The Capitalist: Reform chairman recalls encounter with evil spirits
Baby bans, fake news and paranormal activity at Reform. Catch up on the latest gossip in this week’s instalment of The Capitalist
BANNED: SPEAR GUNS, FLARES AND BABIES
As City AM revealed this week, the list of “prohibited items” detailed on signs at London Tech Week sounded more like the menu at a terrorists’ car-boot sale. Spear guns, flares, knuckle dusters and explosives were all listed as banned, and it seems another dangerous item ought to have been included: babies. The Times reported that entrepreneur Davina Schonle was barred from entering on the grounds that she had her eight-month old daughter with her. She was rightly furious with the absurd decision, but remarkably a spokesperson for London Tech Week doubled down, saying “the environment hasn’t been designed to incorporate the particular needs, facilities and safeguards that under-16s require.” Meanwhile, sessions yesterday at the annual tech jamboree included “empowering communities” and “designing equitable workplaces.” All well and good, as long as you’re not a working mum, it seems.
HAUNTED BY REFORM
New Reform chairman David Bull may have run into an awkward moment when presented with a tweet he made in 2014 calling Nigel Farage an “idiot” during an interview on Good Morning Britain, but that’s not the only ghost of Bull’s past that’s come back to haunt him. Asked by Richard Madeley if he believed in ghosts, the politician – who formerly presented Most Haunted, a TV live ghost hunt – recounted one of his own most spooky encounters with the paranormal. Having felt a presence in his car after a day’s filming, Bull recalled how the show’s medium told him his late grandmother was with him. “Then he changed facially, he started to channel her… and then he jumped on me and tried to strangle me,” Bull recounted. Turns out he had been “hijacked by an evil spirit” while trying to contact his grandmother, the medium explained the next day. The whole encounter, naturally, occurred off air.
LADIES WHO LUNCH
The Sun’s Harry Cole is well known in many of London’s top restaurants, often to be seen splitting a bottle with top sources, but even he was surprised by a tip from a hospitality spy pointing out that one Mayfair eatery this week saw David Cameron and George Osborne in the company of Robert Jenrick, while Nigel Farage, property tycoon Nick Candy and adventurer Bear Grylls ate at a nearby table. To top it off, Jacob Rees-Mogg was also in for lunch, though no word on who he dined with. Perhaps it was a table for one.
MEET THE ALI, HARRY, BARRY FAMILY
If ‘We earn £345k, but soaring private school fees mean we can’t go on five holidays’ sounds like a made up headline to you, you have better media literacy than The Telegraph, which last week was forced to pull an article that has now been proven to be based on a fake case study. Sleuth Ian Fraser first raised the alarm, noting the smiling, five-holiday-a-year family was a stock image from 13 years ago, while no traces of bankers Al and Alexandra Moy could be found online. In response to the debacle, the newspaper conceded its “internal processes were not strong enough” in this instance, but reaffirmed it took the quality of its journalism “very seriously”. According to Press Gazette, it is understood the case study was set up by a PR, with the journalist none the wiser that her interviewee did not exist. One giveaway perhaps? The not-at-all-suspiciously-named family: Al, Alexandra, Ali, Harry and Barry.
CHANCELOR REEVEZ
As the Chancellor gives with one hand and takes away with the other, evidence suggests that the spending axe may have already fallen in her own department. In a post on X hailing the government’s investment in nuclear energy, Rachel Reeves claimed to be “investing in Britian” while putting “more money people’s pockets”. The Capitalist understands that typos are an occupational hazard among publishers but perhaps at the Treasury it’s a case of ‘you get what you pay for’.