Patriotic Englishman, proud husband, Former Councillor, Freemason, Astronomy and Space enthusiast. Interested in all things scientific.
England
Joined February 2011
- Tweets3.8K
- Following896
- Followers1.2K
- Likes11.3K
David G Foot retweeted
Interview with Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy onboard the Queen Elizabeth liner ship, 1947.
David G Foot retweeted
This is what reading actually does to you:
“Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realize the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors. We realize it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. I regret that the brutes cannot write books. … Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. There are mass emotions which heal the wound; but they destroy the privilege. In them our separate selves are pooled and we sink back into sub-individuality. But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like a night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.”
— C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism
If you enjoy our posts, consider becoming a paid subscriber. You'll get:
- Live book club discussions (biweekly)
- Access to our incredible community chat
- Essays to guide you through the Great Books
- All past recordings, essays, and podcasts
- The ability to vote on what we read next
Join here: athenaeumbooks.com/subscribe
David G Foot retweeted
My Benefits Bill.
You can find out yours by sticking your postcode in this new gizmo from the Taxpayers' Alliance benefitsdata.uk/mybill
David G Foot retweeted
🚨BREAKING: Falkland Islanders have responded to Milei
"We are British, We have no desire to be governed by Argentina"
Check out cedar-bold-iris-pilot cedar-bold-iris-pilot.grok.m…
David G Foot retweeted
I don't know what everyone else was up to tonight, but I watched an excellent documentary this evening. The good chaps won.
David G Foot retweeted
There are few places more peaceful than an English river in summer.
Willows trail their branches through slow water. Dragonflies skim the surface. Swallows dip low while trout wait beneath ribbons of waving weed.
Walk a little further and the river changes again.
Kingfishers flash past like blue sparks. Moorhens guide their chicks through the reeds. Centuries-old stone bridges overlook these timeless scenes, just as they have for generations.
These rivers have always been more than water.
They sustained farms and villages, shaped settlements, and were once honoured as sacred places where gifts were left for the gods.
Which makes it heartbreaking that so many are now polluted by sewage, agricultural run-off and neglect.
England’s rivers deserve better.
Follow @oaksandlions for more posts about England's landscapes and wildlife.
#England #EnglishCountryside #Rivers #Nature #EnglishWildlife
David G Foot retweeted
➡️ Latest news - Raising a flag for Armed Forces Day
Fareham Borough Council has marked this year’s Armed Forces Day on Saturday 27 June, by raising the Armed Forces Flag outside the Civic Offices in Fareham.
Read more below 👇
fareham.gov.uk/latest_news/p…
David G Foot retweeted
@SpaceX just posted this video clip showing Ship 39 in the landing burn and splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
Its great, but worthy of some analysis ... and this is mine and I know some will have their own take, which is great but I hope this is helpful for discussion.
Based on the ship 39 Raptor Vacuum (RVAC) engine failure on ascent, the inability of demonstrating a de-orbit burn with the new V3 engines, and this wildly and marginally controlled landing burn, pirouette, and non-stabilized, not quite vertical attitude on splashdown (despite being very close to being on target and perhaps partly planned for data), I am convinced the next flight will be a repeat profile with another suborbital trajectory and splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
During the atmospheric reentry, the ship modified it's profile to compensate for a not-quite-nominal suborbital insertion with lower perigee and a subsequent trajectory slightly short of the intended landing location in the Indian Ocean.
This was caused by the loss of the one RVAC, the longer burn by the other 3 engines to compensate, and higher header tank fuel load due to the lack of reentry burn (demo). I also think there was likely some propellant leakage, possibly due to damage on the RVAC.
Ship 39 was able to skip along in the atmosphere at about 68-70 Km in altitude (using a lower Angle of Attack or AOA), generating enough lift to even gain some altitude for awhile while extending its downrange flight via aerodynamics.
This reentry profile and use of aerodynamic lift compensation is actually great data and experience with the capabilities of the ship for SpaceX, something they may not have had much data on so will help to validate their computational analysis and expand the flight envelope and options for Starship going forward.
SpaceX needs to be able to demonstrate high confidence in the terminal phase of flight of the Starship before attempting a catch attempt.
IMHO I think Flight 13 will definitely be a repeat profile as for Flight 12, Flight 13 will not include a Booster catch attempt but still suborbital flight for the ship, and Flight 14 might be a booster catch attempt and include the first orbital flight for ship, but with a water landing again (perhaps in the Pacific Ocean or off shore in the Gulf, and it won't be until Flight 15 or 16 at the earliest before we might see a ship catch attempt.
If Flight 13 happens by August, and then 1 month between flights after that, then I think we won's see the first ship catch attempt until NET November or December of this year.
Success, but room for iteration and improvement ... a good foundation to build on for V3, but work yet ahead. I am optimistic @SpaceX and the team have the data they need now and will be ready for Flight 13 with even better results in the next couple of months.
But, as always, we shall see and I look forward to others take on this too.
David G Foot retweeted
A farmer dies in April 2026.
His son inherits the farm. The farm has been in the family since 1847.
The farm consists of: 300 acres of grazing pasture, a farmhouse built in 1892, a barn, a milking parlour, two tractors of varying ages, a Land Rover that runs about 70% of the time, and a herd of 180 Hereford-cross cattle.
On paper, the farm is worth approximately £3.2 million. This is because land near him has been bought recently by a London hedge fund looking for carbon credits, which has dragged the comparable value of every field within forty miles upward to a number nobody local can justify.
In cash, the farm produces a profit of about £28,000 a year in a good year. In a bad year it loses money. The son also works as a fencing contractor three days a week to keep the operation viable.
The inheritance tax bill on a £3.2 million estate, even at the reduced 20% rate, comes to approximately £140,000 after the increased threshold is applied. The son does not have £140,000. The son has never had £140,000. The son has £4,200 in his current account and an overdraft.
The son sells 60 acres to a developer to pay the tax. The developer puts solar panels on the 60 acres. The remaining herd cannot be sustained on the reduced land. The herd is sold. The barn becomes a holiday let.
A different family eats Brazilian beef this Christmas without knowing why the price went up.
The Treasury collects £140,000.
The land never produces British food again.
Excellent - well done @RocketLab
Nice to hear music by @Erdayastronaut too!
David G Foot retweeted
As a Soviet historian who has spent years writing about the extreme, repressive control Soviet Communism exercised over its unfortunate citizens, I find it really hard to bring a similar accusation against the Labour government and Keir Starmer.
But I’m finding it increasingly difficult to avoid that conclusion.
We have no Gulag or death penalty, admittedly, but what Labour and the old Soviet regime do have in common is the arrogant belief that they alone hold the moral high ground and that this entitles them to the total control over all those who do not share their worldview.
And like the Soviets of old their tools of control are the same…
- legislation and co-opted courts and civil service to apply it
- the policing of dissent, by hate crime orders, arrests (@glinner), the long term seizure of electronic appliances (@CF_Farrow) to intimidate even those against whom no charges are finally brought.
- controlling free speech (12,000 arrests annually for social media posts in 2025). George Orwell’s ‘thought crime’ persecution has become a reality under Labour.
- framing dissent (the Unite the Kingdom participants) as racism and far right fascism (Stalin started that in the days when Labour was his captive party, the 1930s, and ‘fascist’ has remained their favoured mantra ever since)
- attacking and weakening the family (because the family is so often a place where small ‘c’ conservative values are transmitted down the generations), including the promotion of trans ideology to confuse children in their understanding of the roles of men and women, mothers and fathers. In their eyes women can have penises and ‘heteronormativity’ must be ‘smashed’.
- education, wrested as Marx decreed, from the middle class (private schools and VAT), and used as a vehicle for the state propagandising of children and youth at their most vulnerable age.
… and much more.
In short, I can reach no other conclusion. Under Labour, Britain is becoming a repressive state which is, incredibly, echoing the very characteristics of repression that any former resident of the Soviet Union or its satellite states would recognise today (and they do and tell us so)
And with every opportunity Keir Starmer has to rein that in, he instead doubles down. Month by month things get worse.
This is 2026. I can’t believe what I am seeing. Or what I’m saying. But, yes, it is going on. And only a majority government of either Tories or Reform (and I do have reservations about both) of a coalition of two can reverse this.
… or we are sunk
🚨 RESPECT ORDERS - You don’t need to break the law to be criminalised in Britain. You just need to annoy the wrong person.
The government is pushing through something called a Respect Order, part of the new Crime and Policing Bill now moving through Parliament.
Respect Orders are civil, not criminal, so they don’t require a jury or criminal standard of proof. Just someone saying you’re causing a nuisance, even online!
If someone complains, that you're too loud, too disruptive, too opinionated, you can be banned from:
▪️Posting on social media
▪️Attending a protest
▪️Speaking in a public place
▪️Even entering certain areas
All without ever being charged with a crime. And if you break the order?
well … that’s a crime. You could be fined, arrested, or jailed for up to two years.
It’s pre-crime policing and It’s about control, not safety. It’s a ban on dissent.
David G Foot retweeted
If British jews are to be held responsible for what happens in Gaza...then by the same reasoning British Muslims should be held responsible for the massacres of Christians by Muslims in Nigeria