The voters of Bethnal Green and Bow were last week afforded the rare chance to see their local MP, George Galloway. He was appearing on the television programme Celebrity Big Brother alongside other much loved public figures such as the former comedian Mr Michael Barrymore and that rather coarse young woman with frighteningly large breasts, Ms Jodie Marsh.
We must assume George has concluded that, much as many on the left had long suspected, there is no parliamentary road to socialism. His voting record since taking up his seat last May puts him 634th out of the 645 MPs. He has managed to table all of four written questions and spoken in a grand total of four debates. Only in one area of parliamentary procedure has he displayed much in the way of intense, consuming, political energy — that of collecting his incidental expenses provision, for which he was our 13th most enthusiastic MP in 2003-4.
Clearly he views parliament as nothing better than a bourgeois talking shop, an ineffectual weapon against the capitalist-Zionist wage slave hegemony under which we all labour. Direct action is the answer and, on that count at least, George has been tireless.
Given the chance to vote against the government’s pernicious Prevention of Terrorism Bill he preferred, instead, to say incisive things about it at a highly remunerative public meeting in Cork. On that occasion the government won by a single vote.
But to blame George for that is to miss the point; for a start, the money he earned may well have been passed on to one of George’s favoured Palestinian charities.
It must be a lot because he’s trousered tens of thousands of pounds in book deals, television appearances, public events and quite exhaustive speaking engagements, as well as launching another publishing company. Never mind the cowards who flinch and the traitors who sneer: take your message direct to the people.
And now Celebrity Big Brother, following his triumphant, revolutionary appearance on The Frank Skinner Show. Of course, George will face ridicule, but only from the Establishment — the lickspittle running dogs of the media, the conniving jackals of the Labour party, imperialist lackeys one and all.
Pay no heed, George. If the cost of delivering to Britain a true socialist utopia is sticking a wine bottle up your bottom on prime time television, then you do it. George has said he’s taking part simply to secure for himself “the chance to show a large and different audience what I’m really like”. Good for you, mate. Just don’t stand too close to the pool.
Nothing quite exemplifies the Liberal Democrat party more than its exquisitely slow defenestration of Charles Kennedy.
As coups against a leader go, this was some way short of von Stauffenberg’s bomb beneath the table. It began a couple of weeks ago with a bunch of unnamed senior Lib Dems deciding to write a chastening letter to Kennedy and then — on careful reflection, in true Lib Dem fashion — deciding not to send it. But they let the press know that they might have sent it.
We then endured the middle phase with Lembit Opik — a sort of Latvian Pollyanna, except sadly without the bonnet — lecturing us on the problems caused by alcohol dependency and how this was a real issue for the nation, not just Charles, who had been incredibly brave in facing up to his demons.
Now Kennedy has gone, the most successful leader of his party in 80 years. So he’s laid-back; he likes a drink or three. Is there evidence the public disliked this? Doesn’t his electoral record suggest the contrary?
A black day for our language
There is a black cloud hanging over Scotland Yard’s gruesome “Black Museum”, which displays the most grisly exhibits from a century of violent crime. A Nottinghamshire police officer, Zahid Malik, has complained trenchantly that the popular name of the museum is racist.
I suppose it would not hurt any of us if the place were rechristened the White Museum, or the Rainbow-Multi-Coloured Museum; future generations might puzzle about the nomenclature, but that’s a small price to pay for not offending the sensibilities of the important people involved in the race relations industry.
It is only comparatively recently that the word “black” was appropriated as a political designation for everyone who wasn’t white. In the mid-1980s the Commission for Racial Equality actually decreed that Chinese people along with people from the Indian subcontinent were to be classed as “black”, which must have come as a surprise to most of them and which may well have been the high water mark of fatuous political correctness.
Sooner or later the word “black” will cease to have any political or racial connotations; fashions change and words, such as “wicked” and “bad”, come to mean the opposite of their original meaning.
Who knows: one day “black” may mean “white”. We should thank PC Malik for reminding us of the endless ingenuity and flexibility of the English language.
Pop goes a nation’s sense of priority
Pop Idol, the television programme in which people who can’t sing are insulted by some other people of no world-historical importance, has taken off in a big way in Ethiopia; record ratings and so on.
They even have their own equivalent of Simon Cowell — a musician called Feleke Hailu who is so nasty to the contestants that on one occasion he was hit with a stick.
The Ethiopians, however, have not obtained permission to make their own version of Pop Idol and FremantleMedia, the London-based company that owns the intellectual copyright for the format, intends to make them pay up.
What a strange thing over which to hold “intellectual” copyright. And it seems a bit of a shame, too, that in their legitimate desire to acquire the accoutrements of First World civilisation, the Ethiopians should have got Pop Idol first, well before, say, competent democratic governance, respect for human rights and food.
The National Consumer Council is very angry that confectionery manufacturers are still selling large chocolate bars to the public very cheaply.
Its spokeswoman, Janice Allen, says that she is “disappointed” with the attitude of Mars, Cadbury and others.
Now, read those two sentences again. The National Consumer Council has decided, of its own volition, that British people are far too fat and can’t be trusted to buy food for themselves.
Isn’t this the most perfect example of a campaigning organisation which, through an epic sense of its own importance, ends up campaigning against the very thing it was set up to fight for — ie, the best possible deal for the consumer?
