Peter Mandelson - why was he so keen to "get" George Osborne

Further to my earlier post, Tim Walker, Telegraph's Mandrake reminds us that:

"Before Nat's letter was published, I had been informed that the Opposition planned to ask ministers about a taped conversation possessed by the FBI, which explains why Deripaksa's entry visa to America was revoked. As I revealed in The Sunday Telegraph at the weekend, it was said to be an "explosive" telephone call."

Hmmm...

Mandelson "answers" his critics

The Times online publishes a statement from Lord Mandelson that I reproduce here, I have highlighted the parts that raise more questions than they answer:

"Sir, During the course of this week a number of journalists have asked me about meetings with Oleg Deripaska.

During the weekend when I moved from Brussels to London and prior to me being admitted to hospital for an urgent medical procedure, a statement was released to the press which said I had had meetings with Mr Deripaska in 2006 and 2007. Some people formed the reasonable view, therefore, that my first meeting with him was in 2006. This is not the case: to the best of my recollection we first met in 2004 and I met him several times subsequently*.

The Director-General for Trade in the European Commission, David O’Sullivan, has confirmed in a letter to The Sunday Times on October 16 that I made no personal intervention to support the commercial interests of Mr Deripaska. Mr O’Sullivan explained in his letter that in respect to both the nine-year debate in the EU over tariffs on raw aluminium and to anti-dumping duties on Russian aluminium the decisions were made “after the usual consultation procedures had taken place, including with industry and all 27 European member states, and were based on sound facts”.

Perhaps I should add that naturally I met a great number of business people round the world as EC Trade Commissioner. I think this adds to what I bring to my job now. I should point out that in managing my department’s business as Secretary of State I will, of course, in line with the Ministerial Code, ensure that no conflict of interest, or perception of such, arises from any of my past or indeed future contacts. In this I will be taking advice from my permanent secretary at all times. As Business Secretary I will continue to act with the public interest in mind, as the public has every right to expect.

Lord Mandelson

London SW1"

I leave it to you to ask the relevant questions...


*Just a quick question, Peter Mandelson became EU Commmissioner for Trade in November 2004, what was the date of his first meeting with Mr Deripaska?

Any Questions Friday 24 October 2008

Well worth a listen to the start of the programme as Lord Adonis tries to defend the indefensible about Gordon Brown's responsibility for the economic situation and Lord Fowler and Lord Digby Jones and Jonathan Dimbleby seem incredulous. Listen online or on the Saturday repeat and prepare to be staggered...

Just how crap an ISP are Pipex (update 2)

Further to this and this it seems as though Pipex's POP3 service is now back to near normal levels, for how long is anyone's guess however.

But the story does not end there, Pipex have been doing some maintenance on their mailboxes service which has meant that users have been unable to access their mailbox configurations for 5 or so days. This afternoon Pipex proudly announce that:

"My Service Status - Time of Report:
24/10/2008 at 17:30:18 Last Update: 24/10/2008 at 17:30:18

Report

Pipex Manage Mailboxes is now live with newly added functionality to allow for the addition of anti-virus and anti-spam on your mailboxes."

Pipex users will not be surprised to learn that the mailboxes function does not currently have "added functionality" unless being unable to view or change existing mailboxes or add new mailboxes is considered to be "added functionality". The saga continues...

Vote Obama or else

The Mail, amongst many, report that US police are preparing for the possibility of riots across America if the White House vote goes against Obama. Bob Parks, an internet columnist and black Republican candidate for state representative in Massachusetts said

"If Barack Obama loses there will be another large group of people who will assume the election was stolen from him. This will be an opportunity for people who want to commit mischief".

Don't you just love the left, if their candidate wins (however questionably) they expect the losers to "suck it up", but if their candidate loses then it must be due to foul play.

Getting the grandparents to vote "correctly"

Further to my piece about the Obama supporting campaign to get Jewish liberals to get their retired grandparents in Florida to vote Obama; their slogan being

"If they vote for Barack Obama, they're going to get another visit this year. If not, let's just hope they stay healthy until next year."

, here's the reprehensible Sarah Silverman video

Now I learn that

"A webpage at Barack Obama.com instructs young Obamatrons to "use their grandparents love against them" and get them to vote for the Marxisant radical."

Here's some more from that Barack Obama page:

"The one thing most grandparents have in common is that they have the most wonderful grandchildren in the world - so clever, so handsome, so pretty, ever so precious. Even if you are still unsure of your path in life, and even if your parents and friends occasionally wonder about you, your grandma and grandpa love you and have faith in you.

That is your weapon! "Precious" needs to get on the phone and say, "Grandpa, Grandma, I am asking you to vote for Barack Obama..."

Hope, change and emotional blackmail - well done the Obama campaign for plumbing new depths...

Welcome back the Routemaster

After a "ghastly, dehumanised moron"* killed off the much loved Routemaster London bus and replaced it with the more fare-dodger friendly bendy-bus, it was a relief when Boris Johnson was elected London Mayor on a platform (pun intended) of introducing a new style Routemaster.

Today I read in the Standard that plans are further advanced than I thought. This would be more cheery news if I didn't have this nagging thought that London and the UK will be too broke to afford any new buses by 2009, but we can dream I suppose...



*In a speech on 2 December 2003, Mr Livingstone pledged: "I will save the Routemaster." In 2001, he said: "Only some ghastly, dehumanised moron would want to get rid of the Routemaster." In December 2005, Mr Livingstone got rid of the Routemaster from normal service.

Kyle Doyle and Niresh Regmi and the perils of Facebook

The Register reports the case of an Australian call centre employee, Kyle Doyle, his sickie and how he posted a little too much on Facebook for his comfort... "Kyle Doyle is not going to work, fuck it I'm still trashed. SICKIE WOO!"

Why are we in a recession

I am confused; Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling and the rest of the Labour cabal along with their propaganda wing the BBC have been telling us that the recession is due to the sub-prime problems in the US which have spread out and affected the rest of the world.

If this is true then why has the £ lost 8% in value against the $US this week alone? Do you think that maybe the truth is somewhat different and that there are more home-grown problems than we are being told?

Do you remember Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling trying to convince us that the UK is uniquely placed to weather the global recession, don't hear so much of that now do you? Anyone still believe it?

Peter Mandelson - why was he so keen to "get" George Osborne

The rumours are flying about Peter Mandelson and whether he has been as squeaky clean in his official dealings as we would all expect him to be. I have no way of knowing the truth but if you want to acquaint yourself with the news that the BBC will not be reporting then I suggest looking at these sites:
1. The Standard which will bring you up to speed on Peter Mandelson's apparent problems with date recall regarding his meetings with Mr Deripaska

2. The Daily mail which will introduce you to the Montenegro angle and more links with Mr Deripaska and the Rothschilds

3. Guido Fawkes will be covering as many of these stories as he can and the comments following his articles may also be of interest (the usual disclaimers apply). On Guido's site you will also find an interesting piece about Peter Mandelson and a visit to another billionaire's yacht.



Update:
The BBC have finally realised that there may be a story about Peter Mandelson that they will have to cover, even if rather quietly, hence this piece that includes some way down this admission:

"Earlier this month, the European Commission cleared Lord Mandelson of any inappropriate links with the tycoon, whose business benefited from a December 2005 decision to ease import duties on Russian aluminium.

But the Guardian says officials who cleared Lord Mandelson had not been aware of a previous meeting between the two men, before he took up his post as trade commissioner.

The newspaper says they had been seen together by a journalist at a Moscow restaurant in October 2004."

I trust that the BBC will remind Peter Mandelson or any of his defenders of this fact whenever they try the "an EU enquiry cleared Mr Mandelson" defence.

The BBC being the BBC the article continues with a standard Labour piece of misdirection but I think we would expect no more.

Just how crap an ISP are Pipex (update)

Further to my earlier post it appears that Pipex have moved POP3 servers and the login details have changed from the odd Pipex format to the more standard one:

"Due to a recent change on the mail server platform, customers may be unable to access their mail, it is now required to make an amendment to the format of your username, please replace the % sign with an @ sign when logging on to mail. e.g. If you are currently using - username%dsl.pipex.com or username%dial.pipex.com Please replace it with - username@dsl.pipex.com or username@dial.pipex.com."

Nice of Pipex to tell its x thousand users in advance!

You can follow a thread on this matter here, thanks to my correspondent anonymous at 09:06 this morning.

Are you thinking of retiring to the Costa del Sol?

This news may make you think again, Khaleej Times Online reports that:

"Spain’s remains a target for Al-Qaeda four years after the Madrid bombings that killed 191 people, the intelligence service said in a report quoted by a Spanish newspaper Monday.

“The counter-terrorist activities by the state security forces since the March 11, 2004 attacks shows that Spain remains a target of the Al-Qaeda network and its allies as well as a source of human resources,” the intelligence service said in a report, a copy of which was seen by the El Pais daily.

“Al-Qaeda has not lost sight of the global jihad and, in exchanges with the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), it has told them to quickly attack local targets and reminds them that their real goal is to cross into Al Andalus,” it said.

Al Andalus is the Arabic name for the parts of the Iberian peninsula that were under Muslim, or Moorish, control for almost 800 years until the late 15th century.

The GSPC last year changed its name to Al-Qaeda’s Branch in the Islamic Maghreb.

In September 2007, Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri called for Al Andalus to be restored to the Islamic world, saying the first step needs to be the “cleansing’ of Spaniards and French from the Maghreb.

The Al-Qaeda inspired bombings on four packed commuter trains on March 11, 2004 killed 191 people and wounded hundreds of others.

Spanish courts last year ordered 21 people jailed for life over the attacks. Four have since been acquitted after appeals.

Spanish police last week arrested 12 north Africans suspected of links to the bombings."

Does relaxing on the beach with your wife in a burqa appeal?

Just how crap an ISP are Pipex?

Parts of Pipex's POP3 email system went down yesterday and as of this morning does not appear to be fixed yet. This morning I logged onto to their website and found a link I hadn't seen before "To see if there are any problems with the Pipex Service, please click on this link.", sounds useful... Unfortunately clicking on the link only brings up a 404 - "Not Found - The requested URL /service-status/ was not found on this server."

Pipex as on the ball as ever it would appear.

How stupid do the BBC think the Welsh are?

From the evidence on this page from the BBC Wales news website, the answer is "very".



Do you think the Welsh might know what that large Country to their east is called?

Joe Biden and the 5 crises

Further to my post about Joe Biden's prediction that if elected, Barack Obama will be tested by an international crisis within his first six months in power, here is a report of Sarah Palin's response and you can see the video below...

A quote that sums up this Labour government

From The Scotsman's report on Sarah Brown's trip to campaign for her husband's party in Cardenden comes this extract:

"Then came the most extraordinary piece of control freakery of the day. "I want you guys on the green," said the man from the Labour Party. "There will be six or seven guys with guns who will keep you away from her. You may be shot and then it won't be my problem.""

Democracy, freedom of the press, freedom of speech - just three concepts that appear to have passed this Labour Government by.

BBC Question Time - do they understand irony?

Phil Woolas was pulled from appearing on tonight's BBC Question Time programme, by whom it is unclear although rumours abound that it was because of his recent comments on immigration and disestablishing the Church of England. Whatever the reason, the Labour Government offered Tony McNulty instead but the BBC have plumped for Lord Hattersley instead. It was of course Lord Hattersley who dropped out of several editions of "Have I Got News For YOU" only to replaced the final time by a lookalike tub of lard.

Another Microsoft security vulnerability

Microsoft are about to release an emergency security update to plug a vulnerability which could allow an internet worm to be spread via a computer without the user doing anything. This update is rated as critical for users of Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003 and the less severe rating of "important" for users of Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista. The patch is scheduled for release at 10.00am Pacific Time (6pm BST) with a webcast 3 hours later to explain the issues. Here is Microsoft's current explanation; useful?

The twenty second winner of the weekly "No shit, Sherlock" award

This goes to David Cameron who is reported by the BBC to have made the claim that Gordon Brown is "playing politics" over the George Osborne donation row. Duh, you think David? Or more traditionally, "No shit, Sherlock"

Playing politics is what Gordon Brown does, he will try and sucker his opponents into bipartisanship but will knife them as soon as he feels able.

What a natural orator Barack Obama is (reprise)

Back in June, July and September I blogged about Barack Obama's lack of oratorial skills when his teleprompter breaksdown or he has to answer a question without a script. Today I see on Biased-BBC that a BBC reporter has finally seen that this is a story and printed it..... of course they haven't, don't be ridiculous - it is another attack on John McCain's oratorical skills, because in BBC land Barack Obama is beyond criticism. The BBC's bias towards Barack Oabama in the US and the Labour party in the UK has gone beyond simple bias, they are now blatantly electioneering - can anything be done to stop them?

If you want to see the real Barack Obama in action then do take a look at my earlier articles I linked above.

If you want a laugh then take a look at from IowaHawk, it will make you think - so obviously won't appeal to any Barack Oabama supporters.