Terminology | 2010.08.29
Stephen Bates's diary
Gorgeous George on Ahmadinejad? The BBC could learn from this
✒That fearless defender of the truth George Galloway secured something of a scoop with a 25-minute interview with Iran\'s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in Tehran this week, during which the normally garrulous ex-MP managed to fire off a total of seven hard-hitting questions, none of them quite ranking for toughness with "What\'s your favourite colour?". The interview, from Galloway\'s The Real Deal programme on state-sponsored Iranian Press TV, is now up on YouTube and contains relentless probing of whether Iranian flexibility can defuse nuclear tensions, robust questioning about "Netanyahu\'s gang" in Israel, and a poser on Iran\'s post-election opposition – "What does the Green movement mean to you?" – eliciting an eight-minute answer. During this Galloway shockingly divulged that he needs police protection in London to save him from Iranian opponents of the regime, after being attacked by two of them "in the parliament building". The BBC could learn from his interrogative technique; and probably would if it wasn\'t barred from Iran. Most startling was Galloway\'s question about the woman threatened with stoning for adultery – "an issue seized upon by the enemies of Iran and magnified". Strangely, this translated once Galloway was safely back in the studio into "an ever more infamous case". Surely George doesn\'t ask a craven question to "his excellency" face to face, and then say something more harsh afterwards? That wouldn\'t be like him, would it?
✒Alastair Campbell has joined a list of history\'s most powerful teetotallers, according to the Daily Mail , fit to rank alongside such luminaries as Abraham Lincoln, George Bush, Vladimir Putin and Nicolas Sarkozy. In the light of such an encomium it seems a little churlish of him to canvas support on Twitter yesterday for a mass trespass of Mail editor Paul Dacre\'s Scottish Highland retreat "bought from the proceeds of bile" near Ullapool?
✒Are you organised and mythological? Then a social housing association in the south-west might have a job for you, according to its ad on the Police Jobs website. You\'d need to have a structured way of working, experience of preparing case files for courts and an ability to collate evidence to close historical cases. It\'s only for three months. And presumably you\'d have to really exist .
✒Feeling depressed about potential education cuts? Then a report in the New York Times offers nightmares of a sort even Ed Balls hasn\'t yet dreamed up. Schools across the US have added a few extra requisites to pupils for the new term. Alongside pens and rulers, schools in Texas are asking for paper plates, Seattle schools want children to bring plastic cutlery, Colorado and Illinois request printing paper. And in Honolulu, one primary school has asked that each child should bring in four packs of toilet paper. Don\'t tell Michael Gove.
✒Finally, cheering news that the skull of St John the Baptist has been discovered during the excavation of a fourth century monastery off the coast of Bulgaria, together with one of his teeth. This may come as a surprise to Amiens cathedral and the Grand Mosque of Damascus, which also have his head, but it must be true because the relics were in a tiny urn inscribed with the saint\'s name and date of birth. "This is a holy find. It doesn\'t matter about the science," says Metropolitan Bishop Joanikii of Sliven jubilantly. There\'s great excitement locally – not just spiritually, but because of the prospect of the tourism such a find will bring. Bulgaria could soon rival Jerusalem, they say. Even atheist finance minister Simeon Djankov is thrilled: "I\'m not religious but these relics are in the premier league. The revenue potential for Bulgaria is clear." Meanwhile, Bozhidar Dimitrov, another minister, has rounded on doubters. "Why, damn it, why, where is all this envy coming from? This is what I cannot find an explanation, with this fucking people."
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/[...]en-bates-diary-george-galloway
