Tag: Nigel Farage

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general freedom ideological culture international affairs

BBC Apologizes, Bankers Squirm

Nigel Farage, gangsters, banksters, censorship

Banksters. It rhymes with “gangsters.”

The pejorative for bankers came to mind as I was reading about the British Broadcasting System’s public correction of a story it had published. In covering Coutts bank’s closure of Nigel Farage’s account, back on July 4, the BBC had said that it was not political.

But Mr. Farage, the former leader of the United Kingdom’s Independence Party, “later obtained a Coutts report which indicated his political views were also considered.”

Like we all guessed. 

The lengthy document seen by Farage and then the BBC “included minutes from a meeting in November last year reviewing his account” in which he was called “xenophobic and racist” and characterized as not the kind of customer compatible with Coutts’ “position as an inclusive organisation.”

Britain, like the United States, is in the throes of a very political “culture war.” Farage was the main proponent for Brexit in 2016. The unexpected success of Britain’s plebiscite to secede from the European Union became part of the global populist rebellion that led to the election of Donald Trump here. 

And, like here, in Britain it has gotten nasty.

Farage’s beef with the BBC was easily resolved, as Farage accepted the BBC’s apology and its reporter’s excuse that a “trusted and senior” confidential source within Coutts had fed the news organization misinformation.

The bank in question considers itself very upright and moral, apparently. Hardly a “gangster” — that’s not in its mission statement! But by taking sides in politics (apparently solidly in the Remainer rather than Brexiteer camp), the bank is following a trend we’ve seen here, where big business balks at doing business with people it doesn’t like — ideologically.

This is a recipe for the breakdown of open markets … and civil strife far beyond what we’ve seen so far.

That’s not good for business.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with PicFinder​.ai and DALL-E2

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ideological culture

The Milkshake of Human Unkindness

milkshake, political violence, New Republic, Nigel Farage, Brexit, right, immigration,

“The biggest topic in British political circles on Monday … was milkshakes,” writes Mike Ford in The New Republic, “or, rather, one milkshake in particular.…”

Milkshake, you ask?

Yes. Milkshake. 

The shake in question “was lobbed by a bystander in Newcastle at Nigel Farage, a Brexit Party candidate in the European Parliament elections later this week.” And Mr. Ford goes on to note that infamous Internet figures Tommy Robinson and Carl “Sargon of Akkad” Benjamin (the latter inaccurately dubbed “alt-​right”) have received multiple hits of thrown cold, frothy confections.

It is “a thing.” A meme — a replicable operation.

Burger King has even encouraged the fad, if in a bizarrely mercenary way.

“Throwing a milkshake at someone is rude at worst,” Ford asserts. “It may also qualify as assault in some jurisdictions, especially in the United States.” That second sentence contradicts the first. It is assault “at worst.”

Ford’s op-​ed, entitled “Why Milkshaking Works,” has a tagline: “The far right fears nothing more than public humiliation.”

Really? Look, no one wants the inconvenience of these stupid attacks, but it is the unhingedness of the left that shines through, here — a threatening, punching, shouting-​down, spilling-​upon movement that I suspect mainly grows the ranks of the anti-left.* 

The New Republic has long been a progressive rag: the “new” in the title referred to the magazine’s support for progressivism.

Fitting, then, to see it cheer on, this week, the idiotic, unkind extremism of current progressive culture.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Of course, to some on the left all non-​leftists are “far right.” This is called the phenomenon of “the left pole.”

milkshake, political violence, New Republic, Nigel Farage, Brexit, right, immigration,

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crime and punishment folly general freedom moral hazard nannyism too much government

Big Libertarian Questions

Charlie Gard, Nigel Farage, National Health Service, government, control

“This raises some very big libertarian questions,” said Nigel Farage yesterday. 

About what?

The “rights of parents against the state.”

The outspoken Brexit supporter and former leader of the UK Independence Party was referring to Charlie Gard, the sick, dying 11-​month old British baby, whose parents sought to take to the United States for an experimental medical treatment. But the hospital and the British government pooh-​poohed any likelihood of success and said, “No.”

That’s when Charlie’s parents went to court, fighting for seven months for the right to simply try to save their child’s life. Now, after those months of delay, even that remote medical hope has faded away.

“Even today,” explained Farage, “the hospital and the state are saying to these poor parents, ‘Oh, no, no, Charlie can’t die at home. He’ll have to die in our hospital.’”

The judge in the case called it “absurd” to suggest that little Charlie was a “prisoner of the National Health Service.” But not free to leave the country or even the hospital, that’s precisely what this poor child has become.

“There was a case four years ago of a little kid, Ashya King, who had a brain cancer,” Farage noted. “His parents wanted him to go to Prague for a revolutionary new treatment that the doctors here said wouldn’t work. The boy went. It worked. He’s now cancer free.”

Those parents were briefly imprisoned … for saving their child’s life.

It appears that single-payer makes the government the single-decider.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture local leaders national politics & policies responsibility

From Brexit to Calexit

CalExit, Brexit, UKip, Nigel Farage, Euro, California, Arron Banks, secession

When last we touched upon the strangely over-​the-​top Californian reaction to the Trump presidency, the secession movement, I took the occasion to bring up the rather less radical separatists in the north. “Already 21 of the 23 northernmost counties,” I wrote, “have made declarations to form the State of Jefferson.”

But now there is a new wrinkle. 

“Former UKip leader Nigel Farage and Leave backer Arron Banks recently helped raise $1 million for Calexit, which would split California into eastern and western regions,” we learn from the Daily Mail and the World Tribune. Banks, citing the high disapproval ratings Californians give their government, said that “he and Farage wanted to show people in California ‘how to light a fire and win’ the Calexit referendum.”

Their proposal is distinct from complete secession. It would amount to a California split, with the west coast (Los Angeles and north to the border) splitting off from the rest of the state. This would form an East California and a West California. 

Politically, this might appease the conservatives and moderates who live in more rural east and Southern California, especially since they are coming to increasingly despise Left Coast “liberals” (read: progressives). Whom they not implausibly blame for ruining the state.

But it leaves some Jefferson secessionists stuck with those “liberals.” This, if an oversight, is a big one. Would this not doom the scheme?

While the failed initiative effort of 2014 to split the state into six separate states was far too complicated to wrap one’s head around, the new Calexit effort seems too … simple.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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