George Foulkes, Baron Foulkes of Cumnock
George Foulkes, Baron Foulkes of Cumnock, PC ( born January 21, 1942 in Oswestry, Shropshire ) is a Scottish politician and member of the Labour Party.
He attended Keith Grammar School, the Haberdashers ' Aske 's Boys ' School in Hampstead and then went to the University of Edinburgh. Between 1965 and 1967, Foulkes was president of the Scottish Union of Students. In 1974, Foulkes presented for election for the Regional Council of Lothian and is elected until 1979. In 2009 he stood for election to the post of Rector of Edinburgh University. As the successor of the incumbent Green politician Mark Ballard, however, the journalist Iain Macwhirter was chosen. Foulkes received 31% of votes cast.
Of Commons and House of Lords
1979 Foulkes joined the general election in 1979 the first time on national elections. He won the direct mandate of his constituency in South Ayrshire and moved to the sequence in the British House of Commons one. At the end of the legislative term of the constituency was abolished and Foulkes went on at the general election in 1983 in the constituency of Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley. Again he won the direct mandate and defended it in the elections in 1987, 1992, 1997 and 2001. Subsequently, the constituency was abolished and Foulkes was raised to the end of the legislature in 2005 to the peerage. Since then, he has been a member of the House of Lords. At the general election in 2005 Foulkes no longer went to. Between 1997 and 2001, Foulkes had held the post of parliamentary undersecretary for international developments. From 2001 to 2002 he served as Secretary of State for Scotland.
Scottish Parliament
In the Scottish Parliament elections of 2007, Foulkes was running for a seat in the Scottish Parliament. He did not run this in a single constituency, but was set to the first rank of the Regional Evaluation of the Labour Party for the election Lothians region. As a result of the election results, he drew the only Labour politician for Lothian in the Scottish Parliament. At the end of the legislative term, he resigned from the Parliament.
Other activities and controversies
In 2005, Foulkes resigned as Chairman of the Scottish football club Heart of Midlothian and called the club owner Vladimir Romanov as a " dictator."
2008 Foulkes was criticized due to its high financial demands as a result of his work in the House of Lords. So he called around £ 55,000 for overnight stays within a period of two years in his own home in London. In contrast, his claims to the Scottish Parliament were relatively low. In a live interview to disclose the claims of all MPs and the following discussion in the population Foulkes went to the news anchor and accused the media to want to undermine democracy.
After Foulkes had accused the Scottish National Party (SNP ) of racism against the English in 2007, called for the SNP leader Henry McLeish an apology, but which Foulkes refused.