A Place to Stand

Recent letter sent to the Telegraph & the other UK national newspapers, & a number of US ones:

Dear Editor,
Following the Telegraph's recent defeat in the appeal against their previous suit on their allegation that George Galloway had obtained oil money by fraud may I offer some support. I accept absolutely that the Telegraph's accusations represent the very highest standard of honesty of the newspaper & confirm that I will never seek to suggest otherwise.

Indeed, since the Press Complaints Council, who are funded by & represent the entire UK press, have never at any time suggested that the Telegraph have behaved with anything less than total journalistic integrity, we must accept that the allegations made against Mr Galloway represent the absolute pinnacle of integrity of the entire British press. This is not, of course, to suggest that they are in any way whatsoever truthful.

It is interesting to note the unanimity with which the press have attacked Galloway over his arguably populist move of appearing on Big Brother. This compares with the relative silence when the Prime Minister appeared on the Ant & Dec show to be interviewed, not by the title characters, but by "little Ant & Dec" (who are child impersonators of them). Clearly the press hold Galloway in sufficiently high regard to think he was slumming whereas Mr Blair was being interviewed by his equals.

This does not appear to have been published by any newspaper - some people just don't take criticism.

George has been getting a lot of stick for letting himself be set up by the Big Brotherites. It was certainly naive to think that they were going to let him say stuff about housing conditions, but everybody is naive in front of a camera even experienced hands like him.

I will admit to being, apparently, one of the very few people on the planet who does not find Big Brother exciting & had barely watched it before - I have a low opinion of "media celebrities" & find them saying "yeah, uh" to each other barely ahead of watching drying paint but, purely because of Galloway I did watch bits of this. He was clearly the natural leader & most intelligent & centred of them all whatever journalists say. Granted the competition wasn't tough.

I disagree with his socialism & I think he is a considerable degree of chancer but it is also obvious that he genuinely has beliefs & is willing to robustly defend them against all comers. I thus admire him in a way I most definitely don't some other lefties like Derek Hatton & Ken Livingstone. He is also, following the death of Alan Clark, whom I also admired, one of the few blatantly heterosexual types in Parliament. Oh for the days of LLoyd george who was also a chancer.

He also shared with Clark, a principled opposition to the Yugoslav war. Indeed, & this is a connection to the previous post, during that war I wrote to many MPs in terms less well informed but in the same general direction I currently express. He was one of the very few who spoke at the time against the Krajina Holocaust & in favour of ethnic rather than imperial frontiers for Croatia. When I wrote to him he sent me back the 2 copies of Hansard covering the debates which I still have & to which I referred yesterday. May I say that despite, or perhaps because of, many of the speakers holding these debates up as the Commons at it's best, I hold the opinion that most of our elected leaders could be replaced by randomly selected taxi drivers without harm.

So here's to fearless George Galloway who lives life to the full & is a better man than the interviewee of little Ant & Dec or any of his cabinet or indeed most journalists or Congressmen.