Halifax...

The bank will target her personal account as she will have been linked to her political party, either directly as a signature/authorised or indirectly as a member who approved that the bank account be opened. Even a google search could be enough to link her if she was quoted as speaking on behalf of her party.

The banks have to track people who have or could gave political influence. So in theory the bank could freeze bojo's account and any account he ever received or paid money to, eg any party accounts he is signatory on, his family members, current/ex-wife's accounts, his cleaners etc etc.

The way the system works once the account is flagged under AML ordinary staff would not be legally allowed to communicate with the account holder. Its a criminal act of tipping off which has a jail term and would definitely be a sackable offence. She was never going to get any form of reply even if she managed to contact the CEO directly. From memory there is never going to be any advocating for the account holder as the legislation focused individual responsibility to prevent senior managers passing the responsibilty (blame) to junior staff.

Yes @OneOfThoseOldFashionedWomen when I talk to friends who are indifferent or on the fence, it’s that fact that changes their mind pretty fast.

general public seem either indifferent or careless.

Most people I speak to have no idea that the vast majority of TW still have a fully functioning penis. I find they care more when they realise.

I do wonder about this. Most on here are very aware that the whole trans bollox stuff has red flags and fire engine klaxons going off all over it, but the general public seem either indifferent or careless.

Still, I suppose it's not like there's any money at stake or anything...

Thank-you. Yes, I did, just briefly (in writing) as I didn't think they'd read an essay. They should really do their own fucking research before committing to their stance and not need me to explain why their vacuous virtue signalling is so offensive.

Well done penpalgal. Did you tell them why you were doing it?

Closed my account. There wasn't much money in it, but it's the principle.
I was chatting to a very nice woman the other week and then she piped up with 'it's great that my company is bringing in the pronouns thing now. It's nice that everyone can just be themselves'. This is as far as most people think about it, they have an idea in their minds of stereotypical old school transsexuals, who are very effeminate and non-threatening to women, and they congratulate themselves for being so accepting of them. They don't realise that trans means something completely different on the whole nowadays, nor what the underlying ideology of gender identity ideology is and how sexist and potentially homophobic it is. I think this is particularly true of women without children, they just don't see the threats that this ideology presents.

This was Nationwide's.

Well, they're not in the Stonewall top 100, and I'm not aware of them making any particularly rude tweets recently in an attempt to get into it! Still a pay gap though.

Damn. Are Nationwide any better?

Tweeted supportively of the Halifax, is in Stonewall's top 100 workplaces, has a workplace pay gap (though not as bad as other competitors), and features in the unherd article about banking being suddenly removed from individuals.

Sorry, I know the conversation has moved on, but anyone got the skinny on HSBC?

Coercive power is a formal power source, where influencing agents use the threat of force to gain compliance from targets of influence. The force can include social, emotional, physical, political, or economic means, and is not always recognized by the target.

I'm seeing this creep in before our eyes. Our thoughts and beliefs are at risk now in the UK. It sounds hyperbolic to write this but if only it was.

Control through banking had been an issue for a long time. I think it was the EDL that were prevented from having an account and thus unable to field a political candidate.

Democracy is dangerous when only state allowed democracy is allowed. The report above is frankly terrifying.

It's pretty logical in neo-liberalism, maybe?

Banks/corps have more power than governments. The ways they exert power over individuals will be different than democratic systems.

As our votes get more and more devalued (nobody to vote for, politicians inept, less and less powerful), we try to exercise power using our spending power, although this is increasingly our credit power.

Well, if I were looking to test to see how one could manipulate, pressurise and 'de-person' someone for their political views, what I would do is start with those whose views people generally consider abhorrent.

Then everyone would be more likely to say 'well, they really are awful, maybe they should be cancelled/unpersonned/blacklisted'.

Then we could gradually start to widen the net of who is considered beyond the pale.

One effect of this might be to have people think 'well, they only unperson people who are really horrible, so that person must have been really horrible'. Thus we'll have a sort of preference falsification that is in effect 'no smoke without fire' and anyone who is accused of a thoughtcrime must be de facto a criminal.

Eventually, everyone will have to perform purity tests to participate in society, and this will be accepted.

Yes, very worrying how banks can withdraw their services with out any explanation, notice, or repercussions. Patriotic Alternative are a nasty bunch, but not a proscribed organisation as far as I can tell. But that's besides the point; if it could happen without any recognisable due process to them now it could happen to anyone else with a different set of beliefs and values in the future. The comparison with China's social credit system is a good - and frightening - one.

Btw, I wonder how long it will be before antifascist turns up to misinterpret the above comments as MN being a hive of white identitarians and supporters of .the Proud Boys and other right-wing loons..

I had a look round to see if there were an update to this story. All I could find were claims that, through Patreon and other sources, banks are reacting to attempts to launder money for terrorism. However, nobody claimed that, in this case, it was anything other than her personal account, unlike Tony Collett (?) who seemed to lose access to an organisation's account around the same time.

That incident, Andy M, the support from other UK banks…none of them give me any confidence in the existence of anything like due process or the benign nature of data linkage and the algorithms of social credit that seem to follow an arc of authoritarianism no matter what the political drivers behind it.

It's truly disturbing to think that people like Andy M would be in charge of decisions that affect people's lives in profound ways.

And what a terrifying sentence they impose.

This low-rent version of The Trial went on for another three weeks. Frequently, Laura would phone up Santander customer services. She’d be put on hold for ages. Then the phone would just go dead. She wrote to Santander to complain. They wrote back: they weren’t interested in her complaint and wouldn’t be taking it any further. Meanwhile, her rent, standing orders and Direct Debits stacked up, the late fees and penalties mushroomed around them, as life tumbled towards chaos.

So these banking and other institutions are becoming judge and jury. Scary times.

Another quote from the article about Santander and HSBC that puts it well.

Right of admission is always reserved — we all know this — and you might say that these examples are just the market at work. Except that some things are so fundamental to our everyday lives that they’re not so much markets as the thing that you need in order to use a market.

In the dying days of Gordon Brown, an attempt was made to guarantee every citizen’s right to a current account. It was quickly shot down by the Big Five banks (after all, it wasn’t as if they owed the government any favours). A decade on, that tide is further out than it has ever been.

That's very odd, Magnolia. I can't say I've had that problem (I'm also with Co-op bank) making similar donations (most recently Jo Phoenix). Although your post has reminded me that my gardening is overdue - I believe Julie Bindel has some knotweed (Nottweed?) problems that need dealing with.

Feels very handmaid's tale

'in a post-Covid world, where we’re often being told that cash is no longer acceptable, some are also being told that electronic banking is no longer for them. It’s an interesting crossroads.'

From the Unherd article.