A few days ago I received an invitation to join 19 other people for “Dinner on top of the World”. The event that I was being invited to is taking place tomorrow evening and I was intrigued by the words that formed the invitation. The top of the world could mean a number of things but I read on and discovered that the invitation which came from Conservative Way Forward or CWF was not actually referring to a location as high as 29,029 feet Mount Everest or 28,251 feet high K2 or being as the invitation was in Europe the top of Mount Elbrus at 18,510 feet high. The tallest mountain in the UK is in Scotland, 4437 feet high Ben Nevis. Even the tallest part of the South Downs near where I live which is called Butser Hill is 889 feet high and it is a nice place to have dinner at this time of year. However perhaps not surprisingly the CWF world is centred around London and with the lack of high hills or mountains, London has a number of buildings that certainly surpass the South Downs. The Shard where friends of mine have eaten in the past is 1016 feet high, although of course one cannot eat on the top of the building and I am not sure how high their dining spaces are. There are three buildings in Canada Square which are over 650 feet high, and then at the position of the 10th highest building in London at a massive 591 feet is 30 St Mary Axe or what is referred to as the Gherkin. Finally we have identified the place which the Conservative Way Forward campaigners believe to be on top of the World. The size of the Gherkin means that fractionally under 50 buildings of that size would fit into the same size as Everest.

I am grateful for the invitation Paul Osborn, Councillor from the lovely London Borough of Harrow. The invitation includes the chance to meet and listen to a chap called Robert Colvile who is Director of the Centre for Policy Studies and Editor-in-Chief of CapX. He was previously Head of Comment at the Daily and Sunday Telegraph.

As Paul stated in the invitation “our dinners are where key people discuss the issues in a frank and candid manor. Now is your chance to be at one of them and help shape the policies of the government…..The Gherkin is not normally open to the public so make sure you take this opportunity to dine in one of London’s highest venues.”

So apparently the 20 people who are attending will make a major impact towards how the Government operates, or perhaps just as the idea of the Gherkin being at the top of the world is something of an exaggeration, so too the promise of the dinner being so amazing will also be a bit of a stretch. One of the aspects of the invitation which struck me was that since May 25th, one would imagine that CWF would have sent out a message inviting people to confirm they want to stay on their database. Perhaps they are not big fans of such legislation!