No banking for you!
-
This crap is out of hand…Either get in line with Gender Ideology movement or lose the ability to conduct commerce…
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/uk-news/scots-gender-equality-campaigner-bank-30398305
https://www.gbnews.com/money/high-street-banks-partnership-stonewall-accounts-shut-down
-
Leftist pop culture is captured by a good vs evil ethos. When one is good, these sorts of measures against evil, feel courageous and virtuous. Look for this stuff to happen in America if Trump gets the nomination, and the leftist mob scrabbles for ways to harm his supporters. We got a minor taste of it during his first term, where restaurants would sometimes let it be known that Trump supporters were not welcome, but the taste for the flesh of the evil ones has only gotten more extreme since then.
-
@George-K said in No banking for you!:
It's possible, but not certain, that he's not providing the full story.
According to this report he was refused a particular type of bank account, because he didn't have sufficient funds. He was offered a regular bank account by the bank that owns the bank that refused him.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66097039
The fact that he's threatening to go and live in another country does carry a certain irony.
-
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/07/07/the-terrifying-rise-of-debanking/
Last week, former Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage announced that his Coutts bank account of over 40 years had been closed against his will and without any real explanation. The motive might have been political, he speculated. Perhaps Coutts, the prestigious private bank for the wealthy, had taken exception to his support for Brexit. Farage went on to claim that nine other banks have refused his custom, too. This seemed like a potential case of what has become known as ‘debanking’ – that is, the practice of withholding banking services to individuals, because of the views they hold.
The BBC, however, was not convinced. It quickly tried to debunk Farage’s claims. This week, it claimed that Coutts’ decision to close his account was commercial, not ideological. Apparently, he did not have enough money in the account to meet the elite bank’s ‘wealth threshold’.But this was not the clincher the BBC thought it was. Farage has since pointed out that his wealth levels have never been a problem before for Coutts. And the BBC has had to acknowledge that other Coutts customers have fallen below the wealth threshold but have been able to keep their accounts. ‘Clearly a lot of discretion [is] available to the bank’, Simon Jack, the BBC’s business editor, later conceded.
As it stands, we do not know exactly why Farage’s account was closed. But we do know that he is not the only one claiming to have been ‘debanked’. In fact, over the past week or so, numerous cases have emerged of people being denied access to financial services, seemingly on the basis of their political views. This has included activists, parents groups and even people with no political background at all.Banks seem to be taking particular exception to opponents of wokeness. Shortly after Farage’s battle with Coutts went public, it was reported that Metro Bank had denied services to Our Duty, a gender-critical group. This association of 2,000 parents is trying to spread the message that the medical transitioning of children is harmful. The group’s founder claims that Metro Bank declined to open a business account for Our Duty, on the basis that its aims and beliefs ‘conflict with the culture and ideas [Metro Bank is] pushing’. Given that Metro Bank is a member of trans lobby group Stonewall’s Diversity Champion scheme, we can assume that it is ‘pushing’ gender ideology.
Similarly, Stuart Campbell – the man behind pro-independence blog Wings Over Scotland – claimed last month that First Direct, his bank for over 25 years, cancelled his personal account out of the blue, without even informing him. He only found out when his card was declined at the supermarket.
First Direct offered no explanation as to why it did this to Campbell. But it’s possible to make an educated guess. As well as campaigning for Scottish independence, Campbell has not held back when attacking the excesses of woke ideology. Recently, he has been especially critical of the SNP’s trans policies.
Like Campbell, Anglican vicar Reverend Richard Fothergill also appears to have been debanked for his critical take on trans issues. After being asked by the Yorkshire Building Society earlier this year to give some routine general feedback on his customer experience, Fothergill fired off an email complaining about the YBS’s incessant promotion of trans ideology during Pride month. Fothergill said the building society should stick to financial affairs and keep out of the culture war. The YBS responded by telling the reverend that it had a ‘zero tolerance approach to discrimination’. It then promptly closed his account.Make no mistake, banks and building societies are increasingly engaged in a culture war against their own customers. They are targeting those who hold what they deem to be the wrong views. Halifax even told customers to ‘close their account’ if they didn’t like its new policy of encouraging employees to wear pronoun badges at work.
Online financial transaction platforms have already been setting the precedent in this regard. Last year, for example, PayPal famously deplatformed Toby Young and his Free Speech Union. And a few months ago, fintech company Tide cancelled the Triggernometry podcast’s bank account for seemingly no reason at all. Again, what connects both Young and Triggernometry is their opposition to woke identity politics.
But it’s not just banks’ wokeness that is fuelling the phenomenon of debanking. There are other drivers behind it, too. Take, for example, banks’ refusal to serve ‘politically exposed persons’ (PEPs). These are typically political representatives or their family members. Banks are required to carry out extra checks on these clients and are able to refuse them services on the grounds they are susceptible to bribery and corruption. Farage acknowledged that he has been deemed a PEP, and this could be where his banking trouble stems from.
The PEP system may seem sensible at first glance, but in practice it’s producing bizarre results. Sunday Times columnist Dominic Lawson, for example, faced trouble as a PEP, due to being the son of the late Conservative chancellor, Nigel Lawson. In 2016, Dominic’s disabled daughter was denied a bank account at Barclays because of ‘money laundering risks’. Similarly, Times columnist Hugo Rifkind was labelled a PEP because his father was a former MP. Apparently, the criteria for being a PEP is so broad that even Ivo Dawnay, a journalist, was deemed to be one because is the brother-in-law of Boris Johnson.
Perhaps some banks are applying the PEP rules a bit too rigorously. Clearly, the distant relatives of politicians pose a very low risk for money laundering and corruption.
Whether the PEP rules are to blame for Nigel Farage’s woes remains to be seen. In any case, these regulations cannot explain the debanking of all those non-politicians – of all those activists, journalists and opinionated citizens who have no connection to the political class.This rise in debanking is incredibly serious. By refusing to grant people access to their services, banks are threatening to take away people’s ability to earn a living, run a business, pay bills or apply for loans. This is an extraordinary punishment for holding a dissenting opinion. The threat debanking poses to free speech is utterly terrifying – and it must be resisted.
-
The collision of Brexit cheerleader Nigel Farage, a regal private bank, the BBC and the Conservative Party exploded into a quintessentially British scandal this week, costing the job of one of the country’s top bankers and igniting a debate over how lenders protect their reputations without discriminating against outspoken clients.
The damage was apparent on Wednesday. Alison Rose, chief executive of NatWest NWG -1.85%decrease; red down pointing triangle, one of the country’s biggest banks, resigned under pressure from the government, with calls for fresh scrutiny into how banks decide whom to allow as customers. The tightly woven and overlapping British power centers—banks, media, and politicians in the corridors of power—all played their role.
The origins of the affair began weeks before, when Farage, a British TV presenter known as the godfather of Brexit, waged a public battle with Coutts—an exclusive private bank owned by NatWest—after the bank closed his account.
Farage said Coutts, famed for banking the late Queen Elizabeth II, ditched him because of his pro-Brexit and anti-woke views. During a charity dinner, [Alison Rose, chief executive of NatWest] sat next to the BBC’s business editor and told him that Farage was axed because he wasn’t a profitable customer. The journalist wrote a story the next day and later said he had relied on a “trusted and senior source.”
Farage ultimately landed a sucker punch. He acquired a 40-page document from Coutts that included a list of his political views that the bank felt created “significant reputational risks of being associated with him.”
The document described Farage’s views as “xenophobic and racist” and said he was “considered by many to be a disingenuous grifter,” charges Farage has denied.
-
G George K referenced this topic on
