Is there a way to force Safari on my iPad to always display desktop sites? I'm trying to change some of my Gmail settings on the mail.google.com site through my iPad, but Safari is always showing the mobile Gmail site rather than the desktop site.

Is there a way to force Safari to not send the fact that it's a 'mobile' device, or always show the full site?
There is no way to force Safari to do this,

There are browsers on the app store which work around the mobile site to teh non mobile site. One such browser is Atomic ($0.99 or free) 

Hope that helps.