin, quite simply refers to there never being enough of us. And when we lose Cops for any reason, it gets thinner and thinner.

The line, is the law. We are not here to be ‘liked’ or to be popular, but to be impartial and enforce the law, as it is set out by the democracy that is His Majesty’s government.

Therefore in my humble opinion it has and remains to be a colloquial term for Policing, and nothing else.

Trust me, whilst I would never wish for anyone to have to stand on a line during serious disorder, it has never felt as thin as it does right now.

‘Banning’ a patch that means so much to those who choose to do this ridiculous job is, in my opinion, a little short sighted especially when there is truly nothing offensive about it.

It is simply a symbol of pride in what we do and remembrance for those who are no longer with us.

We were, are and will always be, the #ThinBlueLine 🫡🚨

[MrPaulRobinson @MrPaulRobinson]

"What is the charge? Eating a plant? A succulent garden plant?"

[Brick Cop©️ @Brick_Cop]

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” #ThinBlueLine 🫡🇩🇪🚨

[Michelle Cowbourne @Glastomichelle]

To say I am blown away is an understatement, What a night! Glastonbury Tor and the Aurora...incredible.

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

Satisfying photos for perfectionists - thread 🧵

1. Crescent Moon bridge by Yier Wang

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

Everyday photographs that turned into accidental masterpieces - a thread 🧵

1. Girl with a gray towel

[Sam Ghali, M.D. @EM_RESUS]

Here's a video I made breaking down this AMAZING footage of a bear performing CPR

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

Photographs taken in the right place at the right time, intentionally or by chance - a thread 🧵

1. Wilma Hurskainen

[Raj Kohli @RajSKohliexcop]

Note to self.

When personal training instructor asks you what your favourite machine in the gym is apparently 'vending' is not an option.

[Olaf Falafel @OFalafel]

The Pulp Fiction dance scene except it’s to the theme song for Duck Tales

[Judianna @Judianna]

Monopoly - I didn't know this!

(You'll never look at the
game the same way again!)

Starting in 1941, an increasing number of British Airmen found themselves as the involuntary guests of the Third Reich, and the Crown was casting about for ways and means to facilitate their escape...

Now obviously, one of the most helpful aids to that end is a useful and accurate map, one showing
not only where stuff was, but also showing the locations of 'safe houses' where a POW on-the-lam could go for food and shelter.

Paper maps had some real drawbacks -- they make a lot of noise when you open and fold them, they wear out rapidly, and if they get wet, they turn into mush.

Someone in MI-5 (Similar to America 's OSS) got the idea of printing escape maps on silk. It's durable, can be scrunched-up into tiny wads, and unfolded as many times as needed, and makes no noise whatsoever.

At that time, there was only one manufacturer in Great Britain that had perfected the technology of printing on silk, and that was John Waddington, Ltd. When approached by the government, the firm was only too happy to do its bit for the war effort.

By pure coincidence, Waddington was also the U.K. Licensee for the popular American board game, Monopoly. As it happened, 'games and pastimes' was a category of item qualified for insertion into 'CARE packages', dispatched by the International Red Cross to prisoners of war.

Under the strictest of secrecy, in a securely guarded and inaccessible old workshop on the grounds of Waddington's, a group of sworn-to-secrecy employees began mass-producing escape maps, keyed to each region of Germany or Italy where Allied POW camps were regional system). When processed, these maps could be folded into such tiny dots that they would actually fit inside a Monopoly playing piece.

As long as they were at it, the clever workmen at Waddington's also managed to add:
1. A playing token, containing a small magnetic compass
2. A two-part metal file that could easily be screwed together
3. Useful amounts of genuine high-denomination German, Italian, and French currency, hidden within the piles of Monopoly money!

British and American air crews were advised, before taking off on their first mission, how to identify a 'rigged' Monopoly set -- by means of a tiny red dot, one cleverly rigged to look like an ordinary printing glitch, located in the corner of the Free Parking square.

Of the estimated 35,000 Allied POWS who successfully escaped, an estimated one-third were aided in their flight by the rigged Monopoly sets... Everyone who did so was sworn to secrecy indefinitely, since the British Government might want to use this highly successful ruse in still another, future war.

The story wasn't declassified until 2007, when the surviving craftsmen from Waddington's, as well as the firm itself, were finally honored in a public ceremony.

It's always nice when you can play that 'Get Out of Jail' Free' card!