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fron the guardian - more about the gorgeous one:

"George Galloway's hopes to use his residency in the Big Brother house to denounce the Iraq war and Tony Blair may be thwarted after Channel 4 vowed he would not be allowed to use the show as a soapbox.
Mr Galloway, MP for Bethnal Green and Bow in east London, tried to head off criticism that he was letting his constituents down by devoting up to three weeks appearing in the show, by saying he was trying to bring politics and his ideals to an audience who are usually uninterested. His decision to swap the House of Commons for the Big Brother house alongside celebrities whose star has waned was yesterday condemned by Labour and some of his constituents.

In a statement, the MP - who set up the anti-war Respect party after he was expelled from Labour - set out his reasons for joining Michael Barrymore and the others for up to three weeks.

He gave a "Heineken" reason, saying he hoped taking part in the show would help him reach a young audience politicians usually can not reach: "I'm doing it for the audience, the biggest audience I will ever have. We need to use new and innovative methods to put across our arguments. I'm determined that there are no no-go areas for us and I believe Celebrity Big Brother will be hugely successful for our ideals. I hope ... to reach this mass, young, overwhelmingly not yet political audience with our simple case. That war without end, war throughout the world is leading us all to disaster ... Some of it will get through."

Not so fast, said a Channel 4 spokeswoman: "He won't be able to use his time in the house as a political soapbox. There are regulations and Ofcom rulings which mean we would monitor what is said by him and the others.

"He is one of 11 diverse and entertaining individuals in that house, so he's one of many with different opinions." Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, said Channel 4 had a duty to ensure "due impartiality" on issues of political controversy or major public policy, under the 2005 broadcasting code.

Mr Galloway has been accused of spending too much time away from his east London constituency which he won at the May 2005 general election by 823 votes. He missed a Commons vote on an anti-terrorism measure which the government scraped through by just one vote.

He went on a speaking tour to the US and visited Washington to famously denounce a Senate committee which accused him of financially benefiting from the Saddam Hussein regime. They are charges Mr Galloway denies and for which a British newspaper had to pay him libel damages.

Yesterday in his constituency, the voters who had sent Mr Galloway to Westminster had mixed views.

Kamal Khan, 19, voted for Mr Galloway in May and believes he will achieve more on television than in the Commons: "I'll watch it, I want him to get into the Iraq war. If he can mess up the Senate, he can mess up the celebrities. He can do more good by being on TV and by being in parliament."

Dave Baker, 31, agrees: "He's passing on the anti-war message to an audience who are not usually exposed to that message." But Evelyn Davies, 81, was not impressed: "When they get in we're all forgotten."

Jeff Luff, 46, said: "Keep him in there, he doesn't seem to do anything for the area - a typical politician."

Mr Galloway won his seat by appealing to Muslim voters in the area who were angry at Labour for joining in the invasion of Iraq. But what would they think of Big Brother, where flesh is notoriously very much in view?

As he entered the area's main mosque on Whitechapel Road for Friday prayers, Naeem Parvez warned that Mr Galloway's presence in the house, where past inmates have got got very intimate with each other, might offend morally conservative voters: "Many won't like it. It's [sexually] mixed, women are there."

i quite like this last point, for a lot of the young angry muslims in my area the conservative nature of the religion seems to be something that they can ignore while they listen to music, drink, do drugs and play with girls. true this hypocracy makes them no different from so many others in society, but it is ironic that they can get have their very radical opinions only because they are in a western secular democracy.
not that gorgeous george galloway cares - he just wants to be swanning off to places where he can be important.

and some more from the guardian, and this is the where it is all wrong. if you go the the respect website you will find no mention of constituency surgerys. but that is ok as respect probably think of itself as being the vanguard party, one that may have to be "undemocratic" until such time as they can instill and teach the working class true democracy.... (at least this leninist style view means you don't have to worry about some old bloke complaining about his plumbing.

In search of gorgeous George

Vikram Dodd
Saturday January 7, 2006
The Guardian

If any of George Galloway's 85,950 registered constituents needed help from their MP yesterday, they would have needed formidable levels of ingenuity. He was certainly very visible: as one of the new residents of the Big Brother House, he was almost permanently on air. But contacting the man who remains their elected representative proved a little more difficult.
Friday is the traditional day MPs hold their constituency surgery, where the people they represent seek help and advice on matters ranging from the banal to the important. So were Mr Galloway or his aides available?

The Guardian decided to test how easy it would be to gain access to Mr Galloway were one a constituent with, say, a leaking council house roof which the local authority was being slow in repairing. A quick search on the internet throws up a number that turns out to be the main switchboard for Tower Hamlets council, within whose area Mr Galloway's constituency falls.

A helpful switchboard operator refers the caller to a number for Mr Galloway which proves to be his House of Commons office. That leads to an answering machine that promises that any message left will be returned. It was not.

So the Guardian tried a different approach. A Google search throws up the Respect party website, which says their office is closed until January 6, because they are on the move to new premises in Shoreditch, east London. An answering machine takes a message, and again promises a call back. None comes.

The website gives a mobile number, which goes unanswered. Another outgoing message invites the caller to leave a message. Time to try another approach and a call to the House of Commons main switchboard and request to be put through to the MP's office leads to the phone ringing out for a minute, before the operator says: "There's nobody in his office."

She takes a message and suggests the Commons information line, where a helpful woman gives a separate number for the Respect office, which again leads down a blind alley. Staring failure in the face, the Guardian tries numbers which regular constituents would not have.

Calls to personal mobile numbers for Mr Galloway do not work, and so the next call is to the Channel 4 press office, which says it cannot put a call through to Mr Galloway in the Big Brother house.

By now the roof is leaking badly. But they do give a number for Wendy Bailey, who they have listed as the main contact for the MP. A call to that number is answered by a man who explains that Ms Bailey is a public relations agent who organised Alastair Campbell's "audience with" series in theatres across Britain.

The man gives a mobile number for Ms Bailey, and finally a real human being answers.

Ms Bailey says she was surprised Channel 4 had said she could help constituents in need get help from their MP: "I'm George's media agent."

But what if I was a constituent needing help? Ms Bailey said: "I couldn't help you there. Presumably they [Channel 4] would have the numbers to call, which would be the constituency office."

As we had found out, this was not the case, and Ms Bailey added: "I'm George's media agent and that's what I can talk about."

But what does a constituent with a pressing problem do? "I can't give you any advice on that ... I can't help you, not my area."


we salute you george galloway.