UK Politics Thread (Part 3)

He no longer meets their financial criteria for for an account. He was allowed to continue to keep the account as he had a mortgage with them. As that was paid off they decided to close his account. This is not that unusual. I had an account closed years ago as I no longer actively used it (a pre-requisite was that it had min £1000 paid in monthly.)

They could have kept it open on a discretionary basis but they didn’t want to take any risks. I’m assuming that this is because he has regularly associated with sanctioned individuals and the last thing that Coutts (and their usual clientele) want is HMRC, IRS, the FBI, Scotland Yard or anyone else taking a deep dive into their affairs.

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That is not entirely accurate.

They closed his account due to the available funds falling below the banks required minimum balance.

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That wasn’t the point I was replying to.

It’s also worth noting that despite all the headlines suggesting that the head of Coutts has apologised to him over the whole thing, the apology was strictly specifically about the language used in the internal report.

They have not backtracked on his account closure, or anything else related to it. In fact, the head of the group reiterated that he will still not be offered an account with Coutts, but he can open an account with NatWest instead.

EDIT: In any case, my point was that there are a billion other priorities affecting vastly more people than this, and yet this is the priority that the Conservatives have chosen to act on. Says a lot.

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https://twitter.com/BNHWalker/status/1682208782003187712

it never is :rofl:

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Des Lynam is a public supporter of Farage and UKIP…but Lineker has to “stick to football”

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I honestly thought Des Lynam was dead.

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What an absurd stance to be taking. Putting the onus on Labour to establish “a cross-party consensus on climate action” despite it being members of his own party who are doing their utmost to prevent that from happening.

It’s basically an admission that the Conservatives can’t be relied on to do anything for the environment, or do anything responsible, really.

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It actually makes sense to me. Throw it back in their faces. This is a report commissioned by Tory party and your advisors are saying the same as us. So put your cards on the table instead of hiding behind ignorant sound bites from Cruella and Grant Shatts

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Lots of stories I’ve seen this morning showing the Tories going down the climate denial / ignore it path.

Lord Frost is special

The absurd point about this is that the UK probably won’t see much of a rise in annual average temperatures if the models are correct. Once the Gulf Stream stops bringing warm air from the Caribbean, London should have about the same climate as northern Newfoundland. So you will get some nice -20C winter weather to balance out the new +35C summer weather.

Shame about all those indigenous species that aren’t adapted to sustained below zero temperatures.

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Their precious ‘little England’ attitude makes me fucking sick. The rest of the planet is on fire and they care not a jot.

I’m just back off me hols. We were staying at a converted farmhouse on a small hill farm up the back of Denbigh. The farmer’s son has just planted a vineyard at the bottom of the Vale !

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Yes but we’ll get polar bears. :roll_eyes: :wink:

I bet the Canadian geese won’t shift though.

It’s the absurdity of the excuses, denial and whatever else you can dream up on that gets me. So much so I’ve started to slowly try and read up on some of the alternative science on this. I want to get my head right round what is essentially an easy topic but has loads of detail buried within it.

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Not sure where to stick this but I suspect that it belongs here:

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fbusiness%2F2023%2F07%2F26%2Fpaul-marshall-hedge-fund-nets-millions-bet-against-natwest%2F

GB News owner Sir Paul Marshall’s hedge fund has made a multi-million pound gain on its bet against NatWest shares following the exit of Dame Alison Rose.

Regulatory filings show that Marshall Wace has the biggest short position in the lender’s shares meaning it stands to gain from falls in the bank’s market price.

It looks like he heavily shorted the shares of NatWest back in April back when it looked like there would be fall in global bank share prices after problems at SVB and Credit Suisse. That hasn’t (yet) materialised.

His employee at GBNews is one Nigel Farage who has been kicking up a stink and caused government intervention to force the resignation of Alison Rose from Natwest, This then caused a sudden drop in the share price of Natwest.

Anyone spot some conflict of interests here?

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Fixed for accuracy

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I read a claim last night that the government essentially made Rose’s position untenable.

This cost the UK taxpayer £320m.

For a petty grievance about a pathetic privileged twat not spending enough to be worth the business of a private bank.

Instead of getting on the bullhorn about this everywhere about the Conservatives’ profligate waste of public money to curry favour with one individual, craven Starmer is sucking up to him and agreeing with the course of action.

Pathetic.

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Not really. Markets fluctuate, and unless the government is selling its stake today I doubt any long lasting financial damage is being done here.