London Conversation

Happy Friday, it’s been a funny old week.

Less than 36 hours till the next Gabriel Pogrund Sunday Times onslaught on the Rishi Administration – though to be fair the real targets last week were Richard Sharp at the top of the BBC, one Boris “Al Kamal” Johnson, and Nadhim Zahawi.

Pogrund was behind a lot of the fake Corbyn antisemitism stories so I think it’s important to remember that under all circumstances he still bats for the Tory Party.

Rupert put them there and Rupert can take them away.

I happened to be meeting a friend, Shyam Bhatia, former middle east and diplomatic correspondent for the Observer Guardian by the British Library last Tuesday.

Shyam is writing a book on atrocities committed in India during the Raj.

We were chatting away and I recognised someone enter the café. Though I’d never heard of him till last Saturday I was sure the gentleman in question was the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Jake Wallis Simons.

He’d been on the Sky newspaper review on Saturday night and essentially had gone out to bat for Boris and Richard Sharp. It’s all too easy to jump to conclusions, get the wrong end of the stick, put one ‘s foot in it.

But I politely introduced Jake to Shyam and it turned out that Shyam had written for Jake a couple of times in the last year and that they had both written about Adolph Eichmann.

There followed an interesting chat between the two men about both Eichmann and the Iranian nuclear programme.

I took this snap and when Shyam left told Jake that though I don’t have the same views as him on Jeremy Corbyn that I’d seen his appearance on Sky News.

I told him that I didn’t think it was good that Robbie Gibb who isn’t even Jewish is the sole director of the Jewish Chronicle Holding company and also the representative director for England on the BBC Board.

Jake neither agreed not disagreed, merely acknowledging that I’d spoken.

It would have been good to ask him other questions but it didn’t feel appropriate as he was just having his lunch and may have had other things on his mind.

He did tell a great story about being sent to cover one of Eichmann’s kids in Argentina for the Online Mail.

I’d have liked to have asked him about working with Geordie Greig at the Mail and the way the Epstein / Maxwell / Greig thing was covered. Greig is now back for Lebedev at the Independent. Very weird.

Another ex Chancellor George Osborne edited the Lebedev / Saudi owned Evening Standard and picked up more jobs before working for the Simon Robey banking outfit.

Robey’s wife Victoria Robey is Chair of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and used to be married to … Richard Sharp.

Victoria Robey’s uncle was John Gutfreund a major character in Michael Lewis’s Liars Poker about bond traders at Salomon Brothers.

Several of the the characters in Liars Poker feature in Nicholas Dunbar’s Inventing Money about the Long Term Capital Management LTCM hedge fund that flew too close to the sun and nearly brought down the world economy following the Russian domestic bond default in August 1998.

The bailout was the precursor to post 2008 bailout, reduced interest rates and QE culture. The roots of the recent unconventional financial and economic management of the world economy were put down in Wall Street. Richard Sharp was extremely close to the action.

I went over to another café where I met a certain delinquent historian who told me a tale regarding parallels in the corruption of today as with the corruption of yesteryear.

We noticed that just as Reggie Maudling a former Tory Chancellor had to resign as Home Secretary from Edward Heath’s government for serious financial irregularities so too is former Chancellor Zahawi in some trouble regarding his finances.

Of course former Chancellor Maudling was very popular among pump and dump style property developer financiers and was on the books of many a crooked firm when in opposition. But the Paulson case prosecution in which he was mentioned led to him having to resign.

There were of course also Labour shenanigans. One involving the head of Newcastle Council T Dan Smith. He was friends with Edward “Teddy” Short – leader of the House of Commons and a former Newcastle councillor too. A man called Cornfeld on this occasion played the role of the American property developer. The development was called Peterlee in the North East.

Short had been helping Cornfeld and T Dan Smith lobby at Downing Street and the papers started to write about it. T Dan Smith would have likely injuncted them and so a certain delinquent historian wrote a 2 page article for the Chartist magazine / pamphlet

The head of Wandsworth council, then Labour, was done for taking property related bribes administered by T Dan Smith. His name was Sidney Sporle. It’s not often you hear of Council leaders going to jail. Of course Tesco heiress Shirley Porter of Westminster Council came close. She had to escape to Israel and claim bankruptcy. Wandsworth went on to be a Tory flagship and in 1994 was where the political career began of a young Nadhim Zahawi. By the way Zahawi’s grandad ran the central bank of Iraq and had his signature on the notes. Just saying.

T Dan Smith himself was not jailed for bribery. But he ended up doing time for other fraud.

The fraud squad arranged a meeting with the delinquent historian – they told him they knew of his work and that they had dirt they couldn’t use.

The cops showed the historian an article in the Telegraph in which Short was asked aggressively about T Dan Smith – and his wife cried.

Turns out Short’s wife was the company secretary of the Peterlee Project.

The historian informed the lefty labour MPs like Dennis Skinner and an inquiry was set up by the Government into Edward Short.

Short was cleared by the committee but 6 questions were not released to the public. They probably related to his wife.

Some months later Short was reshuffled out of Government. He was made a Lord. But he was also made Chairman of Cable and Wireless. The firm had merged its operations with Marconi so it was basically a military intelligence and spying operation.

Why would Short have been protected like this? It appears he was part of the Anglo German friendship society which pushed appeasement in the 1930s. Maybe he was a double agent.

Guess who was the chair of Cable and Wireless after Short? From 1980 to 1990, with a period as CEO too, the head of Cable and Wireless was Eric Sharp – Richard Sharp’s dad. He’d run Monsanto Europe previously. When they were spraying Vietnam with Agent Orange.

So when Sharp took over at the BBC it was really MI5 & MI6 tightening their control over the information operations in the UK. Of course he’ll stay. He’s not even being paid for the job.

To quote a friend: ” if the job is evil enough, I’ll do it for free”

In 1985 Paul Lashmar revealed how MI5 had an office at the BBC.

I met Dugher once. He was a very nice man. I’m sure he isn’t always. Smart guy. I’m guessing he’s quite good at getting his way. But also at reverse psychology and reading the room.

So now I’m off to the playground – have a wonderful day!