Peter Mandelson was confronted by an inebriated audience member as he sped away from the platform after delivering his speech at last night's Chemical Industries Association (CIA) dinner at London's Grosvenor House hotel, according to our own Will Beacham, deputy bureau chief of ICB.

Mandelson's speechwriters had been keen to stress reliance the chemical industry has on the automotive sector, and perhaps laboured the point, he remembers.

A furious chemical salesman contact told him afterwards that Mandelson was a fool for neglecting all the other key industry sectors, especially the product he works in. It showed his ignorance of how the industry functioned.

He told Will: "I happened to be coming back from the gents when I saw Mandelson was leaving the event and walking towards me. I went up to him and told him he knew nothing about the chemical industry and was an idiot to be coming here spouting all this nonsense."

Needless to say Mandelson's minder whisked him swiftly away from the ranting man.

The ICIS contingent at last night's Chemical Industries Association (CIA) dinner has now recovered sufficiently to be able to string a few words together about the event...

A great time was had by all in the Great Room at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London on Thursday evening at the CIA's annual dinner. The CIA had made something of a coup in attracting UK Business Secretary Lord Mandelson to speak. He was a little late and it was generally assumed that he had been involved in the horse trading which saw Baroness Ashton of Upholland (what a great title) become the EU's first High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy and Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy EU President. Mandelson had also been a potential UK candidate for the High Representative post.

He gave a good speech vowing support for the industry in innovation and skills while warning of the "huge challenge of decarbonising industrial chemistry." (Says chemical engineer Simon: "Just how we're going to do that in an industry based on organic chemistry is beyond me, but where there's a will and unlimited science budget there could be a way.")

Numbers were down, but that had to be expected given the dire year we've had. What was noticeable was that a lot of diners stayed in the Great Room to chat after the meal rather than dash off to company hospitality suites (of which there were pitifully few), and it only thinned out at close to 1.00 am.

The CIA used its most important gathering of the year to launch a new "blueprint" for UK chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing. The £60 billion industry helps support 600,000 jobs and makes a big positive contribution to the UK balance of trade and, the CIA feels, deserves wider recognition.

(Event coverage by Nigel Davis, Will Beacham, Simon Robinson, Franco Capaldo.)

Click here for ICIS news articles:

UK chemicals face total re-invention

UK chemical industry at risk - CIA

Cinemas in the Houston area are a thing of wonder, according to my ICIS colleagues there. For years I have been hearing of a cinema complex in Katy, Texas, just outside Houston, which not only has wide reclining seats, but also tables in front of the seats where waitresses bring you a meal while you're watching the film. Fantastic.

Cinemas everywhere have become vastly more comfortable, but theatres and opera houses, not to mention economy (coach) airline seats, have been slow to keep up. The hard narrow seats in the upper wings of London theatres, where you fight your neighbour for the armrest, are agony even for this snake-hipped Blog.

For those broader of beam, the new recently opened Dallas opera house has been designed by the Norman Foster architectural practice with maximum comfort in mind. During the design process, the architects reduced the number of seats from 3,300 to 2,200.

The architects said that they had found that, like many things in Texas, "the opera-going bottoms that would fill them are broader than they used to be," according to an article in Private Eye.

 (photo: dallasopera.org)

A rugby fan won himself £250,000 by kicking a ball from 30 metres directly onto the crossbar at the Saracens vs South Africa match on Tuesday.

Saracens fan Stuart Tinner won the giant cheque in the half-time kicking competition, and the video link has been circulating around the chemical publishing industry today, bringing joy and laughter into a grey afternoon. Thanks to Nigel for sending it my way.

Swine flu may have been halted in its tracks by the rise of a common cold virus, according to an article in this week's New Scientist.

Research in the US, France and Sweden has shown that rhinovirus, which causes colds, was on the rise just as the number of swine flu cases began to plateau in October.

Experts suspect rhinovirus may have blocked the spread of swine flu via a process called viral interference, which is thought to occur when one virus blocks another.

The Blog is still relying on the idea that swine flu only affects people of a different, younger age range, and has blithely booked a business trip to an east European city which is currently listed as "high risk."

Since London is also considered high risk, and the Blog is confident of being in the wrong age range, it seems a manageable risk, but we shall see.

 A weekly LinkedIn Network Update has just landed in the Blog inbox, showing how industrious all my contacts have been in joining groups, connecting with each other, updating their profiles, linking to news articles, reading books, updating their status, and planning their trips via TripIt.

The TripIt application has testimonials or "Raves" from users who can hardly contain themselves in their admiration:

• "A terrific site that has changed my travel life..." - WNBC New York TV
• "It's kind of magical..." - Joel on Software

It's just a bunch of boxes which you fill in with details of your business or holiday travel plans, so that all your contacts are emailed with updates stating that: AN Other is returning from a trip to Dubai via TripIt, or Joe Bloggs is planning a trip to New York, NY in November via TripIt.

The ostensible purpose is to alert your many contacts in Dubai or New York - so many that you couldn't possibly contact them all yourself - so that they can bombard you with requests for mutually beneficial business meetings. The real point is of course to show off to all your friends, contacts, previous and prospective employers about your globe-trotting activities. Fair enough, but "magical" or life-changing? I don't think so.

For more in a similar vein:

Persecution via LinkedIn

Best Chemicals Mag on LinkedIn poll

I've been enjoying the third book of Stieg Larssen's Millenium trilogy. My friend Philippa at Tecnon recommended the first one to me because we both enjoy Henning Mankell's Wallander series, and I was in such a hurry to buy the second book in the trilogy that I ended up buying it in hardback rather than waiting for the paperback to come out in the UK in July 2009. It's a perfect book to read on trains or flights, but it's crazy to go on a shorthaul trip with a book that weighs as much as the rest of your luggage put together.

The third book went on sale on 1 October 2009. It was in every bookshop window in its shiny dark green cover, but only in hardback until the paperback comes out in the UK next year. The list price was a staggering £18.99, although Amazon was offering it for £8 plus postage, and at 600 pages the hardback was prohibitively heavy for carry-on luggage.

I resisted, because I hate to reward this kind of manipulative marketing, but then on the way to Amsterdam for the ICIS Training Seminar in October, I weakened and went in to the WH Smiths bookshop in Heathrow's Terminal 4 to look for it.

As if the whole hardback/paperback scam wasn't annoying enough, the book was sold out and not even coming in to the WH Smith warehouse system, the assistant told me.

I took the Amsterdam flight with just a newspaper for company, but on the way back, on a table outside the Schipol florist next to racks of bulbs, the book was on sale and in paperback. It was still a weighty tome, and not exactly a bargain in euros, but it was one small short-lived consumerist triumph ...

Because last week, while I was in a discount bookshop picking up the new Terry Pratchett to give as a present, I saw that all three Millenium books were packaged together with a ribbon and a large bar of Galaxy chocolate for £21 the lot.

Along with all the other early adopters, I'd been taken to the cleaners, and the ribbon and the chocolate were just the final insult.

A big hearty round of congratulations goes out to Heinz Inhester of Ruhrpetrol who tells us that yesterday he became the grandfather of triplets.

"It's been an interesting week. And it's certainly more interesting than propylene," he told our Nel Weddle when she called to talk to him about the olefins market.

More Chemical Babies

Chemicals II: The Next Generation

Alert: Kids in the Office

Truong Mellor, editor of the ICIS butanediol (BDO) report writes ...

In a petrochemical story unlikely to make the ICIS news website, the Australian media has reported that a high-ranking member of a Hells Angels motorcycle gang is facing serious drug charges.

It is alleged the gang has been involved in trafficking large amounts of 1,4-Butanediol between Sydney and Melbourne, which when ingested turns into liquid Ecstasy, also known as GHB.

I feel a faint pucker of disappointment, as Ian Smith was known to be particularly excited about ICIS, within the great empire of businesses which is publishing giant Reed Elsevier, perhaps because of his distant links to oil and chemicals at Shell. We had been looking forward to being the recipients of his largesse and to welcoming him to spend a Day on the Shop Floor with us.

More on drinks on frigates ...

 (photo: Royal Navy frigate HMS St Albans in the Solent.)

The APPEC conference in Singapore last week had some spectacular social events every night, Christine tells me today on her return to London. At the Lukoil party, guests had their photos taken and were given souvenir postcards to take away. Here the ICIS team is captured hard at work on Russian/Singaporean détente - clockwise from top:  Roland, Vicky, Sachie, Sheldon.

I absolutely love this article about a newlywed couple finding out that their wedding cake was made of polystyrene, which Stuart spotted on the BBC news website today. Since everyone is usually too full to manage more sweet food at the end of a wedding reception, and the concept of the cake is more ceremonial and symbolic than gastronomic, the Blog thinks that this would be a good new market for hard-pressed polystyrene producers to explore.

Picture his despair when Joe Chang, a die-hard New York Mets fan - who did NOT want to see the New York Yankees win the World Series - got to his desk the morning following their triumph to find it covered in Yankees logos.

His mournful cry of "Noooo!!!" chilled the bones of all who were working in the Park Avenue South NYC offices of ICIS Chemical Business.

Polyester producer Teijin is to stage a free jazz concert in Bangkok on 6 December 2009 starring the famous saxophone player, Koh Mr Saxman, the company announced in a press release today, spotted by my fellow blogger Doris.

The concert is expected to attract two to three thousand people, and will reflect the company's green philosophy. On stage, Koh Mr Saxman will wear the company's environmentally-friendly recyclable casual jackets. After the jackets are worn out, they can be collected and recycled into new polyester materials through Teijin's "Eco Circle" closed-loop recycling system.

(photo: Koh Mr Saxman)

At last, the official EPCA photos we were all looking forward to. EPCA posted them on the website on Wednesday, where delegates are able to download them by using their conference username and password. A few selected highlights have been chosen for the Blog's readers (photos copyright EPCA).

A UK bus driver became allergic to his wife due to his reaction to polyethylene glycol, according to this article in the Telegraph.

He discovered his allergy when he was given a steroid injection containing polyethylene glycol to treat a problem with his foot. His face swelled up, his heart stopped and he had to be resuscitated.

Now he finds he comes out in a rash whenever he goes near his wife, since polyethylene glycol is a frequent ingredient in skincare products.

It's been a bad week for glycol stories in the press ...

Polyurethane swimsuits are again causing an uproar in the international world of swimming. The 50,000 members of U.S. Masters Swimming are divided over the neck-to-ankle polymer suits, and some members of the association are accusing their fellows of unfair propulsion and are pushing for a ban.

This follows the decision in July by the sport's ruling body, the Fédération Internationale de Natation, or the International Swimming Federation, known as FINA, that it would ban the suits as of January 2010 following pressure from coaches.

"The costume magically helps the wearer shed decades and seconds off the clock. The suits provide a kind of support that elite athletes never have to think about. They suck in nonaerodynamic paunches, flatten aging flab and bolster arthritic knees," according to an article in the Wall Street Journal.

(photo: Adidas)

The whole EPCA Berlin experience is captured for posterity in this video clip, shot in the lobby of the Berlin Intercontinental and the ICIS suite, and starring familiar faces from the world of petrochemicals as they rush about their business over three days in October 2009. Thanks to Stephen Burns of ICIS Houston for encapsulating the drama and passion of the event in this 2.19 minute video, with a jolly German oompah band backing track.

Glycols are back in the news and not in a good way. I read at the weekend about cats being poisoned when they drink up glycol-based antifreeze in the streets. Keen chemical reporters who set up Google alerts on glycols find that they are regularly sent news items about accidental deaths and even murders. Last year the Blog was shown news of two murder cases involving ethylene glycol (MEG).

On the same theme, a colleague who was following the nylon market, found that she was constantly being alerted to news about people hanging themselves with nylon cord. And another reporter in the ICIS London office has had to stop receiving alerts after coming across some very unpleasant news articles on the use of Butanediol (BDO) as a date rape drug.