On Drunkard, Thug and Fanatic, George Foukes

The increasingly hysterical George Foulkes, a Labour parliamentarian most noted for his drunken battering of a police officer, has complained to OFCOM about a former Labour member, Iain Macwhirter, presenting a history show on Scottish Television on the grounds that he does not show sufficient loyalty to the dear leader Union.

It's often said that one should beware an old man in a hurry. Perhaps this could be updated to pitying an old man whose cossetted position in society is about to be ripped from his finger, his snout suddenly jerked out of the trough.

Foulkes is one of the astonishingly large numbers of senior people in the "party for the working people" who have been the beneficiary of privilege and elitism quite beyond the reach of 99% of the population. It has been noted that the majority of the "people's party" MPs and MSPs were afforded an education segregated from working-class children at fee-paying schools.

Born in the west of England, Foulkes was subsequently privately-educated in an exclusive Hertfordshire school, which charges £14.000 per year to educate its pupils separately from mere commoners.

Obviously this experience in a haughty environment, isolated from the working class, has given Foulkes the sense of entitlement and arrogance for which he has become renowned.  

Since the early age of 28, and without ever having had a job outside lobbying, Foulkes graduated from a fee-paying private education to a state-funded University education into paid Unionist politics.

Foulkes has benefited extensively from the largesse of the public purse. In his 26 years as MP, he would have trousered £1,7m in salary alone at today's salary. Add this to £280k in his tenure as an MSP, and the £330k he is entitled to after being appointed to the House of Lords (made a Senator for life as a personal gift from Tony Blair for supporting the British genocide in Iraq).

Add this to a £1000 per day "consultancy" role with a group of international lawyers, "expenses" of £579 per day at the Lords, and his demand to be paid expenses to live in a London property which he inherited.

Foulkes is a great fan of trips to the Caribbean, and as such has ensured that he has been on parliamentary committees which would garner him freebies. Indeed, one of the first items on his agenda when appointed to Holyrood was to ensure that he sat on committees which would see him entitled to free trips to the Caribbean. 

The late, much-lamented lawyer Paul McBride also mentioned Foulkes' propensity to be tired and emotional, when he said that Foulkes hadn't seen him at Labour fundraisers because he was "unaware of what was going on around him". Foulkes is regarded as something of a joke figure in Scottish politics, but what an expensive joke he is.

His sense of entitlement is shown in his reaction when anything goes against him. 

When his friend, the corrupt Commons Speaker Michael Martin was under pressure to resign, Foulkes claimed that everyone who opposed Martin was motivated purely by sectarianism. 

On the exposure of the expenses corruption scandal, Foulkes claimed that the scandal had been manufactured by the media, whose intention was to undermine democracy. 

Foulkes' violent attack on a police officer - which would have seen him expelled from any normal European political party - came after attending yet another troughing freebie.

So Foulkes, as we know, turns nasty and violent when opposed. He is a man used to privilege - to money and power falling into his lap without the need to fight messy elections in close seats. 

Like all bullies, though, Foulkes is a coward at heart. Mr Macwhirter gave Foulkes one warning and one alone: "question my journalistic integrity again and we'll meet in court". Foulkes has gone quiet on the subject - much as he did when former Labour leader Henry McLeish asked him to apologise for labelling the Scottish Government a racist conspiracy.

Perhaps the reason he was so angry at Mr Macwhirter presenting a show which, for the first time, gave a truthful account of Scotland's position in the UK on prime-time television, was that the only time in his life he had the guts to stand in an election in which he wasn't guaranteed victory, he lost. To Iain Macwhirter. 

Foulkes, a talentless buffoon, a fanatical loyalist, and a violent bully, has trousered, at a conservative estimate, £3m from the public purse over the course of a political career in which he didn't reach Cabinet level. 

If I was in his position, I'd probably be hysterical in my attempts to keep the status quo too.

Maybe it could be a new slogan for the anti-independence campaign: "Keep George In The Style To Which He Has Become Accustomed: Vote NO".