Rumours, whispers and City gossip in this week’s edition of The Capitalist

BAYEUX PLATFORMS TAPESTRY OF CRITICISM

Titans of industry and finance gathered earlier this week at the British Museum for the CBI’s annual reception, with a glimpse of the famous Bayeux Tapestry acting as an incentive to RSVP. But The Capitalist’s eye was drawn not to the latest corporate takeover of the hottest exhibition in town, but to the name of the guest speaker. You know that political plates are shifting when Britain’s biggest business group books a guest speaker not from the BBC or IFS but from the CPS, with a dash of Daily Telegraph on the side. Newly installed boss at the free-market Centre for Policy Studies (and Telegraph columnist/podcast supremo) Liam Halligan boomed through the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery with a thundering critique of government largesse, high borrowing and debt. Was it overly political? Halligan told The Capitalist that “basic arithmetic has no ideology.”

‘REBEL’ RAPPER IS SECRETLY AN ACCOUNTANT

Music and accountancy have never been obvious bedfellows, although one man is hoping to change that by penning his own rap songs about taxation. Yes, you read that right. Andy Oury, otherwise known as The Rebel Accountant, has written songs including Can’t Tax This, which he performs to the music of MC Hammer. The track talks about how growth won’t come from taxing SMEs. I can feel my toes tapping already…..

LIME APPRECIATES ‘MEDIEVAL SPIRIT’ OF JOUSTS

Medieval culture collided, quite literally, with the modern day this week as the latest trend was revealed to be Lime Bike jousting. These battles weren’t started by teenagers messing about, though, but an artist and actor who claimed to be putting on a piece of performance art when they staged their initial dual in East London. Over four million people have watched footage from some of the jousting events, and some of those videos depicting men dressed in Medieval attire ramming into one another with sticks have racked up millions of views. The E-bike rental company have insisted that the knights must derobe, calling an end to the jousts in a statement which read that “safety must come first.” They did admit that they “appreciated the medieval spirit.”

PR REFORM MUCH NEEDED FOR FARAGE

On Tuesday, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and his economic affairs deputy Robert Jenrick spoke to crowds in Plymouth to warn that “Britain is broken”. Normally, press officers are all hands on deck to make sure everything looks and sounds on message. But in the middle of his speech, a friend of The Capitalist received a notification saying that Farage’s top communications officer had just completed a game on Linkedin. We all get a tad distracted at work…