TRASHFUTURE - *PREVIEW* The Honourables feat. Gareth Dennis

Episode Date: March 1, 2025

  NOTE: There's a slight issue with some echoes in this recording. We're trying to get it all fixed and will update if we can, but we don't want to delay the episode! Thank you for your patience, as ever.. Gareth Dennis returns to discuss infrastructure, growth, and the new airport runways that are about to festoon this island with promises of imaginary growth. But first, we present to you one of the Guys Of All Time. Get Gareth's book here! And check out Rail Natter here! The entire episode is available on Patreon here! *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s UK Tour here: https://miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

All right. I had notes and they went in an order. Yes. We were preparing for a normal episode and then we discovered, as we sometimes do, a guy who changed everything. We've taken the notes out back. We've shot them in the head with a bulk up. You're not seeing the notes again. The notes are done. Gareth Dennis is here. We're going to be lucky if we talk about infrastructure basically at all, unless it's tangentially connected to this guy.

And I'm enforcing that. I do not want to talk about trends. I do not want to talk about plans. I want to talk about none of that. There is only one thing we can talk about, and it is, peek behind the curtain everyone, what we have all been laughing about here for the best part of like 45 minutes now. Yeah, it's something that like we discovered, Riley and I discovered on the phone calls who arranged the episode ahead of time. It was just going to be a kind of like passing like news thing. And then I did the most surface level of

investigation and I discovered just a real personage. One man's website. So what we're going to do is we're just going to do that. This was going to, so you know, this was going to be like the third segment before we run into the startup if we had had time, and then talking about the Heathrow runway expansion. Instead, we're going to jump right in because this story I already love. And this is before we even found out about the sun. Yeah, the sun, not the sun, the the star, the sun. S.O.M. This is like one of the suns of all time. Yeah, we need another Heathrow runway just for this guy's business trip.

He's a jet setter. He needs a dedicated runway. This harkens back to probably my favorite UK political story of the last several years, which was of course the very unfair and biased character assassination of the Honorable Scott Benton by cowardly undercover journalists who didn't even say they were trying to trick him into breaking the law to lobby for gambling. And I think that just on that alone. You have to tell me you're a journalist, otherwise it's entrapment. Hold on to that thought. Are you a real shake? I've been stung before.

It's so easy to sting like politically connected British people. They keep doing it. MPs keep leaning directly into the hidden microphone to go, cash for questions? I love to. Yeah. Could you say that more distinctly please into the obviously keep calm and carry on tea towel I've crudely draped over my head? This is reported in The Guardian and look, cheers to The Guardian for very few cheers to them in general, but cheers to them for this one story of sending in an undercover reporter to expose corruption in the Labour Party's House of Lords.

Big Jobs Guardian sit down. Cheers to the Guardian. Cheers. Cheers to the Guardian for not just googling the name of the sun and then having the real story. And then writing the long read, sort of 30,000 words that we are going to give you. Yes. Yeah. Well, they've done that thing the FT do, but in like a, in a less explicit way, where sometimes the FT will be like, we can't write about this, but you should talk about it.

But the Guardian have done that kind of like accidentally where they've just, they've just failed to discover a powerful trash future guy. It is funny that that did happen once or twice. So no, this is, so Lord David Evans, not the guy who used to be in charge of the Labour Party after Jenny Formby. This is a different David Evans, who is so Lord David Evans not the guy used to be in charge of the Labour Party after Jenny Formby This is a different David Evans who is 82 years old cool. Love our aging population Yeah was recorded promising to help undercover reporters lobby the government for planning permission and

Like to maintain like investment laws and stuff sure to turn shopping malls into terrible home Just just normal style corruption, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Debenhams quarter. The kind of thing that, like, if you didn't know for a fact was being discussed, you would kind of conclude must be, right? By virtue of just, it's one of the things that would seem likely to happen. Yeah, my living room actually used to be a Clarence concession.

I call it my house of Fraser. The cottages at Clinton Cards. We all know, by the way, that every plan to try to, quote unquote, solve the housing crisis by repurposing stuff that isn't housing into housing is never works. The episode on the back with Roz, it doesn't work. It never works. They're different buildings for different purposes. It doesn't work. They're different buildings for different purposes.

Yeah, doesn't work anyway. The undercover report, a mall would be especially hilarious. Like, I hate windows. I don't want more than one room. I like to be freezing cold. What we all want to do, every person's fondest dream is to live in the Glades shopping center. Yeah, join me in my food court.

The undercover reporters posed as representatives of property investors who wanted to turn all department stores into homes, which was like, permitted development as introduced by the Tories. And basically the reporters said to David Evans, we want to be sure that the Labour government retains these rules. Can you please get us access to Angela Rayner so we can do that? We asked the oldest cunt in the world, hey, can you do some corruption for us? And he's like, I will give you Angela Reiner's I assume it's a telegraph number I'll give you the combination of like signal flags that you need to stand on your roof and use to make contact with her Angela Reiner getting her first ever message in Morse code

Guy arrives handing her a telegram Can you please give me where can I send a singing telegram? Strippagram Can you please give me, where can I send a singing telegram? A strip-o-gram? Hello, hello, hello! We want to build some malls! Guy in like a scantily clad fireman outfit comes in and goes, I hear there's a naughty girl in here who might like to do some corruption. Sorry, that's a strip of ground. But he appeared to be willing to break Lord's rules by offering access to ministers during discussions with the fake developers concerning sponsorship of a commercial event in parliament run by his son. Yes.

And the first detail, the first detail that grabbed me about this was his son. I hear about a fail son, right? And I assume a certain type of guy. How old, this is a biographical detail they usually give you second in a newspaper article. What age is this guy's son? I would love to tell everybody the age of the son. The age of the son who is like relying on his father to channel like political quote unquote donations towards him. He is a 56 year old on his like millionth unpaid internship supported by his father. I need to like really help my 56 year old fail son get started in life.

That explains all- okay I don't want to shoot our thoughts here, there is a website coming up, that's all I'm gonna say about that, but it- suddenly I didn't realize- Intern Energy, suddenly the website is that bit more explained. It's heavy internet, anyways. I think if anything this guy is a success son. suddenly I didn't realize it, internet energy, suddenly the website is that bit more explained. I think if anything, this guy is a success son. Like I've read his website. This guy's leading a life. Someone who's like taking their son to work today. I do have to say that. Your son does look kind of horrified by the podcast. Yeah. 56 year old son to work. Yeah. Bring your 56 year old son to work. Yeah, of course. So then Richard Evans is, so this is how he's described in the Guardian article. During these discussions Richard proposed creating opportunities

alongside the event to be ministers in Parliament, making it very clear the payment of 25,000 pounds to his company for the sponsorship had to happen first. The House of Lords event at the heart of these discussions is one of at least four run by Richard Evans. So Richard Evans has like four companies that are just there to take like money from people who want to get. You gotta pay like 25k like introduction fee, talk to my son. Yeah. In which Lord Evans holds a third of the shares when pressed Lord Evans said he quote totally forgot that he had shares in the company.

I mean if he's 80 years old that might be true. Yeah. No idea what I'm doing. In years old, that might be true. Yeah. No idea what I'm doing. In my defense, what time is it? I divested with that with the South Sea bubble. If you're in the House of Lords, one of your defenses against allegations of corruption can just be drawing a clock. Why?

I only own shares in Malaysian slave holdings. When he was like a middle-aged man, like, it'd probably be very common to have like an and son's business, right? So he probably is just sort of treating it that way. Like, you know, what's right? Like, if, like, if a cobbler can do it, why can't I? And I mean, I guess in the strictest sense, if the House of Lords can't be a family business, what can it be?

So later in the meeting, he said, before the event, we start introducing these people people and by the way, there's nothing untowards about this We're just thinking creatively. That's that's a really funny like Proviso to like begin a meeting. It's very much like the Eric Adams thing of like after getting arrested every day I start every meeting by telling people to obey the law just sitting down and being like right, so we all agree There's nothing criminal about what we're doing here. Now onto the crimes. One way of defending this is basically by saying, but look, this country has a loneliness crisis, right?

And he's fulfilling his part in trying to aid that by introducing people. And if they happen to make a friend that they can do business and deals with, then what's the harm in that, right? He's trying to build a relationship with my son. Is 25 grand really too high a price to pay to end male loneliness? Yeah, because it's just like an elite social club, right? You know, it's like the super elite speed dating things where you also have like a high premium to sort of get in, apparently.

Yeah, it's like a very specific dating network where one side is like construction firms and the other side is Angela Reiner. So, what he actually did, right, so let's go into this further. According to his son, Lord Evans had been nervous before the meeting that David Evans had dialed into, with Richard Evans saying to the Guardian reporters, he's worried he thinks that this could just be the Guardian. He's ever so close. Getting warmer.

I thought it was weird when those construction guys turned up wearing Guardian lanyards, Guardian work IDs, a bunch of them had by-wides in the Guardian, but they assured me it was just a coincidence. Yeah, when these construction guys turned up and asked if that was a vegan option. But their hands were very soft. I thought it was weird that they sat down and started telling me about like how trans women are men. It doesn't really relate to mostly about wild swimming. I don't understand. It was weird. They were two guys who owned a construction co- or who represented guys who owned a construction company, but they seemed to really hate their colleague Owen Jones. Yeah.

Weird. Anyway. Yeah, I didn't know he was in construction.