Coutts cancelling Nigel Farage is desperate attempt to appeal to woke warriors who are holding bosses to ransom
AFTER it became clear that Nigel Farage’s uber-posh bank had closed his account because it disagreed with his politics, serious thinkers and commentators have been gnashing their teeth and claiming that this is the first step on the road to the end of free speech.
Really? The first step? Ha, it’s about the 4,000th step.
If the road to the end of free speech starts at Land’s End and ends in John O’Groats, we’re just going past Carlisle.
All major companies these days have a department staffed by people whose job is to look after the people who work there.
They protect them from being exploited or hurt or boiled, and from having to visit a lavatory that doesn’t suit whatever genitals they’re using that day.
Sounds lovely. But in these modern times, they must also protect them from being offended.
READ MORE NIGEL FARAGE
So if a 16-year-old school leaver, who’s been taught by her woke, climate-obsessed teachers that she has the right to go through life without ever hearing or seeing or smelling anything that upsets her, discovers she’s working at a bank where Nigel Farage keeps his money, she will go to the department charged with looking after her well-being and say she’s “offended” that the bank is doing business with someone who she considers to be a racist and a xenophobe and a climate change denier.
And the department will be forced to take her concerns seriously.
That’s their job. So they will approach the bosses, who, in turn, will be forced to take the department’s concerns seriously. Because that’s why it was set up in the first place.
And so, because of one 16-year-old, Farage gets a letter telling him to take his business elsewhere.
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And there’s more. We learned about a vicar called Rev Richard Fothergill, who complained to the Yorkshire Building Society about how it was promoting transgenderism in Pride month.
And he says that, four days later, he got a letter saying his account had been closed.
And it’s not just banking that’s affected by this sorry state of affairs.
I spoke the other day to the chairman of a large high street retailer who regularly has to write to suppliers cutting ties because someone in his business is “offended” by something they’ve done or said on Twitter.
I know for a fact this sort of thing also goes on in television companies and advertising agencies and even the civil service. It’s everywhere.
PLAY THE OFFENDED CARD
Bosses have their hands tied by weepy woke warriors who wield enormous power because they can play the offended card.
They can’t be sacked and they can’t be ignored.
They have to be given a nice cup of fair trade, nuclear-free, peace coffee made with milk from a nut and told that their ridiculous demands will be met.
Because if they aren’t, the spotty little ignoramus will go on social media and say “they” are working for fascists.
Well let me end by being, once again, a still small voice of calm and reason.
I don’t much care for Nigel Farage. I was passionately opposed to Brexit and find some of what he says head-swivellingly annoying. He offends me greatly.
But he is entitled to hold and share his views, and if he turns up one day at my farm shop, I’ll be happy to sell him some sausages.
Which I won’t have urinated on, I promise.
How to lose a battle
DEFENCE chiefs announced this week that British soldiers could soon be given electric bicycles so they can sneak up more quietly (and cheaply) than if they were in a tank.
Yes. But have you ever tried to ride a bicycle in soft sand? Or in a bog? It’s impossible.
So if stealth (and savings) are the main consideration, I have a better idea. Why not give them horses?
They are extremely good off-road and won’t short out if asked to cross a river.
Plus, most cost much less than a £6,500 e-bike and if properly trained, can move around very quietly indeed.
Also, you don’t need to charge up their batteries every half an hour.
And then we could go further and, instead of guns, which are noisy and also expensive, issue our troops with swords.
It’d be the most eco-friendly and modern army in the world.
And it’d lose every single battle it took part in. But in these green and cost-conscious times, it seems that sort of thing doesn’t matter.
Whale fail...
AFTER 55 whales were found dead or dying on a remote Scottish beach this week, a scientist explained that one of them was probably distracted by a difficult pregnancy and the others had simply followed her into the shallows.
Not being an expert on whale beaching, I had to take his word for it.
But the BBC reporter, who I presume was also not a whale beaching expert, decided he had another theory, so he let the scientist finish speaking and said that human activity was probably to blame.
I know that fits the current narrative, mate, but sometimes you just have to accept that accidents sometimes happen and that the oil companies and the trawlers and Donald Trump aren’t necessarily responsible.
WE learned this week that women with cancer could soon be offered magic mushrooms to help them deal with the fear and anxiety.
Seems reasonable.
Except for one thing. What about men who are suffering from cancer?
Are we expected to deal with the fear and anxiety using nothing more than a stiff upper lip?
A pain in the grass
ALAN TITCHMARSH announced this week that the current trend for rewilding our gardens is catastrophic for wildlife and will reduce biodiversity.
This was met with dismay by a man called Richard Bunting, who says that manicured gardens are a disaster and that Alan should use his influence to back calls for 30 per cent of Britain to be fully wild by 2030.
So who’s right? A gentle old soul who’s spent his entire life tending to gardens, or the former communications director for Amnesty International who had a small part in the movie The Princess Bride?
I think I’ll fire up the Atco.
Yacht very bright
IT seems that the annoying environmental protests aren’t just limited to the UK.
This week, a group called Just Stop Vegetables – or something like that – descended on the marina in Ibiza and emptied fire extinguishers full of paint all over a £240million superyacht.
They then held up banners saying, in English: “You consume. Others suffer.”
Which meant that none of the Spanish locals could understand the message.
And I don’t either, if I’m honest.
Because if you buy a boat like that, then yes you are “consuming”, but the people at the shipyard where it was built, and the people who service it and work on it?
They’ve got jobs and pay packets and they’re not suffering at all.
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My Hornbys are sad but James’ habit is off rails
I HAVE some Hornby 00 model trains on the shelves in my kitchen. I know. Tragic.
But not as tragic as James May, who came over this week for a Grand Tour meeting and spent the entire time turning the coal tenders round so they were facing in the correct direction.
