George Galloway in Belfast - Aug 2012

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You can download the mp3s by right-clicking on the green triangles.

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George Galloway brands Iris Robinson and DUP hypocrites
Noel McAdam
11 August 2012
belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Outspoken MP George Galloway has come under fire over a trenchant outburst accusing Iris Robinson and the DUP of hypocrisy. The DUP declined to comment officially on the controversial politician’s attack on the First Minister’s wife while speaking at the West Belfast Talks Back debate this week. But a senior party source branded the Respect MP’s criticism as “self-serving” and “inappropriate”.

The former Big Brother contestant’s rant came as he shared a stage with senior DUP MP Gregory Campbell, who in turn pointed the finger at Mr Galloway for “playing to the audience”. The exchange came during a discussion involving homosexuality, which Mrs Robinson branded “an abomination” prior to her stepping down in disgrace as a DUP MP, MLA and councillor over two years ago.

Referring to Mrs Robinson’s affair with a teenager which led to her political downfall, Mr Galloway said: “I’ll tell you what’s perverse. How’s this for perversity? Somebody that attacks other people for breaching traditional ideas of marriage by being gay who — when their husband is in London in Parliament — is rolling around in her husband’s bed with somebody else. “That’s a perversion of traditional marriage much more so than anyone else’s sexual orientation. If there’s one thing worse than fornication, it’s hypocrisy. And Iris Robinson and hypocrisy and the DUP are oddly forever joined in my mind.”

East Londonderry MP Mr Campbell accused Mr Galloway of playing to the mainly nationalist audience, who were gathered in the main hall of St Louise’s Comprehensive on the Falls Road. Mr Campbell also said the Scottish politician was guilty of his own hypocrisy, pointing out that Mr Galloway had been on a radio show earlier that day speaking about a warm relationship with former DUP leader Ian Paisley. But Mr Galloway retorted that the former Free Presbyterian moderator Mr Paisley would never have been found in bed with another woman.

Background

Iris Robinson decided to resign as an MP, Assembly Member and Castlereagh councillor in January 2010 following revelations of her affair with 19-year-old Kirk McCambley. In the wake of the scandal, the high-profile DUP woman also faced investigation after it emerged she secured loans for her then teenage lover to set up a cafe business. Mrs Robinson withdrew from all public life as she battled with mental health problems.

She emerged after months of social exclusion last year to attend a dinner in Dublin in honour of the Queen’s historic trip to the Republic, but has yet to speak in public about the affair.

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I've added an edited version of the complete programme and put the link for that on the archive page.

I've also added this section which is what the article above was all about.

http://kiwi6.com/file/0yuccdwn7d

and here's the full debate

http://kiwi6.com/file/8s3s4je9ms

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The bullying George Galloway has become a creepy joke
Ruth Dudley Edwards
September 6th, 2012
telegraph.co.uk

What an interesting time George Galloway has had in the four weeks since – wearing perfectly-matched false smiles – he and I shook hands after our less than friendly disagreements on a panel in West Belfast. Just a few words out of turn and his Respect party is in trouble. Of course he had mostly performed well on the panel. Apart from being a gifted debater, Galloway is brilliant at playing to the gallery. The audience was largely republican and therefore shared his views on the Middle East. It is one of the oddities of Northern Irish politics that republicans are venomously anti-Israel and loyalists madly pro. The day after our meeting, the West Belfast Festival was hosting Palestine Day.

He had brought with him the extremely attractive fourth Mrs Galloway, thirty years his junior, and an imposing man who described himself as the ex-Palestinian ambassador to Belfast and sat in the front row interrupting anyone whose sentiments he disagreed with. Mainly me. I expect he was one of the many who hissed when I suggested that next year they might invite an Israeli and hear another point of view.

What was interesting, though, was the discovery that Galloway is his own worst enemy. When a brave woman who identified herself as a member of an Irish-Israel group asked a civil question, he said something unpleasant along the lines that if the other members were of her calibre, it was no wonder the group was so small. When asked about gay marriage – a tricky question for a Left-winger with a devoted Muslim fan club – he went into a rant about the hypocrisy of Iris Robinson, the unionist politician who famously described homosexuality as an abomination on religious grounds and was then revealed to have been having an adulterous affair with a 19-year-old. He dwelt so long and so grossly on this that even that audience became uncomfortable.

But that’s George Galloway. He’s a bully. And he can’t hide it. I had watched him on Celebrity Big Brother six years ago, and although like all right-thinking people I was repelled by his imitation of an amorous cat, what had stayed with me was him being denounced as a bully by a couple of youngsters. Fortuitously, as I had been seeking ammunition other than his penchant for dictators to use against Galloway in debate, a friend had pointed me to Craig Brown’s One on One, which transcribed the scene where Preston, from a boy band, took on Galloway because he was jeering the washed-up, recovering alcoholic Michael Barrymore with the refrain: “Poor me, poor me, pour me a drink.” So I was able to share with the audience that this was of a piece with his treatment of the questioner and the disgraced Iris Robinson.

So there’s my tip for anyone nervous of appearing with him. He can’t hide his intrinsic nastiness for long.

Galloway was in Indonesia when the Assange carry-on began, and in his weekly self-aggrandising podcast he explained that the allegations – even if true – did not constitute rape. His female editor at Holyrood, a Scottish magazine, fired him. Salma Yaqoob, his protégé who is now the Respect party leader, denounced his views as “deeply disappointing and wrong”. Not being a man to bow the knee to anyone, Galloway refused to recant, so Kate Hudson, the impressive Respect candidate for Manchester Central in the forthcoming by-election, has resigned. “I cannot in all conscience,” she said, “stand as candidate for a party whose only MP has made unacceptable and unretracted statements about the nature of rape. To continue … would be in effect to condone what he has said. That is something I am not prepared to do.”

To add to Galloway’s troubles, his choice of language about sex was stomach-churning: “I mean,” he explained, “not everybody needs to be asked prior to each insertion." The guy is creepy. And, like Assange, he’s become a creepy joke. On Facebook, the question “Who would you rather be stuck on a desert island with, George Galloway, or Julian Assange?” caused much heart-searching. (Assange won. Just.) In West Belfast I had briefly wondered would it be better to be on a desert island with Galloway or with Gerry Kelly, the unrepentant vicious ex-terrorist and Old Bailey bomber who sat on my left. Kelly won.

Today, having heard me mention I’d debated with Galloway, a 14-year-old-friend of mine looked at his cat performance on YouTube. “What did you think?” I asked. ‘Yechhhhhhhhhh!” she said. “Creepy, creepy, creepy.” Now that the women in Respect have got that message, Galloway may yet find himself on a deserted political island.

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Pathetic... as for being creepy though, how many women in their 50s have 14yr old friends?