Cable's boots are made for walking

Dr Vince Cable was once a Glasgow Labour Councillor. Not always a term of approbation, I know. One opponent of Home Rule chastised me once by asking why I was so keen on a Scottish parliament.

"It would be full of Glasgow councillors and Edinburgh lawyers," she said. To which the best reply I could think of was that it would be worse with Edinburgh councillors and Glasgow lawyers. In fact, as it has turned out, it's much worse than that. Cumbernauld councillors and Pitlochry lawyers maybe.

Cable, on the other hand, became a power in the land when he was articulating his critique of the banks - Scottish bankers to the fore - and warning that we were heading for a crash long before any other politics frontliner.

George Galloway writes: "Dying of shame"

Forget that rather facile comment by a legendary manager about football being more important than life or death, to a present-day one it is about just that. Or rather more specifically, death.

Neil Lennon, the manager of Celtic, is a Catholic, a republican and courageously outspoken. It shouldn’t be necessary to append these adjectives to his name but it is because of them that he has received his latest live death threat, a bullet in the post. Prior to that there have been deadly letter bombs and more bullets, his home in Glasgow’s West End is bristling with security devices, his wife has to go to a safe house with their child when Celtic are travelling and Lennon is under police protection, but clearly of the most cursory nature.

On Wednesday evening as he stood on the touchline guiding his team to victory over Hearts at Tynecastle a home supporter leaped the wall scampered past what is laughably known as security and landed a blow before being overpowered by Lennon’s coaching assistants. His assailant hasn’t appeared in court yet but you couldn’t get odds anywhere that the man is anything other than a virulent and violent Protestant bigot.

If Neil Lennon decides at the end of this week and the league campaign that he’s chucking it in then no one would blame him. Scotland, however, would die of shame.

Watch George battle with the News of the World

Former MP George Galloway takes on the News of the World over phone hacking claims in the BBC's See you in Court series - watch it on i-player here

AFTER BIN LADEN - WAR WITHOUT END

PUBLIC MEETING: WEDNESDAY 11 MAY 7PM  

INDIAN YMCA 41 FITZROY SQUARE, LONDON W1T 6AQ (Tube Warren Street)

SPEAKERS INCLUDE: Tariq Ali, George Galloway, Kate Hudson (CND),  Lindsey German (Stop the War)

While public opinion against the war in Afghanistan is hardening  -- both in Britain and the USA -- Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton and David Cameron have made it clear that removing the supposed target of the "war on terror" is not going to change their war policies, which currently see two Muslim countries occupied and  

another under bombardment by the West.

Following Osama bin Laden's assassination, the Stop the War public meeting on Wednesday 15 May -- with speakers including Tariq Ali and George Galloway -- will look at the repercussions for the endless "war on terror".

See you in Court - with George Galloway

This episode of the BBC legal series explores a new and burgeoning area of law involving privacy. Cameras follow controversial and outspoken former MP George Galloway as he takes on the News of The World over phone hacking claims, in one of the biggest scandals to rock the British press in recent years.

Tuesday 10th May, 22:35 on BBC One (except Wales)

George Galloway: The voters have spoken

WELL, the people have spoken. The b******s. That is how senator Dick Tuck in 1966, Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson in 1959 and even Ron Brown the Leither greeted the news of their electoral disasters. But you won't hear that from me.

It's true that the people of the west end of Glasgow chose the SNP's Sandra White - who from the winners' rostrum hailed her own "victorious victory" - over my old friend Pauline McNeill. And that the city's voters prefered New Labour's Hanzallah Malik over me. Only when they come to know him will the full glory of that statement become clear.

But to the victors, the spoils. In a democracy, the public get the parliament they chose, or allowed to be chosen.

As I sat in my garden yesterday surrounded by five children with another on the way, I reflected not on what I'd lost, but what I have, and thanked the Lord for all of it. And all is not what it seemed in any case. The separatists won a haul of 69 MSPs but only half the people voted.

Thank you for your support

The votes have been counted but sadly not enough were cast for our Coalition against Cuts to send George Galloway to Holyrood. Thanks to the 6,972 people who voted for us. More analysis will follow after we've all had a well-earned rest.

George Galloway on the death of Bin Laden

George Galloway makes his pitch for the Scottish parliament

Death of Osama Bin Laden: "Out of a swamp of bitterness . . . "

"I DESPISE Osama bin Laden, the medieval obscurantist savage. The difference is I have always despised him even when Britain and America were giving him weapons, money and diplomatic and political support."


That speech, which won me the Parliamentary Debater of the Year award, was given on the recall of the Commons after 9/11.

Younger readers may be unaware that Bin Laden was once a key member of the western coalition fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. One of the Rambo movies carried a dedication saluting his "freedom fighters".
He could have had no complaints at being gunned down by Americans, having inspired the slaughter of so many of them. But that this fanatic movement will continue is surely obvious.

Galloway condemns NATO's cold-blooded murder of innocent children in Libya

George Galloway this morning expressed his outrage at the NATO air attack which killed Gaddafi's youngest son, Saif Al Arab, and three of Gaddafi's grandchildren in a Tripoli suburb.

"This was a cold-blooded targeted attack on a residential house in the suburbs of Tripoli," said George Galloway who is campaigning in Glasgow for election to the Scottish Parliament. "It beggars belief that this was not a deliberate attempt to assassinate Gaddafi, in the full knowledge that innocent children would be killed in the process. This is a total breach of UN resolution 1973 which authorised action to protect civilians - not kill them.

"NATO sorties are now being used to commit war crimes. Both nationally and internationally the cry must go up for NATO's military actions to be halted immediately and a ceasefire declared. And David Cameron must answer straight, not fudge as he has been doing all day, whether attacking so-called command and control facilities allows the deliberate targeting of Gadaffi and his family, with no regard whatever to the innocent men, women and children who are incinerated as a consequence."