Dear Readers,
Welcome to Off The Fence, our fortnightly propaganda-slash-newsletter arm.
Issue 5 will be with subscribers very soon, and we are working away on our Christmas special. If you haven’t yet subscribed, you can do so here.
We have pieces on Martin Amis, Joe Lewis, Mick Jagger, Chris Rokos and also a link to an article that you all must read.
Homegrown Oligarchs
In the last twenty years, English football clubs have become an attractive investment for Russian asset-strippers and Middle Eastern autocrats. While many have decried foreign kleptocrats’ influence on the beautiful game, much of this criticism skirts arounds the fact that Britain is perfectly capable of birthing its own gruesome tycoons.
Mike Ashley, the Sports Direct billionaire famous for vomiting into a pub fireplace, is yet to relinquish control of Newcastle United, while Owen Oyston, a convicted rapist, was only forced out of Blackpool in 2018.
Tottenham Hotspur, the eternal nearly-men of the Premier League, has been majority-owned by the secretive billionaire Joe Lewis since 2001. While Lewis was born in Bow, he has been domiciled abroad since making a patriotic fortune betting against the pound in 1992. He operates between Florida, the Bahamas and Argentina, and South America is where he has been carving out a Bond villain-style empire.
In Patagonia, on the perfectly-named Lago Escondido (Hidden Lake), Lewis and his sons have accrued a landholding of some 50,000 acres. Which would be legal, of course, but for the fact they are foreigners, and under Act 26, 737 of Argentine National Law, foreigners cannot own rural real estate.
Why Lewis is so desperate to own a vast slice of wilderness is a matter of conjecture. But it has not been without opposition. In 1999, Lewis’ helicopter was blown up in what was an alleged murder attempt. Since then, he has continued to add to his properties, and also to scrupulously remove public access to the lake.
There have been mass protests throughout local towns and court cases brought against Lewis which, as this article speculates, have been dismissed owing to Lewis’ friendship with Mauricio Macri, the former President of Argentina.
There’s been precious little coverage of homegrown oligarchs from our own rapacious, indefatigable press. We wonder why.
Hedge Fund Activism
You’ve probably not heard of Chris Rokos. He went to Eton, then Oxford, then Goldman Sachs, before setting up his own firm, Rokos Capital. He became a billionaire by the age of 42. He retired in 2012 and gave a lot of money to the Tories and flirted with the idea of funding political magazines. He’s now back at the helm of his hedge fund, and keeps dipping in and out of the news.
In July, he offered employees a £150 daily travel fund, so they could shuttle to and from the Mayfair office without resorting to public transport.
Now, in a rare statement, he has pledged support for the Black Lives Matter movement, focusing on supporting educational charities in the capital to reverse the ‘inequality of opportunity’ latent throughout the City.
Hedge funds in London operate with the most extraordinary secrecy, and Chris Rokos is no exception. In our analysis, there are just over 1,250 words on the whole of Rokos Capital’s website, and more than half of those are from the BLM statement.
While it may be easy to be cynical about his public pronouncement, particularly as he does not disclose Rokos’ own staff diversity, this sort of direct and public approach is a rarity among the capital’s most powerful. Kudos to Rokos? Possibly. It would be easier to ladle praise on him for this sort of statement, if he didn’t make his fortunes in such an intransigently opaque manner.
Uyghurs in London
It is happening again. One of the most powerful countries in the world is practising a genocide against an ethnic minority while the world watches on indifferently.
Our own contributor John Phipps has spent a year speaking with the exiled Uyghurs in London. They are too afraid to reveal themselves for fear of repercussions for their own family, as the Chinese state monitors all communications for signs of dissent.
The long-read, published yesterday, is available here.
Abu Hamza, Novelist
Now, jokes at the expense of Martin Amis are two-a-penny, but this is really something special: Chris Morris, the piratical genius of Brasseye, dropping the immortal line, ‘What I can tell you is that Martin Amis is the new Abu Hamza.’
Written thirteen years ago, yes, this is true. But the byline at the bottom offers a hint at what was to come, ‘Chris Morris is making a comedy about jihadis for Channel 4’. This ‘comedy’ turned out to be Four Lions: a hysterically funny film which also ends with a suicide attack on the London Marathon.
As Riz Ahmed, the star of the film, notes in this oral history, ‘I think it’s worth noting that probably the most beloved film about British Muslims, by British Muslims, is made by Chris Morris.’ Something to ponder for those who reckon satire is dead.
Bridges to Babylon
Now, this hasn’t been the cheeriest newsletter, so we thought we’d end with something sweet. Everyone likes Tom Stoppard, and everyone likes Mick Jagger (especially people who pretend not to like Mick Jagger). And guess what? They really like each other, too!
Back in 2008, a friend of The Fence had been interviewing the eminent playwright for a major newspaper, when they found themselves, in a day sent from the Gods, backstage at a Rolling Stones gig, this time to interview the band about a new album/ tour/ grandson/ great-grandson.
Enter Mick Jagger, leaving the young journo a little tongue-tied at the resplendent sight of his Satanic Majesty. Searching for something to say, our friend said, ‘um, Mick, I was just with… um… Tom Stoppard earlier?’
The singer stopped in his tracks and gave a beaming smile, before whispering in a perfect mock-aristocratic drawl, ‘Well, next time you see him, give my best to the old chap.’
He then sashayed onto the stage, at the age of 64, and launched into Jumping Jack Flash.
That’s it for this week. We’ll be back soon with more insider accounts, bookworld gossip and assorted titbits. Please do recommend this newsletter to your friends, and if you would like to get in touch with us, you can do so by responding to this email.
All the best,
TF
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