David Hall

Hospitality professional. Love fine food, wine & Bath Rugby. Do not reget getting old, it's a privilege denied to many. All thoughts are mine & mine alone etc

[David Hall @David_Hall67]

11 years ago today, I laid my first ever concrete, on a sloping field on the ‘lobber’ above #portisaac with help from my amazing brother Will and good friend, weather guru Simon Rowell

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

Keir Starmer — ever a man of his word til the end.
In June 2023 he explicitly ruled out ever indulging in a resignation honours list (BBC Radio 4 Today).
Today he’s marked his resignation with 21 peerages, overwhelmingly public-sector/legal jobsworths. Barely a single wealth creator among them.
Classic line up of the New Establishment which has run the country under Labour and Tory governments for the past three decades and is now firmly in control. Largely (if not entirely) with the following characteristics:
*Career almost entirely in public sector, often taking salaries from several sinecures at once as they work up the greasy taxpayer-funded pole.
*Associated with various ‘right-on’ causes.
*Largely middle class, London chattering class, Oxbridge well represented (of course).
*Fashionable left but not too left. Good mainstream Labour links.
Thus is the antediluvian House of Lords perpetuated by the Left as well as the Right as a comfortable state-funded retirement home for the well-connected ‘good and great’ past their sell-by date — when it should simply be abolished.

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

🚨When asked about new taxes, Andy Burnham said “at some point that might be having to ask for a little more"🚨

Andy Burnham isn't even Prime Minister yet but he's already talking about raising your taxes AGAIN.

We are heading for another summer of chaos with Labour obsessing about who they can tax to pay for more benefits.

It doesn’t matter who is in charge, the problem is the Labour Party.

[Esther McVey @EstherMcVey1]

In an outrageous move in Parliament today the incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham dodged scrutiny again …
Running away from questions is becoming a bit of a theme for him …

[David Hall @David_Hall67]

@orlaminihane @Iromg Make Asylums Great Again..

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

Burnham Has No ‘Democratic Legitimacy’ To Be Prime Minister | Andrew Neil https://t.co/KKW64GErBb via @YouTube

[David Hall @David_Hall67]

@BurnsideWasTosh Utterly horrible and soulless houses - how have we fallen so far…..

[Iain Duncan Smith MP Chingford & Woodford Green @MPIainDS]

Ann embodied something fundamental about this House: the passion and freedom to make our arguments robustly and without fear, and the unique responsibility that we have to the people we represent. The relationship between a Member of Parliament and their constituents is unlike almost anything else. We meet people face to face. We hold surgeries. We go into their homes. If someone is too ill to come and see us, we go and see them. We do so because personal contact with the people we represent is at the heart of our democracy.

We must not allow the epitaph of Ann’s terrible murder to be that we withdraw from that responsibility or lose the very thing that makes this place and our democracy so special.

But nor can we ignore the increasingly visceral and violent language that is allowed to spread online. The Government, and particularly the Home Secretary, must make it absolutely clear to the social media companies that they have a responsibility to do far more to tackle personal abuse, threats and violent rhetoric. Some of what has been said online following Ann’s murder has been utterly shocking, and we cannot simply pretend that this culture of hatred has no consequences.

Ann is not the only Member of Parliament to have been murdered. Jo Cox was murdered. My good friend David Amess was murdered. And the plaques around this Chamber remind us that terrorists have murdered many Members of this House.

We must be bold and we must be clear. We will not accept being shut down. We will not accept being prevented from carrying out our duties. And we will not accept being silenced.

Because that, I believe, is what Ann would have wanted.

[Jamais Vu 🏉 @boot15_vu]

@BBCPolitics @juloof1 Utter tosh. Labour had over 14 years to prepare for government. Instead, they arrived armed with student politics, socialism, and dogma. Without question, this is the most inept, dishonest, ill-equipped, and corrupt government I’ve seen in my lifetime.

[Bernie @Artemisfornow]

Dear Adam,

I have taken time to think about your apology. Mostly because, having made a mistake publicly before, I was keen to accept yours. It hurts when people don’t understand that you are sorry for messing up. I get that, probably more than most.

But here’s the thing… I’m not sure you understand what you did wrong. And so you don’t really understand what you are apologising for or why. With that in mind, I want to help you.

I didn’t know Ann, except as a powerhouse in politics and that so many people have spoken of her friendship and great loyalty. How lovely, I wish I had known her.

I am utterly disinterested in her sexual prowess or the state of her virginity. But I would have enjoyed hearing you speak of her great accomplishments. Not as a woman, but simply as a human being.

Here’s a list.

She served in the House of Commons for 23 years and won five general elections.

She served as a government minister in Social Security, Employment and the Home Office, where she was Minister of State for Prisons.

She rose to become Shadow Health Secretary and then Shadow Home Secretary.

She was appointed to the Privy Council.

After leaving Westminster, she built an entirely new career as an author, broadcaster, documentary-maker, stage performer and television personality.

Then, at the age of 71, she returned to elected politics and became a Member of the European Parliament.

She was a longstanding advocate for Britain leaving the European Union and, when the political establishment failed to deliver the referendum result, she left the Conservative Party after more than 50 years and stood for the Brexit Party.

She was elected as an MEP and took the argument for British independence directly into the European Parliament.

She was also an unapologetic defender of free speech. She continued to speak openly on difficult and unfashionable subjects when others chose silence, it was easier to do that, she accepted the criticism and hostility that came with it rather than surrendering her convictions.

Her Catholic faith was central to her life. She converted to Catholicism, met Pope John Paul II in Rome and was later made a Dame of the Order of St Gregory the Great by Pope Benedict XVI for her service to politics and public life.

She remained a powerful public voice well into her late seventies, defending her beliefs despite decades of ridicule and hostility.

That is an extraordinary life of public service, courage and reinvention.

Yet, when asked to speak about her after her sudden and violent death, you chose to tell the country that she was a “spinster”, an “old maid” and a virgin. You discussed a failed relationship and suggested that afterwards she simply dedicated herself to other activities.

Do you understand the reduction involved in that?

You took the life of a highly accomplished woman and assessed it according to whether she had married, whether she had sex and whether a man had wanted her.

That is what was wrong. That is what you should have known.

It wasn’t simply that your words were poorly chosen or badly timed. It was the instinct to view a woman’s entire life through her relationship with men, even when her achievements should have rendered that completely irrelevant.

Nobody discussing the death of an accomplished male politician would think it necessary to tell viewers whether he was a virgin, speculate about his sex life or describe him as an ageing bachelor whose romance had failed.

I don’t want you cancelled. I don’t believe that people should be denied forgiveness when they make mistakes.

But a meaningful apology has to identify the actual wrong.

Ann was murdered after a lifetime of public service. At the moment her achievements should have been remembered, you diminished her to an unmarried woman who apparently hadn’t had sex.

She deserved better than that. And I’m still not sure you get it. But every woman who watched you speak of her and then read your apology does.

Bernie.

[David Hall @David_Hall67]

@Artemisfornow @AllisonPearson Spot on as always Bernie

[Allison Pearson @AllisonPearson]

Apology not accepted.
Nothing to do with facts. You called that great woman, just slaughtered, an “old maid”, a “virgin”, a “spinster”.
Language which gave away your horrible misogyny.
You would NEVER have described a 78-year old man as “bachelor” let alone “virgin”.
It was unforgivable.
As Ann would have said: “APP-ALL-LLING”!

[David Hall @David_Hall67]

@saveourwest @LibbyTard17 @elonmusk It’s a parody account, albeit not funny at all - it has to be as no-one can actually be that stupid

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Badenoch's Purge is a Mercy Killing, not a Massacre

For years the Conservative Party's problem was not policy. It was character. It kept promoting people who talked like conservatives and voted like technocrats, who nodded along to net zero targets they privately doubted and treaties they privately resented. Kemi Badenoch has just done something rare in British politics: she has looked at that habit and called it what it is. Cowardice dressed up as pragmatism.

Her decision to block former MPs from standing again if they still cling to net zero, or still defend Britain's subjection to Strasbourg, will be painted by critics as ruthless. It is not ruthless. It is honest. A party that lost catastrophically in 2024 does not get to relitigate that defeat by recycling the same faces and the same instincts. Voters did not reject the Conservatives because the party wasn't nice enough to its old guard. They rejected it because it had stopped standing for anything distinguishable from the consensus it claimed to oppose.

Net zero and the ECHR are not minor technical disputes. They are the clearest tests going of whether a politician actually believes in national self-government, or merely enjoys the theatre of it. A candidate who still insists Britain must hit arbitrary carbon targets, whatever the cost to industry and household bills, has not learned anything from a decade of rising energy prices. A candidate who thinks Strasbourg's rulings are compatible with controlling Britain's own borders is not being moderate. They are being evasive.

What makes this striking is the alternative Badenoch is proposing. Not more career politicians, not more special advisers who have never run so much as a corner shop, but people who have actually built things, taught in classrooms, served in uniform, or kept a small business afloat. It is an unfashionable idea: that competence and conviction matter more than polish. But it is exactly what a party trying to prove it has changed needs to demonstrate, not merely announce.

Compare that with the government it is up against. Much of the current Parliamentary Labour Party arrived from the charity sector and NGOs, backgrounds built around advocacy and institutional compassion, not the harder trade-offs of running a country. It shows in the instincts on display: a preference for managing sentiment over confronting problems. Badenoch's bet is that Britain needs fewer people trained to represent a cause and more who have had to deliver a result.

There will be a cost. Some of the rejected will go to the papers. Some will drift to Reform, adding to a defection story that has already dented the Tories once. Badenoch's response, "so be it", is the correct one. A party terrified of losing people who do not agree with its direction will never have a direction. Every serious political project involves deciding who does not belong in it. The Conservatives spent the last parliament unable to do that, and the country noticed.

Contrast this with the alternatives on offer. Reform's vetting has produced candidates that make its own leader wince. Labour, with over four hundred MPs, could not find anyone better to replace Starmer than a man who once lost to Jeremy Corbyn. Against that backdrop, a party willing to say no to its own former MPs looks less like an act of cruelty and more like the first sign of a functioning institution.

None of this guarantees electoral success. Polling still has the Conservatives level with Labour and behind Reform. But recovery has to start somewhere, and it rarely starts with comfort. Badenoch is betting that voters can tell the difference between a party performing seriousness and one practising it. That bet is worth taking.

[David Hall @David_Hall67]

@saveourwest @LibbyTard17 Don’t engage, it’s just an extremely unfunny parody account - no one could possibly be that stupid

[Alex Armstrong @Alexarmstrong]

Today we are once again finding out how tolerant the “Be Kind” left truly are.

They showed themselves when Charlie Kirk was assassinated and once again they show it today.

The fact they celebrate the murder/death of people, who simply disagreed with them,
proves how poor their argument is. They couldn’t beat these people in debate so their only victory is in death.

The great thing about Anne Widdecombe is that she would’ve revelled seeing them all so deeply rattled.

[David Hall @David_Hall67]

@Rjh5720 @BBCNews Or just simply ban them - solves two problems; a mass future health problem from breathing in hot oily chemicals containing god knows what carcinogens, and rids the multitude of awful vape shops in the high street

[David Hall @David_Hall67]

@MarcherReborn But plenty of choice when they do! 🍺🍺

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

No rapist, paedophile, or grooming gang member should be allowed out of prison early.

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

Opening Jackdaw is common sense.

Britain needs cheap, abundant and reliable energy if we are going to grow. Jackdaw alone could supply around 6% of our gas needs this October.

Andy Burnham has a choice. Back British energy, British jobs and lower bills or let Labour’s Net Zero madness hold our country back.

The message from Aberdeen South was clear: people want secure British oil and gas.

[Sharron Davies HoL MBE @sharrond62]

Manchester suffers steepest fall in living standards in England. The scrutiny will now come. https://t.co/M4WUdoWYU6