Galloway wins Bradford West By-Election

Shit MP. Spends too much time trying to be a public figure, talking in the media, getting photos taken, travelling to other countries etc to do any sort of job as a politician.

Not that I approve of the Parliamentary system in the first place, might I add

Galloway's a fucking awful human being. Stalinist, misogynist, careerist, pro-life, sceptical of evolution in favour of creationism, directly supports Islamic fundamentalism (he donated £25,000 to Hamas and supported Ahmadinejad's presidential campaign in Iran). The Left are having a field day because he's anti-austerity, but he's not a socialist, however much he claims to be. Electing an anti-austerity MP is not going to combat austerity anyway. That has to be done through grassroots self-organisation of the working class. Galloway is just as bad as any other politician.

And as bulmer said, the parliamentary system is crap anyway

He's grown a beard and announced his victory thusly:

Allahu akbar!

Haha! Brilliant

He said something in the past about how when he looked at his 6-month old child he refused to believe it was purely down to evolution that his child could be so beautiful and that there must have been a creator. Something like that anyway. I lose track of half the bollocks that falls out of his mouth.

Should also be noted that, presumably due to tickbox politics, Cameron decided to put a white woman in as the Tory candidate (if you're going to lose the seat, may as well get your women candidates quota up, right?*). Consequently the Asian Tory vote (originally built up by the sulphurous Mohammed Riaz) collapsed from its 12 - 14 K avg in all the elections since 1997 (during which time the Tory candidate has been a succession of Pakistani-origin Muslim males), down to 2 K. The reporting of "a drop of 22.78%" doesn't make it clear that this is in absolute terms, not relative. i.e. Whiteley lost 3/4 of the Tory vote to Gorgeous George. A bigger swing, both relatively and absolutely, than defected from Labour for him. In other words, the majority of his electorate are right-wing Muslim Tories. Hardly an "anti-austerity" vote.

* also speaks to the same general ignorance/contempt for working class communities in general and Northern ones in particular, that "Pastygate" signaled.

It makes shit difference in the end, it's funny to see centre-left pundits whine and their tears have lightened up my morning.

plus he won by a won huge margin so there's enough tears for all.

Surprised he didn't change his name to Gallahway, tbh.

@Havaan. No I totally agree. Galloway will do no different (i.e. nothing) than if he had been elected by a majority of folks primarily motivated by anger about austerity. But it's a handy smack-down to have to any swappie (or other) idiot that tries to present this as something like "the fightback against austerity has begun".

@ocelot If this is the fightback, it's lost.

I heard that he refered to executed homosexuals in Iran as 'paedophiles'. Now there's a left-winger we can ALL be proud of...

@the button's picture. What the fuck! Literally in two sentences accuses labour of being 'sectarian' in a multi-faith constituency then in the next talks about what God KNOWS. I can't believe anyone reading that could have without being sick on themselves

That non-sectarian campaign in full:

Guardian

cue EDL press release, no doubt...

pan-arabic nationalism has a voice in the Commons again

generally, catholics aren't creationists, only the most nutty ones like Santorum are, the catholic church has no problems with evolutionary theories

http://notsofriendlyhumanist.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/rectorial-elections/

My impression from the above article is that his POV is pretty much the standard Catholic one - acceptance of (most) evolutionary theory but with the proviso that human evolution is a special case directed by God.

The fact that human babies take six months to start crawling should be a pretty damning indictment of god then...

God: Ookay let's take a look at these humans then. So we want to make them like angels, yeah? Hmm...

[after some tinkering]

Alright guys, K angels were a bit overpowered so I've nerfed their specs. I've given them well-developed brains but poor self-control, bad memories and very limited long-term planning abilities. I took the wings out and made them a bit shit at running, really inefficient at swimming, second-rate insulation or cooling systems and they'll take about two decades to get up to full strength (which will still compare VERY badly to most other apex predators). They can't survive much outside 1G gravity and are susceptible to pretty much every virus and bacteria going. Ooh ooh also, I'm going to lumber them with a book of totally self-contradictory hokum called the Bible.

This is gonna be hilarious.

Evidence please?

They also described his muslim voters as 'immigrants' which was a bit sinister. The Guardian's introduction originally read:

'It appeared that the seat's Muslim immigrant community had decamped from Labour en masse to Galloway's fundamentalist call for an immediate British troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and a fightback against the job crisis'.

Second one ain't me.

Sorry hombre, now changed.

I'll look up the evidence in a bit but Galloway himself admitted to doing it, he just claimed it was for 'aid' (even though it went directly to Hamas). He was banned from entering Canada because of it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7939480.stm

Not wanting to stand up for the guy but I'm not sure it's that big a deal really; he's a politician after all, meeting with and giving aid to governments and resistance movements is hardly unusual all told. Admittedly this was his own money but still.

Have y'all seen this?

http://www.itv.com/news/story/2012-03-29/bradford-west-by-election/

How the fuck did this happen!!!!??!!
I thought everyone knew Galloway is a nob

Not exactly. Everybody knows that he is universally loathed by the establishment, the TV news, all the newspapers, etc. Because a lot of people are alienated from them, that tends to give yer man far more credibility to the naive than he deserves - kinda like Nick Griffin. With the difference that Galloway is actually a hell of a lot smarter than Griffin and able to beat most establishment politicians in open debate. Add to that, his consistent support for the "Muslim side" (sic) in Kashmir, Iraq, Palestine, etc, etc, make him an attractive proposition to young alienated British Asians, particularly (but not exclusively!) to those from a Muslim background. On the surface he looks like a sincere critic of British imperialism. Of course it's obvious to anyone with political experience that he's just a one-man racket, but that experience comes from what is currently a very, very minority pursuit that most people don't have any background in. Also to a degree you are talking about a break from the corrupt quasi-colonial communal politics game that both Labour and the Tories have been playing in Bradford for nearly 20 years.

Guardian

For once the journalist is not entirely wrong. It would take longer to go through the whole sorry tale, but anyway... But it's not just about that segment of the electorate, which at 38% is still a minority, it's also to do with people's more canny estimation of what kind of rep can get the goods, now matter how bent they are. If you think that all politicians are shameless egotists, only in it for themselves, but you still have an interest in having a rep in the area who can create a stir when necessary - who would you prefer, some faceless, milk and water party machine drone who couldn't win a debate at a Church of England synod, never mind against the number 10 attack team, or a skilled gobshite rabble-rouser like Galloway, no matter what a venal, amoral, self-serving turd he is? Working class people put their money on dogs, horses, prizefighters and footballers every day without worrying about their morals. It's not that different, it's certainly not necessarily the evidence that people are mugs that you seem to think it is.

http://ww4report.com/node/2507