{"id":1750,"date":"2016-03-19T06:36:26","date_gmt":"2016-03-19T06:36:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/imjussayin.com\/blog\/?p=1750"},"modified":"2016-03-19T06:36:26","modified_gmt":"2016-03-19T06:36:26","slug":"george-galloway-london-mayoral-candidate-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imjussayin.com\/blog\/george-galloway-london-mayoral-candidate-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"George Galloway London Mayoral Candidate 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Galaxy Radio has invited the Mayoral candidates to the studio. Being Mayor is a job that some see as requiring a big personality.\u00a0 The first candidate to be interviewed was the Respect candidate, George Galloway, who is certainly a big personality, love him or hate him.\u00a0 George undoubtedly has an understanding of grass root issues.\u00a0 He spoke to the listeners and did not shirk any questions he was asked.<\/p>\n

Regarding the role of Mayor, George feels that it needs a big personality saying that both \u201cKen Livingston, who was a good Mayor and Boris Johnson, who in [his] view was a bad one, were larger than life figures, bigger than their parties, bigger than party politics.\u00a0 They were leaders and London would want to continue that tradition of a leading figure\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"chalk<\/a>George sees housing as the biggest crisis in London which needs \u201cAn emergency response.\u201d\u00a0 He identifies private sector landlords as being central to the problem, with 2 million people in private housing and only 80 council homes built annually.\u00a0 He has a four-point plan to manage the crisis.\u00a0 His plans include building 200,000 council homes on brown and green field sites which would include skyscrapers.\u00a0 He would require developers to build 50% affordable housing on new developments, unlike the Battersea Power station which contains just 8% of affordable housing.\u00a0 Consequently, rents and house prices would fall.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most controversially, George plans to compulsory purchase the 600,000 empty properties in London bought by foreign investors.\u00a0 He will only take this action where the property is left vacant for a year without good reason.\u00a0 “Emergency measures” have to be taken George says because London housing is an emergency.<\/p>\n

George sees gentrification as an opportunity for us to \u201cGentrify ourselves\u201d and for young entrepreneurs to \u201cProduce the good coffee that used to be unavailable”.\u00a0 As Mayor, he would use his influence to protect, promote and help small and medium size businesses and stop high streets from becoming \u201cYet another parade of the big multinational corporate faces\u201d.<\/p>\n

Candidates can be predictable in the election rounds. \u00a0However, George Galloway managed to pull a few surprises out the hat.\u00a0 He was amazed that London is without a Slave Museum and is prepared to pay for one from his pocket.\u00a0 Perhaps most surprising was to find George Galloway and Nigel Farage teamed up.\u00a0 They both believe Britain should be out of Europe.\u00a0 Here their agreement ends.\u00a0 One reason George wishes to leave is he thinks Britain has an obligation to the Commonwealth including Reparations for taking human beings, \u201cDepositing them in the fields as owned beasts of burden.\u201d He supports Reparations.<\/p>\n

George says he is standing for a \u201cLondon for All\u201d and he certainly has all the bases covered and with over 20,000 people tuned into his interview, I would not write George Galloway out of the race as yet.<\/p>\n

Connect with me on Twitter: <\/b>www.twitter.com\/imjussayin2<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n