David Beckett

@iamdavidbeckett

Tetraplegic, vegan, Fabian, a man who refuses to let what he can't do stop what he can do Labour Councillor, proud to represent the Brinkburn and Faverdale ward in Darlington

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David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Jul 15

I enjoyed the #PMQs analysis by @mrjamesob.bsky.social and @natashaclark.bsky.social (youtu.be/4Yo0uA4LI2M) and think the reference by Badenoch to getting the tone right may have been influenced by responses to the exchange after Starmer announced his resignation (such as @mrjohncrace.bsky.social)

Graceless Kemi concedes not a croak of kindness for newly liberated Keir article by John Crace

You learn a lot about a person at a time like this. Not so much about the prime minister, who has resigned. Keir Starmer has already revealed how he deals with a personal loss. But about the leader of the opposition. Here was a chance for Kemi Badenoch to show her human side. To give the world a rare sighting of her empathy gene. But Kemi just can’t go there. She can’t read a room. She has only one mode. All-out attack.

Other people’s moments of weakness are just material for her to use against them. Even now, she probably thinks she played a blinder at prime minister’s questions. A chance taken to humiliate Keir when he’s down. She has no idea how graceless she is. How charmless.

All the more so because she has played no part in Starmer’s resignation. The Conservatives have just been bystanders. There has been no dramatic intervention by Kemi. No set piece in which she has exposed his weakness and forced the issue. Keir’s departure was purely between him and the Labour party. It was Keir’s MPs who had given up on him. No one else.

One day she will find this comes back to bite her. Those whom she has ripped apart on her way up won’t hesitate to do the same to her when she is on the way down. Which may be sooner than she imagines. She certainly has no idea of how to make friends with people.

The mad thing is that it would have taken so little for Kemi to have come out of PMQs looking good. In their first exchanges after a Downing Street resignation, it’s customary for the leader of the opposition to say something complimentary about the outgoing prime minister.

It doesn’t even have to be very much. She could have said she admired his steadfast support for Ukraine. Or gone for the human touch. That she had enjoyed the conversations they had held in private. Had loved meeting his wife and kids. Wished him all the very best. But Kemi would rather die than do this. She sees kindness as a sign of weakness. It would have cost her what passes for her self-worth.

Had she done this – allowed even a forced croak of kindness to escape her lips – then everything that followed would have been OK. Kemi would have bossed the show. As it was, she crashed and burned. Her language becoming progressively more angry and violent the longer she went on. It was the behaviour of a spoiled child. A playground bully whom her party doesn’t dare to call out.

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Dec 14

Amusing error on Patriots.com, which has Chris Simms predicting that the Patriots play themselves tonight @patriots.bsky.social

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Aug 29

A very good and compelling argument for legislative scrutiny of the monarchy, the institution to which all Members (our representatives) swear an oath of allegiance There is a typo (film flam) in the penultimate paragraph which you may want to correct

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Aug 16

Just had the interesting experience of going through the process of verifying my age for @bsky.app, following an emailed link to do a facial scan, which estimated my age I’m not sure how mature-looking teenagers will fare or how the program deals with people in their 20s or 30s with youthful faces🧐

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Aug 16

The fact that Putin thinks the meeting with Trump was “very useful” and a way to discuss ending the “Ukrainian crisis“ shows how the discussion was on Putin’s terms and will have emboldened the Russian war criminal - Trump was naive to be manipulated by the dictator www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c2...

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Jun 9

Your analysis of Trump’s response to the demonstration in LA and a need to scapegoat is very similar to this exchange in The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard @mrjamesob.bsky.social

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· May 21

Maybe they will follow up with a ban on tartan paint and left handed pencils

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· May 18

I hope the exit polls are accurate and Mr Dan is duly elected as the next president of Romania

Romanian election exit polls suggest surprise win for pro-western candidate Nicusor Dan

Exit polls from the Romanian presidential election suggest pro-Western centrist Nicusor Dan is on course for a surprise win over hard-right populist George Simion

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· May 18

The opinions of Nick Ferrari on this morning’s #LauraK about how the government seeking to use a pragmatic approach to improve the lives of UK citizens and the British economy is typical of a historical revisionism about the question put to the public in 2016 1/4

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· May 18

The latest blog post by @barristersecret.bsky.social to debunk the absurd claims by some right wing commentators about EDI policies and the membership of the Inns of Court is beautifully written with a blend of humour and statistical analysis thesecretbarrister.com/2025/05/18/n...

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Apr 3

“The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom” – Donald Trump

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Mar 26

He would probably deny writing it, just as he did when asked about calling Zelenskyy a dictator

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Mar 25

This aged badly

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Mar 20

Listening to @mrjamesob.bsky.social has just made me look through Catch-22 again and marvel at the brilliance of Joseph Heller’s writing

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Mar 1

This is excellent by @iandunt.bsky.social, a a wonderful reaction to what we all witnessed in the Oval Office, what it shows about the character and personality of those involved, and what the UK and Europe must do now iandunt.substack.com/p/some-dispa...

What we saw yesterday was the single most appalling diplomatic spectacle of our lifetime. I constantly have to check my sentences now for hyperbole, but what else competes? What could ever come close? It was like a fairy tale in reverse. A monstrous grotesque, motivated entirely by greed, power and self-pity, trying to humiliate a man who has risked everything for the survival of his country. To watch Donald Trump or JD Vance is to come face to face with the human potential for viciousness and mendacity. They are the filth of this goddamn world.

There's no point going into what happened. You'll have seen it already. But I would like to say this and to have it written down somewhere: Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a hero. There's no-one I look up to more. From the beginning of this war, he has conducted himself with grace, restraint, pragmatism, bravery and singular moral clarity.

He did not run. He did not hide. Instead, he formulated a plan to defend his country. He has spent years asking world leaders for what he needs to defeat the enemy. Most of the time, those requests were met. Sometimes they were not. And when they weren't, he did not sulk. He tried something else. Despite the pressure and the anguish, he was rational, level-headed and imaginative.

He understood that the best way to protect his country was to deliver an accomplished public relations exercise. He did this with a degree of genius we have not seen since perhaps Nelson Mandela. He spoke softly, but rationally, practically but inspiringly. He showed the world what Ukraine is, what lay inside its heart.

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Feb 28

The answer to the president's question is "yes, Mr President, you did you call President Zelenskyy a dictator. You wrote it on your own social media platform about a week ago"

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Feb 27

Cause and effect?

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Feb 26

"Alleged" is doing some unnecessarily heavy lifting here - it's a shame a publication like The New Statesman can't call things what they are because a Nazi salute is a Nazi salute, whoever does it

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Feb 18

I didn’t see the original post, so don’t know if I have blocked the author (which is unlikely because I don’t think I’ve blocked anyone on here), so did you block them or did they block you? I don’t know why I can’t see the post to which you are referring

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Feb 16

"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." – Maya Angelou

Elon Musk giving what appears to be a Nazi gesture

News Analysis
Trump officials attack a German consensus on Nazis and speech

Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk have challenged decades-long the approaches to political extremism that were designed to prevent another Hitler.

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Feb 11

I never thought I'd see the day when the Pope delivered a theological slap down to the Vice President of the United States, but these are strange times www.vatican.va/content/fran...

6. Christians know very well that it is only by affirming the infinite dignity of all that our own identity as persons and as communities reaches its maturity. Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. In other words: the human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings! The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation. The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan” (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception. [3]

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Feb 1

For the second year, I’ve successfully completed #dryjanuary and raised money for @alcoholchangeuk.bsky.social

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Jan 28

Source: www.naval-technology.com/news/renamin...

The process to change the name of Boat 7 from HMS Agincourt to HMS Achilles began more than a year ago, meaning its pre-dates the change of UK government from Conservative to Labour in July 2024. This would mean it began in the final months of the premiership of Rishi Sunak, who served as prime minister from October 2022 to July 2024.
The name Achilles has been born by six ships previously, having earned six battle honours including Trafalgar, as well as River Plate and Okinawa in World War II. An earlier HMS Achilles was laid down 120 years ago this year, in 1905.
“The name was proposed by the Royal Navy Ships Names and Badging committee and approved by His Majesty the King,” a Royal Navy spokesperson told Naval Technology.

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Jan 24

There is an excellent analysis by @davidallengreen.bsky.social of why the legal action by Prince Harry and Lord Watson against News Group Newspapers ended so suffenly; it wasn’t for the reasons so many people immediately suspected www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/th...

The evidence of the text of the apology and the circumstances of how this case came to an end therefore do not point to Prince Harry and Tom Watson being finally defeated by any costs risks. It instead points to the case ending because NGN accepted liability.

Accordingly, it seems that it was not the financial might of NGN that defeated the claimants, but the readiness of the defendant to admit to unlawful activity rather than suffer a full trial (which, on limitation, the defendant actually had a fair chance of winning). The case came to an end because the claimants had pressed on despite the most formidable costs threats. The man-trap set against the prince and Watson failed—and NGN was caught in another litigation trap instead.

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Jan 10

This is a fine way to spoil a cup of tea and obliterate any flavour from the tea leaves

Kemi Badenoch drinks her tea with evaporated milk and four sugars, and also loves Haribo Tangfantastics

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Dec 18

Unfortunate mention of a "cheese magistrate" in the report about Andrew and Tristan Tate on @LBC earlier

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Dec 12

"I never have gaffes... I think very careful about what I say" "I don't think sandwiches are a real food"

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Dec 7

Someone needs to edit this paragraph because the first sentence is repeated

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Nov 27

Good to see Kemi Badenoch’s attack line about something Keir Starmer said about British immigration law being contextualised and explained, showing why he may have written what he did *37 years ago*

David Beckett@iamdavidbeckett· Nov 27

She also erroneously claimed that “We had a budget in March this year and tractors were not blockading the streets of Whitehall afterwards,” despite widespread coverage of those protests