Nigel Farage branded ‘sketchy crackpot’ in secret NatWest emails disclosed after de-banking scandal<

Nigel Farage claims a “woke brigade” is marching through public and private companies after emails revealed NatWest staff gloated about the closure of his bank account in a series of sniggering internal messages.

The crowing remarks were handed over to the former Ukip leaders through a subject access request, and shone light on conversations among staff members who joked he had been “debanked” by Coutts, a NatWest subsidiary, and that they hoped it “knocked him down a peg or two.”

In an angry tirade agains the bank, Mr Farage also revealed the internal documents referred to him a “crackpot”, “sketchy” and “a fool”.

The internal gossip followed the closure of Mr Farage’s Coutt’s account, which he claims was a politically motivated decision.

Mr Farage was also described in one of the emails as an “awful human being”, while another said they would have paid a significant sum to have been the one to tell the GB News presenter his account was being shut down.

A third said: “I’d throw a milkshake at him if I was approached to open an account for him.”

In one exchange, published by the Daily Telegraph, an employee points to Mr Farage claiming NatWest has a “political agenda”.

A colleague replies: “No it’s just you are an awful human being Nigel Farage lol. He’s so politically relevant right now. Like who even are you anymore.”

The colleague goes on to mock the Brexiteer’s past attempts to portray himself as a man of the people, saying it is “good that an ‘everyman’ banked at Coutts”.

Following the publication Mr Farage called for former NatWest boss Dame Alison Rose, who quit over her role in the scandal, to have her multi million pound severance pay deal scrapped.

“This is the culture that the queen of woke, Dame Alison Rose, brought into the head office and throughout the Bank of NatWest,” he said.

And Mr Farage called for an investigation into all the staff who had made mean comments about him.

But he told GB News: “It does not hurt at all. I am so used to the illiberalism of the so-called liberals, that I can deal with it. It is horrible stuff.

“But it all goes to show the arrogance of those in power, the march of the woke brigade through our public and private corporations.

“I have the honour to be the first person to genuinely have the voice and the position to stand up and fight back.”

NatWest is hosting a board meeting on Thursday to agree the terms for Dame Alison’s departure. It is set to unveil its quarterly results on Friday.

Mr Farage said any payment to Dame Alison would be a “reward for failure” paid for by taxpayers, given the public’s 39 per cent ownership of the bank.

The closure of Mr Farage’s bank account led to a row over so-called de-banking of those with controversial political views, but a review by the Financial Conduct Authority foud no firm evidence of banks denying people access to accounts over the last year due to their political views.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-natwest-coutts-alison-rose-b2435066.html

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UPenn faces free speech hypocrisy storm for refusing to discipline pro-Hamas protesters - despite probing into law professor who said 'America would be better with fewer Asians'

A typical deliberate misquote from the Left. What Prof. Wax actually said:

"But as long as most Asians support Democrats and help to advance their positions, I think the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration.”

It was clearly a political, not a racist statement


The University of Pennsylvania has been accused of hypocrisy for trying to oust a controversial law professor who said 'America would be better with fewer Asians' while claiming free speech means it cannot punish anti-Semitic students.

The beleaguered Ivy League college has spent two years trying to discipline tenured professor Amy Wax over her remarks and other comments, which include arguing that some ethnicities have lower IQs than others.

University leaders claimed her behavior undermines Penn's commitment to attracting a 'diverse student body to an inclusive educational environment' and 'harmed' students.

But amid a backlash to the Palestine Writes festival last month that invited speakers who have made anti-Semitic remarks, Penn reaffirmed its commitment to upholding free speech.

Among those who appeared was Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, who has previously performed in an outfit closely resembling a Nazi uniform and once suggested 'bombing' audiences with confetti in the shape of swastikas, stars of David and dollar signs.

Although Penn released a statement condemning anti-Semitism ahead of the event, it still copped furious criticism that it tried to deflect by hiding behind a commitment to free speech.

The Palestine Writes festival - held on the eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar - featured a lineup of well-known antisemites. It drew extra attention after the Hamas attacks on Israel two weeks later.

A memo to the university's board about the Palestine Writes event asserted that 'Penn does not regulate the content of speech or symbolic behavior,' the Washington Free Beacon reports.

Recipients were reminded that faculty may invite 'hateful' figures on campus so long as there is 'no imminent threat of harm.'

The note, written by the university's president Liz Magill and chairman of trustees Robert Bok, also rejected the term 'hate speech' as too difficult to define and noted the college had done away with its anti-hate speech policy following a political correctness dispute in 1994.

That was despite the school using the term 'hate speech' in its complaint against Wax.

Penn bosses have been attempting to remove the professor following her comments and concerns she has assigned work related to racist thinker Enoch Powell and invited Jared Taylor a white identity politics advocate to speak in her class.

She is now attempting to use the university's memo and its stance on free speech as an argument that she is afforded the same protections.

In a letter to university officials, Wax's lawyers said: 'The [memo] makes clear that even if Jews are 'harmed' by the speech of radical left Palestinian supporters appearing at the [Palestine Writes] Festival, those organizing the [Palestine Writes] Festival and inviting Jew-hating Palestinian nationalists will not be punished because Penn permits and protects the expression of all viewpoints, even those that are contrary to Penn's 'institutional values.

'But if a strongly conservative and tenured professor invites Jared Taylor, assigns Charles Murray and Enoch Powell, and takes to social media to tell very hard-to-hear truths about group differences, she is not protected. Rather, she is sanctioned.'

The letter was sent two days after the devastating Hamas attacks of October 7 and argues that there is a 'glaringly obvious' double standard.

It comes as the university battles to hold onto donations after several major donors pulled the plug on funding amid what they deemed to be an unsatisfactory response to the Palestine Writes festival, anti-Semitism and the so-called lax response to the attacks.

'We are devastated by the horrific assault on Israel by Hamas that targeted civilians and the taking of hostages over the weekend. These abhorrent attacks have resulted in the tragic loss of life and escalating violence and unrest in the region,' Magill said in a statement three days after the attack.

'Many members of our community are hurting right now. Our thoughts are especially with those grieving the loss of loved ones or facing grave uncertainty about the safety of their families and friends.'

But, some took exception with the statement, saying it didn't go far enough and condemn the attack.

That led several prominent alums to sever ties with Penn including David Magerman, a Jewish computer scientist who helped build the trading systems of Renaissance.

Magerman's decision came after Apollo CEO Marc Rowand and Highsage Ventures founder Jonathan Jacboson reduced their donations down to just $1.

Estee Lauder heir Ronald Lauder also vowed to 're-examine' his financial commitment to the institution unless it did more to protect Jewish students.

Meanwhile trustee Vahan Gureghian called for Magill's resignation after resigning from the board over what he feels is an insufficient response to mounting anti-Semitism on campus.

'Like so many elite academic institutions, the leadership of UPenn has failed us through an embrace of antisemitism, a failure to stand for justice, and complete negligence in the defense of its own students' well being,' Gureghian said.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12672425/UPenn-free-speech-anti-Semitism-Amy-Wax.html

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Homes in 99% of the country are below the affordability threshold, meaning that they cost more than 28% of a family’s income

Home ownership was supposed to be the American dream, the thing to which the entire middle class could not only aspire but also achieve. That dream has turned into a nightmare, thanks in large part to the Biden administration and the big spenders in Congress. Now home ownership is increasingly out of reach for Americans.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta began maintaining a Home Ownership Affordability Monitor Index in 2006 because homes were so unaffordable at that time. The latest reading from that index, which has plunged 36% since President Joe Biden took office, is the lowest in its history and indicates record unaffordability. It now takes 44% of median income—before taxes—to afford a median-price home.

It’s even worse in several major metropolitan areas across the country. The cost of a median-price home is 50% of median income in Boston, 55% in Miami, 63% in New York, 84% in San Francisco, and 85% in Los Angeles. But these are percentages of before-tax income, which means the cost of home ownership in some of those places exceeds 100% of net income. “No joke,” as Biden would say.

And it’s not just a problem in a few major cities—it’s everywhere. A recent report estimated the affordability of the median-price home for the average American in 572 counties. Going through the data in the report reveals that homes in 99% of the country are below the affordability threshold, meaning that they cost more than 28% of a family’s income.

What’s even scarier is that measurements like the one from the Atlanta Fed are underestimating the problem. Its index assumes a buyer has a 10% down payment, but most people can only comfortably afford a 3% down payment. If the median prospective buyer wipes out all his savings, he still only has enough for an 8% down payment.

Putting less down means a larger loan, which means larger monthly payments, which means lower affordability. Additionally, interest rates have continued to rise and are now over 7.6%, compared with the 6.8% used in the Atlanta Fed’s calculations. Home prices have also risen, and both factors further increase the monthly payment on a mortgage.

How we got here is a lesson in excessive government spending.

During the pandemic, the government spent trillions of dollars it didn’t have and created money out of nothing to pay for it all. In 2021, instead of allowing government spending to return to normal levels, Biden and a spendthrift Congress rammed through trillions of dollars in additional spending while the Federal Reserve continued creating money to finance the deficit spending.

The predictable result was 40-year-high inflation. That sent prices, including the prices of homes, through the roof. Artificially low interest rates compounded the problem by allowing people to take on ever-growing mortgages without increasing their monthly payments. Home prices rose even higher.

But inflation caused people’s real (inflation-adjusted) earnings to fall and forced interest rates to rise. This was a deadly combination for home-ownership affordability.

Lower real earnings mean everyone is spending more on food, transportation, energy, etc., with less available in their monthly budget for housing. At the same time, home prices have been pushed to record highs and mortgage rates are at the highest level in 23 years. At the same moment as people have less money to pay for housing, the price of housing has shattered all previous records.

To be clear, the foundation for this problem was laid long before Biden became president. The Fed’s persistently artificially low interest rates have been causing asset bubbles for two decades, and its purchase of housing-related financial derivatives has further buoyed housing prices.

In the years immediately preceding the pandemic, the Fed had begun a tighter monetary policy, which helped blunt the inflationary impact of government spending in 2020. But Biden’s continued overspending, excessive borrowing, and oppressive regulating—along with creating money to pay for it all—gave the problem a violent shove into overdrive.

For example, impractical corporate-average-fuel-economy and heavy-haul-emissions standards—along with higher fees on coal power plants and leases for oil and gas wells on public lands—have all increased energy and transportation costs, which have trickled down throughout the economy, raising prices everywhere.

Had Biden not imposed these regulations and merely allowed spending to return to previous levels, the problem, and $2 trillion annual deficits, could’ve been avoided. But now we’re trapped in a nightmare it’ll be hard to wake up from.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/10/23/home-prices-from-american-dream-to-american-nightmare

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First peoples?

There has been a lot of indecision in recent years about what to call those people whom for many decades Australians have called "Aborigines". That word now seems to be taboo. "Indigenous" is a favourite replacement but the Canadian practice is increasingly creeping in. Canadians say "First Nations" for the early inhabitants of their country.

Using "first Nations" for early inhabitants of Australia is a however a substantial misfire. The many pre-white tribes of Australia had few of the characteristics of nations except perhaps informally understood borders. Making "nations" out of hundreds of tribes is quite a stretch. There was certainly no language or DNA common to them all and not much that we would recognize as governing bodies or a defence department.

Perhaps for that reason the angry article below refers to "first peoples" instead, a more defensible usage.

But both usages founder on the claim that the pre-white inhabitants of Australia were in any sense "first". They were not. It enrages the Left for anybody to mention it but it is well documented that the original inhabitants of what we now call Australia were a race of pygmies. And the pygmies concerned are far from a lost tribe. Some of them still survive in areas of the Atherton Tableland.

One of them walked right past me in 2004 as I was sitting in an open-air cafe in Kuranda. He was black but was only about 4'6" tall, a height commonly given for the Australian pygmies in early documents. There certainly are still some very short blacks in the mountainous areas behind Cairns

In the early days, anthropologists and explorers took photos of the pygmies which showed them as being about 4.6" (1.3 meters) tall

There is a long article by the irreverent historian Keith Windschuttle which gives the full story. See

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/history-wars/2002/06/the-extinction-of-the-australian-pygmies/

There were quite a lot of reports of contact with pygmies throughout the 20th century. See:

https://www.mysteriousaustralia.com/our_lost_pygmy_tribe.html

There have been many attempts from the Left to debunk the story that there were a race of pygmies in Australia but have a look below and you will see one of them, 3"7" tall and still alive when the picture was taken by a news photographer in 2007.



She is pretty substantial to be a "myth". There is an article about her reprinted below

https://tongue-tied2.blogspot.com/2023/10/elder-faces-eviction-article-originally.html

It’s a measure of the confidence assimilationists now feel, not to mention their profound indecency, that they’ve wasted no time pushing to start rolling back what few gains have been made on Indigenous policy.

Tony Abbott immediately demanded that Indigenous flags no longer be flown and acknowledgements of Indigenous people be abandoned at official events — signs of separatism, he says. If even those most basic acknowledgements that First Peoples exist are now to be erased, then we are indeed seeing full-blown separatism. The LNP in Queensland abandoned support for a treaty process in that state. Peter Dutton, in the words of one of his own MPs, sought to “weaponise” claims of child abuse within Indigenous communities.

The mainstream media also wasted no time in trying to fit the result into a narrative that carefully avoided the core issues of the referendum. The Australian Financial Review echoed the argument of The Australian that it was all Anthony Albanese’s fault for his “failure to genuinely consult with Mr Dutton to try to secure bi-partisan support for the Voice,” arguing that it was down to Albanese’s “hubris”.

This is a self-serving lie that gets everyone — Dutton, the No campaign, racists, the media — off the hook. There is literally no referendum proposal that Dutton would have supported, as his goal was to damage Labor, not address the substance of either recognition or closing the gap. The AFR goes on to complain that Albanese has ruled out “pursuing other forms of constitutional recognition or legislating for an Indigenous advisory body”.

Let’s coin a name for this fiction: how about the White Man’s Recognition Myth? It’s one many No supporters, including Abbott and Dutton, cling to — that if only they’d been asked to support simple recognition without a Voice, they’d have backed it.

White Man’s Recognition found a full flowering in an extraordinary column by David Crowe last week. Normally the doyen of both-sidesist press gallery commentary, Crowe came alive during the campaign to lash the No campaign but lamented last Thursday “a Yes vote is only possible for leaders who compromise more than they would like. This is true for Indigenous leaders as much as party leaders. As late as June this year, there was a pathway to success for recognition without the Voice, something Dutton says he supports.”

That is, the failure of the referendum is on First Peoples and their inability to compromise, their unwillingness to accept a token White Man’s Recognition, their insistence that recognition actually be meaningful and involve a two-way interaction, not imposed on them like so much else has been imposed on them for more than two centuries.

Stop complaining, accept what you’re given, abandon any agency, it’s non-Indigenous people who’ve done all the compromising, why won’t you? Being recognised as actually existing should be enough. It’s not just Albanese, evidently, who is afflicted with hubris.

It shouldn’t need to be said, but after the ferocious and resentful dismissal of genuine recognition by non-Indigenous Australia, no non-Indigenous person is in a position to lecture First Peoples about what they should have done differently in order to please us.

It is non-Indigenous people who have killed off recognition and reconciliation in favour of maintaining a white fantasy in an occupied country. The next steps, whatever they are, must come from First Peoples. And if those steps are away from the rest of us, we’ve only ourselves to blame.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/the-job-of-non-indigenous-australians-now-is-to-shut-up/ar-AA1iFLla

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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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