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What put the fox in the coop for the city’s PR man, Neil Bennett, last week?
Was one of your clients playing? Had a chief executive spoken out of turn or was an angry journalist ruining a campaign? The problem lay in the poultry game closer to home, with the advisor’s chickens.
Bennett has kept birds at the bottom of his garden for 25 years, where they have been providing eggs to H/Advisors co-chief executive Maitland.
Has British bureaucracy gone mad?: Neil Bennett has to register his chickens or face a £5,000 fine for each one he fails to declare
But to his horror, Bennett has to register them or face a £5,000 fine for each one he fails to declare.
It is the latest decree from the Department for Food and Rural Affairs and, as he points out, yet another example of Britain’s bureaucracy gone mad.
Bennett, in a column in City AM newspaper, foresees trouble, writing: “When the Defra man arrives, owners will smuggle their birds into sheds, even cupboards and cupboards, and pretend they were never there.”
Afiniti hires big and good for its advisory board
Afiniti is at it again, hiring the great and good to its advisory board.
The Bermuda-based technology company was best known for employing David Cameron before the now Foreign Secretary resigned in 2021 in a hearing into sexual harassment allegations against its founder Zia Chishti.
But a newly designed Afiniti website shows former BT boss Gavin Patterson and former Unilever chief executive Alan Jope have joined the team.
Rupert Soames struggles to remember ‘Cool Britannia’
The other night Rupert Soames of the Confederation of British Industry spoke to Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch at a dinner in the city.
After discussing Brexit and Britain’s place in the world, Soames recalled when he felt “most optimistic” about UK business.
‘It was in 2012 with the Olympic Games, it was a wonderful thing, Cool Britannia, we had a brand. It seems like an eternity ago, but it was only 12 years,’ he stated.
In fact, the London Olympics were 12 years ago, but, as Badenoch reminded Soames, Cool Britannia was more than 25 years ago, in 1997.
Perhaps neither of them cared to remember those halcyon days under New Labour.
Is England manager Southgate looking for a job as a banker?
Goldman Sachs was in an uproar last week after Gareth Southgate was spotted at its London offices.
The England manager was due to give a talk to Goldman’s top brass on “leadership under pressure”.
England are heading to the Euros this summer and Southgate will step down after the tournament.
Could the former Aston Villa and Middlesbrough star, who left school with eight O levels, be tempted to work as an investment banker?
It would surely be easier than managing Manchester Utd if Erik ten Hag was sacked, arguably the most difficult job in football.
Contributors: Ruth Sunderland and Patrick Tooher