Even under the Tories, the authoritarian Left rules Britain

It's a sort of "sub rosa" Fascism

Living in London for a few years in the late noughties, I opened a NatWest bank account. At the end of my time there I joined Tony Abbott’s office. The bank account was abruptly closed soon after, without explanation. Might this have been related to Abbott’s extreme political incorrectness from the perspective of the London blob? The possibility never occurred to me until Nigel Farage’s recent experiences with Coutts, one of the banks in the NatWest group.

Thank goodness the managers of Britain’s banks are dim as well as sinister. Any intelligent person knows that you don’t pick a fight with Farage, the country’s smartest politician. As a result of the managers’ ineptitude, we now know how deeply the left has captured the corporate world – on top of much of the education system, the public service, the media, entertainment, the armed forces, the Church of England and, since the accession of King Charles III, the monarchy.

The Sunak government has, probably reluctantly, sided with Farage against Coutts’ ‘debanking’ of him for his political views, so bringing down the career of NatWest’s chief executive, Dame Alison Rose, an establishment favourite knighted by the King and recently invited by him to discuss climate change issues with President Biden. Paid the absurd salary of £5.25 million last year, she demonstrated farcical incompetence, both breaching client confidentiality in gossiping to a BBC journalist about the closing of Farage’s account and claiming wrongly that this was not for political reasons but because his balance wasn’t high enough. Farage then easily obtained Coutts’ 40-page charge sheet against him. Charges included: his support for Donald Trump; sharing a ‘transphobic’ tweet by Ricky Gervais; suspected anti-vaxxing views; calling for a referendum on net zero; and the claim he is a racist – all, of course, inconsistent with the ‘inclusive values’ of Coutts, a bank available only to millionaires and long a favourite of famously inclusive Middle Eastern autocrats.

Rose claimed to be unaware of the dossier and apologised to Farage for its ‘deeply inappropriate’ content, claiming that ‘it is absolutely not our policy to exit a customer on the basis of legally held political and personal views’ – although that is precisely what happened. After the fiasco, NatWest’s board, amazingly, expressed continued confidence in her. An off-the-scale public backlash followed, after which the government, which owns 38.6 per cent of NatWest, having initially seemed relaxed about the board’s support for Rose, suddenly ordered her axing. Coutts’ Australian chief executive, Peter Flavel, soon followed. The bank has now done a U-turn, telling Farage he can have his accounts back.

The saga revealed that Britain’s deranged right-on banks aren’t confined to the NatWest group: a further ten refused Farage an account. And it emerged that account closures are a vast and growing phenomenon. In 2016 the number was under 50,000. Last year it was 343,500 and so far this year it’s 200,000. Accounts are almost always closed suddenly and without explanation, an act as devastating as having the electricity or water cut off. Many of the closures relate to fraud and money laundering and others are because customers are deemed ‘politically exposed persons’, based on the odd justification that people connected, even indirectly, with public office are somehow more susceptible to fraud. This has led to the ‘debanking’ of people of all political persuasions, even their relatives, and seemingly anyone with a Russian connection, even if anti-Putin. But the banks’ commitment to ‘progressive’ values means conservatives in particular have come under their spotlight. Columnist Simon Heffer was interrogated about his friendship with Farage before he could top up his pension fund; and NatWest abruptly closed the account of Professor Leslie Sawers, a staunch defender of women’s rights on transgender issues.

The government has said it will introduce new rules requiring banks, if they propose to close an account, to explain to customers why and to allow them an increased 90 days to challenge a decision. And Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said banks cannot close accounts because of customers’ political beliefs. These steps, if followed through – never a given under the Tories – might make other corporate leaders hesitate before targeting customers for their politically incorrect views.

But the Farage-gate revelations suggest the wokery of Britain’s corporate institutions has gone too far to be easily reined back. What was once seen as core business now everywhere seems to be less important than leftist ideology. So we see, for example, Costa Coffee featuring in its advertising not messages about the quality of its coffee, but its commitment to transgender rights, via an image of a person bearing the scars of a double mastectomy. Just as the police seem to find plenty of time to participate in Pride parades – but not to respond to burglaries – Coutts managed to devote significant resources to compiling their Farage hatchet-job against a background of banks closing 5,000 branches since 2015 and making it ever more difficult for customers to speak to a staff member.

The saga also says much about what it takes these days to get to the top of the corporate ladder. Many of us might have assumed it had something to do with improving customer satisfaction and increasing profits. But it’s now clearer than ever that, certainly when it comes to Britain’s banks, it’s more important to signal commitment to the latest woke pieties. When Rose took over NatWest in 2019, she said ‘tackling climate change would be a central pillar’ of her leadership. Sure enough, she immediately ended new loans for North Sea oil and gas extraction, lessening Britain’s energy security and driving up energy prices. Under her tenure, NatWest’s share value dropped by 11 per cent.

The mostly woke Tories don’t want an extended battle with woke companies. But the trend to leftist capitalism would be worse under Labour. Opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer echoed the government in saying Rose had to resign. But his front-benchers liked the idea of companies blacklisting conservatives.

This raises the question of whether, in time, the corporate social justice warriors might extend ‘debanking’ to other undesirables, eg. beef and dairy farmers or consumers of ‘inappropriate’ or ‘problematic’ media or entertainment. Don’t be surprised if, under Britain’s next government, the drift towards woke corporate authoritarianism strengthens further.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/setback-for-britains-thought-police/

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Media Giant Gannett Sued for Allegedly Discriminating Against White Employees

The largest newspaper publisher in the U.S., Gannett, was hit with a class-action lawsuit Friday that alleges its diversity efforts discriminated against non-minority employees.

Current, former, and prospective Gannett employees filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, alleging the company’s “Reverse Race Discrimination Policy” discriminated against “non-minorities” on the basis of race.

The policy, announced in 2020, sought to ensure its newsrooms’ demographics reflected the communities they covered by 2025.

“Gannett executed their Reverse Race Discrimination Policy with a callous indifference towards civil rights laws or the welfare of the workers, and prospective workers, whose lives would be upended by it,” the complaint states.

Leadership was incentivized to comply with the new policy through bonuses, awards, and promotions, according to the complaint.

Gannett publishes hundreds of local media outlets across the U.S., along with publishing USA Today.

In 2020, Gannett also promised to “expand the number of journalists focused on covering issues related to race and identity, social justice and equality,” USA Today reported.

Steven Bradley, former sports editor for the Rochester, New York-based Democrat and Chronicle and one of the plaintiffs on the lawsuit, previously sued the company in April in state court for allegedly firing him because he is white.

“Gannett always seeks to recruit and retain the most qualified individuals for all roles within the company,” Gannett Chief Legal Counsel Polly Grunfeld Sack said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “We will vigorously defend our practice of ensuring equal opportunities for all our valued employees against this meritless lawsuit.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/23/media-giant-gannett-sued-allegedly-discriminating-against-white-employees

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The Woke can’t handle Queen: "Fat Bottomed Girls" axed from album

I must say that I don't like the name at all. I am as much an admirer of a well-rounded female posterior as any man, but you can have too much of a good thing

Only yesterday, I was reading about the website Worth it or Woke created by cinephile James Carrick, whose mission is to offer movie-goers an alternative to the US left-leaning review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes.

Worth it or Woke serves up ‘red-pilled movie reviews’ for conservative audiences. The site assesses each film, giving it a rating of ‘woke’, ‘woke-ish’, or ‘non-woke’ to help guide right-wing viewers. In May, Carrick told Rolling Stone magazine that a ‘woke’ rating [on his website] indicates a strong emphasis on activism over narrative.

When I woke up this morning to the news that the 1978 hit Fat Bottomed Girls had been given the arse from Queen’s greatest hits album to appease a younger audience – the ‘Worth it or Woke’ website came to mind.

Perhaps we need more websites like this? Rating books, music, artists, publishers, festivals, and politicians who have been sucked down the plughole of wokeism.

Queen’s new album (released by Universal Music) was made available on Yoto – a screen-free audio player for children. A cautionary disclaimer on the Yoto website reads:

Please note that the lyrics in some of these songs contain adult themes, including occasional references to violence and drugs. These are the original and unedited recordings. Whilst no swear words are used parental discretion is advised when playing this content to or around younger children.

So references to adult themes, violence, and drugs in Queen’s songs are perfectly acceptable for children yet they oppose the celebration of a woman’s BIG, beautiful booty? Are you kidding me?

And whilst Yoto are getting all prudish and self-righteous about Fat Bottomed Girls 45-years after the fact. Why wasn’t Killer Queen (which is about a high-class escort) or Another One Bites The Dust (which is about a deadly massacre) cut from the greatest hits album? I’m pretty sure the ‘meaning’ of the latter is a lot worse for kids than a sexy rock song about a boner-causing rump.

Anyway, it turns out Sir Brian May wrote the song for Freddie Mercury to sing because he knew that Mercury had a penchant for big-bottomed girls and boys.

During an interview with Mojo Magazine, May states:

On the face of it, it’s a heterosexual song because it’s called ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’, but I was totally aware of Freddie’s proclivities and the fact he was going to sing it. Plus, some of the inspiration for the song came from stuff that I saw in Freddie’s life as well as my own. So it’s actually not so much of a heterosexual song as you might think. It’s a sort of pansexual song. There are so many ways you can take it.

The removal of Fat Bottomed Girls is just so baseless whether it’s for a child-audience or not. Children don’t spend their days analysing song lyrics. Kids live in the present moment and are more interested in the melody and the beat.

I had heard Fat Bottomed Girls hundreds of times (by the time I was 12) blaring from my brother Damian’s bedroom in the 80s. I never thought about whether the song was sexist or misogynistic or body-shaming because I didn’t know what any of those words meant. I was just a child.

All I knew is that the tune made me want to dance and TURN UP THE VOLUME.

And dance I did…

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/the-woke-cant-handle-queen-fat-bottomed-girls-axed-from-album

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Class grievance has failed. Other grievances needed

Grievances is what the Left do. Now that defending "the worker" makes little sense, some other group -- any group -- is needed to be defended. Gays are also now old hat so they have lost their steam. And blacks are not as good as they were. Amid affirmative action it is takes imagination to brand their treatment as oppressive. So transsexuals are a godsend from Marx. They support doing ghastly things to young people so that needs a lot of defending

At the end of the second world war, socialists around the world still believed in the inevitable overthrow of capitalism and the emergence of a workers utopia. Today capitalism is alive and well and, every socialist government that has been attempted, has failed utterly. There were varying degrees of failure from the Marxist nightmare of Cambodia to the relatively painless collapse of the Soviet Union. The astonishing economic success of the Peoples Republic of China only occurred when it abandoned all pretence at socialism and embraced state capitalism.

This left the millions of socialists around the world in a position which Amir Taheri has termed ‘ideological bankruptcy’. He argues the ‘the European left has developed a grievance based discourse… to form a coalition of real or imagined victims’. The class struggle beloved of 1950s socialists has been replaced by constant reference to historic sins such as slavery, colonialism and racism. The replacement of traditional Marxist ideology began in European universities but has infected education systems throughout the West in the past seventy years and has spread into state-owned media such as the ABC here, and the BBC in the UK.

This trend has also led the publishing industry to create a market for books which tell us how awful white people are. Dark Emu is one of the most successful of locally produced books in this genre but there are dozens, and most of them can be found on university reading lists, and HSC set text lists. My own particular favourite is White Fragility by the American academic, Robin DiAngelo, which, according to my Penguin edition, is, ‘A vital, necessary and beautiful book’.

Dr DiAngelo tells me that I am a racist of the worst kind as I don’t believe that I am a racist. There is something reminiscent of the witch-finder-general in Professor Dr DiAngelo’s tone. The fact that I don’t believe I am a racist is not something to be debated. Rather, it is proof of the depth of my moral and social blindness. She argues that, ‘Being perceived as white, carries more than a mere racial classification; it is a social and institutional status… imbued with legal, political, economic and social rights and privileges that are denied to others’. The problem with this sort of generalisation is that we can substitute the word ‘Aboriginal’ for ‘white’ and it till holds true. The legal and economic rights that apply to Aboriginals include mining royalties running into the billions, the right to deny non-Aboriginals access to ‘sacred sites’, free education and health care, the right to appear on The Drum and Q&A to tell white people how racist they are, and so on.

No one denies that there is a substantial gap between the life-chances of the 3.8 per cent of the population that is Aboriginal and the rest us. Everyone agrees that this situation must be addressed. But the latest great idea, the Voice, is doomed to failure because, like all its predecessors, it is based on establishing more government intervention through the creation of yet another bureaucracy. The great irony is that the Marxists and socialists who, half a century ago argued that capitalist governments were established to suppress the proletariat and ensure that the bourgeoisie remained in power, now argue for the establishment of yet another taxpayer funded bunch of government ‘advisers’.

The Pascoes and DiAngelos of the publishing world, cashing in on a gullible public, may not see themselves as Marxists or socialists. They may not subscribe to most of the central pillars of Marxist ideology, and they may not believe in the inevitable overthrow of capitalism. But they would all subscribe to the belief that the state and the white population today conspire to oppress a black population in exactly the same way that, in the 19th century, the state and the bourgeoisie oppressed the proletariat. In other words they would both subscribe to a Marxist analysis of the distribution of power within the state.

The political tradition of classical liberalism holds that a free market and laissez-faire economics, along with civil liberties under the rule of law, provide the best form of government. Economic freedom, political freedom and freedom of speech represent classical liberal ideals and they are all under attack today. In particular, freedom of speech is contested across the Western world. As John Roskam recently noted, ‘Bill Leak, Archbishihop Julian Porteous, Israel Folau… and Calum Thwaites are just some of the Australians either persecuted or prosecuted… because of what they said or believed’ (‘Live not by lies’ The Spectator Australian 22 July). The same trend is flourishing in the UK where J.K. Rowling who, because of her unremarkable views about gender, is only one of many people subjected to abuse which, a few decades ago, would have been unimaginable.

The economic freedom which is central to liberal values is also under attack on many fronts. One current example it the recent debacle in WA concerning the legislation impinging on the right of farmers to put up fences on their own properties. This was a restriction of the economic freedom of the landholders and is also an example of how the WA government’s policy of appeasement of the various Aboriginal lobby groups was always doomed to failure.

And on it goes. A relentless list of injustices and atrocities perpetrated on a victimised Aboriginal population by white oppressors supported by a racist police force and justice system. One problem with this viewpoint is the growing number of Australians from a non-white background. Are the millions of people of Chinese, Indian and Arabic descent, who choose to live here, part of the victimised non-white minority, or are they also involved in perpetuating the discrimination against the Aboriginal population? Are they oppressed or oppressors? This is a question in the left’s too hard basket.

A century ago there was a genuine distinction between working and middle classes in the Western industrialised economies and Marxist ideas of class struggle were relevant. While the structure of modern economies has completely changed, the ideologies which supported the Marxists and socialists have not. The diminishing number of people parading outside government offices in support of ‘voice, truth, treaty’ are a vestigial remnant of a once important movement. The ABC is their life support mechanism – a sort of artificial tongue.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/aussie-life-129/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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