Halifax...

[MummBRaaarrrTheEverLeaking]

twitter.com/HalifaxBank/status/1541692892175110146?t=6PoJxoXZAUwWHmXRZdtsxw&s=19

Getting their arses handed to them in the comments, it's rather heartening to see that people have really had enough of this.

twitter.com/HalifaxBank/status/1541786073302433792?t=E_xpGMHqPNolZkP145kPSQ&s=19

Although AndyM here is prepared to defend it to the hilt by actively encouraging customers to close their accounts 😬

Awkward conversation with management about the goal being bringing in customers and not telling them to bugger off for Andy in the office tomorrow perhaps!

Purgatory, that example has haunted me ever since I read it. There's no question that the reason that we have law and protections in a democracy is not for us to decide to apply them selectively and facilitate oppressive actions against those we dislike or whom we find rebarbative.

Manipulating people's behaviour or shaping our public narratives through social credit feels like a dangerous step. This is not just about Laura Towler. If this is allowed to stand, this is an implicit threat to everyone who finds themselves in disagreement on some point.

Do we want something akin to China's Social Credit to take hold more widely? To have people's right to travel locally, far less abroad, curtailed? To have any employment or a child's choice of school contingent on a family's history, own work records, and linkages to others that make up your social credit score?

Churches are reporting that members of some faiths are losing social credit points because they don't purchase alcohol and there's no evidence of some other activities. The absence of such activities is taken as adherence to a faith and that is a demerit for social credit.

I do not want banks making social credit like decisions about my fellow citizens.

'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.

Feels very handmaid's tale

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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..

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Damn. Are Nationwide any better?

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.

This was Nationwide's.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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