George Galloway announced to the world this morning he was on his way to an East London police station to demand the release of the director making his crowd-sourced film, The Killing of Tony Blair. Woodward and Bernstein eat your hearts out. George has become a journalist.
Galloway and his acolytes have been using twitter to tell anyone who can bother to be interested that his little helper – or ‘respected film-maker’ of his ‘much-anticipated film’ (such modesty) as he puts it – was arrested whilst trying to film me at a Labour fundraiser in Walthamstow. Galloway, never one to underestimate his own significance in the scheme of things, has also tweeted Ed Miliband condemning him for having me raise funds for Labour, and the Met Police to claim he intends to sue for wrongful arrest. The Queen should stand by for a green ink missive.
A few points if I may.
I do many speaking events and it is rare that the police attend. There was a police presence at this one because Galloway and some of his fellow travellers had for two weeks been trying to crank up local and social media to get a demonstration outside, and urge people not to attend the dinner. Enough people to fill a couple of minibuses duly turned up and gently abused Labour supporters, who filled the venue, as they arrived.
So this is the first thing to know – the police were there not to protect me but to police a protest being organised by Galloway for his film. The evening went off perfectly well, and at the end there was a book signing. Funds to the Party before you ask, George – hope the accounts of your crowd-sourcing venture will be published soon.
As a queue formed a man appeared with a film camera, and one of the organisers asked him who he was with. He appeared not to engage, and then a second man – George’s ‘respected film-maker’ – who had been waiting patiently filming me on his mobile while I signed some books, put his arm towards me and and said he was making a citizen’s arrest. He spoke so softly I couldn’t quite hear what the offence was, but from them on, his appeared to be the offence of ‘seeking arrest to publicise George’s straight to DVD latest attempt at reinvention.’ I smiled nicely, as is my wont at book signings, and asked for the next book to sign. There ensued rather a lot of pushing and shoving, none of it involving me, at which point Galloway’s little helper started lashing out at the police, and his other little helper filmed away happily, as one would expect.
I am sure that Galloway would not want to be accused of sexing up his movie, so I do hope he will provide this context in what doubtless will be a fair and unbiased account of Tony Blair’s life and times, namely that the cops were there for his protest, and only had to arrest his man because he started laying into them. Media as spin doctors, creating their own ‘news,'(sic). I would suggest from Galloway’s excited tweets, and his heroic march to the police station for his latest freedom-fighting pose, that he will be very happy with his team’s day’s work. The film just got spicier, he told his excited band of followers. Oh George, how exciting for you. Sounds like this turned you on almost as much as the first class flights and the red carpet Saddam used to roll out for your tongue on your visits to Baghdad.
I was happy too, to help Stella Creasy raise funds for her campaign to remain a Labour MP, hopefully as part of a Labour government.
Meanwhile, when the film-maker is released I suggest he makes a film either on Galloway’s tenure at the once great charity, War on Want, whose demise led to my first ever meeting with the not so Gorgeous George; or a profile of the late Saddam Hussein, analysing the courage, strength and indefatigability that so inspired his new best friend and puppet master.
gg = gift of the gab but it does sometimes fail him spectacularly.
I’ve not recovered from the crudity of his attempted defence of Ass-ange’s escapade in a bed in Sweden when he said that men don’t need permission ‘for each insertion’ – am surprised that anyone would continue listening to his assessment about anything after that output.
He’d completely missed the point, misrepresenting the motives of a woman that believed in protecting herself as well as all her partners however many there might be and a pretentious sloth that didn’t.
He even exploited Islam to evade presecution for bigamy (or was he simply exploiting that the marriages didn’t take place under British law?) so I hope he’s actually named on all his off-springs’ birth certs.
Do wonder how he’s entitled to any slots on Question Time etc and why he’s not been properly denounced as an exploiter.
GG is a scumbag of the first order. I’ve never been able to figure out exactlywhat his agenda is and what he hopes to achieve. Apart from self aggrandisement.
You’re next Alistair! You’ve a while to go yet if you live out your natural life-span; and the vast war-crimes to which you were a material accessory could yet come back to nail you. You and B’liar standing side by side in some future – honest, non-US-controlled – Nuremberg Tribunal to answer for your crimes could yet come to pass… Sleep well at night; sweet dreams!
I wonder where/how you have rounded up your supporters?
I guess that your ID is not an anagram for ‘courage of my OWN convictions and nobody else’s are needed’ huh? 😛
D’uh, in pressing to find out who they are are I see all are ‘strangers’ – how sweet xxx
Also, in my ignorance of the ‘how not to’ I have accidentally added myself to their number in the ‘reveal’ so please know that for balance it now has a downer (one of which there would not have been without the mistaken upper as people ARE entitled to their own opinions but per-lease, be a grown up and do it without rounding up all yer mates, twerp).
Perhaps you’ll return and let us know just whose chemicals have recently been used in Syria (but perhaps you won’t).
Michele, just for info purposes, I can tell you that Disqus have disabled the down vote option from all their sites. It’s been disabled for about a week or more now. Which accounts for the fact that the ‘hit and run’ post by a passing stranger on this thread has ‘apparently’ received no down votes, I would suggest. I can assure you that your own ID does not show up in the reveal of the ‘up votes’ As I’ve told you before, a mistaken ‘up vote’ can be simply removed by clicking on the ‘up vote’ symbol again.
Ah, thank you for adding ‘by clicking on the ‘up vote’ symbol again’ as that had not been included in your other post re the ability to cancel an unintended Up click 🙂 and I’d been faffing around impatiently for ages 🙂
Whoops, sounds as if I missed out the most important bit in that other post!
Soz about that. If it was during the run up to Christmas, I probably wasn’t
concentrating properly.
Which reminds me about something else. Please accept my (rather belated) congrats on the arrival of your first grandchild. I hope he or she is thriving and that you are enjoying being a grandma. Congrats also of course to your son and DiL 🙂
MANY thanks 🙂 She’s naturally the loveliest baby ever except for her Dad of course, who’s been heard to say words like ‘delightful’ after years of little more vocab than ‘petrol’ and ‘speed’ and mesmerising discussions about 16-wheelers :-s ……..). Soon2be DiL is coping fabulously, so calm and organised xxx
This :
http://www.examiner.com/article/syrian-chemical-weapons-may-shed-light-on-saddam-s-missing-wmds
reiterates something discussed on Today in the early days of the Iraq war. I doubt you heard it, being so la-la-la ‘pacifist’ (lol).
At least AC had the cojones to put up your limp comment. While you are a coward, hiding behind an anonymous ID you little man.
Look here, most of us know that AC isn’t perfect. He has made mistakes just as everyone else has. However, compared to many out there in public life who are vicious conniving downright evil bastards, he is not in their league at all. To put it bluntly, he is a family man, not a Satanist or paedophile as so many powerful people (men and women) are.
Change the record Rhisiart and grow up! Things are not as simple as that, y paish (you old ladies girdle)!! : )
Threatining language indeed. Expect nothing less from our totalitarian ‘anti-war’ friends. Grow a brain matey-and a spine.
Off topic but relevant to life in general, staggering but reliable report about how NHS stats are being twisted and mis-recorded. I know, d’uh, who’d a thunk it?
Need to disguise what someone died from?
Simply change their diagnosis to something that isn’t counted :-s
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03w0j4l
We don’t really need scarey films when doctors can be coerced to simply change diagnoses of conditions that are counted to something that isn’t ……. even to something like sepsis that would surely be more hospital-caused than would have been the underlying illness!
Gorgeous GG is his own personal carnival side-show. Pelt balls at his coconuts for sixpence. : )
Galloway versus Campbell… I am tempted to make a flippant joke… so I think I will! In the words of Henry Kissinger regarding the Iran/Iraq war “It’s a pity zey both can’t lose.”
But the truth is, though I disagree with many of their views, and more still of their actions (which I don’t always think stay true to their views) I still for some reason quite like both George and Alastair.
For what it’s worth, on this particular issue, one may have an opinion on the Iraq War (I was against as it happens, but recognise that perhaps if I received all the intelligence and advice Tony Blair did I might have been for) it is very hard to see the situation as anything other than exactly the way Alastair has described it, ie George grandstanding in order to promote his film and himself.
I suppose the only counter could be that many’s a labour top brass did that in Alastair’s time, though not Alastair himself, and presumably not always with Alastair’s blessing.
For my sins I quite like George Galloway. He’s basically stuck two fingers up at everybody and lived by his own rules. Amen to that I say. If he’d stopped after his virtuoso appearance at the US Senate hearing his legend would have remained intact forever more.
However, like a junkie looking for his next fix he’s become more and more absurd in his constant quest for adoration (and that is *all* this is about). Lurching from one group of ‘the downtrodden’ to the next in the hope of being adopted as their ‘saviour’.
It is an ever dwindling pool of people for whom he proclaims allegiance. At some point George will have exhausted every conceivable port of call in his quest for ‘justice’. It is at that point that he’ll need to save the one thing that he’s been running away from all these years – himself. Start now George – before it’s too late…
I of course get the tenor of your post, but I can’t help but note the opening reflecting something I hear a lot of – “X has put his fingers up to the establishment etc”.
It is not as if people had a great deal to fear from doing so – especially those like GG with nothing to lose anyway and who promote themselves as anti establishment.
People should be a bit more critical (as in fairness most have been below) . If we often have a right to expect better of establishment politicians (and we do) perhaps we also should expect better not least in terms of intellectual rigour, from their anti establishment protagonists too.