Freedom From The Mundane - A Writer's Blog

Thursday, May 12, 2005

How To Be A Wally, By Colin Galbraith T.W.A.T.

Another glorious day I thought as I rose from my slumber and smiled to myself at the sunshine beaming in through the curtains. Days like this make going to work that bit more bearable. I got ready and gathered my gear together and locked up the house. The sun was shining down on the back of my freshly shaven head as I pulled close the main door of the house.

To my left I noticed one of our neighbours a couple of doors down. The one who we had the "car incident" with. I had not really met him yet so it seemed like a good opportunity to make his acquaintance. He looks like an older version of me; tall, bald, bit of a belly. He was smiling at me too as he saw me leave the driveway and walk onto the pavement.

Before I could say hello, he took the imitative and greeted me with a warm "Good morning!"

"How you doing?" I said cheerfully, but with the intention of it being rhetorical.

"Not bad," he said, surprising me and still smiling. "How did the move go? You settled in okay?"

"Aye not bad, thanks" I said. "We're getting there. It's taking a while but -"; I stopped mid-sentence.

As I walked passed him standnig in his garden, talking merry chit-chat with the him all cheery and smiley, I realised to my peachy-faced horror, that he had a mobile phone pressed against his far-side ear. He was talking to someone else and I was having their conversation.

I hoped my quick thinking could get me out of it with a shred of dignity, so I kept smiling and walked away. God knows what he was thinking; crazy people from next door probably.

Talking about arses, George Galloway is at it again.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4538735.stm

The US Senate has published a report stating there is evidence he and a French politician received vouchers enabling him to buy 20 million barrels of oil under the Oil for Food programme.

Galloway, of course, denies the charges, stating that he wrote to the senate to ask to come forward and present his case and evidence to the contrary. The Senate responded by saying, "Contrary to his assertions, at no time did Mr Galloway contact the permanent subcommittee on investigations by any means, including but not limited to telephone, fax, e-mail, letter, Morse code or carrier pigeon."

The report in question states, "In April 2005, the Vice President of Iraq, Taha Yassin Ramadan, told the Subcommittee that Galloway had been granted oil allocations "because of his opinions about Iraq" and because Galloway "want[ed] to lift the embargo against Iraq." In 2003, another Hussein official told investigators of the U.S. Treasury Department that "a member of the British Parliament benefited tremendously from the illegal trade of oil by Iraq," and specifically identified Galloway: [The source] stated that George Galloway, Labour Party, was the owner of a company [] that was involved in the Iraqi oil trade scheme."



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I suspect this is one of these stories that we will never fully get to the bottom of. People will argue, "no smoke without fire" and others that, "Galloway is being setup".

People should remember though, that this is the man who has consistently been driven through his political career by his own ego, underhand political manoeuvres and shady stretching of the Law. He is the man who saluted and congratulated Sadaam Hussein, was suspected of taking money from him in payment for "influence" of the Regime's agenda in the West, who has been arrested more than once for breaching UK law, who nearly faced treason charges for inciting Iraqi troops to fight the British Army and who once walked arm in arm with the terrorist Gerry Adams in support of Sinn Fein against British policy in Northern Ireland.



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It looks as if nothing has changed. I quote here directly from the concluding statement in the Senate Report:

"Despite Galloway's denials, the evidence obtained by the Subcommittee, including Hussein-era documents from the Ministry of Oil and testimony from senior Hussein officials, shows that Iraq granted George Galloway allocations for millions of barrels of oil under the Oil for Food Program. Moreover, some evidence indicates that Galloway appeared to use a charity for children's leukaemia to conceal payments associated with at least one such allocation. Lastly, according to senior Hussein officials, the oil allocations were granted by Iraq because of Galloway's support for the Hussein regime and his opposition to U.N. sanctions."

This is the same man who called the BBC this morning demanding to go live on air and tell the public how clean he is as a politician - from his holiday home in Portugal!!

I rest my case.

For a copy of the full US Senate report, right-click here and select Save Target As on the following link:

US Senate Report on Oil Allocations

Back to writing.

During the day I sent in details to FreelanceWriting.com of the Hunting Jack contest for their competition section. I figured it might generate more readers. I redrafted and completed the e-book article and submitted it to Writer-On-Line.com.

I found a suitable location for the closing scene of Hunting Jack but I had to write to them to find out when they were established as their website doesn't have the details. If it wasn't around in 1995, then it's a no-go, unless of course, I fictionalise it.

I never got to do any work on Hunting Jack in the evening as intended. I had to help a worried little girl with her four times table, which took up most of what remained of my evening.

I cut my losses and went to bed with Jekyll & Hyde. Well you know what I mean! I also caught Boris Johnson on Question Time - what a scream. Get him in as Tory party leader and you never know what might happen!
Colin 10:23 am

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