To Hull in a handcart?

Anyone who just happened to notice my highly amusing bit of code the other day should now be under no illusion that I am not an utter geek. The reason I say that is to justify poking around the Whois database looking for any other interesting domains after the other day's little discovery.

What I found yesterday was, I have to admit, mildly interesting. It appears that one of Alan Johnson's constituency neighbours (and semi-namesake), Diana Johnson makes use of the domain "dianajohnson.co.uk". The domain itself redirects to her website hosted on the Labour Party's main site.

Now, the person that registered Diana Johnson's domain (presumably with her consent) is someone going by the name of Andy Platt. When I first saw the name it was familiar to me but I couldn't place it. Then I remebered... it's the same name that appears on the Whois database for "libdemwatch.co.uk". Could it be the same person? Well, there's an Andy Platt referenced as the designer of Revolts website, which is linked to Hull University, and he lists a domain of "ilovefizzypop.co.uk" in his email address.

ilovefizzypop.co.uk was purchased through UK2 but, interestingly, it's records are handled by the same third party "secure" provider as the dianajohnson.co.uk domain ("000025.net"). Coincindence? Possibly. However, in turn 000025.net actually use another third party called Dnszones.net (are you getting confused yet?), and Dnszones.net tracks back to a company called UH Hosting in Luton. UH Hosting just also happens to be the company that looks after libdemwatch.co.uk. Now, assuming you followed that, what it means is that it's extremely unlikely that the Andy platt that registered libdemwatch.co.uk is a different Andy Platt to the one who registered dianajohnson.co.uk.

Now that we've connected those dots it's get a little better. If you have a look under the "Links" section of Diana Johnson's site you'll notice she's linking to... LibDemWatch. Now the last time I looked LibDemWatch as a domain was dead. However, it appears to have been resurrected... well... sort of. When you hit LibDemWatch you are redirected to Yellow Peril.

Yellow Peril sits under a domain name of fourthterm.net (good huh?), which, is registered by DomainsbyProxy (a company one uses to hide the true ownership details of a domain). This company just also happens to be the registrar of a domain called Natwatch.org, an anti-nationalist party website. Why do I mention this? Well whilst it all maintains plausible denialibilty, both Natwatch, and more importantly, Yellow Peril are allegdely run by none other than.... David Taylor.

So let's just recap for those that have glazed over and to whom I apologise profusely.

1: The person responsible for Hull MP, Diana Johnson's website is called Andy Platt.
2: Andy platt also own the domain for LibDemWatch.
3: This explains why LibDemWatch is linked to from Diana Johnson's site.
4: Andy Platt has redirected LibDemWatch to Yellow Peril a site allegedly associated with David Taylor.
5: David Taylor has registered domains for Alan Johnson's leadership bid.
6: Alan Johnson also just happens to be an MP from Hull.

You do the maths.

Update: It's been suggested in the comments that the above are "tenuous" links. There are however no allegations being made above. There are merely interconnected points from an exploratory journey, that is why I told others to "do the maths". The whole often has a tendency to be greater than the sum of its parts.

Update 2: Andy Platt - bless him - appears to have redirected www.ilovefizzypop.co.uk to this very post. To be fair I'm actually quite pleased I've upset him enough to make him do it really. If anyone is angry about it though you can write to him at his address here. Notice below the different server addresses for Andy's site and mine. If you're going to try and be 1337 Andy, at least try to do it properly. Otherwise you just make yourself look silly.

-bash-2.05b$  telnet dizzythinks.blogspot.com 80
Trying 72.14.219.191...
Connected to blogspot.l.google.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
^]
telnet> quit
Connection closed.
-bash-2.05b$ telnet www.ilovefizzypop.co.uk 80
Trying 213.230.203.210...
Connected to ilovefizzypop.co.uk.
Escape character is '^]'.
^]
telnet> quit
Connection closed.