Nigel Farage?

[lovesheart]

Slowly listening more to news and politics.. I'm out the loop atm

Was watching about Nigel Farage and the NatWest bank story. It said NatWest were worried he was racist and xenophobic.

Is he? Hope it's ok to ask, just haven't heard any of his speeches or views yet, I've seen him on some discussions and none of that has been indicated in the snippets I've seen.

Do you think he is? Is he still UKIP leader? Will he ever be in any other party? You may see a few obvious dumb questions pop up now and again whilst I get my head around how it works 😅

Whilst in principle I agree with you, it all depends on whether those views are legal.

So there is a world of difference between disagreeing with say Black History Month and say dressing up in bedsheets with a burning cross and publicly calling for the harm to others (regardless of race or religion or whatever).

One is a personal view the other is an incitement to violence / harm and a criminal offence.

What I can't stand about Farage is the coverage he gets from the BBC !

It's like oxygen for the raving pillock

I’m no fan of Farage, but he has a right to be whatever he likes, as long as he exists within the law. So phrases like odious, racist and so on are placing YOUR value judgements against a person accusing Coutts/NatWest of WRONGLY doing just the same.
Would you fling the same insult to his face? Before you answer, question whether any response is made as emboldened by your social media anonymity?

I hate Alison Rose for being this stupid as we live with my FIL who sits in the kitchen EVERY DAY with GB News AT FULL BLAST (because he’s hard of hearing) and THEY WONT STOP TALKING ABOUT THIS.

As an ex bank employee I can absolutely say we would have been sacked if we revealed confidential information.
I cannot understand why Rose was allowed to resign and not sacked. Obviously as she resigned she gets to keep her enormous pension etc 🤔

There really isn’t a basis for it. The CEO should not have broken confidentiality and is right to have resigned, but bank CEOs have done much much worse and not had to resign.

If Farage met the criteria Coutts require to hold an account with them, he’d still have an account regardless of his political beliefs. I don’t know why 10 banks turned him down. I doubt it is solely his political beliefs but since they haven’t broken confidentiality we’ll probably never know.

The idea that the overpublicised non-entity Nigel Farage doesn’t have freedom of speech is risible. Largely illustrated by one sided over reporting of this non story to distract from the Tory clusterfuck. I have no doubt the Tories will be taking full advantage of this to bring in further banking deregulation ASAP.

Pre brexit banks were free to trade across the whole of the EU. Now they're not. So if your address was in an EU country it got shutdown. I was a barclays customer for almost 50 years, now it's gone.

I’d imagine it has something to do with what HSBC were calling a ‘better banking policy’ when they closed mine pre brexit. I’d imagine some accounts that were fine pre brexit suddenly flagged up after brexit for some reason. Presumably because these are Brits living in an EU country with a bank account outside the EU in the U.K.

Unlike Nigel I was just able to walk into the nearest bank and open a new account in no time at all though.

I am so sorry.

This is a gross misrepresentation of what has occurred. The commercial circumstances of farage were discussed by coutts and different views seem to have been taken at different times. But the bulk of discussion concerned the « reputational risk » his public statements and behaviour apparently posed.
that is why Rose initiallly apologised to him; why the BBC apologised for reporting, incorrectly, that his account was closed due to his financial position; and why the public discussion has developed in the way it has.
the determination to keep insisting on untruth in face of the facts says done thing very disturbing about the so-called progressives.

I wish I never had to hear another word from or about Farage. This whole story is driving me round the twist, he's everywhere again.

My mind was absolutely blown by Alison Rose's actions though!

The idea that the overpublicised non-entity Nigel Farage doesn’t have freedom of speech is risible. Largely illustrated by one sided over reporting of this non story to distract from the Tory clusterfuck. I have no doubt the Tories will be taking full advantage of this to bring in further banking deregulation ASAP.
All this.

One is a personal view the other is an incitement to violence / harm and a criminal offence.

But then that is a police matter. Fine, if the police need to seize funds or instruct the bank regarding the account. Its not up to the bank to decide to control someone's account or their status.

Absolutely spot on!

FFS 10 other banks have rejected him. This has nothing to do with his political views!!!!

Have you read all of the 40 pages?

There’s an obvious reason why that’s the focus of the bulk of the document. It’s literally a pro/con document, with evidence, of reputational harm from adverse media coverage and mitigations for why they should/shouldn’t keep Nigel on given he wouldn’t meet the economic criteria to hold an account with them from July 2023 when his mortgage was paid off.

I don’t think it’s me that’s grossly misrepresenting the situation. I do have a query as to why this is being so badly reported in a lot of the media and they are taking Nigel and the government’s interpretation of it without question.

The focus on Farage maybe obscures who else it is happening to.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jul/28/gina-miller-true-and-fair-party-monzo-bank-account

I am really interested in this ridiculous story for the issues it has thrown up:

1. There appears to be enough people who can't get bank accounts, mainly muslims and the vulnerable, in the uk. (Btw not NF who was offered a Natwest account instead of the Coutts). But despite all the fuss about "fundamental right to a bank account", no-one is mentioning this much.

1. GB news head made a fortune (about £750 million) from shorting Natwest shares. Opportunistic or more planned?

1. Could this be used as a platform to loosen anti-money laundering laws?

1. Was NF really turned down by 10 other banks? Why? What dodgy dealings has he been up to?

1. Why did Rishi Sunak make a comment? What does NF have on him? Is he threatening to start another party before the next election?

1. What shit has someone been up to to create such coverage? A dead cat that got out of hand?

This is a really interesting post on how social media is used to disseminate false information: so looking at it in more detail:

• There appears to be enough people who can't get bank accounts, mainly muslims and the vulnerable, in the uk. (Btw not NF who was offered a Natwest account instead of the Coutts). But despite all the fuss about "fundamental right to a bank account", no-one is mentioning this much.

+++

A clear "what about". Access to bank accounts has indeed been in the press for some time :

labourlist.org/2023/06/our-banks-often-exclude-the-poorest-a-fair-banking-act-could-change-that/?amp

However what the NF issue is about is banks closing existing customer accounts based on their legal expressions and views not access to bank accounts in the first place for low income earners.

1. GB news head made a fortune (about £750 million) from shorting Natwest shares. Opportunistic or more planned?

++++

Now is quite interesting- you take a story with an element of truth and then twist it.

So what is true here is that Marshal Wallace a hedge fund with over £50 billion of assets is one of two investors in GB News.

What happened is that back in Spring this year (before the NF story broke) Marshall Wallace placed a short position on NatWest stock through an algorithmic computer trading decision (ie the decision was not made by any individuals for political or personal reasons).

The short was for 0.59% of NatWest stock and to date has made £11.7 million. So the £750 million figure and the linkage to NF is complete fiction.

1. Could this be used as a platform to loosen anti-money laundering laws?

+++

By raising a question you then plant ideas in people's minds when the two issues are unrelated. This is about banks closing accounts due to the legal views of their customers nothing to do with laundering illegal money from criminal activities of which there is no allegation.

1. Was NF really turned down by 10 other banks? Why? What dodgy dealings has he been up to?

+++
A "surely there must be more behind this" is a classic conspiracy theorising. The answer is that the other banks also don't want to be associated with NF's legally held views.

1. Why did Rishi Sunak make a comment? What does NF have on him? Is he threatening to start another party before the next election?

+++

Another conspiracy theory approach.

The reality is that as PM of the Government, the Government owns 39% of NatWest shares and is its largest shareholder - that's what HMG has on NatWest.

The reason Sunak waded in was:

1. He is publicly against the concept that banks should be able to close people's accounts based on their legal political views.
2. The CEO of NatWest disclosed confidential customer information and false information at that to a BBC journalist.

1. What shit has someone been up to to create such coverage? A dead cat that got out of hand

++++

And the conspiracy theorising continues. The reason that so much coverage has been created is that NF has been very active in trying to create as much coverage as possible on this topic to portray himself as some kind of freedom fighter for free expression of views. He hasn't got much else going for him at the moment and is an opportunist.

But the post is a fine example of the what aboutery and conspiracy theorising which are classic grey zone trolling used throughout social media to try shape people's views.

Yes I’ve read the document; it’s as I have said. That’s why the BBC apologised for their incorrect reporting, which had been fed to them by Rose. That’s why Farage got his apology from NatWest.
it isn’t the media reading this one wrong, I’m afraid.

He has a program on GB News weekdays 7pm. Hundreds of thousands of people are now watching. Perhaps you should watch it. The banks have been out of control with their woke policies and tens of thousands of ordinary people have had accounts shut for no reason.

I can't believe he's younger than Brad Pitt.
Read that on Mumsnet and checked it out.

I can't believe he's younger than Brad Pitt.

Bloody hell!

They broke data protection laws .

Did they? Farage went public (lots newspaper articles) saying he was financially skint & struggling in 2018-2020. Alice Rose (CEO of Coutts) told Simon Jack (BBC) that Farage probably didn't meet the income requirements. When she resigned/apologised she said that she made that "mistake" because she thought it was information widely in the public domain already.

my question is, other than say he didn't meet the income requirements, what did Coutts person (AR) say that "broke GDPR" ?

Didn't Monzo say they closed bank account for Gina Miller's political party, because Monzo doesn't permit bank accounts for political parties, and this check wasn't done properly when she opened the account?