Galloway on tv in the next week

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Galloway mentioned that he's on Sky News tomorrow morning - reviewing the papers on 'Sunday Live' at 10am. He also said he'll be on The Wright Stuff on (I think) Thursday. I'll try to have them available here as soon as possible after broadcast.

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From this morning's 'Sunday Live'.

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Galloway was strident in his defence of Michael Martin on Question Time just a few months ago...

[nekokate]

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Time Has Finally Come To Silence The Speaker
George Galloway
Daily Record
Dec 1 2008

HAVING entered the lists many times in defence of Speaker Michael Martin, I'm afraid it's now a lost cause. I have variously defended him from the snobs who didn't like the fact that he was a panel beater from a Glasgow tenement, bigots who didn't like the fact he was the first Catholic Speaker since Oliver Cromwell turned the crypt at Westminster into a stable for his horses, and the Tory press who didn't much fancy his grasp of syntax. But the Damian Green affair has beaten the last panel of his defensive shield to destruction.

I have no time for Tory Green or his campaign to persuade us that we have too many foreigners in our midst. But the outrage at what took place last week seems to me a turning point in Britain's democratic life. For anti-terrorist officers to arrest an MP - a shadow cabinet minister - question him for 10 hours, raid his home and his Commons office, seize his mobile phone, his confidential papers and access his parliamentary email account, could not be more grave.

Governments, however, come and go, and regularly alternate with the opposition. Gordon Brown made his name in Parliament ruthlessly ramming Whitehall leaks down the Thatcher government's throat. The Tories regularly prosecuted civil service whistleblowers - Clive Ponting and Sarah Tisdall - who put the right of the public to know above red tape and secrecy. But one bulwark since the days of Cromwell was always with us. Until now.

Speakers of the House of Commons have literally given their heads in defence of the rights of a free Parliament against overweening state interference from the Crown or its ministers or their repressive forces. This week, a man in tights carrying a black stick will march from the side of the royal throne in the House of Lords to the door of the House of Commons which will be ritually slammed in his face.

It is an archaic relic with more meaning than most. It symbolises that Cromwell's revolution meant the end of the rights of the Crown to enter Parliament as they pleased and to seize and detain MPs at whim. Three hundred and fifty years on, and officers of the Crown trampled through the parliamentary estate last week and crushed under foot much more than Mr Green's plush Common's carpet.

No one would assert any MP's right to immunity from investigation or arrest for common criminality. If Mr Green's cupboards had been stuffed with contraband, I would not be writing this. But Green's offences - if offences they be - are entirely political. He is accused of doing no more than his job as a free MP in a free parliament, namely receiving information about matters of political controversy and making a judgment as to if and how this information should be released into the public domain.

If Michael Martin knew of these raids and didn't try to stop them, he's too wicked to be allowed to continue in his post. If the authorities didn't bother to tell him or care to seek his permission, then he's too weak be allowed to sit in the Speaker's chair any longer.

MY two TV shows, Comment and The Real Deal, have been running for months on Press TV but most British people could watch them only on the internet. From today, we're on the Sky platform channel 515, which should mean a multiplication of viewers. Check it out. It's bold, fearless and, though Iranian, not at all foreign to regular readers of this column.

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If you're interested in learning more about Cromwell, there is an excellent new 2 part series from The History Channel called 'Cromwell - God's Executioner', and you can watch it by clicking HERE

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From this morning's 'The Wright Stuff'

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I can't watch anything involving Mathew Wright - he makes me feel a mixture of angry and ill.

When he talks he looks as though he's trying to eat his own face.

[nekokate]

thanks very much, Mr Face

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cheers face.