Saturday, October 25, 2008

Dale's High Horsey: Mandy Must Make Full Disclosure



Iain Dale is on his dizzyingly high horse, again, suggesting (a) that George Osborne has made a full disclosure and that (b) Mandelson should too. Of everything ever we think that is.

Now I'm not convinced by any means that Osborne has made any such things as a "full disclosure", and I don't think that the essential idea of a "full disclosure" of all meetings and beings-in-the-same-place-as for ever and a day is actually a doable thing for busy cosmopolitans.

Who knows for example who was in that 150-seat Tuscan restaurant as well as combinations of Mandelson, Deripaska, Rothschild, and whoever else has so far been mentioned? Or at some 1000-strong function or other at Davos some time? And being in the same place or even saying hello is surely not automatic guilt-by-association.

Meanwhile Pauline Neville-Jones and her financial relations with Robert Shetler-Jones - no relation AFAIK - do need a good going over. His dormant or non-trading company Scythian Limited appears to have given the Tories £70,000 declared so far. Much of it for the former spy-Lady.

The Way We Live Now. Someone, name of Old Holborn, in Dale's comments suggests he looks where we were loitering last Wednesday.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Come, come, Chris.

Mandelson and Rothschild flew to Moscow from Davos to attend this dinner. Rothschild has extensive business interests with Deripaska, as they both do in turn with Peter Munk, Chief Exectutive of the world's largest gold producer, who was also in at the dinner.

And you want us to believe that they merely bumped into each other while getting an extra sachet of ketchup.

On a totally unrelated topic, does anybody know the whereabouts of the gloriously nomencletured Oofy Wegg-Prosser, Mandelson's former special adviser and whose shoes Derek Draper was hired to clean three times a day?

Anonymous said...

If the News of the Screws is to be believed, it looks like Peter's most recent employers may be asking him to make full disclosure as well.

I've always admired your solid loyalty to your party, Chris, but I can't help feeling that Peter Mandelson has very little to do with the Labour Party, other than to use the party and ultimately tarnish it.

You deserve better.

Anonymous said...

Now it would appear that Mandelson flew to Moscow from Switzerland on Deripaska's private jet.

All that trouble just so that they could be in the same restaurant at he same time. What a charitable man is our Oleg.

I think Lakelander is right, except for the last paragraph. Loyalty is one thing but blind (or one eyed) loyalty is quite another.

jailhouselawyer said...

Oh goody, are we going to find out who was buggering who back at the old school?

Chris Paul said...

There is every possibility of that JH. EHC and WR are on the wrong Moskva meeting and fine dining I think. It's the second one that included Rothschild is it not?

Having personally helped stir up quite an outbreak of heckling against Mandy - and what's more sold the story to the Guardian - I have mixed feelings about Mandelson. But just now he's proving excellent value for money.

Not that I'm paying him anything you understand.

Anonymous said...

2004 or January 2005.

Both of them would be before the decision to axe the aluminium tariff. Mandelson (or his 'advisors') tried to claim they did not meet until 2006, ie after the decision was made.

Why would that be?

Mandelson "value for money"? Hasn't that always been the problem with him?

Chris Paul said...

Before the decision WR? Are you quite sure about that?? Was the decision not really made some time earlier? Though admitting that would be rather inconvenient for you chaps.

Anonymous said...

Definitely.

Dinners in 2004 and January 2005. Investigation ino whether the tariff should be cut began late in 2004.

Mandelson signed off the decision in December 2005 and it was ratified by the Council of Ministers in January 2006.

Yes, I am sure.

Chris Paul said...

In the spirit of helping the "hard of thinking". That would be in 2001. And not in fact in a smoke filled room in Hartlepool:

It has been reported that in 2005 Lord Mandelson was instrumental in easing EU tariffs on imports of Russian aluminium foil, which would have been favourable to Deripaska, but European commission officials pointed out yesterday that this decision had been taken in 2001, three years before Mandelson arrived in Brussels.

Guardian scoop, 24 October 2008

You lot really are muppets. Mandelson is a walking talking "Honey Pot" or to get European a Lorelei, luring Tories and their fellow water borne travellers to their richly-deserved dooms on the rocks.

Anonymous said...

So the European Commission launched an investigation on whether to scrap the tariffs three years after they had made the decision, did they?

I don't think so.

Mandelson personally signed it in December 2005. This was after he had met Deripaska at least twice but before he originally admitted to meeting him for the first time.

The Guardian have got it completely wrong. The tariff was INTRODUCED in 2001, not wihdrawn.

Apology??

Anonymous said...

You know I always rely on you for news of what's going on inside the loop, Chris. Any idea what the Mandelson-Deripaska-Rothschild meetings were about.

Apparently they were nothing to do with aluminium. Maybe they discussed Montenegro joining the World Trade Organisation.

Have a look at
http://forum.stirpes.net/politics/20308-mccains-kremlin-ties-montenegros-independence.html