Who would have thought, that briefing a journalist with lies about the personal details of a customer might be a bad thing?
She should have resigned yesterday when the story first appeared.
If an employee had done that it would have been instant dismissal for Gross Misconduct...
All of them couldn't have played it worse from the start. They have fallen into Farage's trap at every single step.
Farage is a wily coyote and smart, he is up against chinless no mark Tory duffers. A 5 year old could run rings round them.
"Wily coyote" is a slightly odd phrase to use, since isn't it a nod to the cartoon character (Wile E. Coyote), who was famously hapless and inept, and up against a much sharper, quicker adversary?
I agree he's an effective self publicist, though. The really odd thing isn't just that they closed his account on the basis they did, but that they apparently thought, "Well, I very much doubt Nigel will make a whole big thing out of this in the media".
Surely they did flag up that Farage would publicise this?
The general advice to deal with people you don't like, basically ignore them, don't give them the oxygen of publicity.....If Coutts had just kept his account, but under a close watch for anything dodgy, no news story, no tales of building dodgy dossiers, no bad PR, no getting called in by the government etc etc etc.
Instead they just given Farage a megaphone and a massive watch tower spotlight to be shone right at them AND worst of all now given his a new crusade to campaign on, one in which he is in the right.
I bet all the other banks are really thanking the morons at Natwest for this.
They should have done what they do with other people at Coutts they are getting rid of - transfer them automatically and seamlessly to a NatWest account. Includes moving all direct debits and standing orders. So no one misses a beat.
Downgrading someone to a regular account is a non story.
On power: "ten years is the maximum dose for adults".
The introduction to that interview supports my thesis that Ken Clarke bears heavy responsibility for the Tories losing power after he moved from department to department attacking Conservative-supporting professionals in the public sector.
Not sure about this. The pendulum always swings eventually, and you can't really be a Secretary of State whilst offending nobody.
That's not a defence of Clarke's record at Health and Education before he was Chancellor, but the Conservatives implemented a lot of controversial policies in the 1980s and early 1990s, some of which Clarke was directly involved in, some not. That isn't really what lost it for them in 1997 - there was simply a general feeling by the mid-1990s that the Conservatives had run out of steam and didn't fully appreciate or have compelling solutions for the most important issues for people. There was also a fairly large amount of sleaze going on, and it was widely felt that it was time for a change to the other lot.
Clarke was Health Secretary 1988-1990 and Education 1990-92. Are you really saying 1997 was some kind of delayed reaction to that (which was not felt in the 1992 General Election for some reason)? Feels a bit far-fetched to me, although he was one of a series of Conservative ministers who were unconvincing on those issues both within the professions involved and externally.
I think I am saying the Conservative government was wiped out because it had taken on so many voters who were its natural supporters. Not just Clarke with police, doctors and teachers, although that was a large part of it, but also the defence cuts, and then if you look at who was hurt by the ERM debacle, it was home owners and mortgage holders, it was entrepreneurs and small business owners.
That is how I conceptualise that part of our political history, rather than hand-waving about running out of ideas or fairness or time for a change. Whatever people thought of the cones hotline, that was not what changed their votes. Nor was it the poll tax, which had been neutralised by John Major. The blue team lost power because it systematically alienated its own voters. They'd played by the rules, done what was called for, and *their* government had screwed them over.
It's true that, over the course of a period in government, you collect enemies like a rolling stone gathering moss, and they tend to be a bit stickier than the friends you make.
But I think you underestimate things like the Cones Hotline. It's not that it was an awful policy in itself - there have been many worse and if it had been proposed in 1985 alongside a broad programme it would barely have been newsworthy. But by the mid-90s it was emblematic of a fag end administration that struggled to get things done, to grasp the scale of challenges in public services, or to have meaningful solutions. And it's that broad impression more than the fact a couple of professions had been narked with the Tories for a while that really lost it for them in 1997, in my view.
Sunak and Starmer could be doing exactly the same things they both are now under the same economic circumstances, but in 2015 rather than 2023, and I'd be very confident Sunak would trounce Starmer in the GE.
Sometimes, it really is a matter of timing.
Well yes, because in 2015 the Tories hadn’t yet trashed our economy, international credibility or public services. Though they were certainly making a start.
Probably not trounced either. Similar result to Cameron-Miliband or a bit worse.
Labour had trashed our economy in 2010, and our international credibility over things like extraordinary rendition, Iraq and the Expenses Scandal. Public services were on a totally unsustainable footing and largely unreformed.
Motes and Beams.
International credibility yes, though the current government has taken that up multiple notches.
The expenses scandal featured as many if not more conservative MPs as Labour. The Lib Dems on the other hand showed disproportionately less likely to have hands in the till.
The economy and public finances were in a far far better shape in 2010, despite only just emerging from a global crisis, than now.
Bear in mind Miliband only lost narrowly in 2015 and largely because of a collapse in LD support in the South West and the rise of the SNP after Indy ref. So unless we think Starmer would have gone down worse with the public than Miliband, it’s likely he would have done roughly as well or better.
He might also have desisted from reforming the Labour membership rules in the way that allowed Corbyn in by the back door in 2015.
Bit of a shock to hear that the fires in Greece may have been caused by arson, according to local officials.
I don't think its that uncommon. Wild fires are overwhelmingly started by humans, either deliberately, semi-deliberately (i.e. it will be a laugh to start a small fire, ohhhhhh shit) or by carelessness.
If there are already restrictions in place, I think you can be done for arson in lots of places if you then go out and start any kind of fire.
Does there need to be any malicious intent (as opposed to crass stupidity or accident)?
Sadly, there is a long history of such fires being started deliberately. In many countries. People have been charged and convicted of manslaughter for this, IIRC.
Who would have thought, that briefing a journalist with lies about the personal details of a customer might be a bad thing?
She should have resigned yesterday when the story first appeared.
If an employee had done that it would have been instant dismissal for Gross Misconduct...
All of them couldn't have played it worse from the start. They have fallen into Farage's trap at every single step.
Farage is a wily coyote and smart, he is up against chinless no mark Tory duffers. A 5 year old could run rings round them.
"Wily coyote" is a slightly odd phrase to use, since isn't it a nod to the cartoon character (Wile E. Coyote), who was famously hapless and inept, and up against a much sharper, quicker adversary?
I agree he's an effective self publicist, though. The really odd thing isn't just that they closed his account on the basis they did, but that they apparently thought, "Well, I very much doubt Nigel will make a whole big thing out of this in the media".
Surely they did flag up that Farage would publicise this?
The general advice to deal with people you don't like, basically ignore them, don't give them the oxygen of publicity.....If Coutts had just kept his account, but under a close watch for anything dodgy, no news story, no tales of building dodgy dossiers, no bad PR, no getting called in by the government etc etc etc.
Instead they just given Farage a megaphone and a massive watch tower spotlight to be shone right at them AND worst of all now given his a new crusade to campaign on, one in which he is in the right.
I bet all the other banks are really thanking the morons at Natwest for this.
What crusade ? His thing seems to be calling for the rest of the NatWest board to be sacked.
The bank has accepted it was in the wrong; the CEO has resigned. Now he's just being a pillock.
He says he is now on a crusade to fight for the debanked and unbanked.....
Farage is always on the look out for a new bandwagon, at one point it was COVID restrictions, then it was the small boats, now he has found debanking.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Bit of a shock to hear that the fires in Greece may have been caused by arson, according to local officials.
I don't think its that uncommon. Wild fires are overwhelmingly started by humans, either deliberately, semi-deliberately (i.e. it will be a laugh to start a small fire, ohhhhhh shit) or by carelessness.
If there are already restrictions in place, I think you can be done for arson in lots of places if you then go out and start any kind of fire.
Does there need to be any malicious intent (as opposed to crass stupidity or accident)?
To meet the definition of arson I think it has to be deliberate
I think there is also a pedantic point that a wildfire was originally one started by lightning strike or whatever as opposed to tame fire started by taking a brand from the hearth or lighting a match. What is happening in Greece would more accurately be called tree fires.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Is that really the case ? Or is it rather that most of us, including journalists, are only slowly becoming aware of how arbitrary, and difficult to challenge banking rules have become ?
The Farage affair has opened that conversation, even if the details are loosely related to the problems that are likely to face most people.
Bit of balance - the real problem, not pols' particular preoccupations.
"Despite all the recent front-page attention given to Nigel Farage and today’s development – the resignation of NatWest chief executive Alison Rose – there is something else you should know: banks have been quietly closing accounts without giving their customers any reasonable explanation for decades. Setting aside Farage’s politics and personality, and Coutts’s fragile disposition when it comes to people rich enough but arguably not wholesome enough to utilise their elite banking facilities, it should concern us when banks close our accounts with little or no warning. Ordinary people don’t get the prime minister hollering for justice, and we certainly don’t get apologies from CEOs."
Ooh, the Guardian have almost got it.
The thing is the left outlets are making a big deal out of the fact it is Farage, but unfortunately a lot of change only comes when you get a well connected person wronged.
Sarah Everard has sparked changes to the law and policing (and rightly so), but she is far from the first case, but she was well connected to the media, so her case got massive prominence among the industry.
She seem the opposite with grooming gangs. They were "nobodies", so the media didn't care for years and years. It was one brave Times journalist who finally pushed and pushed and pushed on this.
Was it her connections to the media? I thought it was the pretty, white young woman that resonated with so many other young women. See differing levels of media noise based on the ethnicity of the victims.
Zara Aleena, the law graduate murdered walking home in Sunil's manor, might beg to differ. It is often said that only White victims grab the headlines but that is not really true. The biggest factor is probably what else happened on the same day. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-63599799
It probably reflects more on me that although I recall her death, I did not recall her name, yet Sarah Everard's name is fresh in the memory owing to the differential exposure (in my opinion). Of course the cases were different, and the involvement of a serving Met Police officer made it particularly notable, but I stand by my opinion that white victims get higher profile than non-whites.
Bit of a shock to hear that the fires in Greece may have been caused by arson, according to local officials.
I don't think its that uncommon. Wild fires are overwhelmingly started by humans, either deliberately, semi-deliberately (i.e. it will be a laugh to start a small fire, ohhhhhh shit) or by carelessness.
If there are already restrictions in place, I think you can be done for arson in lots of places if you then go out and start any kind of fire.
Does there need to be any malicious intent (as opposed to crass stupidity or accident)?
To meet the definition of arson I think it has to be deliberate
I think there is also a pedantic point that a wildfire was originally one started by lightning strike or whatever as opposed to tame fire started by taking a brand from the hearth or lighting a match. What is happening in Greece would more accurately be called tree fires.
In (say) English law, yes, deliberate: but one wonders about errors in translation which might mean that arson there includes such things as lighting a barbecue in a high risk area.
Bit of a shock to hear that the fires in Greece may have been caused by arson, according to local officials.
How else would they be caused ? No volcanic eruptions or asteroid strikes on Rhodes recently that I'm aware of.
Many wildfires start without deliberate arson. Sunlight concentrated through a lens can do it. I believe that that can even be a drop of water acting as the lens, but modern times is often broken glass. Other sources can be lightening, sparks from rockfalls, spontaneous combustion.
After all, fires and burning are part of the Australian ecosystem, and would definitely have evolved without the hand of man to start the pesky fires.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Is that really the case ? Or is it rather that most of us, including journalists, are only slowly becoming aware of how arbitrary, and difficult to challenge banking rules have become ?
The Farage affair has opened that conversation, even if the details are loosely related to the problems that are likely to face most people.
The "no sympathy for Farage" posts were dominant on here, at least from the centrists and left, until it became clear Coutts had lied. A big part of civil liberties is surely about defending the liberties of those you dislike or disagree with.
Bit of a shock to hear that the fires in Greece may have been caused by arson, according to local officials.
How else would they be caused ? No volcanic eruptions or asteroid strikes on Rhodes recently that I'm aware of.
Many wildfires start without deliberate arson. Sunlight concentrated through a lens can do it. I believe that that can even be a drop of water acting as the lens, but modern times is often broken glass. Other sources can be lightening, sparks from rockfalls, spontaneous combustion.
After all, fires and burning are part of the Australian ecosystem, and would definitely have evolved without the hand of man to start the pesky fires.
Ah yes lightning, forgot about that one. That'll be the biggy for "natural" fires but there weren't any storms in Rhodes before the heatwave afaik. So I'd expect it them to be human created.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
Bit of a shock to hear that the fires in Greece may have been caused by arson, according to local officials.
How else would they be caused ? No volcanic eruptions or asteroid strikes on Rhodes recently that I'm aware of.
Many wildfires start without deliberate arson. Sunlight concentrated through a lens can do it. I believe that that can even be a drop of water acting as the lens, but modern times is often broken glass. Other sources can be lightening, sparks from rockfalls, spontaneous combustion.
After all, fires and burning are part of the Australian ecosystem, and would definitely have evolved without the hand of man to start the pesky fires.
My understanding was broken glass was a bit of a myth, as so many factors need to fall exactly into place for that unlikely situation to occur.
Natural causes are overwhelmingly lightening strikes and volcanic matter. With occasionally a vast build up of decaying matter produces just enough heat to cause combustion.
Who would have thought, that briefing a journalist with lies about the personal details of a customer might be a bad thing?
She should have resigned yesterday when the story first appeared.
If an employee had done that it would have been instant dismissal for Gross Misconduct...
All of them couldn't have played it worse from the start. They have fallen into Farage's trap at every single step.
Farage is a wily coyote and smart, he is up against chinless no mark Tory duffers. A 5 year old could run rings round them.
"Wily coyote" is a slightly odd phrase to use, since isn't it a nod to the cartoon character (Wile E. Coyote), who was famously hapless and inept, and up against a much sharper, quicker adversary?
I agree he's an effective self publicist, though. The really odd thing isn't just that they closed his account on the basis they did, but that they apparently thought, "Well, I very much doubt Nigel will make a whole big thing out of this in the media".
Surely they did flag up that Farage would publicise this?
The general advice to deal with people you don't like, basically ignore them, don't give them the oxygen of publicity.....If Coutts had just kept his account, but under a close watch for anything dodgy, no news story, no tales of building dodgy dossiers, no bad PR, no getting called in by the government etc etc etc.
Instead they just given Farage a megaphone and a massive watch tower spotlight to be shone right at them AND worst of all now given his a new crusade to campaign on, one in which he is in the right.
I bet all the other banks are really thanking the morons at Natwest for this.
They should have done what they do with other people at Coutts they are getting rid of - transfer them automatically and seamlessly to a NatWest account. Includes moving all direct debits and standing orders. So no one misses a beat.
Downgrading someone to a regular account is a non story.
My experience of retail banks would suggest a "seamless" transfer might not be possible. Especially with RBS, which is probably super messy with all the various acquisitions.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
I’ve been raising it for a while. We need data on what the actually blocks are - proper addresses, financial, credit score etc.
In theory it is trivial to sign up to any number of banks and alt-banks.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
I’ve been raising it for a while. We need data on what the actually blocks are - proper addresses, financial, credit score etc.
In theory it is trivial to sign up to any number of banks and alt-banks.
Natwest are rejecting half the applications for their basic bank accounts. Those are the bank accounts supposed to be available for the "unbanked".
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
The Graun does discuss the point, if only by assereting that we have rights to bank accounts.
But what happens if I turn up to Coutts and demand a basic bank account? I do wonder. They will tell me to piss off. But so can any other bank. Is there any bank of last resort?
And we discussed the impact of Post Office Bank privatisation and detachment from the Post Office branches and the rundown of the old univcersal provision of a PO bank book in every post office and sub-PO in the land.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Is that really the case ? Or is it rather that most of us, including journalists, are only slowly becoming aware of how arbitrary, and difficult to challenge banking rules have become ?
The Farage affair has opened that conversation, even if the details are loosely related to the problems that are likely to face most people.
The "no sympathy for Farage" posts were dominant on here, at least from the centrists and left, until it became clear Coutts had lied. A big part of civil liberties is surely about defending the liberties of those you dislike or disagree with.
The thing was the Farage story wasn't even that "wild", we have had lower profile people previously having the same experience in the past year or so e.g. Triggernometry podcast, Reform Party, Free Speech Union.
It also became clear pretty quickly he had the receipts.
Who would have thought, that briefing a journalist with lies about the personal details of a customer might be a bad thing?
She should have resigned yesterday when the story first appeared.
If an employee had done that it would have been instant dismissal for Gross Misconduct...
All of them couldn't have played it worse from the start. They have fallen into Farage's trap at every single step.
Farage is a wily coyote and smart, he is up against chinless no mark Tory duffers. A 5 year old could run rings round them.
"Wily coyote" is a slightly odd phrase to use, since isn't it a nod to the cartoon character (Wile E. Coyote), who was famously hapless and inept, and up against a much sharper, quicker adversary?
I agree he's an effective self publicist, though. The really odd thing isn't just that they closed his account on the basis they did, but that they apparently thought, "Well, I very much doubt Nigel will make a whole big thing out of this in the media".
Surely they did flag up that Farage would publicise this?
The general advice to deal with people you don't like, basically ignore them, don't give them the oxygen of publicity.....If Coutts had just kept his account, but under a close watch for anything dodgy, no news story, no tales of building dodgy dossiers, no bad PR, no getting called in by the government etc etc etc.
Instead they just given Farage a megaphone and a massive watch tower spotlight to be shone right at them AND worst of all now given his a new crusade to campaign on, one in which he is in the right.
I bet all the other banks are really thanking the morons at Natwest for this.
They should have done what they do with other people at Coutts they are getting rid of - transfer them automatically and seamlessly to a NatWest account. Includes moving all direct debits and standing orders. So no one misses a beat.
Downgrading someone to a regular account is a non story.
My experience of retail banks would suggest a "seamless" transfer might not be possible. Especially with RBS, which is probably super messy with all the various acquisitions.
I wouldn't risk it. I'd do it manually myself, moving over direct debits etc. by hand (and taking the chance to review them as well). You also need to double check all of them with the providers, and any linked savings accounts, anyway, so it doesn't much add to the work.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
I’ve been raising it for a while. We need data on what the actually blocks are - proper addresses, financial, credit score etc.
In theory it is trivial to sign up to any number of banks and alt-banks.
Natwest are rejecting half the applications for their basic bank accounts. Those are the bank accounts supposed to be available for the "unbanked".
In their defence, it is a common problem for the banks, the main issue is
1) Customers provide incorrect/inadequate info about themselves, this will lead to issues on AVS check.
2) Customers have already got into the financial difficulty with the bank and left a trail of debt and destruction with that banking group. For example customer has left RBS with debts of £10k at their RBS bank account/loan/overdraft/credit card, when they apply for a basic account with Natwest that is going to show up.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
I’ve been raising it for a while. We need data on what the actually blocks are - proper addresses, financial, credit score etc.
In theory it is trivial to sign up to any number of banks and alt-banks.
Natwest are rejecting half the applications for their basic bank accounts. Those are the bank accounts supposed to be available for the "unbanked".
At the risk of triggering dear old Anabobazina, this alone is one important reason for cash.
I wonder what the PO Bank is like in this respect?
Bit of a shock to hear that the fires in Greece may have been caused by arson, according to local officials.
How else would they be caused ? No volcanic eruptions or asteroid strikes on Rhodes recently that I'm aware of.
Many wildfires start without deliberate arson. Sunlight concentrated through a lens can do it. I believe that that can even be a drop of water acting as the lens, but modern times is often broken glass. Other sources can be lightening, sparks from rockfalls, spontaneous combustion.
After all, fires and burning are part of the Australian ecosystem, and would definitely have evolved without the hand of man to start the pesky fires.
My understanding was broken glass was a bit of a myth, as so many factors need to fall exactly into place for that unlikely situation to occur.
Natural causes are overwhelmingly lightening strikes and volcanic matter. With occasionally a vast build up of decaying matter produces just enough heat to cause combustion.
Lightning is the big one in California.
Series of unfortunate events for me once - massive lightning storm at Muir Pass, then a flash flood as we tried to find somewhere to camp, then smoked out by a wildfire started by the lightning.
I think I took refuge in a PB thread that evening.
Who would have thought, that briefing a journalist with lies about the personal details of a customer might be a bad thing?
She should have resigned yesterday when the story first appeared.
If an employee had done that it would have been instant dismissal for Gross Misconduct...
All of them couldn't have played it worse from the start. They have fallen into Farage's trap at every single step.
Farage is a wily coyote and smart, he is up against chinless no mark Tory duffers. A 5 year old could run rings round them.
"Wily coyote" is a slightly odd phrase to use, since isn't it a nod to the cartoon character (Wile E. Coyote), who was famously hapless and inept, and up against a much sharper, quicker adversary?
I agree he's an effective self publicist, though. The really odd thing isn't just that they closed his account on the basis they did, but that they apparently thought, "Well, I very much doubt Nigel will make a whole big thing out of this in the media".
Surely they did flag up that Farage would publicise this?
The general advice to deal with people you don't like, basically ignore them, don't give them the oxygen of publicity.....If Coutts had just kept his account, but under a close watch for anything dodgy, no news story, no tales of building dodgy dossiers, no bad PR, no getting called in by the government etc etc etc.
Instead they just given Farage a megaphone and a massive watch tower spotlight to be shone right at them AND worst of all now given his a new crusade to campaign on, one in which he is in the right.
I bet all the other banks are really thanking the morons at Natwest for this.
They should have done what they do with other people at Coutts they are getting rid of - transfer them automatically and seamlessly to a NatWest account. Includes moving all direct debits and standing orders. So no one misses a beat.
Downgrading someone to a regular account is a non story.
My experience of retail banks would suggest a "seamless" transfer might not be possible. Especially with RBS, which is probably super messy with all the various acquisitions.
I wouldn't risk it. I'd do it manually myself, moving over direct debits etc. by hand (and taking the chance to review them as well). You also need to double check all of them with the providers, and any linked savings accounts, anyway, so it doesn't much add to the work.
I've got 2 accounts, one with salary, mortgage, childcare (The big stuff) and another with a couple of grand & 2 direct debits which I just move around every so often for "switching" bonuses. The switching account is currently with Natwest cycling into their regular saver.
Bit of a shock to hear that the fires in Greece may have been caused by arson, according to local officials.
How else would they be caused ? No volcanic eruptions or asteroid strikes on Rhodes recently that I'm aware of.
Many wildfires start without deliberate arson. Sunlight concentrated through a lens can do it. I believe that that can even be a drop of water acting as the lens, but modern times is often broken glass. Other sources can be lightening, sparks from rockfalls, spontaneous combustion.
After all, fires and burning are part of the Australian ecosystem, and would definitely have evolved without the hand of man to start the pesky fires.
Ah yes lightning, forgot about that one. That'll be the biggy for "natural" fires but there weren't any storms in Rhodes before the heatwave afaik. So I'd expect it them to be human created.
It doesn't really matter does it? I think OP is trying to push the line this is not about climate change at all it's arsonists, but arsonists need conditions in which they can work
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
The Graun does discuss the point, if only by assereting that we have rights to bank accounts.
But what happens if I turn up to Coutts and demand a basic bank account? I do wonder. They will tell me to piss off. But so can any other bank. Is there any bank of last resort?
And we discussed the impact of Post Office Bank privatisation and detachment from the Post Office branches and the rundown of the old univcersal provision of a PO bank book in every post office and sub-PO in the land.
There are nine banks that have agreed to provide an account of last resort as basic bank accounts. But they do not have to accept you, or even explain why they do not accept you.
And Natwest reject half of the applications, compared to Lloyds rejecting 1 in 7. Now just perhaps obvious fraudsters are targetting Natwest for some reason rather than Lloyds, but equally it could be that Natwest are rejecting them on either direct commercial cost reasons or the fear of fines, neither of which would be acceptable.
Loving the chat around reserve days for test cricket. Not so long ago everyone was bemoaning that all tests were finished inside four days or fewer, so why have five scheduled days.
I suspect if England had escaped with a draw on Sunday rather than the convicts, we wouldn't be having the discussion...
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
I’ve been raising it for a while. We need data on what the actually blocks are - proper addresses, financial, credit score etc.
In theory it is trivial to sign up to any number of banks and alt-banks.
Natwest are rejecting half the applications for their basic bank accounts. Those are the bank accounts supposed to be available for the "unbanked".
In their defence, it is a common problem for the banks, the main issue is
1) Customers provide incorrect/inadequate info about themselves
2) Customers have already got into the financial difficulty with the bank and left a trail of debt and destruction with that banking group. For example customer has left RBS with debts of £10k at their RBS bank account/loan/overdraft/credit card, when they apply for a basic account with Natwest that is going to show up.
There obviously two different issues here.
1) People being debanked who have done nothing illegal and meet all the criteria, but because of PEP rules or somebody in the bank decides they "don't align with the banks values".
2) People being unbanked because of the wider banking laws and rules around what evidence they need to provide and what has been their previous financial situation.
Both are worthy of further investigation and potentially reform for differing reasons.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
I’ve been raising it for a while. We need data on what the actually blocks are - proper addresses, financial, credit score etc.
In theory it is trivial to sign up to any number of banks and alt-banks.
Natwest are rejecting half the applications for their basic bank accounts. Those are the bank accounts supposed to be available for the "unbanked".
At the risk of triggering dear old Anabobazina, this alone is one important reason for cash.
I wonder what the PO Bank is like in this respect?
Bit of a shock to hear that the fires in Greece may have been caused by arson, according to local officials.
How else would they be caused ? No volcanic eruptions or asteroid strikes on Rhodes recently that I'm aware of.
Many wildfires start without deliberate arson. Sunlight concentrated through a lens can do it. I believe that that can even be a drop of water acting as the lens, but modern times is often broken glass. Other sources can be lightening, sparks from rockfalls, spontaneous combustion.
After all, fires and burning are part of the Australian ecosystem, and would definitely have evolved without the hand of man to start the pesky fires.
My understanding was broken glass was a bit of a myth, as so many factors need to fall exactly into place for that unlikely situation to occur.
Natural causes are overwhelmingly lightening strikes and volcanic matter. With occasionally a vast build up of decaying matter produces just enough heat to cause combustion.
Lightning is the big one in California.
Series of unfortunate events for me once - massive lightning storm at Muir Pass, then a flash flood as we tried to find somewhere to camp, then smoked out by a wildfire started by the lightning.
I think I took refuge in a PB thread that evening.
Who would have thought, that briefing a journalist with lies about the personal details of a customer might be a bad thing?
She should have resigned yesterday when the story first appeared.
If an employee had done that it would have been instant dismissal for Gross Misconduct...
All of them couldn't have played it worse from the start. They have fallen into Farage's trap at every single step.
Farage is a wily coyote and smart, he is up against chinless no mark Tory duffers. A 5 year old could run rings round them.
"Wily coyote" is a slightly odd phrase to use, since isn't it a nod to the cartoon character (Wile E. Coyote), who was famously hapless and inept, and up against a much sharper, quicker adversary?
I agree he's an effective self publicist, though. The really odd thing isn't just that they closed his account on the basis they did, but that they apparently thought, "Well, I very much doubt Nigel will make a whole big thing out of this in the media".
Surely they did flag up that Farage would publicise this?
The general advice to deal with people you don't like, basically ignore them, don't give them the oxygen of publicity.....If Coutts had just kept his account, but under a close watch for anything dodgy, no news story, no tales of building dodgy dossiers, no bad PR, no getting called in by the government etc etc etc.
Instead they just given Farage a megaphone and a massive watch tower spotlight to be shone right at them AND worst of all now given his a new crusade to campaign on, one in which he is in the right.
I bet all the other banks are really thanking the morons at Natwest for this.
They should have done what they do with other people at Coutts they are getting rid of - transfer them automatically and seamlessly to a NatWest account. Includes moving all direct debits and standing orders. So no one misses a beat.
Downgrading someone to a regular account is a non story.
My experience of retail banks would suggest a "seamless" transfer might not be possible. Especially with RBS, which is probably super messy with all the various acquisitions.
I wouldn't risk it. I'd do it manually myself, moving over direct debits etc. by hand (and taking the chance to review them as well). You also need to double check all of them with the providers, and any linked savings accounts, anyway, so it doesn't much add to the work.
I've got 2 accounts, one with salary, mortgage, childcare (The big stuff) and another with a couple of grand & 2 direct debits which I just move around every so often for "switching" bonuses. The switching account is currently with Natwest cycling into their regular saver.
Do you not need your salary and direct debits to get the bonus?
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
I agree with your first para - essentially basic banking should be a human right of anyone living in a modern liberal society - whatever we think of them.
On the second point, the general shrugs that initially met the story (including from me) were only partly because Farage is seen as controversial and rich to the point that it's unlikely that he'll find himself unbanked. It's also that the bank is Coutts, which is relatively little-known to the general public and thought of as a bank for a small elite. It's a bit like a story that the Duke of Norfolk finds that Eton wouldn't put his son down for a place. "Oh, well" would be a natural reaction to that.
To the (limited) extent that the story has opened up the discussion of refusal of banking facilities more generally, it's a good development. And of course Farage should get his account back.
Who would have thought, that briefing a journalist with lies about the personal details of a customer might be a bad thing?
She should have resigned yesterday when the story first appeared.
If an employee had done that it would have been instant dismissal for Gross Misconduct...
All of them couldn't have played it worse from the start. They have fallen into Farage's trap at every single step.
Farage is a wily coyote and smart, he is up against chinless no mark Tory duffers. A 5 year old could run rings round them.
"Wily coyote" is a slightly odd phrase to use, since isn't it a nod to the cartoon character (Wile E. Coyote), who was famously hapless and inept, and up against a much sharper, quicker adversary?
I agree he's an effective self publicist, though. The really odd thing isn't just that they closed his account on the basis they did, but that they apparently thought, "Well, I very much doubt Nigel will make a whole big thing out of this in the media".
Surely they did flag up that Farage would publicise this?
The general advice to deal with people you don't like, basically ignore them, don't give them the oxygen of publicity.....If Coutts had just kept his account, but under a close watch for anything dodgy, no news story, no tales of building dodgy dossiers, no bad PR, no getting called in by the government etc etc etc.
Instead they just given Farage a megaphone and a massive watch tower spotlight to be shone right at them AND worst of all now given his a new crusade to campaign on, one in which he is in the right.
I bet all the other banks are really thanking the morons at Natwest for this.
They should have done what they do with other people at Coutts they are getting rid of - transfer them automatically and seamlessly to a NatWest account. Includes moving all direct debits and standing orders. So no one misses a beat.
Downgrading someone to a regular account is a non story.
My experience of retail banks would suggest a "seamless" transfer might not be possible. Especially with RBS, which is probably super messy with all the various acquisitions.
I wouldn't risk it. I'd do it manually myself, moving over direct debits etc. by hand (and taking the chance to review them as well). You also need to double check all of them with the providers, and any linked savings accounts, anyway, so it doesn't much add to the work.
I've got 2 accounts, one with salary, mortgage, childcare (The big stuff) and another with a couple of grand & 2 direct debits which I just move around every so often for "switching" bonuses. The switching account is currently with Natwest cycling into their regular saver.
Do you not need your salary and direct debits to get the bonus?
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
I agree with your first para - essentially basic banking should be a human right of anyone living in a modern liberal society - whatever we think of them.
On the second point, the general shrugs that initially met the story (including from me) were only partly because Farage is seen as controversial and rich to the point that it's unlikely that he'll find himself unbanked. It's also that the bank is Coutts, which is relatively little-known to the general public and thought of as a bank for a small elite. It's a bit like a story that the Duke of Norfolk finds that Eton wouldn't put his son down for a place. "Oh, well" would be a natural reaction to that.
To the (limited) extent that the story has opened up the discussion of refusal of banking facilities more generally, it's a good development. And of course Farage should get his account back.
But he stated from the get go, 9 other banks had rejected him over the course of a number of months. Only after he came out and made a big fuss did Natwest eventually say he could have a basic account with them. According to Farage, it is now 10 banks who have rejected him and as it stands he is without a new bank and is "unbanked" (Coutts have given him a temporary extension on his account).
Now you could say well he should just take the Natwest account and shut up, but given the Natwest top brass seem happy to leak his financial situation and caused them to lose their jobs / make the board look like idiots, I imagine most of us wouldn't want to have our accounts with them as who knows what might get leaked next.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
I’ve been raising it for a while. We need data on what the actually blocks are - proper addresses, financial, credit score etc.
In theory it is trivial to sign up to any number of banks and alt-banks.
Natwest are rejecting half the applications for their basic bank accounts. Those are the bank accounts supposed to be available for the "unbanked".
In their defence, it is a common problem for the banks, the main issue is
1) Customers provide incorrect/inadequate info about themselves
2) Customers have already got into the financial difficulty with the bank and left a trail of debt and destruction with that banking group. For example customer has left RBS with debts of £10k at their RBS bank account/loan/overdraft/credit card, when they apply for a basic account with Natwest that is going to show up.
There obviously two different issues here.
1) People being debanked who have done nothing illegal and meet all the criteria, but because of PEP rules or somebody in the bank decides they "don't align with the banks values".
2) People being unbanked because of the wider banking laws and rules around what evidence they need to provide and what has been their previous financial situation.
Both are worthy of further investigation and potentially reform for differing reasons.
Agree, I've posting on here for years how easy it is to become unbanked and we've not even discussed CIFAS markers.
Bit of balance - the real problem, not pols' particular preoccupations.
"Despite all the recent front-page attention given to Nigel Farage and today’s development – the resignation of NatWest chief executive Alison Rose – there is something else you should know: banks have been quietly closing accounts without giving their customers any reasonable explanation for decades. Setting aside Farage’s politics and personality, and Coutts’s fragile disposition when it comes to people rich enough but arguably not wholesome enough to utilise their elite banking facilities, it should concern us when banks close our accounts with little or no warning. Ordinary people don’t get the prime minister hollering for justice, and we certainly don’t get apologies from CEOs."
Ooh, the Guardian have almost got it.
The thing is the left outlets are making a big deal out of the fact it is Farage, but unfortunately a lot of change only comes when you get a well connected person wronged.
Sarah Everard has sparked changes to the law and policing (and rightly so), but she is far from the first case, but she was well connected to the media, so her case got massive prominence among the industry.
She seem the opposite with grooming gangs. They were "nobodies", so the media didn't care for years and years. It was one brave Times journalist who finally pushed and pushed and pushed on this.
Was it her connections to the media? I thought it was the pretty, white young woman that resonated with so many other young women. See differing levels of media noise based on the ethnicity of the victims.
Zara Aleena, the law graduate murdered walking home in Sunil's manor, might beg to differ. It is often said that only White victims grab the headlines but that is not really true. The biggest factor is probably what else happened on the same day. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-63599799
It probably reflects more on me that although I recall her death, I did not recall her name, yet Sarah Everard's name is fresh in the memory owing to the differential exposure (in my opinion). Of course the cases were different, and the involvement of a serving Met Police officer made it particularly notable, but I stand by my opinion that white victims get higher profile than non-whites.
I broadly agree with you, although as you say there were some other important differences in the cases. The involvement of a serving Police officer, and consequent focus on wider problems of misogyny in the Met Police is a really important one.
Another is that the Everard investigation was, initially, a missing person inquiry which do attract a lot of immediate media attention where the person is believed to be in serious peril, as there are urgent appeals, large-scale searches etc. Whereas Aleena was found close to death soon after the attack on her - so it was a murder investigation from day one.
That's not to disagree with the generality of your point.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
The Graun does discuss the point, if only by assereting that we have rights to bank accounts.
But what happens if I turn up to Coutts and demand a basic bank account? I do wonder. They will tell me to piss off. But so can any other bank. Is there any bank of last resort?
And we discussed the impact of Post Office Bank privatisation and detachment from the Post Office branches and the rundown of the old univcersal provision of a PO bank book in every post office and sub-PO in the land.
There are nine banks that have agreed to provide an account of last resort as basic bank accounts. But they do not have to accept you, or even explain why they do not accept you.
And Natwest reject half of the applications, compared to Lloyds rejecting 1 in 7. Now just perhaps obvious fraudsters are targetting Natwest for some reason rather than Lloyds, but equally it could be that Natwest are rejecting them on either direct commercial cost reasons or the fear of fines, neither of which would be acceptable.
Thanks. And of course even being refused an account appears on one's credit record AIUI so the more you get refused the more likely it is to happen?
Bit of a shock to hear that the fires in Greece may have been caused by arson, according to local officials.
How else would they be caused ? No volcanic eruptions or asteroid strikes on Rhodes recently that I'm aware of.
Many wildfires start without deliberate arson. Sunlight concentrated through a lens can do it. I believe that that can even be a drop of water acting as the lens, but modern times is often broken glass. Other sources can be lightening, sparks from rockfalls, spontaneous combustion.
After all, fires and burning are part of the Australian ecosystem, and would definitely have evolved without the hand of man to start the pesky fires.
Fires and burning are part of a significant proportion of the Mediterranean ecosystem. And lowland heath in the UK (although that might only be through human management over centuries).
The problem comes when you put houses in amongst that ecosystem and expect them not to burn.
Lightning triggered fires are pretty common. Not every strike is accompanied by a deluge.
Bit of a shock to hear that the fires in Greece may have been caused by arson, according to local officials.
It used to be burnt land had less planning restrictions . Once the forest goes up in smoke it’s easier to develop . Not sure if that’s still the law but one would hope it’s been changed now .
Bit of a shock to hear that the fires in Greece may have been caused by arson, according to local officials.
It used to be burnt land had less planning restrictions . Once the forest goes up in smoke it’s easier to develop . Not sure if that’s still the law but one would hope it’s been changed now .
Oh, the local equivalent of Glaswegian urban improvement? How curious.
Bit of a shock to hear that the fires in Greece may have been caused by arson, according to local officials.
How else would they be caused ? No volcanic eruptions or asteroid strikes on Rhodes recently that I'm aware of.
Many wildfires start without deliberate arson. Sunlight concentrated through a lens can do it. I believe that that can even be a drop of water acting as the lens, but modern times is often broken glass. Other sources can be lightening, sparks from rockfalls, spontaneous combustion.
After all, fires and burning are part of the Australian ecosystem, and would definitely have evolved without the hand of man to start the pesky fires.
Lightning is a common cause of fires. Discarded glass bottles have caused fires in Edinburgh parks, such as Blackford Hill and Arthur's Seat.
But you get a lot of people who think it will be fun to start a bonfire and then don't know how to put it out properly, or can't control it. They might not have been intending to start a fire that covers hundreds of square kilometres, but they've done so through willful negligence.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
The Graun does discuss the point, if only by assereting that we have rights to bank accounts.
But what happens if I turn up to Coutts and demand a basic bank account? I do wonder. They will tell me to piss off. But so can any other bank. Is there any bank of last resort?
And we discussed the impact of Post Office Bank privatisation and detachment from the Post Office branches and the rundown of the old univcersal provision of a PO bank book in every post office and sub-PO in the land.
There are nine banks that have agreed to provide an account of last resort as basic bank accounts. But they do not have to accept you, or even explain why they do not accept you.
And Natwest reject half of the applications, compared to Lloyds rejecting 1 in 7. Now just perhaps obvious fraudsters are targetting Natwest for some reason rather than Lloyds, but equally it could be that Natwest are rejecting them on either direct commercial cost reasons or the fear of fines, neither of which would be acceptable.
Thanks. And of course even being refused an account appears on one's credit record AIUI so the more you get refused the more likely it is to happen?
As for differences, that's interesting.
I'd assume that's what is happening to Farage. The credit referencing agencies effectively create collusion to debank people.
Bit of a shock to hear that the fires in Greece may have been caused by arson, according to local officials.
It used to be burnt land had less planning restrictions . Once the forest goes up in smoke it’s easier to develop . Not sure if that’s still the law but one would hope it’s been changed now .
Oh, the local equivalent of Glaswegian urban improvement? How curious.
They got their new stadium in the end, but nice though it is, it is something of a white elephant and somehow the council tax payers are the ones that ended up losing money.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Even people found guilty of crimes shouldn't be debanked IMO, (let alone having the wrong opinion).
There are many Andriivkas in Ukraine. The one in question is about 6km south of the center of Bakhmut and about 2km south of Klishchiivka. I suspect I am going to be saying this again and again, but the total area that has changed hands is about 6 square km. It's good, but it is slow.
It’s always slow, when the enemy is digging trenches and mining fields.
Progress is progress though, and the Ukranians are making progress every day.
I know. I agree with you. But the 2014 area of Ukraine is 579,290sqkm and the Russians currently occupy about a quarter of it including Crimea. Call it 150Ksqkm. 6sqkm is 0.005% (ie 0.00005) of the occupied territory. At that rate they will have cleared out the orcs in about 20,000 days, which is 54 years ten months.
We remember WW1, but forget that it took four years to resolve. This isn't going to finish in 2023, and probably not 2024. Unless Trump wins and changes US policy faster than Starmer on penises, in which case the Ukranians are dead by Xmas 2024.
Personally I doubt it. Ireland had an anglo saxon economy and was totally screwed in 2009. Eye watering pain. It has only escaped as it nicks everyone elses taxes and is a small economy so can pay its debts down.
The UK would not have had that luxury and was probably so large an economy as to wreck the Euro. Black Wednesday 2 would have been the outcome.
I think you may have replied to a different post than the one you thought...
No I think you are wrong on this. Joe Root should open both the batting and bowling for England.
I disagree. Of the two I think Oppenheimer will gross least
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
I’ve been raising it for a while. We need data on what the actually blocks are - proper addresses, financial, credit score etc.
In theory it is trivial to sign up to any number of banks and alt-banks.
After moving to Ireland it took us seven months to open a joint bank account. A lot of the delays was because we didn't have acceptable proof of address. It was a right pain in the arse.
There are many Andriivkas in Ukraine. The one in question is about 6km south of the center of Bakhmut and about 2km south of Klishchiivka. I suspect I am going to be saying this again and again, but the total area that has changed hands is about 6 square km. It's good, but it is slow.
It’s always slow, when the enemy is digging trenches and mining fields.
Progress is progress though, and the Ukranians are making progress every day.
I know. I agree with you. But the 2014 area of Ukraine is 579,290sqkm and the Russians currently occupy about a quarter of it including Crimea. Call it 150Ksqkm. 6sqkm is 0.005% (ie 0.00005) of the occupied territory. At that rate they will have cleared out the orcs in about 20,000 days, which is 54 years ten months.
We remember WW1, but forget that it took four years to resolve. This isn't going to finish in 2023, and probably not 2024. Unless Trump wins and changes US policy faster than Starmer on penises, in which case the Ukranians are dead by Xmas 2024.
Every major country that lost in WWI collapsed at home before they did on the battlefield (even Russia, although the two were closer to being hand-in-hand there). The Ukraine war is obviously smaller in scale and intensity. Nonetheless, I'd expect the same - it'll be a political defeat that ends it, not a military one.
Interestingly, though, the two are sort of linked.
The political defeat occurs when it looks like the military one will take too long.
Indeed. Or won't come at all. Putin is clearly treading a fine line between committing enough to keep the war going without committing too much to spark potentially unmanageable unrest at home, in the hope that something will turn up to either change the terms of the war, or that Ukraine will crack first. But to go back to the point above, that's relying on the Russian people / state being willing to accept the costs of a war which - whatever the media says - clearly isn't existential for the country.
Bit of a shock to hear that the fires in Greece may have been caused by arson, according to local officials.
It used to be burnt land had less planning restrictions . Once the forest goes up in smoke it’s easier to develop . Not sure if that’s still the law but one would hope it’s been changed now .
Oh, the local equivalent of Glaswegian urban improvement? How curious.
James is said to have launched a foul-mouthed tirade against staff after a drain was blocked at his home during the production of James Martin’s Saturday Morning.
There are many Andriivkas in Ukraine. The one in question is about 6km south of the center of Bakhmut and about 2km south of Klishchiivka. I suspect I am going to be saying this again and again, but the total area that has changed hands is about 6 square km. It's good, but it is slow.
It’s always slow, when the enemy is digging trenches and mining fields.
Progress is progress though, and the Ukranians are making progress every day.
I know. I agree with you. But the 2014 area of Ukraine is 579,290sqkm and the Russians currently occupy about a quarter of it including Crimea. Call it 150Ksqkm. 6sqkm is 0.005% (ie 0.00005) of the occupied territory. At that rate they will have cleared out the orcs in about 20,000 days, which is 54 years ten months.
We remember WW1, but forget that it took four years to resolve. This isn't going to finish in 2023, and probably not 2024. Unless Trump wins and changes US policy faster than Starmer on penises, in which case the Ukranians are dead by Xmas 2024.
It's 603,000 km2 including Crimea I believe. I imagine part of the reason the Ukrainians haven't immediately committed all their stuff to the new offensive is they don't trust their western partners and want plenty in reserve in case that support capitulates as it could do after 2024. It seems the US would rather risk ten of thousands of Ukrainian lives rather than provide them with air power, I'm guessing because they do not want such Ukrainian success that Russia might lose Crimea/implode. To my mind it's silly and may reflect narcissistic egos in the NSC, who perhaps quite enjoy controlling Ukraine and think they can carefully calibrate exactly what needs to be done. Heaven forbid Ukraine be so strong that the US can't control them. Does the US want Ukrainian autonomy or leverage?
Read Phillips O'Brien bemoaning attempts in Washington to micromanage the war.
Let's call it 600,000sqkm. Makes the maths easier.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Even people found guilty of crimes shouldn't be debanked IMO, (let alone having the wrong opinion).
I completely agree. But my point was there there isn't even an arguable case for punishing those not guilty.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
I’ve been raising it for a while. We need data on what the actually blocks are - proper addresses, financial, credit score etc.
In theory it is trivial to sign up to any number of banks and alt-banks.
After moving to Ireland it took us seven months to open a joint bank account. A lot of the delays was because we didn't have acceptable proof of address. It was a right pain in the arse.
There are many Andriivkas in Ukraine. The one in question is about 6km south of the center of Bakhmut and about 2km south of Klishchiivka. I suspect I am going to be saying this again and again, but the total area that has changed hands is about 6 square km. It's good, but it is slow.
It’s always slow, when the enemy is digging trenches and mining fields.
Progress is progress though, and the Ukranians are making progress every day.
I know. I agree with you. But the 2014 area of Ukraine is 579,290sqkm and the Russians currently occupy about a quarter of it including Crimea. Call it 150Ksqkm. 6sqkm is 0.005% (ie 0.00005) of the occupied territory. At that rate they will have cleared out the orcs in about 20,000 days, which is 54 years ten months...
Silly calculation, though. The Russians might have built defences in some depth, but they're still a fairly thin red line along the borders of the territory they've seized.
Exactly , take a few key areas and most of rest become untenable.
The last time somebody tried that we ended up with Operation Market Garden.
We know some things work.
Going around works, eg MacArthur and Inchon.
Attacking from an unexepected direction works, eg Tommy Franks and Gulf War II or the Germans and the Ardennes Forest.
Overwhelming firepower and technological superiority works, eg Schwartzkopf and Gulf War I.
Surprise works, like the Six Day War, when the IAF destroyed Egyptian air forces on the ground
Do you know what doesn't work? Taking a few key areas. It's a war. Unless it's something like a port, things move.
In the 6 Day War, the Syrians panicked after their defences were breached. It was only the fact that the Israel didn’t have a plan or interest in conquering the whole country that saved them.
Once an army breaks, it can loose a lot of ground fast. As we saw earlier in this war.
I didn't say it didn't! What I said was that "Taking a few key areas" doesn't work. And it doesn't. We have to get out of the habit of thinking it does.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
I’ve been raising it for a while. We need data on what the actually blocks are - proper addresses, financial, credit score etc.
In theory it is trivial to sign up to any number of banks and alt-banks.
After moving to Ireland it took us seven months to open a joint bank account. A lot of the delays was because we didn't have acceptable proof of address. It was a right pain in the arse.
Do you have an Irish Passport ?
No address in a passport.
It is the same in the UK. You need a few utility bills to open accounts so you need to be somewhere for some months.
Who would have thought, that briefing a journalist with lies about the personal details of a customer might be a bad thing?
She should have resigned yesterday when the story first appeared.
If an employee had done that it would have been instant dismissal for Gross Misconduct...
All of them couldn't have played it worse from the start. They have fallen into Farage's trap at every single step.
Farage is a wily coyote and smart, he is up against chinless no mark Tory duffers. A 5 year old could run rings round them.
"Wily coyote" is a slightly odd phrase to use, since isn't it a nod to the cartoon character (Wile E. Coyote), who was famously hapless and inept, and up against a much sharper, quicker adversary?
I agree he's an effective self publicist, though. The really odd thing isn't just that they closed his account on the basis they did, but that they apparently thought, "Well, I very much doubt Nigel will make a whole big thing out of this in the media".
Concur doubly.
On your last point, the old saw used to be, don't start a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.
Early 3rd-millennium update: don't incorrectly/ineptly/illegally bad-mouth a controversialist (such as Farage) whose tweets (or xcretions) are read and re-tweeted (or whatever) by millions.
Who would have thought, that briefing a journalist with lies about the personal details of a customer might be a bad thing?
She should have resigned yesterday when the story first appeared.
If an employee had done that it would have been instant dismissal for Gross Misconduct...
All of them couldn't have played it worse from the start. They have fallen into Farage's trap at every single step.
Farage is a wily coyote and smart, he is up against chinless no mark Tory duffers. A 5 year old could run rings round them.
"Wily coyote" is a slightly odd phrase to use, since isn't it a nod to the cartoon character (Wile E. Coyote), who was famously hapless and inept, and up against a much sharper, quicker adversary?
I agree he's an effective self publicist, though. The really odd thing isn't just that they closed his account on the basis they did, but that they apparently thought, "Well, I very much doubt Nigel will make a whole big thing out of this in the media".
Concur doubly.
On your last point, the old saw used to be, don't start a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.
Early 3rd-millennium update: don't incorrectly/ineptly/illegally bad-mouth a controversialist (such as Farage) whose tweets (or xcretions) are read and re-tweeted (or whatever) by millions.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
I’ve been raising it for a while. We need data on what the actually blocks are - proper addresses, financial, credit score etc.
In theory it is trivial to sign up to any number of banks and alt-banks.
After moving to Ireland it took us seven months to open a joint bank account. A lot of the delays was because we didn't have acceptable proof of address. It was a right pain in the arse.
Do you have an Irish Passport ?
No address in a passport.
It is the same in the UK. You need a few utility bills to open accounts so you need to be somewhere for some months.
I ask only because my daughter found it a lot easier to get things done when she moved to Waterford if she used her Irish passport. It cut out some of the admin. From memory she set up her bank account in a fortnight,
James is said to have launched a foul-mouthed tirade against staff after a drain was blocked at his home during the production of James Martin’s Saturday Morning.
Who would have thought, that briefing a journalist with lies about the personal details of a customer might be a bad thing?
She should have resigned yesterday when the story first appeared.
If an employee had done that it would have been instant dismissal for Gross Misconduct...
All of them couldn't have played it worse from the start. They have fallen into Farage's trap at every single step.
Farage is a wily coyote and smart, he is up against chinless no mark Tory duffers. A 5 year old could run rings round them.
"Wily coyote" is a slightly odd phrase to use, since isn't it a nod to the cartoon character (Wile E. Coyote), who was famously hapless and inept, and up against a much sharper, quicker adversary?
I agree he's an effective self publicist, though. The really odd thing isn't just that they closed his account on the basis they did, but that they apparently thought, "Well, I very much doubt Nigel will make a whole big thing out of this in the media".
Surely they did flag up that Farage would publicise this?
The general advice to deal with people you don't like, basically ignore them, don't give them the oxygen of publicity.....If Coutts had just kept his account, but under a close watch for anything dodgy, no news story, no tales of building dodgy dossiers, no bad PR, no getting called in by the government etc etc etc.
Instead they just given Farage a megaphone and a massive watch tower spotlight to be shone right at them AND worst of all now given his a new crusade to campaign on, one in which he is in the right.
I bet all the other banks are really thanking the morons at Natwest for this.
What crusade ? His thing seems to be calling for the rest of the NatWest board to be sacked.
The bank has accepted it was in the wrong; the CEO has resigned. Now he's just being a pillock.
He says he is now on a crusade to fight for the debanked and unbanked.....
Farage is always on the look out for a new bandwagon, at one point it was COVID restrictions, then it was the small boats, now he has found debanking.
Who would have thought, that briefing a journalist with lies about the personal details of a customer might be a bad thing?
She should have resigned yesterday when the story first appeared.
If an employee had done that it would have been instant dismissal for Gross Misconduct...
I expect that Farage is now going to sue the hell out of NatWest, and log a case with the Information Commissioner which can expose them to further fines.
I'm not totally sure he'd get far suing them, as it's not clear to me what his quantifiable loss is. Certainly, he'd be taking a major risk as soon as they made an offer to settle (essentially, he'd be liable to pay both his and their legal costs if this exceeded the sum ultimately awarded, which is quite likely to be modest). I think Farage is canny enough to get this - pursuing a court case after a sensible "without prejudice" offer is made is a bit of a mug's game.
So I'm not convinced he'll spin this out into a full-blown court case (he may issue proceedings but can't see him having his day in court), although I can see it with ICO complaints etc.
The loss is to his reputation. Now, you might think that he has no reputation to lose, but no matter his politics, he was in good standing in society, and NatWest decided to brief the press that he was not in good standing in society.
It’s the sort of case where the damages are £100k and the costs £3m, or else NW can settle for £500k now and avoid the court case they know they’ll lose.
Or they offer £250k, in the knowledge that Farage is taking a multi million pound, probably losing gamble on costs, if he takes it to court.
I suspect that Farage has someone prepared to bankroll the lawsuit. But he might take the £250k, as most of us would.
Coutts private banking is in serious trouble. A real client manager can take his clients with him. How many of the good client managers at Coutts (there are a few) have rung round their premium clients, got agreement and approached Rothschilds with a list and a request for a signing bonus.
This recently happened to one private bank - that hadn’t fucked up publicly.
Ratner-ing your brand. Even if you hate Farage, the thought that your exclusive private bank, the reason most people want an account there is that their person business and wealth stays private, can be undermined by an executive of the wider group (who shouldn't even know anything about your financial status) casually spilling the beans to a friendly journalist at a big public dinner.
And for good measure, the potential that they have people trawling your social media etc, to see what kind of person you are and compiling dossiers on you.
They don't need teams of trawlers working day and night to do that nowadays.
In any case I don't believe for one second that somebody at Coutts looked for stuff and found the tweet in which Nigel Farage committed the heinous crime of calling the now king "stupid" for accepting a suitcase containing a million euros in cash from a Qatari sheikh, and then decided completely off their own bat that this was terribly naughty of the client and cause for telling him to look elsewhere for his banking services.
Coutts used to be in daily contact with their late client, the now king's mother.
The king banks with them. They're probably in daily contact with him too. Imagine having that job. You'd probably want to Ratner the brand.
There's a Coutts cash machine inside Buckingham Palace. I bet there wasn't ever one of those in Nigel's house.
Further kingface-related events will come out of the blue like this. He's f***ed the City. He'll probably f*** the Church of England next, or maybe the army, or theatreland, or shipping insurance, or the BBC, or the Times, or SIS. You can understand why Putin calls him "Your Majesty".
He's a mini-version of Trump who wears funny clothes and probably has to be held back from having a tantrum or otherwise causing an issue about 10 times a day. He really thought he was going to take a publicly more hands-on role in running his kingdom when he "ascended" last year. He must have been getting such good "advice" from fearless souls who were never unafraid to tell him just how things really are. He was going to go to Cairo and tell the plebs and administrators of the entire world about the planet, the works. He heard it from Laurens van der Post, so he really knows. Never forget that Boris Johnson dissed him in public too when Johnson was PM and kingface was still Prince of Wales, over Rwanda...
PS Who else was at the dinner? Not the BBC presenters. I mean big donors or potential donors.
Bit of a shock to hear that the fires in Greece may have been caused by arson, according to local officials.
It used to be burnt land had less planning restrictions . Once the forest goes up in smoke it’s easier to develop . Not sure if that’s still the law but one would hope it’s been changed now .
Oh, the local equivalent of Glaswegian urban improvement? How curious.
James is said to have launched a foul-mouthed tirade against staff after a drain was blocked at his home during the production of James Martin’s Saturday Morning.
Bit of a shock to hear that the fires in Greece may have been caused by arson, according to local officials.
It used to be burnt land had less planning restrictions . Once the forest goes up in smoke it’s easier to develop . Not sure if that’s still the law but one would hope it’s been changed now .
Oh, the local equivalent of Glaswegian urban improvement? How curious.
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
I agree with your first para - essentially basic banking should be a human right of anyone living in a modern liberal society - whatever we think of them.
On the second point, the general shrugs that initially met the story (including from me) were only partly because Farage is seen as controversial and rich to the point that it's unlikely that he'll find himself unbanked. It's also that the bank is Coutts, which is relatively little-known to the general public and thought of as a bank for a small elite. It's a bit like a story that the Duke of Norfolk finds that Eton wouldn't put his son down for a place. "Oh, well" would be a natural reaction to that.
To the (limited) extent that the story has opened up the discussion of refusal of banking facilities more generally, it's a good development. And of course Farage should get his account back.
I think it's slightly more complex than the Duke of Norfolk example. I don't think it would be seen as a bad thing if Farage applied for a bank at Coutts and was turned down - like the Duke of Norfolk. The issue is that he had a bank account which was removed (because Coutts, it appears, decided they didn't like him). The analogy here is if the Duke of Norfolk's son had a place at Eton but was then thrown out of Eton because they wanted fewer posh people. Coutts/Natwest then compounded this by a) conducting a personal witchhunt against Farage, b) briefing the press about him, and c) lying about it. It's hardly the model of discretion which we'd associate with private banks. Or any sort of banks. I'm not in the market for private banking, but if I was I wouldn't now go to one which trawls the internet for dirt on its customers.
(In all honesty, my banking choices are largely driven by inertia. I'm also quite cross about First Direct's parent company HSBC cheerleading for the CPC in Hong Kong, and also for replacing the easy-to-see numbers on the front of the card with hard-to-see numbers on the back, but still haven't got around to moving banks.)
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
I’ve been raising it for a while. We need data on what the actually blocks are - proper addresses, financial, credit score etc.
In theory it is trivial to sign up to any number of banks and alt-banks.
After moving to Ireland it took us seven months to open a joint bank account. A lot of the delays was because we didn't have acceptable proof of address. It was a right pain in the arse.
Do you have an Irish Passport ?
No address in a passport.
It is the same in the UK. You need a few utility bills to open accounts so you need to be somewhere for some months.
I ask only because my daughter found it a lot easier to get things done when she moved to Waterford if she used her Irish passport. It cut out some of the admin. From memory she set up her bank account in a fortnight,
I'm off to Waterford in a week or so to stay with friends. This being the short haul alternative to my cancelled Georgia holiday. Never been before and looking forward to it.
Who would have thought, that briefing a journalist with lies about the personal details of a customer might be a bad thing?
She should have resigned yesterday when the story first appeared.
If an employee had done that it would have been instant dismissal for Gross Misconduct...
All of them couldn't have played it worse from the start. They have fallen into Farage's trap at every single step.
Farage is a wily coyote and smart, he is up against chinless no mark Tory duffers. A 5 year old could run rings round them.
"Wily coyote" is a slightly odd phrase to use, since isn't it a nod to the cartoon character (Wile E. Coyote), who was famously hapless and inept, and up against a much sharper, quicker adversary?
I agree he's an effective self publicist, though. The really odd thing isn't just that they closed his account on the basis they did, but that they apparently thought, "Well, I very much doubt Nigel will make a whole big thing out of this in the media".
Surely they did flag up that Farage would publicise this?
The general advice to deal with people you don't like, basically ignore them, don't give them the oxygen of publicity.....If Coutts had just kept his account, but under a close watch for anything dodgy, no news story, no tales of building dodgy dossiers, no bad PR, no getting called in by the government etc etc etc.
Instead they just given Farage a megaphone and a massive watch tower spotlight to be shone right at them AND worst of all now given his a new crusade to campaign on, one in which he is in the right.
I bet all the other banks are really thanking the morons at Natwest for this.
What crusade ? His thing seems to be calling for the rest of the NatWest board to be sacked.
The bank has accepted it was in the wrong; the CEO has resigned. Now he's just being a pillock.
Perhaps he fancies the Chairman gig himself.
Whatever the beneficial side effect regarding issues Farage's case has made us aware of, he has reinforced the notion that he is an unpleasant and entitled oik.
There are many Andriivkas in Ukraine. The one in question is about 6km south of the center of Bakhmut and about 2km south of Klishchiivka. I suspect I am going to be saying this again and again, but the total area that has changed hands is about 6 square km. It's good, but it is slow.
It’s always slow, when the enemy is digging trenches and mining fields.
Progress is progress though, and the Ukranians are making progress every day.
I know. I agree with you. But the 2014 area of Ukraine is 579,290sqkm and the Russians currently occupy about a quarter of it including Crimea. Call it 150Ksqkm. 6sqkm is 0.005% (ie 0.00005) of the occupied territory. At that rate they will have cleared out the orcs in about 20,000 days, which is 54 years ten months.
We remember WW1, but forget that it took four years to resolve. This isn't going to finish in 2023, and probably not 2024. Unless Trump wins and changes US policy faster than Starmer on penises, in which case the Ukranians are dead by Xmas 2024.
It's 603,000 km2 including Crimea I believe. I imagine part of the reason the Ukrainians haven't immediately committed all their stuff to the new offensive is they don't trust their western partners and want plenty in reserve in case that support capitulates as it could do after 2024. It seems the US would rather risk ten of thousands of Ukrainian lives rather than provide them with air power, I'm guessing because they do not want such Ukrainian success that Russia might lose Crimea/implode. To my mind it's silly and may reflect narcissistic egos in the NSC, who perhaps quite enjoy controlling Ukraine and think they can carefully calibrate exactly what needs to be done. Heaven forbid Ukraine be so strong that the US can't control them. Does the US want Ukrainian autonomy or leverage?
Read Phillips O'Brien bemoaning attempts in Washington to micromanage the war.
Let's call it 600,000sqkm. Makes the maths easier.
Right now the Ukrainians are attempting to encircle Bakhmut; if they are successful, then (a) they will take a whole bunch of Russian prisoners (which will be a serious issue for the Putin government), and (b) will have taken back the Russia's biggest gain of the year.
Do not underestimate the first issue: casualties are a lot easier to hide than prisoners.
BBC: Kevin Spacey found not guilty on all charges.
Yet with reputation forever tarnished.
'Not guilty' does not necessarily mean the evidence given against the accused was false; it just means it wasn't sufficient to convict beyond reasonable doubt.
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
I agree with your first para - essentially basic banking should be a human right of anyone living in a modern liberal society - whatever we think of them.
On the second point, the general shrugs that initially met the story (including from me) were only partly because Farage is seen as controversial and rich to the point that it's unlikely that he'll find himself unbanked. It's also that the bank is Coutts, which is relatively little-known to the general public and thought of as a bank for a small elite. It's a bit like a story that the Duke of Norfolk finds that Eton wouldn't put his son down for a place. "Oh, well" would be a natural reaction to that.
To the (limited) extent that the story has opened up the discussion of refusal of banking facilities more generally, it's a good development. And of course Farage should get his account back.
I think it's slightly more complex than the Duke of Norfolk example. I don't think it would be seen as a bad thing if Farage applied for a bank at Coutts and was turned down - like the Duke of Norfolk. The issue is that he had a bank account which was removed (because Coutts, it appears, decided they didn't like him). The analogy here is if the Duke of Norfolk's son had a place at Eton but was then thrown out of Eton because they wanted fewer posh people. Coutts/Natwest then compounded this by a) conducting a personal witchhunt against Farage, b) briefing the press about him, and c) lying about it. It's hardly the model of discretion which we'd associate with private banks. Or any sort of banks. I'm not in the market for private banking, but if I was I wouldn't now go to one which trawls the internet for dirt on its customers.
(In all honesty, my banking choices are largely driven by inertia. I'm also quite cross about First Direct's parent company HSBC cheerleading for the CPC in Hong Kong, and also for replacing the easy-to-see numbers on the front of the card with hard-to-see numbers on the back, but still haven't got around to moving banks.)
And, it would stick in my throat, to have people who have received fines for money laundering, presuming to sit in judgement on my "values."
BBC: Kevin Spacey found not guilty on all charges.
Yet with reputation forever tarnished.
'Not guilty' does not necessarily mean the evidence given against the accused was false; it just means it wasn't sufficient to convict beyond reasonable doubt.
Even so, found innocent, but name tarnished. Why not have anonymity for the accused?
There are many Andriivkas in Ukraine. The one in question is about 6km south of the center of Bakhmut and about 2km south of Klishchiivka. I suspect I am going to be saying this again and again, but the total area that has changed hands is about 6 square km. It's good, but it is slow.
It’s always slow, when the enemy is digging trenches and mining fields.
Progress is progress though, and the Ukranians are making progress every day.
I know. I agree with you. But the 2014 area of Ukraine is 579,290sqkm and the Russians currently occupy about a quarter of it including Crimea. Call it 150Ksqkm. 6sqkm is 0.005% (ie 0.00005) of the occupied territory. At that rate they will have cleared out the orcs in about 20,000 days, which is 54 years ten months.
We remember WW1, but forget that it took four years to resolve. This isn't going to finish in 2023, and probably not 2024. Unless Trump wins and changes US policy faster than Starmer on penises, in which case the Ukranians are dead by Xmas 2024.
It's 603,000 km2 including Crimea I believe. I imagine part of the reason the Ukrainians haven't immediately committed all their stuff to the new offensive is they don't trust their western partners and want plenty in reserve in case that support capitulates as it could do after 2024. It seems the US would rather risk ten of thousands of Ukrainian lives rather than provide them with air power, I'm guessing because they do not want such Ukrainian success that Russia might lose Crimea/implode. To my mind it's silly and may reflect narcissistic egos in the NSC, who perhaps quite enjoy controlling Ukraine and think they can carefully calibrate exactly what needs to be done. Heaven forbid Ukraine be so strong that the US can't control them. Does the US want Ukrainian autonomy or leverage?
Read Phillips O'Brien bemoaning attempts in Washington to micromanage the war.
Let's call it 600,000sqkm. Makes the maths easier.
Right now the Ukrainians are attempting to encircle Bakhmut; if they are successful, then (a) they will take a whole bunch of Russian prisoners (which will be a serious issue for the Putin government), and (b) will have taken back the Russia's biggest gain of the year.
Do not underestimate the first issue: casualties are a lot easier to hide than prisoners.
Encirclement is surely pretty difficult to achieve unless it happens very quickly. Otherwise the enemy always has a chance to retreat (as happened in Kherson, and indeed in Bakhmut when the boot was on the other foot).
Loving the chat around reserve days for test cricket. Not so long ago everyone was bemoaning that all tests were finished inside four days or fewer, so why have five scheduled days.
I suspect if England had escaped with a draw on Sunday rather than the convicts, we wouldn't be having the discussion...
I don't mind too much about losing time to the weather. It's part of the charm of the game. But I do object to losing playable time because a) we insist on closing at 6.30, about three hours before sunset, and b) slow over rates.
Huge, if this proves out. It could change everything.
The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12008 ..For the first time in the world, we succeeded in synthesizing the room-temperature superconductor (Tc≥400 K, 127∘C) working at ambient pressure with a modified lead-apatite (LK-99) structure. The superconductivity of LK-99 is proved with the Critical temperature (Tc), Zero-resistivity, Critical current (Ic), Critical magnetic field (Hc), and the Meissner effect. The superconductivity of LK-99 originates from minute structural distortion by a slight volume shrinkage (0.48 %), not by external factors such as temperature and pressure. The shrinkage is caused by Cu2+ substitution of Pb2+(2) ions in the insulating network of Pb(2)-phosphate and it generates the stress. It concurrently transfers to Pb(1) of the cylindrical column resulting in distortion of the cylindrical column interface, which creates superconducting quantum wells (SQWs) in the interface. The heat capacity results indicated that the new model is suitable for explaining the superconductivity of LK-99. The unique structure of LK-99 that allows the minute distorted structure to be maintained in the interfaces is the most important factor that LK-99 maintains and exhibits superconductivity at room temperatures and ambient pressure...
I'd be shorting helium futures, if such a thing were possible.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
I’ve been raising it for a while. We need data on what the actually blocks are - proper addresses, financial, credit score etc.
In theory it is trivial to sign up to any number of banks and alt-banks.
After moving to Ireland it took us seven months to open a joint bank account. A lot of the delays was because we didn't have acceptable proof of address. It was a right pain in the arse.
Do you have an Irish Passport ?
No address in a passport.
It is the same in the UK. You need a few utility bills to open accounts so you need to be somewhere for some months.
I ask only because my daughter found it a lot easier to get things done when she moved to Waterford if she used her Irish passport. It cut out some of the admin. From memory she set up her bank account in a fortnight,
I'm off to Waterford in a week or so to stay with friends. This being the short haul alternative to my cancelled Georgia holiday. Never been before and looking forward to it.
Lots of nice scenery around,. Waterford itself is like a UK market town. I enjoyed the Commeragh Mountains ( try the magic road), the copper coast, Dunmore East, Tramore, Mount Congreve gardens and if you want to splash cash Waterford Castle for a meal or afternoon tea,
Seattle Times ($) - With referendum failure, WA just dodged a bullet of hype and hate
Opinion - Danny Westneat: When the former president’s toxic son, Donald Trump Jr., started weighing in on Washington state politics in April, I admit it put me a little on edge.
It had the potential to poison politics in our state for the entire year.
“These sick bastards are evil,” Trump Jr. started blasting away. “Washington passes bill allowing the state to TAKE CHILDREN AWAY FROM PARENTS that do not consent to their child’s gender transition surgeries.”
It didn’t matter that the tweet was false; it got 3 million views anyway. It seemed to herald that the culture war over trans youth, so prevalent around the country, would soon be raging here.
Sure enough, of all the controversial bills our state Legislature passed this year, only one has faced a concerted effort to overturn it — the one involving trans kids, the one Trump Jr. was hyperventilating about.
That bill . . . altered the rules for teen runaway shelters. . . .
The uproar came when lawmakers added a new exception — if the kids are running away because they want an abortion or gender-based care.
Again, the shelter is supposed to call the state agency. In turn, the agency is directed to pair the teen with counseling, as well as to contact family.
Though these rules for runaway shelters have been around for some time, when they were applied to the hot-button topics of abortion and gender, all MAGA broke loose. . . .
“Reject legalized kidnapping” was then one slogan adopted for a Washington state referendum campaign against the new law. . . .
SO THE GREAT NEWS IS: The “reject legalized kidnapping” referendum campaign just announced it fell at least 5,000 signatures short, out of more than 162,000 needed. . . .
This effort didn’t succeed largely because the state Republican Party didn’t give money to the cause (a departure from 2020, when it helped bankroll a failed repeal effort of a new sex-education policy in the schools.)
Initially, the state Catholic Conference also didn’t back this latest referendum . . .It switched, though, under pressure and supported the campaign during the final month. It should have stuck with the right call it made the first time.
SSI - Under WA State law, to qualify a referendum for statewide vote, on a statute newly-passed by the legislature, requires minimum of 162,259 valid registered voter signatures (4% of 2020 gubernatorial vote). Note that requirement to qualify a statewide initiative is double, 8%.
As rule of thumb, petition campaigns need to submit an additional "cushion" of 25% or more, to ensure that they have sufficient sigs after duplicates, mismatched sigs and sigs from people who are NOT registered are weeded out, by Secretary of State signature checkers.
Huge, if this proves out. It could change everything.
The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12008 ..For the first time in the world, we succeeded in synthesizing the room-temperature superconductor (Tc≥400 K, 127∘C) working at ambient pressure with a modified lead-apatite (LK-99) structure. The superconductivity of LK-99 is proved with the Critical temperature (Tc), Zero-resistivity, Critical current (Ic), Critical magnetic field (Hc), and the Meissner effect. The superconductivity of LK-99 originates from minute structural distortion by a slight volume shrinkage (0.48 %), not by external factors such as temperature and pressure. The shrinkage is caused by Cu2+ substitution of Pb2+(2) ions in the insulating network of Pb(2)-phosphate and it generates the stress. It concurrently transfers to Pb(1) of the cylindrical column resulting in distortion of the cylindrical column interface, which creates superconducting quantum wells (SQWs) in the interface. The heat capacity results indicated that the new model is suitable for explaining the superconductivity of LK-99. The unique structure of LK-99 that allows the minute distorted structure to be maintained in the interfaces is the most important factor that LK-99 maintains and exhibits superconductivity at room temperatures and ambient pressure...
I'd be shorting helium futures, if such a thing were possible.
Maybe. I guess it depends what its maximum current capacity is and whether it can be made into wires.
Loving the chat around reserve days for test cricket. Not so long ago everyone was bemoaning that all tests were finished inside four days or fewer, so why have five scheduled days.
I suspect if England had escaped with a draw on Sunday rather than the convicts, we wouldn't be having the discussion...
I don't mind too much about losing time to the weather. It's part of the charm of the game. But I do object to losing playable time because a) we insist on closing at 6.30, about three hours before sunset, and b) slow over rates.
Correct.
Suggestion:
1. All tests have a reserve day in case of lost time. 2. Play can continue as long as conditions permit (though not under floodlights alone), to make up lost time, to a maximum of 10 hours elapsed time per day, or 8 hours playing time. 3. Play can be scheduled to start early (eg 1030 rather than 1100) to make up lost time from previous days. 4. Over rates of less than 13 per-hour, excluding stoppages not the fielding side's fault, to be penalised at 5 runs per over not bowled, subject to a minimum 40 overs per innings / day. 5. If a series is tied going into the final test, that test to be played over 450 overs or to a win, no matter how long that takes.
Good to see SKS taking a position on NatWest now that all the difficult decisions have been taken.
Just like he was during COVID. Captain Hindsight.
It is what concerns me most about him being PM. We really need dynamic brave leadership, Sunak and Hunt are running the country like a middle manager waiting for the boss to come back, when we actually have a lot of issue that the longer we wait the worse they are getting.
Yes Captain Hindsight was one of your best.
It was none of Starmer's business. He is LOTO, a nobody in practical terms, so the best action was to stfu. Now the cat is out of the bag, and if he is asked for an opinion he has to comment.
Which boss are Sunak and Hunt waiting for? Hmm, I'll have a think on that one. I am assuming no one who has been discredited to the ends of the earth and back.
Loving the chat around reserve days for test cricket. Not so long ago everyone was bemoaning that all tests were finished inside four days or fewer, so why have five scheduled days.
I suspect if England had escaped with a draw on Sunday rather than the convicts, we wouldn't be having the discussion...
I don't mind too much about losing time to the weather. It's part of the charm of the game. But I do object to losing playable time because a) we insist on closing at 6.30, about three hours before sunset, and b) slow over rates.
Saving an otherwise lost match as gloom descends and rainclouds gather is 100% part of the point.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
I’ve been raising it for a while. We need data on what the actually blocks are - proper addresses, financial, credit score etc.
In theory it is trivial to sign up to any number of banks and alt-banks.
After moving to Ireland it took us seven months to open a joint bank account. A lot of the delays was because we didn't have acceptable proof of address. It was a right pain in the arse.
Do you have an Irish Passport ?
No address in a passport.
It is the same in the UK. You need a few utility bills to open accounts so you need to be somewhere for some months.
I ask only because my daughter found it a lot easier to get things done when she moved to Waterford if she used her Irish passport. It cut out some of the admin. From memory she set up her bank account in a fortnight,
I'm off to Waterford in a week or so to stay with friends. This being the short haul alternative to my cancelled Georgia holiday. Never been before and looking forward to it.
Lots of nice scenery around,. Waterford itself is like a UK market town. I enjoyed the Commeragh Mountains ( try the magic road), the copper coast, Dunmore East, Tramore, Mount Congreve gardens and if you want to splash cash Waterford Castle for a meal or afternoon tea,
PLUS Waterford is but a skip and a jump from ancestral homestead, near New Ross, of . . . wait for it . . . Robert Fizgerald Kennedy, Jr.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
I’ve been raising it for a while. We need data on what the actually blocks are - proper addresses, financial, credit score etc.
In theory it is trivial to sign up to any number of banks and alt-banks.
After moving to Ireland it took us seven months to open a joint bank account. A lot of the delays was because we didn't have acceptable proof of address. It was a right pain in the arse.
Do you have an Irish Passport ?
No address in a passport.
It is the same in the UK. You need a few utility bills to open accounts so you need to be somewhere for some months.
I ask only because my daughter found it a lot easier to get things done when she moved to Waterford if she used her Irish passport. It cut out some of the admin. From memory she set up her bank account in a fortnight,
I'm off to Waterford in a week or so to stay with friends. This being the short haul alternative to my cancelled Georgia holiday. Never been before and looking forward to it.
Lots of nice scenery around,. Waterford itself is like a UK market town. I enjoyed the Commeragh Mountains ( try the magic road), the copper coast, Dunmore East, Tramore, Mount Congreve gardens and if you want to splash cash Waterford Castle for a meal or afternoon tea,
PLUS Waterford is but a skip and a jump from ancestral homestead, near New Ross, of . . . wait for it . . . Robert Fizgerald Kennedy, Jr.
Currently the most popular candidate for President.
Who would have thought, that briefing a journalist with lies about the personal details of a customer might be a bad thing?
She should have resigned yesterday when the story first appeared.
If an employee had done that it would have been instant dismissal for Gross Misconduct...
I expect that Farage is now going to sue the hell out of NatWest, and log a case with the Information Commissioner which can expose them to further fines.
I'm not totally sure he'd get far suing them, as it's not clear to me what his quantifiable loss is. Certainly, he'd be taking a major risk as soon as they made an offer to settle (essentially, he'd be liable to pay both his and their legal costs if this exceeded the sum ultimately awarded, which is quite likely to be modest). I think Farage is canny enough to get this - pursuing a court case after a sensible "without prejudice" offer is made is a bit of a mug's game.
So I'm not convinced he'll spin this out into a full-blown court case (he may issue proceedings but can't see him having his day in court), although I can see it with ICO complaints etc.
The loss is to his reputation. Now, you might think that he has no reputation to lose, but no matter his politics, he was in good standing in society, and NatWest decided to brief the press that he was not in good standing in society.
It’s the sort of case where the damages are £100k and the costs £3m, or else NW can settle for £500k now and avoid the court case they know they’ll lose.
Or they offer £250k, in the knowledge that Farage is taking a multi million pound, probably losing gamble on costs, if he takes it to court.
I suspect that Farage has someone prepared to bankroll the lawsuit. But he might take the £250k, as most of us would.
Coutts private banking is in serious trouble. A real client manager can take his clients with him. How many of the good client managers at Coutts (there are a few) have rung round their premium clients, got agreement and approached Rothschilds with a list and a request for a signing bonus.
This recently happened to one private bank - that hadn’t fucked up publicly.
Ratner-ing your brand. Even if you hate Farage, the thought that your exclusive private bank, the reason most people want an account there is that their person business and wealth stays private, can be undermined by an executive of the wider group (who shouldn't even know anything about your financial status) casually spilling the beans to a friendly journalist at a big public dinner.
And for good measure, the potential that they have people trawling your social media etc, to see what kind of person you are and compiling dossiers on you.
They thought it'd win them plaudits in their fellow professional and social circles.
I really hope Farage cleans them out and makes mincemeat of them. I've had to deal with all sorts of shit from these sorts of people over the last eight years over being a Tory and a Brexit supporter, and keep my mouth shit all the while for fear of the consequences.
Probably best not to share your mouth shit anyway.
No typo goes unpunished on here.
Not as good as Hyufd's earlier 'Thatcher increased working class hole ownership'.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
I’ve been raising it for a while. We need data on what the actually blocks are - proper addresses, financial, credit score etc.
In theory it is trivial to sign up to any number of banks and alt-banks.
After moving to Ireland it took us seven months to open a joint bank account. A lot of the delays was because we didn't have acceptable proof of address. It was a right pain in the arse.
Do you have an Irish Passport ?
No address in a passport.
It is the same in the UK. You need a few utility bills to open accounts so you need to be somewhere for some months.
I ask only because my daughter found it a lot easier to get things done when she moved to Waterford if she used her Irish passport. It cut out some of the admin. From memory she set up her bank account in a fortnight,
I'm off to Waterford in a week or so to stay with friends. This being the short haul alternative to my cancelled Georgia holiday. Never been before and looking forward to it.
Lots of nice scenery around,. Waterford itself is like a UK market town. I enjoyed the Commeragh Mountains ( try the magic road), the copper coast, Dunmore East, Tramore, Mount Congreve gardens and if you want to splash cash Waterford Castle for a meal or afternoon tea,
PLUS Waterford is but a skip and a jump from ancestral homestead, near New Ross, of . . . wait for it . . . Robert Fizgerald Kennedy, Jr.
Currently the most popular candidate for President.
Who would have thought, that briefing a journalist with lies about the personal details of a customer might be a bad thing?
She should have resigned yesterday when the story first appeared.
If an employee had done that it would have been instant dismissal for Gross Misconduct...
I expect that Farage is now going to sue the hell out of NatWest, and log a case with the Information Commissioner which can expose them to further fines.
Bit of a shock to hear that the fires in Greece may have been caused by arson, according to local officials.
I don't think its that uncommon. Wild fires are overwhelmingly started by humans, either deliberately, semi-deliberately (i.e. it will be a laugh to start a small fire, ohhhhhh shit) or by carelessness.
If there are already restrictions in place, I think you can be done for arson in lots of places if you then go out and start any kind of fire.
BBC: Kevin Spacey found not guilty on all charges.
Yet with reputation forever tarnished.
'Not guilty' does not necessarily mean the evidence given against the accused was false; it just means it wasn't sufficient to convict beyond reasonable doubt.
Even so, found innocent, but name tarnished. Why not have anonymity for the accused?
Just like the Man City soccer player, Benjamin Mendy.
Huge, if this proves out. It could change everything.
The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12008 ..For the first time in the world, we succeeded in synthesizing the room-temperature superconductor (Tc≥400 K, 127∘C) working at ambient pressure with a modified lead-apatite (LK-99) structure. The superconductivity of LK-99 is proved with the Critical temperature (Tc), Zero-resistivity, Critical current (Ic), Critical magnetic field (Hc), and the Meissner effect. The superconductivity of LK-99 originates from minute structural distortion by a slight volume shrinkage (0.48 %), not by external factors such as temperature and pressure. The shrinkage is caused by Cu2+ substitution of Pb2+(2) ions in the insulating network of Pb(2)-phosphate and it generates the stress. It concurrently transfers to Pb(1) of the cylindrical column resulting in distortion of the cylindrical column interface, which creates superconducting quantum wells (SQWs) in the interface. The heat capacity results indicated that the new model is suitable for explaining the superconductivity of LK-99. The unique structure of LK-99 that allows the minute distorted structure to be maintained in the interfaces is the most important factor that LK-99 maintains and exhibits superconductivity at room temperatures and ambient pressure...
I'd be shorting helium futures, if such a thing were possible.
And the chemistry looks fairly nice as well- lead, copper, phosphorus, oxygen. Nothing weird.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
I’ve been raising it for a while. We need data on what the actually blocks are - proper addresses, financial, credit score etc.
In theory it is trivial to sign up to any number of banks and alt-banks.
After moving to Ireland it took us seven months to open a joint bank account. A lot of the delays was because we didn't have acceptable proof of address. It was a right pain in the arse.
Do you have an Irish Passport ?
No address in a passport.
It is the same in the UK. You need a few utility bills to open accounts so you need to be somewhere for some months.
I ask only because my daughter found it a lot easier to get things done when she moved to Waterford if she used her Irish passport. It cut out some of the admin. From memory she set up her bank account in a fortnight,
I'm off to Waterford in a week or so to stay with friends. This being the short haul alternative to my cancelled Georgia holiday. Never been before and looking forward to it.
Lots of nice scenery around,. Waterford itself is like a UK market town. I enjoyed the Commeragh Mountains ( try the magic road), the copper coast, Dunmore East, Tramore, Mount Congreve gardens and if you want to splash cash Waterford Castle for a meal or afternoon tea,
PLUS Waterford is but a skip and a jump from ancestral homestead, near New Ross, of . . . wait for it . . . Robert Fizgerald Kennedy, Jr.
Currently the most popular candidate for President.
On power: "ten years is the maximum dose for adults".
The introduction to that interview supports my thesis that Ken Clarke bears heavy responsibility for the Tories losing power after he moved from department to department attacking Conservative-supporting professionals in the public sector.
Not sure about this. The pendulum always swings eventually, and you can't really be a Secretary of State whilst offending nobody.
That's not a defence of Clarke's record at Health and Education before he was Chancellor, but the Conservatives implemented a lot of controversial policies in the 1980s and early 1990s, some of which Clarke was directly involved in, some not. That isn't really what lost it for them in 1997 - there was simply a general feeling by the mid-1990s that the Conservatives had run out of steam and didn't fully appreciate or have compelling solutions for the most important issues for people. There was also a fairly large amount of sleaze going on, and it was widely felt that it was time for a change to the other lot.
Clarke was Health Secretary 1988-1990 and Education 1990-92. Are you really saying 1997 was some kind of delayed reaction to that (which was not felt in the 1992 General Election for some reason)? Feels a bit far-fetched to me, although he was one of a series of Conservative ministers who were unconvincing on those issues both within the professions involved and externally.
I think I am saying the Conservative government was wiped out because it had taken on so many voters who were its natural supporters. Not just Clarke with police, doctors and teachers, although that was a large part of it, but also the defence cuts, and then if you look at who was hurt by the ERM debacle, it was home owners and mortgage holders, it was entrepreneurs and small business owners.
That is how I conceptualise that part of our political history, rather than hand-waving about running out of ideas or fairness or time for a change. Whatever people thought of the cones hotline, that was not what changed their votes. Nor was it the poll tax, which had been neutralised by John Major. The blue team lost power because it systematically alienated its own voters. They'd played by the rules, done what was called for, and *their* government had screwed them over.
It's true that, over the course of a period in government, you collect enemies like a rolling stone gathering moss, and they tend to be a bit stickier than the friends you make.
But I think you underestimate things like the Cones Hotline. It's not that it was an awful policy in itself - there have been many worse and if it had been proposed in 1985 alongside a broad programme it would barely have been newsworthy. But by the mid-90s it was emblematic of a fag end administration that struggled to get things done, to grasp the scale of challenges in public services, or to have meaningful solutions. And it's that broad impression more than the fact a couple of professions had been narked with the Tories for a while that really lost it for them in 1997, in my view.
Sunak and Starmer could be doing exactly the same things they both are now under the same economic circumstances, but in 2015 rather than 2023, and I'd be very confident Sunak would trounce Starmer in the GE.
Sometimes, it really is a matter of timing.
Well yes, because in 2015 the Tories hadn’t yet trashed our economy, international credibility or public services. Though they were certainly making a start.
Probably not trounced either. Similar result to Cameron-Miliband or a bit worse.
Labour had trashed our economy in 2010, and our international credibility over things like extraordinary rendition, Iraq and the Expenses Scandal. Public services were on a totally unsustainable footing and largely unreformed.
Motes and Beams.
International credibility yes, though the current government has taken that up multiple notches.
The expenses scandal featured as many if not more conservative MPs as Labour. The Lib Dems on the other hand showed disproportionately less likely to have hands in the till.
The economy and public finances were in a far far better shape in 2010, despite only just emerging from a global crisis, than now.
Bear in mind Miliband only lost narrowly in 2015 and largely because of a collapse in LD support in the South West and the rise of the SNP after Indy ref. So unless we think Starmer would have gone down worse with the public than Miliband, it’s likely he would have done roughly as well or better.
He might also have desisted from reforming the Labour membership rules in the way that allowed Corbyn in by the back door in 2015.
Rubbish. All the MPs that were prosecuted were Labour. The stench was deep. And we were staring down the biggest budget deficit in our history and a sovereign debt crisis. They were absolutely not in a "much better shape" - palpable nonsense.
Please don't try rewriting history now because you want to egg on a victory next year. It insults our intelligence.
There are many Andriivkas in Ukraine. The one in question is about 6km south of the center of Bakhmut and about 2km south of Klishchiivka. I suspect I am going to be saying this again and again, but the total area that has changed hands is about 6 square km. It's good, but it is slow.
It’s always slow, when the enemy is digging trenches and mining fields.
Progress is progress though, and the Ukranians are making progress every day.
I know. I agree with you. But the 2014 area of Ukraine is 579,290sqkm and the Russians currently occupy about a quarter of it including Crimea. Call it 150Ksqkm. 6sqkm is 0.005% (ie 0.00005) of the occupied territory. At that rate they will have cleared out the orcs in about 20,000 days, which is 54 years ten months.
We remember WW1, but forget that it took four years to resolve. This isn't going to finish in 2023, and probably not 2024. Unless Trump wins and changes US policy faster than Starmer on penises, in which case the Ukranians are dead by Xmas 2024.
Personally I doubt it. Ireland had an anglo saxon economy and was totally screwed in 2009. Eye watering pain. It has only escaped as it nicks everyone elses taxes and is a small economy so can pay its debts down.
The UK would not have had that luxury and was probably so large an economy as to wreck the Euro. Black Wednesday 2 would have been the outcome.
I think you may have replied to a different post than the one you thought...
LOL old age - just turned 62, things can only get worse !
Just a boy Alan
thanks malc, but like you Im hoping wisdom follows age
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
I’ve been raising it for a while. We need data on what the actually blocks are - proper addresses, financial, credit score etc.
In theory it is trivial to sign up to any number of banks and alt-banks.
After moving to Ireland it took us seven months to open a joint bank account. A lot of the delays was because we didn't have acceptable proof of address. It was a right pain in the arse.
Do you have an Irish Passport ?
No address in a passport.
It is the same in the UK. You need a few utility bills to open accounts so you need to be somewhere for some months.
I ask only because my daughter found it a lot easier to get things done when she moved to Waterford if she used her Irish passport. It cut out some of the admin. From memory she set up her bank account in a fortnight,
I'm off to Waterford in a week or so to stay with friends. This being the short haul alternative to my cancelled Georgia holiday. Never been before and looking forward to it.
Lots of nice scenery around,. Waterford itself is like a UK market town. I enjoyed the Commeragh Mountains ( try the magic road), the copper coast, Dunmore East, Tramore, Mount Congreve gardens and if you want to splash cash Waterford Castle for a meal or afternoon tea,
PLUS Waterford is but a skip and a jump from ancestral homestead, near New Ross, of . . . wait for it . . . Robert Fizgerald Kennedy, Jr.
Currently the most popular candidate for President.
Politicians as a class are at higher risk of bribery and need more supervision, esp cos it is in public office. Ditto their families. So they pass laws to deal with that (good) and whine when they get it in the neck as the banks CBA with the hassle. And try to piggyback on the Farage affair to get the laws watered down.
'“Banks have also more widely been overzealously interpreting the PEP rules, which meant many MPs have had trouble getting access to financial services. MPs’ families as well, spouses and children even, so they have been a bit overzealous,” Philp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
He called the closure of Farage’s account “particularly bad” and said there was a wider issue of banks potentially not providing banking services to people because of their lawful political views.
“We believe in free speech in this country, we believe in political freedom and that means no one should be denied banking services,” said Philp.'
Yebbut loads of people are denied banking services?
The extent to which our media and politicians bend over backwards for Brexit Squidward is inexplicable to me.
That's actually a different matter entirely. Ordinary people are fallign foul of the CIFAS system as implemented by the banking industry.
But it's a good point because the pols are also trying to claim they are hard done by in the same way, when it's am entirely different issue which is the primary problem for pols (although the results are also mediated by the CIFAS system, it's silly to blame it on CIFAS).
But the principal of access to banking as a universal right (ideally) is fundamental to both. If anything good comes out of the highly unedifying affair, it would be recognition of that.
I can't see how you can force them to take anyone's accounts. Doesn't make sense. It's central to moneylaundering legislation that banks have a responsibility over whom they accept.
The issue is not "forcing them to take accounts" its "closing existing accounts" - some of which they have held for decades.
Either the bank didn't do KYC properly in the first place - or they suspect criminality in which case the police should be involved.
In Farage's case it boiled down to "we don't like his politics" - I wonder why they have closed the accounts of Professor Lesley Sawers, 64, the Equalities and Human Rights commissioner for Scotland, who has been with them 32 years....
So the big question - does Nicola Sturgeon still have a bank account ?
I assumed that RBS = Royal Bank of Sturgeon. Have I got that wrong?
Yes, Sturgeon banks with HBOS, well the Bank of Scotland branch.
Though SNP did comically publish her entire account and tax returns.
If she is charged and depending on the charges, she may become an unbanked person.
Right now she'll struggle to get mainstream insurance, which is another scandal like the unbanked.
Home & car insurance becomes invalidated the moment you get charged with most mainstream insurers, the ones that will accept you charge up to 10 times the standard price.
Edit - You don't even have to be charged/convicted, if you live with someone or are financially associated with somebody in those circumstances, then you are in the same boat.
I didn't know that. Pretty disgraceful as it's effectively punishment before trial - and collective punishment.
Yeah, this is (well should be) a massive civil liberties story with a bureaucracy that has gone mad following kafkaesque rules that have been introduced without consideration of why society should leave anyone "unbanked".
No-one should be "unbanked" regardless of what they have done. By all means monitor and control high risk accounts differently but absolutely do not shut them off from employment and housing.
But because its Farage, those who would normally be loudly complaining about civil liberties have been too quiet, and left the story mostly about him and the idiots at Coutts/Natwest.
Not the Graun, it's been pretty good of late.
I havent seen the notion of challenging the entire idea of unbanked, including for money launderers, from anyone else at all. It is simply not compatible with modern life to leave tens of thousands of people unbanked, and an open invititation for criminal gangs to exploit such individuals.
I’ve been raising it for a while. We need data on what the actually blocks are - proper addresses, financial, credit score etc.
In theory it is trivial to sign up to any number of banks and alt-banks.
After moving to Ireland it took us seven months to open a joint bank account. A lot of the delays was because we didn't have acceptable proof of address. It was a right pain in the arse.
Do you have an Irish Passport ?
No address in a passport.
It is the same in the UK. You need a few utility bills to open accounts so you need to be somewhere for some months.
I ask only because my daughter found it a lot easier to get things done when she moved to Waterford if she used her Irish passport. It cut out some of the admin. From memory she set up her bank account in a fortnight,
I'm off to Waterford in a week or so to stay with friends. This being the short haul alternative to my cancelled Georgia holiday. Never been before and looking forward to it.
Lots of nice scenery around,. Waterford itself is like a UK market town. I enjoyed the Commeragh Mountains ( try the magic road), the copper coast, Dunmore East, Tramore, Mount Congreve gardens and if you want to splash cash Waterford Castle for a meal or afternoon tea,
PLUS Waterford is but a skip and a jump from ancestral homestead, near New Ross, of . . . wait for it . . . Robert Fizgerald Kennedy, Jr.
Currently the most popular candidate for President.
Comments
Downgrading someone to a regular account is a non story.
The expenses scandal featured as many if not more conservative MPs as Labour. The Lib Dems on the other hand showed disproportionately less likely to have hands in the till.
The economy and public finances were in a far far better shape in 2010, despite only just emerging from a global crisis, than now.
Bear in mind Miliband only lost narrowly in 2015 and largely because of a collapse in LD support in the South West and the rise of the SNP after Indy ref. So unless we think Starmer would have gone down worse with the public than Miliband, it’s likely he would have done roughly as well or better.
He might also have desisted from reforming the Labour membership rules in the way that allowed Corbyn in by the back door in 2015.
Farage is always on the look out for a new bandwagon, at one point it was COVID restrictions, then it was the small boats, now he has found debanking.
I think there is also a pedantic point that a wildfire was originally one started by lightning strike or whatever as opposed to tame fire started by taking a brand from the hearth or lighting a match. What is happening in Greece would more accurately be called tree fires.
Or is it rather that most of us, including journalists, are only slowly becoming aware of how arbitrary, and difficult to challenge banking rules have become ?
The Farage affair has opened that conversation, even if the details are loosely related to the problems that are likely to face most people.
After all, fires and burning are part of the Australian ecosystem, and would definitely have evolved without the hand of man to start the pesky fires.
Natural causes are overwhelmingly lightening strikes and volcanic matter. With occasionally a vast build up of decaying matter produces just enough heat to cause combustion.
In theory it is trivial to sign up to any number of banks and alt-banks.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jul/20/bank-account-closures-what-new-rules-mean-for-uk-customers
But what happens if I turn up to Coutts and demand a basic bank account? I do wonder. They will tell me to piss off. But so can any other bank. Is there any bank of last resort?
And we discussed the impact of Post Office Bank privatisation and detachment from the Post Office branches and the rundown of the old univcersal provision of a PO bank book in every post office and sub-PO in the land.
It also became clear pretty quickly he had the receipts.
1) Customers provide incorrect/inadequate info about themselves, this will lead to issues on AVS check.
2) Customers have already got into the financial difficulty with the bank and left a trail of debt and destruction with that banking group. For example customer has left RBS with debts of £10k at their RBS bank account/loan/overdraft/credit card, when they apply for a basic account with Natwest that is going to show up.
I wonder what the PO Bank is like in this respect?
Series of unfortunate events for me once - massive lightning storm at Muir Pass, then a flash flood as we tried to find somewhere to camp, then smoked out by a wildfire started by the lightning.
I think I took refuge in a PB thread that evening.
Will Kerr has been in role since December 2022 having been headhunted
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jul/26/devon-and-cornwall-police-chief-suspended-on-misconduct-allegations?CMP=twt_gu
The switching account is currently with Natwest cycling into their regular saver.
And Natwest reject half of the applications, compared to Lloyds rejecting 1 in 7. Now just perhaps obvious fraudsters are targetting Natwest for some reason rather than Lloyds, but equally it could be that Natwest are rejecting them on either direct commercial cost reasons or the fear of fines, neither of which would be acceptable.
I suspect if England had escaped with a draw on Sunday rather than the convicts, we wouldn't be having the discussion...
1) People being debanked who have done nothing illegal and meet all the criteria, but because of PEP rules or somebody in the bank decides they "don't align with the banks values".
2) People being unbanked because of the wider banking laws and rules around what evidence they need to provide and what has been their previous financial situation.
Both are worthy of further investigation and potentially reform for differing reasons.
https://www.postoffice.co.uk/help-support/card-account
On the second point, the general shrugs that initially met the story (including from me) were only partly because Farage is seen as controversial and rich to the point that it's unlikely that he'll find himself unbanked. It's also that the bank is Coutts, which is relatively little-known to the general public and thought of as a bank for a small elite. It's a bit like a story that the Duke of Norfolk finds that Eton wouldn't put his son down for a place. "Oh, well" would be a natural reaction to that.
To the (limited) extent that the story has opened up the discussion of refusal of banking facilities more generally, it's a good development. And of course Farage should get his account back.
Now you could say well he should just take the Natwest account and shut up, but given the Natwest top brass seem happy to leak his financial situation and caused them to lose their jobs / make the board look like idiots, I imagine most of us wouldn't want to have our accounts with them as who knows what might get leaked next.
Another is that the Everard investigation was, initially, a missing person inquiry which do attract a lot of immediate media attention where the person is believed to be in serious peril, as there are urgent appeals, large-scale searches etc. Whereas Aleena was found close to death soon after the attack on her - so it was a murder investigation from day one.
That's not to disagree with the generality of your point.
As for differences, that's interesting.
The problem comes when you put houses in amongst that ecosystem and expect them not to burn.
Lightning triggered fires are pretty common. Not every strike is accompanied by a deluge.
But you get a lot of people who think it will be fun to start a bonfire and then don't know how to put it out properly, or can't control it. They might not have been intending to start a fire that covers hundreds of square kilometres, but they've done so through willful negligence.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/exowner-of-doncaster-rovers-jailed-for-arson-plot-1078635.html
They got their new stadium in the end, but nice though it is, it is something of a white elephant and somehow the council tax payers are the ones that ended up losing money.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66309899
The Guardian is giving quite good coverage here, at last :
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/jul/26/ufo-hearing-congress-david-grusch-whistleblower-live-updates
https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/chapel-wiped-out-blaze-2825826
(Not that what was built there has been an improvement.)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-12339869/ITV-chef-James-Martin-centre-bullying-storm-accused-intimidating-crew-multiple-occasions-latest-scandal-channel.html
If you think that is bad, you should hear Mrs U if I mix the colours and whites in the washing machine.
But my point was there there isn't even an arguable case for punishing those not guilty.
It is the same in the UK. You need a few utility bills to open accounts so you need to be somewhere for some months.
On your last point, the old saw used to be, don't start a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.
Early 3rd-millennium update: don't incorrectly/ineptly/illegally bad-mouth a controversialist (such as Farage) whose tweets (or xcretions) are read and re-tweeted (or whatever) by millions.
My God that guy is a magnet for middle aged housewives. They mobbed him, he was like a rock star chef.
In any case I don't believe for one second that somebody at Coutts looked for stuff and found the tweet in which Nigel Farage committed the heinous crime of calling the now king "stupid" for accepting a suitcase containing a million euros in cash from a Qatari sheikh, and then decided completely off their own bat that this was terribly naughty of the client and cause for telling him to look elsewhere for his banking services.
Coutts used to be in daily contact with their late client, the now king's mother.
The king banks with them. They're probably in daily contact with him too. Imagine having that job. You'd probably want to Ratner the brand.
There's a Coutts cash machine inside Buckingham Palace. I bet there wasn't ever one of those in Nigel's house.
Further kingface-related events will come out of the blue like this. He's f***ed the City. He'll probably f*** the Church of England next, or maybe the army, or theatreland, or shipping insurance, or the BBC, or the Times, or SIS. You can understand why Putin calls him "Your Majesty".
He's a mini-version of Trump who wears funny clothes and probably has to be held back from having a tantrum or otherwise causing an issue about 10 times a day. He really thought he was going to take a publicly more hands-on role in running his kingdom when he "ascended" last year. He must have been getting such good "advice" from fearless souls who were never unafraid to tell him just how things really are. He was going to go to Cairo and tell the plebs and administrators of the entire world about the planet, the works. He heard it from Laurens van der Post, so he really knows. Never forget that Boris Johnson dissed him in public too when Johnson was PM and kingface was still Prince of Wales, over Rwanda...
PS Who else was at the dinner? Not the BBC presenters. I mean big donors or potential donors.
Coutts/Natwest then compounded this by a) conducting a personal witchhunt against Farage, b) briefing the press about him, and c) lying about it.
It's hardly the model of discretion which we'd associate with private banks. Or any sort of banks. I'm not in the market for private banking, but if I was I wouldn't now go to one which trawls the internet for dirt on its customers.
(In all honesty, my banking choices are largely driven by inertia. I'm also quite cross about First Direct's parent company HSBC cheerleading for the CPC in Hong Kong, and also for replacing the easy-to-see numbers on the front of the card with hard-to-see numbers on the back, but still haven't got around to moving banks.)
Whatever the beneficial side effect regarding issues Farage's case has made us aware of, he has reinforced the notion that he is an unpleasant and entitled oik.
Do not underestimate the first issue: casualties are a lot easier to hide than prisoners.
It could change everything.
The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor
https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12008
..For the first time in the world, we succeeded in synthesizing the room-temperature superconductor (Tc≥400 K, 127∘C) working at ambient pressure with a modified lead-apatite (LK-99) structure. The superconductivity of LK-99 is proved with the Critical temperature (Tc), Zero-resistivity, Critical current (Ic), Critical magnetic field (Hc), and the Meissner effect. The superconductivity of LK-99 originates from minute structural distortion by a slight volume shrinkage (0.48 %), not by external factors such as temperature and pressure. The shrinkage is caused by Cu2+ substitution of Pb2+(2) ions in the insulating network of Pb(2)-phosphate and it generates the stress. It concurrently transfers to Pb(1) of the cylindrical column resulting in distortion of the cylindrical column interface, which creates superconducting quantum wells (SQWs) in the interface. The heat capacity results indicated that the new model is suitable for explaining the superconductivity of LK-99. The unique structure of LK-99 that allows the minute distorted structure to be maintained in the interfaces is the most important factor that LK-99 maintains and exhibits superconductivity at room temperatures and ambient pressure...
I'd be shorting helium futures, if such a thing were possible.
Opinion - Danny Westneat: When the former president’s toxic son, Donald Trump Jr., started weighing in on Washington state politics in April, I admit it put me a little on edge.
It had the potential to poison politics in our state for the entire year.
“These sick bastards are evil,” Trump Jr. started blasting away. “Washington passes bill allowing the state to TAKE CHILDREN AWAY FROM PARENTS that do not consent to their child’s gender transition surgeries.”
It didn’t matter that the tweet was false; it got 3 million views anyway. It seemed to herald that the culture war over trans youth, so prevalent around the country, would soon be raging here.
Sure enough, of all the controversial bills our state Legislature passed this year, only one has faced a concerted effort to overturn it — the one involving trans kids, the one Trump Jr. was hyperventilating about.
That bill . . . altered the rules for teen runaway shelters. . . .
The uproar came when lawmakers added a new exception — if the kids are running away because they want an abortion or gender-based care.
Again, the shelter is supposed to call the state agency. In turn, the agency is directed to pair the teen with counseling, as well as to contact family.
Though these rules for runaway shelters have been around for some time, when they were applied to the hot-button topics of abortion and gender, all MAGA broke loose. . . .
“Reject legalized kidnapping” was then one slogan adopted for a Washington state referendum campaign against the new law. . . .
SO THE GREAT NEWS IS: The “reject legalized kidnapping” referendum campaign just announced it fell at least 5,000 signatures short, out of more than 162,000 needed. . . .
This effort didn’t succeed largely because the state Republican Party didn’t give money to the cause (a departure from 2020, when it helped bankroll a failed repeal effort of a new sex-education policy in the schools.)
Initially, the state Catholic Conference also didn’t back this latest referendum . . .It switched, though, under pressure and supported the campaign during the final month. It should have stuck with the right call it made the first time.
SSI - Under WA State law, to qualify a referendum for statewide vote, on a statute newly-passed by the legislature, requires minimum of 162,259 valid registered voter signatures (4% of 2020 gubernatorial vote). Note that requirement to qualify a statewide initiative is double, 8%.
As rule of thumb, petition campaigns need to submit an additional "cushion" of 25% or more, to ensure that they have sufficient sigs after duplicates, mismatched sigs and sigs from people who are NOT registered are weeded out, by Secretary of State signature checkers.
Suggestion:
1. All tests have a reserve day in case of lost time.
2. Play can continue as long as conditions permit (though not under floodlights alone), to make up lost time, to a maximum of 10 hours elapsed time per day, or 8 hours playing time.
3. Play can be scheduled to start early (eg 1030 rather than 1100) to make up lost time from previous days.
4. Over rates of less than 13 per-hour, excluding stoppages not the fielding side's fault, to be penalised at 5 runs per over not bowled, subject to a minimum 40 overs per innings / day.
5. If a series is tied going into the final test, that test to be played over 450 overs or to a win, no matter how long that takes.
It was none of Starmer's business. He is LOTO, a nobody in practical terms, so the best action was to stfu. Now the cat is out of the bag, and if he is asked for an opinion he has to comment.
Which boss are Sunak and Hunt waiting for? Hmm, I'll have a think on that one. I am assuming no one who has been discredited to the ends of the earth and back.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/rfk-jr-maintains-highest-favorability-rating-among-presidential-candidates-new-poll
Please don't try rewriting history now because you want to egg on a victory next year. It insults our intelligence.
FWIW, which policies* of RFK do you think resonate particularly well with Democratic voters?
* Having the surname "Kennedy" is not a policy
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte wasn't elected president of France in 1848 for his dazzling personal qualities.