George Galloway
I’ve just been watching George Galloway in Parliament attempt to defend himself against the report from the Standards and Privileges Committee which claimed that: “he did not register his interest in the Mariam Appeal, or the individual donations it received above the registration threshold; he did not declare his interest in the Mariam Appeal on all occasions when he should have done so; he used his Parliamentary office and staff in support of the Mariam Appeal to an excessive extent; he breached the advocacy rule in the terms in which it was in force at the time.â€
They have found him that because he had thus “damaged the reputation of the House†that he should “apologise to the House, and be suspended from its service for a period of eighteen actual sitting daysâ€. I don’t know and I guess only George does whether this is true or not. I don’t know whether he knew that his charity was benefiting form the food for oil programme. Again I guess only he knows. The Committee seem convinced he did. The whole food for oil and economic sanctions were a sick game anyway. Debasing and degrading a country is wrong whatever Tony Blair’s and George Bush’s god thinks.
Galloway was making a sterling attempt at a defence. He is a powerful orator and he successfully besmirched some of the members of the committee before Michael Martin ‘named’ and threw him out. If we had had a press worthy of our interest they would have started filming him immediately and broadcasting Galloway outside but as it was we had to wait ages to get some snippets of his speech. I don’t think I’ve seen Galloway speak before – but boy is he entertaining. He has a good voting record and the guts to stand up and speak passionately – he has impressed me.