James Taranto notices a discrepancy in Georgie Galloway's accounts:
Pennies for MariamWhen you send Geogie a contribution, don't forget to include extra for handling - he loves to handle it.
The father of Mariam Hamza, the Iraqi leukemia patient who is supposed to be the beneficiary of a charity set up by scandal-plagued pro-Saddam British parliamentarian George Galloway, "said [Thursday] that he was worried his daughter's life was in danger because funds promised by the Scottish MP's Mariam Appeal had failed to arrive," Friday's Telegraph reports:Hamza Abd Mittab said that the monthly allowance of £65 that the family of seven has received for three years from the appeal, to pay for Mariam's food and travel expenses, had last been paid in January. Speaking at the family home in Baghdad yesterday, he said: "Mariam's drugs are almost finished now and my daughter will die if she doesn't receive assistance."Sixty-five pounds is the equivalent of just over $100, so the charity's annual payment to Mariam amounts to barely more than $1,200. But as today's Telegraph makes clear, Galloway isn't so niggardly with everyone. The paper reports Galloway has acknowledged the Mariam Appeal "spent more than £800,000 on political campaigns and expenses"--including an £18,000 salary for Galloway's Palestinian Arab wife. That's more than 23 times the annual payment to young Mariam.
