First Direct and Natwest closing bank accounts for political reasons inc being gender critical

[Snorkers]

Apprently First Direct have closed the account of the Wings over Scotland founder for his beliefs (He's Gender Critical), and Coutts, owned by Natwest, closed Nigel Farage's account.
Whatever you think of Nigel Farage he is entitled to a bank account.

This is really worrying.

I bank with First Direct. I am gender critical. Do I need to hide my beliefs to keep my bank account? Will tey stop me getting access to my money?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12249755/Nigel-Farage-claims-three-loved-ones-bank-accounts-closed-Brexit.html

In all seriousness should I find another way to pay my monthly direct debit to sex matters than from my main bank account?

It does sound a bit mad but I was just thinking the same thing.

I think people who say that there is more to this than meets the eye

or

Their must be a good reason

No smoke without fire.

Well I don’t like them so glad they are suffering.

Don’t understand that the people who work for government agencies, local councils, banks and big companies who make these life altering decisions are somehow morally superior and are all incredibly intelligent with a law degree and never do anything wrong or let their own personal prejudices get in the way of the truth.

The idea of giving bank employees who have their own views on people in the public eye and who can misread, mis interpret and have their own bias and prejudices power to destroy someone’s life at a whim is quite frankly frightening

I have had all these types of phrases levelled at me. Then I turn up in court and win. One court case I didn’t have to say hardly anything as the “admittance of guilt” the government agency had was a letter I had written where they read “I have done X Y And Z “ instead of “I have not…”apparently the letter had only ever been read once.
8 months that court case took and not one person thought to check the evidence. I knew a certain person didn’t like me but as they were in a position of power they could make my life a nightmare

So it looks like the Conservative party who you need to vote for as they don’t appear on your list.🤣

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/businesses/complaints-deal/banking-and-payments/bank-account-closures

This says:
Businesses that provide bank accounts are generally entitled to close them – just as their customers are. But you should treat your customers fairly. You shouldn’t close an account because of unfair bias or unlawful discrimination. And you shouldn’t usually close an account without giving reasonable notice.

Types of complaints we seeCustomers may complain that you’ve closed their bank account unfairly. This might be because you:

• made a factual or administrative mistake
• gave them conflicting information or advice
• discriminated against them
• didn’t follow your own procedures properly
• didn’t give them enough notice

You don’t have to explain to a customer why you’ve closed their account, but it can be helpful to do so.

This needs to be changed. How can they not have to tell you why they've closed your account??
In the Yorkshire Bank case they did actually say it was because he didn't share their values which is an obvious case of discrimination.And to add insult to injury they actually asked him for his opinion.

A total set up.

What about PEP employees who are chasing out political commentator customers?

Can they sack staff behaving in a discriminatory way?

I have to say, I thought the Mermaids, surrogacy couple didn't have such great jobs. I recall their interview on TV years ago at home, it was a small flat full of boxes and clutter, I don't know how they fit in two babies.

Are you suggesting sex matters takes payment in crypto? That's not a bad idea, I know how to pay in crypto

I was thinking more along the lines of just paying them from a credit card not linked to my bank. I could drop the monthly subscription and just pay an equivalent annual lump sum off the card.

Well, the world has gone fkin mad anyway so if it sounds mad its because we are living in mad times.

I think I'll stop my dd and just bung them the odd £50 off an unlinked credit card. It's a shame as it may discourage other supporters from making regular donations

On another thread someone suggested that the Vicar who provided feedback to Yorkshire building society should join a niche financial institution and avoid standard financial institutions.

I can't help thinking about something I read in the Bible about those who don't go along with an ideology not being able to buy or sell!

Banks warned to uphold free speech after accounts blacklisted

www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/07/02/banks-warned-uphold-free-speech-accounts-blacklisted/

"Banks are to be warned by the Treasury that they must protect free speech amid an escalating row over the blacklisting of customers who hold controversial viewss_.
Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor, is understood to be “deeply concerned” that overzealous lenders are closing down accounts because they disagree with customers’ opinions and has asked City minister Andrew Griffith to investigate the issue.
Whitehall sources said that results of a consultation on the subject will be published within weeks, after it was launched earlier this year in the wake of PayPal blocking the accounts of free speech groupss_.
The controversy flared up again last week after the leading Brexiteer Nigel Farage revealed his account had been closedd_ by his bank. A vicar was also dropped as a customer after criticising his lender’s stance on LBGTQ+.
The Treasury is poised to recommend a more rigid notice period if payment providers, including high street lenders, want to close a customer’s account as well as requiring banks to provide more information about why they have decided to shut accounts. Regulators will be able to take action against banks that break the rules.
Officials believe that the recommendations can curb excessive behaviour by banks.
A senior Treasury source said: “It is absolutely a concern. No one should have their bank account denied on the grounds of freedom of expression. We expect to take action on this issue within weeks.”
Ministers are increasingly worried that there is a trend of closures affecting customers who hold controversial political views."

To be honest I find it a bit rich that banks are fine with the arms trade, petrochemical companies, tobacco companies, diamond mines or just the fact that there are billionaires and yet we live in a world where people actually still die for lack of basics like food, shelter or medicine etc etc and then get all upset about people thinking that sex is real, matters and can’t be changed. Really strange…

Wow how did we get here. Bbc and itv too.

Is the Stonewall Index still running?

The last time I was involved in it (c.2020), it was all about pushing banks and corporates to change their clients' attitudes to LGBTQIA+ issues.

You have to give details of specific examples of how you've achieved each goal with tangible evidence, so a bank being able to boast in their Stonewall Index application that they received a "transphobic" missive from a customer and immediately closed their account is absolutely the kind of evidence a bank would salivate over.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12256943/Its-not-just-Nigel-Farage-daughter-blocked-opening-bank-account.html

There are two issues PEP and the Stonrwall index.

Members of political parties are PEP so that explains the conservatives for women incident.

If your grandfather is in the HoL you can be refused an account too.

I suspect the PEP will be sorted as it affects them unlike schools, NHS Annexe B and prisons.

Farage, as head of the company Reform (masquerading as a political party) is being treated as a PeP. There are huge questions over the funding of Reform and it's perfectly reasonable for a private bank to want to protect itself from financial sanctions for facilitating foreign agents.

Why they have moved now, I can only guess is based on new information they've received and it will be interesting to see if they move against the bigger players. I won't be holding my breath though.

The banking sector seems to have been infiltrated and compromised:

People of any gender can be pregnant, Bank of England states

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0ae0f936-178d-11ee-8fcc-23dc1e6b4441?shareToken=9ae6515845ccb8b5c7ba6725258c1a45

The Bank of England’s views and actions were included in its 2022 submission to be included in the list of the 100 top employers published by Stonewall, the LGBT lobby group, a copy of which has been obtained by The Times.
The Bank came 57th in Stonewall’s annual list last year after submitting a 103-page application. This revealed that in June 2021 the Bank had introduced a “family leave” policy that included the phrase “birthing parent” to mean mother. The Bank’s parental bereavement leave policy “talks about parents without specifying gender”, its application said.

And

In April 2021, the Bank’s LGBT network emailed all bank governors and executive directors to “encourage support of LGBT+ inclusion”, it said. Five governors and executive directors attended a meeting of the “LGBT+ and allies” steering group and eight signed up for reverse mentoring.

And

The Bank is to introduce a recruitment system that will include “broader gender definitions” and wants to create “quantitative targets” in respect of LGBT employees. Stonewall suggested a focus on categories such as parents, LGBT staff aged under 26 or over 50, those at board level and people of faith. It added: “Stonewall can support with developing this area through creating bespoke workshops.”

The MPs and Lords will be blocked out of bank accounts soon and goodness knows what else.

As has long been the case the useful idiots like Stella and MpS like her who championed this stuff, are first on the wall by those who take over!

Why the focus on LGBT people of faith, what faith, Queer theory?

What type of parents, breastfeeding biological males?

As ever, the organisations/sectors with the worst records on misogyny - the military, the Church, finance, the media, the judiciary - are highly susceptible to gender ideology, because they are already strongly invested in the gender stereotypes that TRAs peddle.

Nigel Farage AT nigel_farage
It should alarm everybody that a bank has the power to punish those it considers to have erred or strayed.

Jim Grace AT mac_puck
This happened 2 months ago, you say? April 2023?

If it's because of your Brexit views - did Coutts really only find these out 2 months ago?

If it's Bryant outing your Russia money in March 2022, why wait until April 2023?

Hmm... what DID happen in April 2023?

Ahh... Right-oh!

Oh my. How coincidental.

Fox was saying he is going to use cash now. He will have to get a good safe.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38499883

A pilgrim could leave his cash at Temple Church in London, and withdraw it in Jerusalem. Instead of carrying money, he would carry a letter of credit.

I don't find this funny at all. I don't like the idea of a disabled granddaughter refused an account.

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/laurence-fox-tries-to-withdraw-money-from-his-bank-account-on-twitter-and-hilarity-ensues-351912/

Some of us are old and ugly enough to remember Boerclays.

With the demise of bank branches and the almost universal use of plastic, I think there are a whole load off issues around bank access coming to the surface, exacerbated my money laundering requirements..

1. "Wokeness" to use a shorthand, so our Yorkshire banking vicar
2. PEP
3. Capacity. I wanted to open the equivalent of a child account for my mother with dementia. No overdraft no added features. Just something she/her carer could use for a coffee at the garden centre or to pick up basics from Tesco. I had access to her account on my phone so could top up when needed. No capacity=no account whatsoever. I understand that this is also a major problem for those caring for a semi independent adult, who receives benefits in their own name.
4. Those with a bad credit record or no internet/smart phone. There are swathes of people shut out of on line activity. Often the poorest or oldest.
5. Algorithms. I am financially secure with my mortgage paid off and a strong credit rating, yet my Barclays account, which I have had for three decades is becoming unusable. They wanted to take away my overdraft, and then refused me a Barclay card, even though I have no debt and no other cards. In the past months I have had payments (one to an Etsy supplier, two to a guy supplying new windows) stopped by their fraud/money laundering algorithm, to the extent that I have to ask my husband to make larger payments for me. DD says she was phoned when she tried to transfer money from her Barclays account to another account and asked if she actually knew the person she was transferring money to. (Duh...same name.) This sort of thing has already sent my builder to Monzo (he got tired of huge amount of paperwork he was asked to supply for an account he had had for decades) and I assume many others. Not the outcome I assume that the FCA anti moneylaundering types wanted.

There are probably more. I hope any review looks at access overall, and not just around the fringes. Forget about LGBTQ+++ and whatever people may think about gender, access to banking and other payment services is a major equalities issue.

I do think the Yorkshire Building Society (YBS) issue is a clear result of Stonewall's influence.

They won a big diversity award in 2018 and a quick google shows that the head of D&I at YBS has won other awards as head of D&I at YBS for her massive diversity efforts, and has sat on several diversity panels including ones with Stonewall in her professional capacity representing YBS. To clarify (to MNHQ), I'm not singling this D&I head out as an individual, but she's doing all this in her professional capacity as a representative of Yorkshire Building Society and YBS have actively sought to promote their diversity activities by issuing quotes to press and posing for photos. Furthermore, these press reports and promoted events are easily searchable in the public domain.

So while I appreciate the additional issue of being a PEP in Farage's case, I'm still concerned that the vicar issue is a Stonewall thing, as it's clear from YBS's activities in the diversity space (and also because there's no suggestion that the vicar is a PEP) that YBS interpreted his objection to rainbow flags and questioning their relevance was sufficiently abusive to warrant account closure.

My previous employers were pressured by Stonewall to drop clients that didn't support LGBT inclusion (obviously they didn't, but it's what Stonewall wanted and repeatedly pushed for) and to actively push Stonewall messages onto clients through everything from our procurement forms and client KYC processes to inviting clients to LGBT events, and so on.

So it doesn't surprise me in the least that YBS would have it in their heads that controlling clients' beliefs like this is normal behaviour, because it does feel completely normal when you're in that bubble (especially when you're being constantly praised for condemning bigots and actively promoting gender identity ideology, as YBS clearly have been).

However, what concerns me is how much control their D&I team have over client account closures, especially when their interpretation of what counts as "transphobic" is so obviously dictated to them by Stonewall.

The issue was discussed on BBC Radio 4's World at One today (starts about 23:08 minutes in): https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001nghc

These people must be using coercive controlling at home to see it as normal.