The Oil Price, Russia and OPEC.

(Transcript from The Viewpoint Podcast)

The price of oil has made a major shift downward in recent weeks, falling to around $60 a barrel for North Sea Brent Crude, and below $60 for West Texas Intermediate. For most of us, it will mean that it will cost us less to fill up our cars, and prices for the goods on our shelves should start falling because transportation will start costing less as well.

But there's much more to it than that, especially for Russia. Oil revenues are a big part of their government's income, and the drop from over $120 a barrel to around $60, means that Russia's budget, which was calculated at a higher price, will not be able to spend as much money as they previously thought. The drop in the Oil price even sent the Russian Rouble shooting up against the dollar, to almost 80 roubles to the dollar, before settling OPEC even decided not to cut production to force prices higher, and whilst most saw that as a shot across the bows of US shale oil producers, Russia's aggression against Ukraine may have also played a part as neither the US nor Russia are part of the international cartel.

Russian President Vladimir Putin held his usual end of year press conference this week, and like previous Soviet Premiers and dictators worldwide, blamed the West for what is happening with his economy. And whilst it's true that the West's economic sanctions have hurt Russia to some degree, OPEC's refusal to cut production of oil in order to raise the price on international commodities markets will do far more to damage the Russian economy than the west's sanctions.

And who are these OPEC members who will hurt Russia's economy so badly? Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Venezuela and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Not a single western country in the cartel, not even the UK. Maybe Putin should get some of his Russia Today buddies to start going after Iran's Press TV.

Galloway wins Bradford East: Lessons for all parties

So, George Galloway from the Respect party won the Bradford West by-election.  He won it on a 50.8% turnout, which is pretty high for a by-election, with a majority of 10,100.  That's a pretty impressive performance, no question about it.  In fact, George Galloway's 18,341 votes is just 60 less than Marsha Singh got for Labour in 2010, when the turnout was 64.9%, 14% higher.

So, what does this result tell us?

Well, it shows that George Galloway definitely got his vote out.  His Respect team in Bradford worked their socks off and proved that in a contest invloving the major parties, a minor party can still win.  And it also proved that the other parties didn't really try, including Labour, as they assumed it would be a safe Labour seat.  I remember a work colleague once telling me that when you 'assume' you make an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me'.  The major parties assumed it was going to go to Labour and the voters made asses of them all.

But it also shows the value of getting your message out there in any number of different ways. He's had a show on talkSPORT for a number of years, but that show has come to an end, not because of the election result, but because talkSPORT is totally removing the remaining non-sport programming from its schedule. 

In New York, George does a 1-hour show on WBAI, on a Wednesday morning.  The show is produced out of London, like all of George Galloway's shows.

But the shows that are most controversial are the ones that are aired on the Iranian international news channel, Press TV.  One is a Press TV original show, called Comment, where viewers phone in to speak to George and his guests.  The other is a show that originally aired on Raj TV before being transfered over to Press TV, George's own news commentary TV show, The Real Deal. 

The shows are now only available online in the UK after Ofcom revoked Press TV's licence. 

Without a doubt, these shows have helped keep George Galloway in the public eye, and kept his viewpoint in people's minds.

But in a sense, this victory also confirms that George Galloway is a political opportunist.  In 1987, George Galloway unseated Roy Jenkins, who had been with Labour before becoming one of the gang of 4 that formed the Social Democratic Party back in 1981.  In the 1997 General Election, the constituencies had changed, and George had to fight to be nominated for the Glasgow Kelvin seat.  But he won that nomination and served another two terms, firstly with Labour, then when he was expelled from the party in late 2003, he joined a newly formed party, known only as Respect.  But he was not going to be able to contest Glasgow Kelvin again, as the constituency was split amongst three new constituencies for the 2005 General Election; Glasgow Central, Glasgow North and Glasgow North West.

And it was then he began his run as a 'parliamentarian of fortune'.  He would challenge and defeat Labour's Oona King in the Bethnal Green and Bow constitiuency.  He chose not to contest the seat again, and instead contested a newly created seat of Poplar and Limehouse in 2010, but came in 3rd. 

It does leave me feeling that George Galloway is a political opportunist, looking for seats that he feels he can make a strong challenge in, because either the sitting MP is seen as weak, or maybe because it is not felt that there will be any strong challengers so the main parties don't spend a lot of money on the campaign, and then Galloway comes in and organises a grass roots campaign that wins out.

And George Galloway does make a reasonable point in saying that was disenfranchisement with the 3 major parties, and he was able to capitalise on that.  But then so should any minor party, or indeed independent candidate.

Overall, there is a lot for all parties and candidates to learn from this.  I hope this makes other elections in future much more unpredictable.

Mumbai attacks: More media coverage

Unsurprisingly, the continuing developments in Mumbai dominate the news, though most channels currently are covering other stories as well. Even GMTV seems to have taken on a more sombre tone this morning with the story getting more coverage than most international stories do. There is a ticker running this morning with continual information about this one story. I don't see much GMTV normally, but I don't remember GMTV running a ticker normally. I could be wrong.

Not surprisingly NDTV 24x7 and most of India's other major news channels are running the story as continual breaking news. CNNIBN is one that does too, and is currently supplying pictures to sister network CNN International, who continue to cover it as breaking news. Star News seems to be one of the few that has switched away from it.

Al Jazeera is majoring on it, with a lot of breaking news coverage but they do attempt to cover over stories as well. Most channels seem to be on normal schedules with the story dominating the news. Fox News Channel is running normal programmes, but with Fox News Alerts replacing ad breaks in some cases. DW-TV is on normal programmes, but the story dominates.

ITN's online channel also leads with the story but continues on it's roughly normal schedule. Press TV from Iran also leads with the story, but also continues to cover other stories. CNBC is also providing some coverage too, using the resources of CNBC TV 18, their Indian partner.

I'll have more on the media coverage of this story, later on.

Iranian International News Channel highlights story about Impeaching President Bush. Surprised?

Well,I can honestly say I'm not surprised about the decision by Press TV to highlight this story on their front page.

It's well known that George W Bush is not exactly the most popular US President in the world at large, except of course to American conservatives and Republicans. But remember this is a state-funded media organisation, much like the BBC and Voice Of America. The head of Press TV claims that they maintain editorial independence from the government, though this is disputed.

Whether they are independent or not, ultimately how they will be judged is on the stories they cover and how they cover them.