Geroge Galloway and the Gaza convoy

- 'Call me Fidel.'
- 'Fuck off, fatboy.'

You may have heard about the convoy of vehicles driving from the UK to Gaza - they hope - in a blaze of self-publicity - they hope - carrying food and other aid for Gaza under the name Viva Palestine. It's a large convoy of vehicles, and an impressive undertaking.

Everyone's roughing it. Yvonne "Stockhausen Syndrome" Ridley* reports, at Socialist Unity -

This morning I expect many of us are bleary eyed as the convoy heads for Bordeaux - I know I am, after a sleepless night trying to find a comfortable position to sleep in a car seat...My eyes feel like sandpaper every time I blink...this 5000 mile trip from London to Gaza isn’t a jolly or five star vacation for any of us

Well...not everyone. Gorgeous George, obviously, isn't roughing it. The Independent reports:

You’ll find him at the head of the column, where the cameras can see him. Driving a Mercedes 4×4. This being George, he has a Winnebago motorhome in which to sleep while everyone else has to kip down in tents or in their cabs..."I do have to appear on television when we stop.”

And, inevitably -

He will actually fly back to London for three days a week, to host radio shows and his surgery as MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, while the others press on.

Nor is it all peace and love. Not that George would stir up already radicalised British Muslims. Oh no.

Most of those who are going with him are British Muslims. "If I had said to the youth, 'Right, break out the Kalashnikovs, we're heading for Palestine,' they would have been there. The people are boiling mad."....He goes further. "There is a kind of intifada among the youth. They are determined to act."

Lovely. Why do I suspect that if they were ever to really have their way - an event George no doubt fondly dreams of - 'the youth' would have him up against a wall sharp-ish?

H/T Harry's Place.

*Journalist > Taliban hostage > convert to Islam. Go figure.