Around the time of the global banking crisis in 2008, Jeremy Clarkson told me he was buying a farm, a safe and a shotgun.
When I asked him why, he explained that the only way to survive the coming apocalypse was to have a place to grow your own food, store your cash, and arm yourself against the Walking Dead.
Turns out he was pretty insightful, although back then he had no idea Clarkson’s Farm would become the new Top Gear. Growing your own food sounds like a plan, given that supermarket prices are in the stratosphere as a result of corporate greed and Putin’s war against Ukraine, Europe’s grain basket.
Withdrawing savings and putting them in the safe, or even under the mattress, made sense when financial institutions were failing.
And while I’ve never been a fan of guns, despite running the provisional wing of the Tony Martin Is Innocent campaign, taking precautions to protect property seems the only sensible way to behave now that the police have long since given up the ghost.
After four decades at the same bank, Coutts, Nigel Farage (pictured) has been told his client is no longer welcome.
The farm has proven to be Jezza’s best investment, not because it makes money in farming, but thanks to the surprising success of his inspired Amazon television series.
How much longer that will last is anyone’s guess. Amazon executives in Cupertino, California, are said to be reviewing the show’s future in the wake of controversy over Clarkson’s criticism of the blessed Meghan Markle.
He has just been reprimanded by Ipso, the press complaints body, for a column in which he expressed his visceral hatred of the Duchess of Montecito, and expected her to be forced to walk naked through the streets while excrement was thrown at her.
Tasteless, certainly. But I had said the same thing about Matt Hancock uncensored. In fact, most people agreed with me. In fact, the day Clarkson’s column appeared, I gleefully sent him an email accusing him of plagiarism.
Who would have imagined that the world was about to fall on his head again?
After a torrent of complaints, particularly from a couple of women’s ritual organisations, Ipso found him guilty of “sexism”. Clarkson had already realized that she had gone too far and promised not to do it again.
Ipso, an independent body supported by the vast majority of British news organisations, was set up in the wake of the Leveson inquisition to resolve complaints while defending freedom of expression.
The Clarkson ruling is a worrying overreach, although it carries few sanctions. Press freedom has never been in greater danger, especially with the prospect of a censorious incoming Labor government wedded to state control of the media.
What’s equally sinister, however, is that this decision could be co-opted by others bent on “canceling” Clarkson to burnish their own woke credentials.
Will it be enough for his bankers, say, to close his accounts and declare him a “non-person”?
After all, that’s exactly what just happened to Nigel Farage. After four decades at the same bank, Coutts, Farage has been told his client is no longer welcome. It is still not entirely clear why this has happened. Some say it is part of an establishment backlash against Brexit, which is certainly plausible. Another explanation is that he has flouted regulations targeting prominent public figures suspected of being at risk of money laundering.
Hiding behind parliamentary privilege, Remainiac Labor MP Chris Bryant wrongly accused Farage of receiving more than £540,000 from the Russians – and still refuses to apologize or recant. If Bryant had the courage to repeat the insult outside the House, Farage could see him in court.
This is the same type of despicable tactic falsely used by General Nonce Finder Tom Watson to allege that senior Conservative politicians were part of a child sexual abuse ring.
Rather than suffer the consequences and be cast out of polite society, Watson has now been elevated to the Lords by Keir Starmer and given a lucrative job as head of UK Music. Farage is said to detect the dead hand of MI5 behind all this. I don’t see why the Funny People would be involved, but just because you’re paranoid and all.
The former leader of the United Kingdom has every right to feel frightened by this development. No other bank will touch it either. He could force him to leave Britain entirely, giving weight to his conspiracy theories.
We have since discovered that others who criticized the fashionable dogma were canceled by their banks.
First Direct showed the door to a Scottish journalist who questioned the claim that women can have penises. A vicar who asked the Yorkshire Building Society why its branches were decorated with Pride flags had his savings account closed because it was deemed “discriminatory”.
Toby Young of Free Speech Union had his organization’s account closed through PayPal. Reclaim, the party set up by actor-turned-freedom activist Laurence Fox, has been denied a bank account. There are many other examples.
Adoption of woke philosophy by otherwise venal corporations has been on the rise for years. I’ve written a lot about it, especially professional football, covering all the fads from Black Lives Matter to LGBTQWERTY+ rainbow laces.
Around the time of the global banking crisis in 2008, Jeremy Clarkson told me he was buying a farm, a safe and a shotgun.
They do this to divert attention from their own naked amorality and greed. Coincidentally, Farage’s story appeared at the same time as my last column, which was headlined “Only one view of the world is allowed today: ultra-woke, pro-migrant, anti-Brexit and anti-Boris.”
It was about the pathetic attempts in Parliament to punish prominent Boris Johnson supporters who dared to criticize members of Hattie Harman’s lynch mob, set up to condemn the former Prime Minister for lying to the House.
It’s a kangaroo court, sport, it’s a kangaroo court.
Now it appears that Skippy, Bush’s babysitter, is not only running the House of Commons disciplinary process, but is also bouncing around the private sector.
How else to explain Farage’s scandalous treatment, which he has rightly compared to communist China?
What gives banks the right to refuse to do business with those who hold opinions contrary to prevailing conventional wisdom? Access to banking services should be a basic human rite, exclusive to criminals convicted of serious financial fraud.
Farage’s only alleged crime, like Boris, was helping to persuade 17.4 million people to vote democratically to leave the EU. The self-proclaimed “elites” have never forgiven them.
If they can be crucified, no one is safe. Maybe the forces of darkness will come for me next.
In the interest of full disclosure, Farage is a peer. Not close, but I’ve known him for over 20 years. There are very few things on which we disagree.
While Springsteen sang in Bobby Jean, at least in political terms, we like the same music, we like the same bands, but not the same clothes. He would see me as an idiot with red corduroy strides.
The only political party I have openly supported in this column is the Brexit Party.
Like the Scottish policeman and the Yorkshire vicar, I don’t believe women have penises and I loathe the Pride Month cult, although I have always supported equal rights for homosexuals. And I have said it repeatedly in this column.
So will it be my next turn to close my bank accounts?
And what about Clarkson? He has been a friend and colleague of mine for over 30 years, even though we disagree on many political issues, especially Brexit. He was an unbridled Remainer, but he didn’t hold it against him.
Will his pro-EU views be enough to save him from being thrown into the banking desert? Who knows? Many great and good resent his well-deserved success and are repelled by some of his opinions, even when expressed in jest.
That safe could come in handy after all, although in these days of contactless payments, cash is no longer king and could soon become obsolete.
Still, the ability to grow your own food will come in handy. Having a shotgun, not only to scare off the ‘travelers’ who try to steal your tractor, but also to shoot some rabbits, will certainly help you once your credit is bad at the local butcher shop and the hole in the wall is Swallow your debit card. .
And about that bomb…