By Philip Hall For more than 30 years I have been teaching people how to speak, write, read and listen in English with some success. I was a Spanish teacher, too for a while. Spanish is the language that I… Read More ›
Phil Hall
Mandala
My march through the relative silence of nine years Has brought me to a small house With a green garden Two daughters A son and A wife. Where are my brothers? Where are my parents? Where are my uncles and… Read More ›
Norris McWhirter’s White Rabbit
By Phil Hall The first guided client to be ushered up the slopes of Chomolungma-Sagarmatha by Sherpa Tenzing was brave Sir Edmund. This was the day that the mountain was finally colonised. I wonder, did Sir Edmund Hillary pee on… Read More ›
Stand up to Apartheid Israel, you Lily-livered Soft Leftists*
The moment has come for the soft left to develop a backbone and make a stand against reactionary expansionist Zionism. By Phil Hall and Naeem Ali Jundyeh LET’S be clear. It was the United States and British governments who… Read More ›
Born to Respect the Wild
We grew up up understanding that nature is wild and and dangerous. By Phil Hall In a film that hasn’t really stood the test of time, My Dinner with Andre, one of the characters played by Wallace Shawn says: I… Read More ›
Catastrophes are not for drama queens
For the bipolar British middle class global warming is the emotional equivalent to the death of Princess Diana. The debate about global warming parallels the debate about nuclear catastrophe. We are as close as we ever were to catastrophe, to… Read More ›
The Danger of Working Class Fascism
Everyday working class, fascism is real by Phil Hall One of the dirty secrets of history is that fascists can also be working class. Marxists, communists and socialists claim that all fascism comes from the middle and lower middle classes,… Read More ›
How to be a Gourmet
– like Richard Steinhardt By Phil Hall Grandpa was an admirer of Napoleon and this was partly why he chose to live in Golfe Juan in 1972. The other reason they both chose to live in Golfe was because they had… Read More ›
Allow Me to Spit!
In the USA racism is the collateral damage caused by social inequality and injustice, and a history of slavery, segregation and discrimination. By Phil Hall ‘Killer Mike’ in his emotional response compared the killing of George Floyd by a policeman… Read More ›
Ideas about Cuba and Che
By Phil Hall When we watched a film about the Mexican revolution starring Pedro Infante in 1997 my wife explained a little about what was going on to our teenage children: ‘Unfortunately, during the Mexican revolution, our family was on… Read More ›
The Poetry of Markets
One of the greatest pleasures in my grandfather’s life was to visit the market in Cannes, to admire the variety and quality of the produce on offer and to chat to some of the stallholders. Covered markets in Spain are… Read More ›
Tread Softly Starmer, You Tread on Our Dreams
LISTEN TO THE LEFT STARMER, OR GO! Masks off! Keir Starmer got elected as Labour leader under false pretenses. At the next Labour leadership election he will be sent into oblivion. Keir Starmer, like Tom Watson, got into his position… Read More ›
A Personal Vision of Richmond Park and Beyond
by Philip Hall Richmond Park is not far away from us. It’s easy to reach it and to walk in it. We enter by the Kingston Gate and from there walk to the Ham Gate. At the Ham gate there… Read More ›
Social Darwinism: the deadly poison at the heart of reason
by Philip Hall The cast system is inhuman. FGM seems impossibly cruel. Look at the Taliban: Malala got a bullet in the head just for going to school. Look at forced marriage, at child marriage. How can that be tolerated?… Read More ›
Don’t Tear Up your Labour Membership Card
WHAT IS TO BE DONE? By Phil Hall The British Disease is passive aggression. It is class hatred not class warfare. Class warfare is healthy, it leads to revolution and change. Class hatred, on the other hand, results in ordinary… Read More ›
Humanity’s Rosy Fingered Dawn: 2020
By Phil Hall Covid-19 arrives, We sit at home for a long while. The cities empty, the air clears and bird song seems louder. Translucent jellyfish float up the canal and goats clop through a Welsh hill town. We all… Read More ›
How to defeat Covid-19
By Phil Hall In China the barefoot doctors believed in prevention rather than cure. So how can we make societies like ours more resilient to pandemic infections like Covid-19? Well, we could advocate for a more humane society. That would… Read More ›