Galloway's motions on Roma and private schools

George Galloway submitted two motions to the British parliament on Friday 15 November 2013 - in support of the Roma immigrants attacked by former Home Secretary David Blunkett, and in favour of social mobility and curbs on private schools.


Roma immigrants


That this House condemns the derogatory comments of the member for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough about Roma immigrants; agrees that describing their presence here as likely to lead to an 'explosion' is widely inaccurate and could well lead to stigmatisation, prejudice and Romaphobia; understands that these migrants have been driven to our country through poverty and prejudice; believes that they should be welcomed and notes that repeated studies have shown that immigrants contribute more to our economy than they take out 


Private schools


That this House wholeheartedly agrees with the Prime Minister that there must be much greater social mobility in British society; wonders he has appointed the number of members of his cabinet and close advisers from Eton and other private schools; notes that his government has scrapped the educational maintenance allowance, allowed private school fees to be exempt from VAT, permitted universities to massively hike their fees to the detriment of working class aspirants; and urges him to insist to his Chancellor that one significant way of tackling this problem would be to remove the charitable status of the public school sector.

Galloway calls for police inquiry into Lewis land deal

Bradford West MP George Galloway has written to West Yorkshire chief constable Mark Gilmore asking him to ensure that the police inquiry into Kings Science Academy investigates the role of Tory vice-chairman Alan Lewis over the lease of land on which the school stands.

"Lewis' name is all over the initial report of financial irregularities at Kings but has been redacted in the published version," said Galloway. "He was a patron or benefactor of some sort of the academy. His company signed a 20-year deal to lease the land he owns on which the academy is built - at the quite extraordinary sum of £296,000 a year. According to a whistleblower who has come to me and who was involved in this farrago that is many times the going rent in Bradford. And on top of the £6 million in rent Lewis's company will inherit the £10 million building; all of this public money, all of this the very definition of a scandal."

Galloway added: "There is clearly the question of whether there is a conflict of interest here. But what the public needs to know is just who at the school was involved in agreeing this land deal and why a rent way over the odds was signed-off and paid for by the taxpayer. We already know that someone at the school forged and submitted invoices in the name of Lewis' company. The police must include this highly-questionable deal in their investigation, which is why I have written to the chief constable today."

Galloway pursues free school 'fraud'

A highly-critical investigative report into apparent fraud at one of the government's flagship free school was not investigated.

George Galloway has put down dozens of questions in parliament demanding to know why the Department of Education did not ensure that the police were called in to look at the financial irregularities at Kings Science Academy in Bradford, a free school which has been visited and praised by Prime Minister David Cameron and education secretary Michael Gove.

"The report makes clear that more than £80,000 of public money was misappropriated," said Galloway, "and the department singularly failed to make this known to the police. Instead it appears that someone made a telephone call which was logged as 'information only' and what any reasonable person having read the report would conclude as fraud was not investigated."

The Bradford West MP continued: "Mind you, if the report which was made public was handed over it would have made no sense because all of the crucial information has been redacted. And the DfE will not publish a clean one. At the beginning of this I wondered if there had been incompetence or a cover-up. Now it is clear there was both."

Galloway calls for urgent action on air pollution

The Bradford West Respect MP George Galloway today called for urgent action to improve air quality in the city which has the fourth-highest number of emergency hospital admissions for asthma in the country. And he hit out at the "churlish, petty and damaging" views expressed by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat leaders on Bradford council "who clearly believe this isn't a problem".

According to campaigning group Asthma UK, which is to give evidence to parliament next month, the city is one of the worst places in the country if you are an asthma sufferer. And air pollution is the principal cause.

"It's not often I commend an initiative by the Labour-controlled council but I hope the recommendations by its Defra-funded study on air quality improvement are rubber-stamped next week," Galloway said." It's obvious that vehicle pollution, particularly from heavy goods vehicles and buses, is one of the major causes of some 853 emergency hospital admissions last year of asthma sufferers. Pollution is particularly high in parts of my constituency, like Manningham for instance.

Asylum: Britain is an open-air prison for the most needy

Once again, a report on the asylum system in Britain has revealed the cruel and unusual punishment of applying for help from Great Britain.

Some applicants are waiting up to 16 years for a decision. A backlog of 32,600 cases from 2011 is yet to be resolved. The number of applicants waiting over six months rose by 63% last year. Some 3,500 people who applied for asylum in 2012 have yet to receive an initial decision.

The cruelty of the asylum system is not in the decisions it reaches. It is in the legal and financial limbo it puts asylum seekers in while they get lost in the machine.

Those having their asylum status decided are not allowed to work and they are not allowed to claim benefits. They are given £36.62 a week, to be collected from the Post Office, for sustenance.

They can apply to the UK Border Agency for help with accommodation if they are destitute.  The housing, provided by private contractors like Serco and G4S, was attacked as "sub-standard" by MPs today. The anecdotal evidence is of grey, despairing places in a state of disrepair, full of lost people.

The asylum system turns Britain into a vast open-air prison. One asylum seeker who arrived in the UK after being held in a jail in Iran told me that his prison had merely been expanded. Without the right to work, or claim benefits, or volunteer, he was trapped in a state of inaction, of half-presence. The system would not respond to questions. For years on end, you would hear nothing. It is a legally mandated half-state, a state-imposed lethargy.

It really doesn't matter which side of the immigration or asylum debate you're on. You can be as anti-asylum as you like. Whichever way you look at it, this system is intolerable. It doesn't just condemn the vulnerable to an excuse of a life. It also, as home affairs committee chair Keith Vaz pointed out today; potentially allow war criminals and terrorists into Britain, hiding in the grey areas of a convoluted and malfunctioning bureaucratic system.

The system must be fixed and made to function, not just to provide help for those who most need it, but also to get rid of those who don't. But for that to happen there must be public pressure. Today is a rare day when asylum won a place in the news headlines. Unless that happens more often, the system will remain a forgotten mechanism, letting down the country and the needy at once.

by: Ian Dunt

source: politics.co.uk

Congestion charge rip-off

George Galloway has written to every member of the London Assembly about the websites which rip-off motorists by appearing to be official ones to pay congestion charges. In fact they levy a healthy premium and are probably illegal.

The text of the letter is here:

Dear London Assembly Member,

You may have seen the ITV London News at 6pm last night, the excellent top item of which was a story from Simon Harris about the unofficial websites that exist to rip off London’s motorists trying to pay the congestion charge online. I tabled a motion in parliament (see link below) in early September after my chief of staff, an Oxbridge graduate no less, was conned by such a website and I then discovered these websites had been in existence for a long time conning and ripping off an untold number of London motorists. The sites are deliberately designed to look like an official site and the people behind them manipulate google so that their site comes first when you google, say, “pay congestion charge”.

Burma's Violence Demands Greater International Attention

Religious violence in Burma, also known as Myanmar, has become the new breeding ground for sectarian violence. Much of the violence this past week has been instigated by radical Buddhist mobs belonging to the notorious 969 Movement at Rohingya Muslims, which constitute less than 5% of Burma’s total population, and are of Bengali heritage. The 969 Movement is led by Ashin Wirathu, a relatively unknown Buddhist monk who claims to preach nonviolence but actively loathes Muslims, who he sees as part of a malevolent mission to eradicate the country’s Buddhist majority.

Rohingya Muslims face draconian social and economic restrictions, and they are not entitled to full citizenship. Moreover, they are unable to marry individuals outside their faith. Beginning this year, mosques were heavily looted and destroyed, inciting greater animosity between the two groups.

Galloway submits motions of soldiers' sectarianism and MPs extra allowances

George Galloway today submitted two parliamentary motions which should appear on the order paper tomorrow (Tuesday) or Wednesday.

British soldiers and sectarianism

That this House condemns the reprehensible and ill-disciplined behaviour of members of the Armed Forces including some Royal Marine soldiers at Ibrox Park, the home of Glasgow Rangers, on Saturday 28^th September 2013 on what was dubbed an “armed forces' day”; notes the sickening scenes as they chanted songs attacking Catholics, embraced braying fans and held up sectarian banners; questions the role of the senior officers who apparently sanctioned the event and appeared to take no action to halt the behaviour; and demands that those marines who joined in this hatefest are severely disciplined.  

 The bedroom tax and MPs’ allowances

That this House notes that under the bedroom tax more than 600,000 social tenants with spare rooms must either move or pay an average of £14-a-week penalty; further notes that  members of parliament with a spare room in their London homes can claim an additional allowance if a child or children routinely resides with them; notes that the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority has ruled that they will still be eligible for the additional allowance if the child visits just once a month; condemns the 29 hypocritical MPs who, while backing the bedroom tax, have claimed an additional £64,000 and a further 20 who claimed £37,000; and urges the government to end this unfair allowance which can only reflect badly with members of the public.

The scandal of stop and search

Respect's Lee Jasper argues that the Tory-led coalition has purged all traces of anti-racism and multiculturalism while following the French model

May I apologise in advance dear reader this is rather long article. It seeks to deal with issues that a rarely covered elsewhere in any depth and so by its very nature has become a complex read. I hope nevertheless you will take the time to read it as I have laboured long in writing this for you. Get a cup of tea, relax and put your feet up.

You will no doubt not completely agree with all I have written here, but in prompting debate its important that there is compelling argument. 

I didn’t submit a consultation response to the Governments snap 8 week summer consultation on the police power of stop and search. After 30 years of an almost relentless rise in rates of stop and search under Tory, Labour and now a Tory led Coalition Government and countless consultations I really didn't see much point. 

There are number of other reasons why I chose not to formally submit a view, but primary among them was that I, along with many of Britain’s black communities, have zero confidence in the Government’s commitment to tackle racism either more broadly or within the criminal justice system in particular. 

Is she serious about reform?

This Tory led Coalition government has engaged in an ideologically driven purge that has seen the gradual elimination and eradication of all traces of anti-racism or multiculturalism in Government policy. As far as race is concerned the Prime Minister has adopted the French model in dealing with racism  and determined no special provision, no focus on difference, no special interest group’s agenda’s and has given the issue zero political priority. 

This has seen the dismissal of all national Black and ethnic minority consultation forums, the proscription of single ethnic funding for disadvantaged groups and promoted the most disgraceful demonization of immigrant communities. In addition, they have enfeebled the Equalities Human Rights Commission removing Black and Asian Commissioner’s, slashed budgets and sacked workers. They have made a bonfire of legal aid cuts and left black people with no ability to easily or affordably access or enforce our rights to be protected from racism and unlawful discrimination.

Suffering under the Israeli-Egyptian siege of Gaza

Waiting to pass the Rafah crossing

From Shahd Abusalama, courtesy of the Electronic Intifada. Shahd blogs as Palestine From My Eyes

As I write, I am supposed to be somewhere in the sky, among the clouds, flying to Istanbul to begin my graduate studies. But I could not catch my flight, as I am still trapped in the besieged Gaza Strip, sitting in darkness during the power cuts caused by fuel crisis, trying to squeeze out my thoughts during what is left of my laptop’s charge.

As much as I am attached to Gaza City, where I was born and spent all 22 years of my life, each day I spend trapped in it makes me despise living here. Each day that passes makes me more desperate to set myself free outside this big, open-air prison. Each day makes me unable to stand the mounting injustice, torment, brutality and humiliation.

I have never experienced as many extreme ups and downs as I did this month. Despite the hardships throughout September, I also had some immensely happy moments. I think I will remember them the rest of my life. 

This is life in Gaza: highs amid lows, everything in the balance, nothing secure from day to day, no plans, no guarantees.