Farage’s fate shows that cash should remain king

Nigel Farage’s cancellation by Coutts and Co – a blackballing which seems to have extended nationwide – brought to mind two similar events with which I had to contend a few years ago.

First, in the East, where I was fortunate to have a flexible bank manager who allowed me to step behind her PC and spy next to my name the words ‘politically exposed’ – affixed by an American credit agency which knew the square root of nothing about me, save what some bot had picked up from Google. ‘This will be on most banks’ systems in the world,’ I was informed, ‘and the majority of them will close your account or won’t allow you to open one in the first place.’

Thankfully, common sense prevailed and we were able to circumvent the problem. More alarmingly, however, was that this red flag extended to my adolescent children simply by dint of their association with me.

The second incident occurred in the United Kingdom where my experience was identical to Farage’s – a bland notification that I had two months in which to withdraw any funds and place them elsewhere (if elsewhere would have me).