Banks are to be warned by ministers that they must protect free speech as increasing numbers of customers are having their accounts closed for holding allegedly controversial views.
The Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is reportedly 'deeply concerned' that lenders are blacklisting customers they are deemed to hold contrary political beliefs and social values.
And is he prepared to actually do anything? Well, he's prepared to consider it, at least...
A Treasury source told the Daily Telegraph: 'It is absolutely a concern. No one should have their bank account denied on the grounds of freedom of expression. We expect to take action on this issue within weeks.'
What action? Hold another meeting? Send a stong letter of condemnation? Admit that this has been brewing under your noses for a long time?
What's that, Reader? You're surprised? You thought it was new? Oh no. It's EU legislation that hasn't been junked when we junked the EU.
The term defines anyone with a 'prominent public function' and originates in a 1987 initiative against corruption and money laundering launched by the G7 group of leading economies. This was designed to make banks and other financial institutions subject any PEP to intense scrutiny when setting up accounts — on the grounds that by reason of their public position they presented a much higher risk for potential involvement in corruption and money laundering than the man or woman in the street.
And, as we all know, give some people power and they will wield it in ways you never thought possible.
The PEP system came into force in this country under the Money Laundering Regulations 2007, which referred to people with a prominent public position 'other than [in] the United Kingdom'. In other words, identifying powerful people from various highly corrupt nations, where political power and bribery went together like eggs and bacon. But the financial institutions here immediately applied it to members of our own Parliament — even though this did not become mandatory until the Money Laundering Regulations 2017. And not just them, but their immediate family — which, typically, include the PEP's 'parents, siblings, spouse, children, in-laws, grandparents and grandchildren'.
And all our legislative government was asleep at the switch while they did it. Or...were they?
Is it possible they knew exactly what was going on? And were content because they never thought it'd affect them?
It isn't impacting them. Only those with views against the mainstream leftist views. That covers all of our major political parties and this is designed to stop them becoming a viable competitor to our big three.
ReplyDeleteThe way around this is to slacken the already obsession laws to allow people to set up their own bank. Similar to the way you can set up your own insurance company. Not every Tom, Dick or Ginger Whinger can afford it but many can. Once we can start boycotting these banks their tune will change but while they are protected by law then we have no control.
Spot on!
DeleteThe ones doing the money laundering are the ones who put all their filthy lucre into off-shore washeterias which is not we the little people unless you count leaving a fiver in your jeans pocket before you ran them through the twin-tub circa 1970. These laws were knee-jerk reactions to .... well.... jerks!
ReplyDeleteI've just blogged about this.
ReplyDeleteThere seems to be a lot of this top-down overbearing bollocks coming from several organisations. It's a recent phenomenon and I just wonder where it's coming from. Farage mentions "the institutions", by which I assume he means the educational establishment. But it goes further and is a wider problem. It'd say that the whole idea of top-down corporate parenting is coming from the WEF and other supra-national organisations.
Organisations we do not vote for.
Which breaks the covenant that the public have with politics: we allow people to have political power over us, as long as we decide who holds that power. We vote them into office.
We do not vote corporations into office, we do not vote bankers in to political office, we do not vote charities into positions of power either, nor the WEF. The main reason I voted FOR Brexit was because the EU had too much power over us without us having the ability to vote them in or out of power.