Those 25 crappy DVD’s Obama gave Gordon Brown as a memento of his US visit?
Gordon Brown
When Personal Finance Is Political
Oh, so that’s why my bank charges are so high…
…it is still a matter of pride that, in Britain, one is never required to discuss one’s political beliefs. Unless, that is, you want to do a certain type of business with the state-controlled Royal Bank of Scotland.
Damn it, there it was a lovely clear blue morning and the warm spring day spread out before me. Then I read this by Fraser Nash in the Spectator,and the grey blanket of clouds over Noord-Holland redescended.
It’s bad enough for some of us RBS customers, what with the trillion pound RBS Labour-licensed theft from the taxpayers and sterling’s virtual parity (93p today)with the euro, which is affecting anyone on a fixed income who lives abroad pretty drastically.
Now it appears that the great clunking fist is using his shares in the bank to meddle politically in people’s intimate financial affairs – and he, via RBS, may also be giving enhanced bank services to his political friends and fellow travellers.
Geoff Robbins, a Cheshire-based computer consultant, recently approached RBS to ask for a credit-card processing facility for his business. After the usual bankers’ inquisition, he was asked a question that knocked him for six: did he have any political affiliation? Did he know any MPs, councillors or mayors? It was a new question, the lady explained to him, which had been introduced soon after the government took control of RBS. She said, in his paraphrase, that ‘political influences may be used for corrupt purposes’.
Might’n’t they just.
NB: this is the Spectator and Nelson so consider the source. But I’m inclined to believe every word; as Nelson himself says:
When I first heard Mr Robbins’s story, it seemed hard to believe. But the more I considered the context of this government’s apparently irrepressible desire to pry into every aspect of out lives, the more it had the awful ring of truth. I decided to investigate further and called RBS, who issued an outright denial. ‘We would never ask such a question, nor would we dream of doing so,’ said its spokeswoman. So Mr Robbins had concocted his story? Unconvinced, I called RBS Streamline, posing as an employee for my mother-in-law’s (real) company and asking for the same service.
Sure enough, the chilling question came at the end: ‘Is she a member of any political party?’ I asked why this was relevant. ‘I presume we ask because there is a high volume of fraud in that sector. Because people who are of that sort of [party political] nature, maybe, are inclined to commit fraud.’ The question, I was told, is ‘thrust upon us by the Financial Services Authority’. The FSA says this is untrue. Banks can check clients’ backgrounds, but no one is required to talk politics.
That the bank is being so open about its political intimidation is what’ss truly scary; it’s yet another in-your-face move by Labour to douse potential opposition and is all of a piece with ACPO’s shrill warning of a ‘summer of rage’ and recent clampdowns on peaceful protest.
But what can you do? Unfortunately I’m in the same invidious position as so many other RBS customers: disgusted and scared but unable to move because we need banking services. Try changing banks in the current financial climate, particularly if your income is low or fixed and your credit history not all it might be.
The personal is indeed political, but expressing political disgust? Not affordable.
Can’t I Turn My Back For Even One Bloody Day?
Due to a trip to IKEA on Thursday and Martin’s consequent attack of bookcase building and orgy of shelf filling, there’s been no pc access and therefore no posting since Thursday morning.
Sorry, couldn’t help it, but the bookcases do look nice.
Typically, the moment I walked away from the keyboard, Ian Blair got canned, the bailout bill passed (thus enabling the world’s biggest robbery with menaces EVAR), and WTF? What fresh hell is is this? Peter Mandelson’s back in government?
Well, bugger me three ways to Wednesday with a technicolour hedgehog. Sideways. I thought I’d lost my capacity for surprise.
We know why Brown’s done jumped the shark – he’s desperate, that’s obvious. But why would an egoist like Mandelson accept an effective demotion to accept a position under someone he’s known to loathe?
That brings me to my comment of the day, which comes from the responses to Michael White’s column in the Guardian:
Newsed1
Mandy did this for one reason.
He will become Lord Mandelson.
A man who wanted to live the life so much he took a secret loan, can’t believe his luck. No amount of spin or ‘borrowed’ money could have bought a title.
And Gordon snared a man whose self-preening is such that’s it’s worth 18 months onboard the HMS McTitanic for a lifetime of being a Lord
Mandy gets Ermine and Gordo gets the arch shit-flinger.
There’s no more to it than that.
BANG. Hits the nail right on the head.
Interested as I am in the minutiae and the niceties of politico-social etiquette, I have a small protocol question. Mandelson has a long -term partner who lives with him in Brussels. If they marry, as they are entitled to, do they become Lord and Lord Mandelson?
There Is No Obe Wan
With the news this morning that the Bradford & Bingley building society is to be nationalised, no wonder people are getting exceedingly jittery and very, very angry.
The banking system as it stands is a crumbling edifice of avarice, dishonesty and jaw-dropping incompetence, on the verge of falling apart and hurting millions. No amount of panicky governmental tinkering and emergency taxpayer-funded bailouts will slow the accelerating collapse; the foundations were rotten from the start. That rock of financial security? Just shifting sand.
How tempting it is to want to wipe it all out and start again. Let’s blame it all on Gordon Brown and vote in the Tories! That’ll show Labour, the hypocritical bastards.
But although no one has clean hands in this, least of all the Tories, Cameron, his sidekick Osborne and the Conservative Party are actually precipitating the bank crash to ensure their own political and financial survival:
The Tories were accused last night of being bankrolled by a City ‘wolf pack’ after it emerged that the party was receiving hundreds of thousands of pounds from hedge fund managers who have been making vast sums of money from plunging bank shares.
After the Financial Services Authority had, in effect, barred the controversial practice of short-selling bank stocks and the Treasury was forced to draw up a rescue package for Bradford and Bingley, it emerged that a small group of City financiers who have made fortunes from falling stock markets are paying at least £50,000 a year to the party.
The Labour party should wish they had such donors. No wonder Brown & Darling banned short selling; it’s been directly enriching Tory party coffers. Remember Bush’s Pioneers’ Club?
Bush Pioneers are people who gathered $100,000 for George W. Bush’s 2000 or 2004 presidential campaign. Two new levels, Bush Rangers and Super Rangers, were bestowed upon supporters who gathered $200,000+ or $300,000+, respectively, for the 2004 campaign, after the 2002 McCain–Feingold campaign finance law raised hard money contribution limits. This was done through the practice of “bundling” contributions. [1] There were 221 Rangers and 327 Pioneers in the 2004 campaign and 241 Pioneers in the 2000 campaign (550 pledged to try).[1] A fourth level, Bush Mavericks, was used to identify fundraisers under 40 years of age who bundled more than $50,000. [2]
Nineteen of the original Pioneers became ambassadors in 2001. Three Pioneers have been convicted of politics-related crimes.
David Cameron, aping Bush, has a Pioneers Club of his very own:
Their donations entitle them to membership of an elite supporters club called the Leaders Group, which bestows invitations to functions attended by David Cameron, something that has prompted allegations that the Tory leader is supporting ‘cash for access’.
[…]
Hedge fund managers whose donations entitle them to membership of the group include Michael Hintze of CQS, who has given £662,500 and whose organisation shorted shares in Bradford and Bingley. Two other men who qualify as members of the group are Paul Ruddock, who has given almost £210,000, and David Craigen, who has donated £50,000. The pair’s investment firm, Lansdowne, was exposed last week as shorting shares in HBOS.
[My emphasis]
The Tories are profiting directly from and are implicated in bank collapses, and it’s a below the fold squib? Shows how Labour and their rapidly dwindling gang of media supporters have lost the plot: once they’d’ve been on a story like this like white on rice.
At least the Lib Dems noticed:
Yesterday critics were quick to attack Cameron for taking money from hedge funds. ‘Now we see that the same hedge fund wolf pack who brought HBOS to its knees are bankrolling the Tory party,’ said Lord Oakeshott, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman.
Ah yes, the Lib Dems. Help us, Vincey Wan Cablekenobe, you’re our only hope!
Not:
The Liberal Democrats are facing an embarrassing High Court battle with a lawyer who says that the party wrongly accepted £632,000 of his money as part of a donation. Robert Mann, 60, claims that the party failed to carry out adequate checks on the money which was received as part of a £2.4m gift from the financier Michael Brown.
So much for Lib Dem fiscal integrity. There are a couple more words that suffice to sum up the totally useless Lib Dems: Nick and Clegg.
Oh gods, we really are in the shit, aren’t we, and voting won’t make a ha’porth of difference.
Quidditch Announced For London 2012
Not really, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Labour is going to have to keep sucking up to JK Rowling though. A measly million won’t clear Labour’s debts – it’ll barely cover Hazel Blears’ handbag habit.
But the remaining rank and file at conference and in the constituencies are chuffed and the press has their juicy weekend nugget of politics, cash and celebrity, so everybody’s happy.