Fingers not in till: Galloway innocent

In an unsurprisingly underplayed announcement, the Charities Commission has cleared George Galloway of inappropriately using funds donated to his Mariam Appeal.

The Charity Commission today published the final report of its inquiry into the Mariam Appeal, sparked by a complaint by a member of the public to the attorney general's office in April last year, alleging that money donated to the appeal had been used to pay for Mr Galloway's travel expenses.

But the commission's director of operations, Simon Gillespie, said today: "The commission's thorough inquiry found no evidence to suggest that the large amounts of money given to the Mariam Appeal were not properly used."

The full report is available here. There is a peculiar pattern to this, as with the other Galloway non-crimes: with great fanfare, his latest misdemeanours are announced; denunciations are issued from all quarters; and then, a few months later, the truth dribbles out and the terrible sins transpire to be non-existent. Strange, that, isn't it?