Published by daryl February 28th, 2008
in Teflon Tony.
Just love this entry from Wikipedia - now Rupert Murdoch, I can understand how he had his hand up Blair’s arse pulling the strings (no-one gets elected these days with out his nod) but Richard “Dirty” Desmond? Owner of “Asian Babes”? In Downing Street? Seriously - was Blair a fan? Still - I can understand the requirement for some of Dirty Des’s reading material aimed at mother thumb and her four daughters given the unfortunate looking Mrs Bliar… gives a whole new meaning to dirty dossier.
“A Cabinet Office freedom of information response, released the day after Blair handed over power to Gordon Brown, documents Blair having various official phone calls and meetings with Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation and Richard Desmond of Northern and Shell Media.
The response includes contacts “clearly of an official nature” in the specified period, but excludeds contacts “not clearly of an official nature.” No details were given of what subjects discussed. In the period between September 2002 and April 2005, Blair and Murdoch are documented speaking 6 times; three times in the 9 days before the Iraq war, including the eve of the March 20 US and UK invasion, and on January 29, April 25 and October 3 2004. Between January 2003 and February 2004, Mr Blair had three meetings with Richard Desmond; on January 29 and September 3 2003 and February 23 2004.
The information was disclosed after a three and a half year battle by the Lib Dem Lord Avebury.Lord Avebury’s initial October 2003 information request was dismissed by then leader of the Lords, Baroness Amos. A following complaint was rejected, with Downing Street claiming the information compromised free and frank discussions, while Cabinet Office claimed releasing the timing of the PM’s contacts with individuals is undesirable, as it might lead to the content of the discussions being disclosed. While awaiting a following appeal from Lord Avebury, the cabinet office announced that it would release the information. Lord Avebury said: “The public can now scrutinise the timing of his (Murdoch’s) contacts with the former Prime Minister, to see whether they can be linked to events in the outside world.”"
Published by daryl February 28th, 2008
in Corporate Crooks.
The European Commission has fined US computer giant Microsoft for defying sanctions imposed on it for anti-competitive behaviour. Microsoft must now pay a record 899m euros ($1.4bn; £680.9m) after it failed to comply with a 2004 ruling that it abused its dominant market position.
The ruling said that Microsoft was guilty of not providing key code to rival software makers.
EU regulators said the firm was the first to break an EU anti-trust ruling.
Continue reading ‘EU fines Micro$oft record $1.4bn’
Published by daryl February 24th, 2008
in Spurs.
Tottenham came from a goal down to beat Chelsea at Wembley and win the Carling Cup after extra-time. 
Jonathan Woodgate won it when Petr Cech disastrously punched the ball on to his head from Jermaine Jenas’s free-kick.
Pascal Chimbonda had hit the bar for Spurs, before Didier Drogba’s 20-yard free-kick gave Chelsea the lead with Paul Robinson badly out of position.
Spurs levelled when Wayne Bridge handled in the box and Dimitar Berbatov coolly rolled in the resulting penalty.
Continue reading ‘There’s only one club in London!’
Published by daryl February 19th, 2008
in Teflon Tony and Corporate Crooks.
Mike Turner, CEO of BAE Systems was out today cap in hand begging for more taxpayers cash to help fund his weapons of mass destruction.
Mr Turner said the government must find the money for planned weapons programmes or risk Britain losing the industrial capability necessary to defend itself, The Sunday Times reported.
Turner’s comments come as the Ministry of Defence struggles to resolve a 1.5 bln stg budget crisis that threatens several big defence programmes.
‘If you want to keep a defence industrial base, and operational sovereignty in the UK, then you are going to have to fund it, and research and development. If you don’t do that, you are dead,’ said “Mad” Mike in an interview with the paper.
He failed to mention how he feels knowing his companies products are directly responsible for millions of deaths a year - nor did he feel he should comment on Teflon Tony’s decision to drop the SFO investigation into the bribes made by his company.
Published by daryl February 17th, 2008
in Teflon Tony and Corporate Crooks.
Discredited former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, put “irresistible pressure” on investigators and “stepped over the boundaries of what was permissible” to call off a criminal investigation into allegations of corruption surrounding an arms deal with Saudi Arabia, the High Court here has been told.The Court is hearing an appeal from two anti-arms campaign groups — Corner House Research and the Campaign Against Arms — who want the investigation to be resumed.
The case relates to accusations that BAE Systems, Britain’s biggest arms supplier, paid more than £1 billion in bribes to members of the Saudi royal family to clinch a £43-billion defence deal in 1985.
Prince Bandar, son of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and former Ambassador to Washington, is among those accused of benefiting from the alleged “kickbacks.” The BAE as well as the Prince have denied any wrongdoing.
Continue reading ‘Tony Blair “stepped over the boundaries of what was permissible”.’
Published by daryl February 12th, 2008
in Database State and Corporate Crooks.
People in the UK who go online and illegally download music and films may have their internet access cut under plans the government is considering. A draft consultation suggests internet service providers would be required to take action over users who access pirated material via their accounts.
If made law the insane proposal would give ISPs, the UK government and any corporate entity free reign to inspect downloaded packets and prevent individual’s access to the internet.
Continue reading ‘Illegal downloaders ‘face UK ban’’
Published by daryl February 3rd, 2008
in Uncategorized.
On Gutsy had a problem installing the Ruby MySQL Gem:
Using:
sudo gem install mysql
gave the error:
Building native extensions. This could take a while...
ERROR: Error installing mysql:
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.
/usr/bin/ruby1.8 extconf.rb install mysql
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lm... yes
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lz... yes
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lsocket... no
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lnsl... yes
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
*** extconf.rb failed ***
Could not create Makefile due to some reason, probably lack of
necessary libraries and/or headers. Check the mkmf.log file for more
details. You may need configuration options.
To fix:
sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient15-dev
Try again and all should be fine 
