2200 [2145] [2108] Hrs GMT
London
Saturday
25 September 2010
Editor © Muhammad Haque
Contextual reference:
What is the CONTEXT?
BHANGEELAAR! Answer: That George Galloway was ill advised to lend his backing to that 'petition' in Tower Hamlets to have a directly elected mayor.
We say this as based on our involvement in the community where the overwhelming view is that an executive mayor will make things worse for ordinary people and for democracy in Tower Hamlets. There may be a question about the allegedly ‘large number of votes’ that the ‘YES’ box was given by voters on 6 May 2010. That is one of the claims that we contest [=dispute, challenge on the facts, on the evidence and oppose on policy grounds] and shall continue to contest until all the reasons we have been using in our challenge to "Dr" Kevan Collins in his role as the "Returning Offiocer" are and have been addressed truthfully, comprehensively and in public.
In the meantime we return to the search for a way to channel the energies of all the pro-democracy groups, persons and interests in Tower Hamlets towards defending what little democracy we still have left in the ‘Borough’ and for strengthening democracy to suit the multifarious needs of the people in and of Tower Hamlets.
Whatever the outcome of the current mess – the anti-democratic mess in Tower Hamlets, as direct result of the diversion into a demand for directly elected mayor here can only get worse! George Galloway as a long standing campaigner would have been better off doing something really democratic and liberating rather than backing a move that if allowed to go on to the suspected next stage will set back the pro-democracy campaigns in the East End by years.
If not by decades. We here cite Richard Ingrams to provide a generous perspective into the significant positive role that people like George Galloway even after defeats at parliamentary polls can play for the ordinary people.
The question is: who do they listen to? The BHANGEELAAR! Campaign’s views as at 2145 GMT on Saturday 25 September 2010 is that George Galloway ‘IF HE IS STILL ACTIVELY engaged about the peoples’ causes in Tower Hamlets’ should start to look AGAIN at the role that he had said in April 2006 he would definitely play [as paraphrased and reporetd by AADHIKAR Media]:
Free Tower Hamlets Council of the insidious corruption that still overwhelms the controlling clique on it and in it…
Will such an aim be even compatible, four years on and in September 2010 with any association with any activity in support of making a lone individual so powerful that even the NOTION of accountability to elected councillors is ‘lawfully’ sidelined and scrapped?
What was the evidence [as usually defined by AADHIKARonline: objective, internationally and UNIVERSALLY valid] on which George Galloway could have based HIS recommendation on 6 February 2010 of Lewisham’s [directly elected mayor] Steve Bullock?
[To be continued]
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/richard-ingrams/richard-ingrams-heres-a-cause-that-george-galloway-can-get-behind-2089135.html
Richard Ingrams:
Here's a cause that George Galloway can get behind Notebook Saturday, 25 September 2010 I was disappointed not to see the name of George Galloway in The Tablet's recent list of Britain's top 100 Catholics. George has his detractors, as I know, but he could be the best candidate to take Rupert Murdoch and the News of the World to court over the phone-hacking scandal. When it comes to taking on press barons his record is quite impressive. He won damages of £150,000 off The Daily Telegraph after the paper accused him of treason and taking sacks of gold from Saddam Hussein. Following that action, the News of the World and its notorious "fake sheikh" (journalist Mazher Mahmood) attempted to track Galloway by offering him money while prompting him to make anti-Semitic remarks. Galloway saw through the ruse and later put photographs of Mahmood on the internet to warn other potential victims. Defending his right to discredit left-wing MPs, Mahmood had the cheek to sue Galloway for breach of privacy. The case was thrown out. Suspecting that his phone was being hacked into to provide Mahmood with ammunition for his entrapment, Galloway is now suing the News of the World. Rupert Murdoch, who has already paid Max Clifford £1m to drop a similar action, may feel inclined to offer Galloway an equivalent sum to avoid damaging disclosures. Fellow Catholics will be praying that Galloway will resist the temptation to take the money and run. Differing medical opinions Yet another story involving our friend the pathologist Dr Freddy Patel has come to light, this time concerning a case in which he was involved in 2004. As a result of all the recent publicity about Patel, now suspended by the GMC, Stella Karaviotis described how her mother died in 2004 of an embolism after a plaster cast was put on her ankle at London's Royal Free Hospital. Though the death certificate gave the cause of death as pulmonary embolism, Dr Patel decreed that she suffered a brain haemorrhage and had died of natural causes. After a three-year legal battle by Miss Karaviotis – "three years of hell", she called it – the coroner eventually reversed Patel's findings. Coincidentally with this report it emerged that Dr Patel had also been involved in the case of the barrister Mark Saunders, shot dead by armed police in 2008 when he threatened them with a shotgun. Patel, whose dismal record was by then well known on the pathology circuit, was representing the Saunders family. It would be tasteless of me to suggest that the police might have been hoping that he would conclude that the barrister had died of a heart attack. Tired and emotional, or just plain troubled Long years ago when I was the editor of Private Eye, we would make regular use of the phrase "tired and emotional" as a hopefully non-libellous alternative to "drunk". It was an expression very frequently applied to the Labour politician George Brown, at one time Foreign Secretary in Harold Wilson's government. You no longer read of people being tired and emotional. More likely nowadays they will be described by the press as "troubled". This is a bit more of a blanket word, but it is most frequently used to indicate an addiction – to drugs, alcohol or whatever. Pop singers Amy Winehouse and George Michael are troubled, as was the late snooker champion Alex Higgins. But the word can also be used in a wider sense of those who exhibit any symptoms of hysteria or breakdown. This week the Radio 1 presenter Chris Moyles made headlines after he bored his listeners with a rambling rant about the BBC's failure to deliver his monthly pay cheque – a rather trivial setback considering that his annual salary is £630,000. In yesterday's reports Moyles was said to be "looking dishevelled and sweaty" when he posted a picture on Twitter, while a friend described him as "struggling" and "really on the edge" after a break-up with his girlfriend. Can it be long before dishevelled Chris joins the ranks of the troubled?
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