Again the principle is banking (and other) services. It's a real issue. It's come up before regarding internet services. Regulation/law has to include rights for customers.


I'm more worried about the rehabilitian of blair than whatever that muppet has been up to.

It's not banking per se. It's not NatWest and Lloyds - it's Coutts, the royal bankers and as you rightly said, **** 'em.

You should worry less about a discredited and widely loathed ex-PM and more about the intellectual vacuum at the top of the Labour party and how it can be filled with heft.

As before. The principle is banking and other services. If you want to argue that only 'high street' type banks shouldn't be free to refuse customers because of their politcal/personal beliefs then I think we could agree pretty quickly.

Yes and it's very worrying that blair is becoming a player again at the top of the labour party. He has plenty of heft I want more left.

The essence of freedom is tolerating stuff we dislike. There's a toe the party line vibe off this. As was said it's a potential Pandora's box.

What? That's not an 'essence of freedom'. Have you not heard of the 'paradox of intolerance'? If you tolerate those who would not tolerate you, you end up with an intolerant society. In other words, you can not achieve 100% tolerance. In the same way you cannot have 100% freedom, because my freedom to swing my fist ends at your chin. At a certain point, often fairly early in these discussions, we seem to switch between 'freedom' and 'privilege'; when it comes to free speech, change privilege for 'platforms'.

In terms of 'what I like', I'm totally tolerant of people who like Marvel, even though it's the death of cinema yada yada, but I am not tolerant of people who have any view in the range of 'lgbtq people should not have equal rights to straight people' all the way through to 'drive them into the sea'. Nor should I be - I have my own freedom to choose who I associate with, to whom I listen. This is not a simple cultural choice between death metal and K-pop, it's a fundamental disagreement on what constitutes 'the good', let alone how best to get there.

Framing fascism as merely stuff we don't like only brings it closer.

Yeah it really is, sorry. I don't like Farage's views but he's a right to express them even if I dislike them. That's tolerance. I can also express my view that he's basically a wanker.

Tolerance isn't advocating their views. You don't get to silence those whose views you dislike. That's not freedom.

You're perfectly free to express your dislike of their bigotry...and they're perfectly free to espouse bigoted unlikable views. Do you see how freedom works?

One of the first things I ever posted about in politics was on the paradox of intolerance. We do tolerate those who wouldn't tolerate us (ironic given what p was to 2+2). as much as we can. The fact we can't achieve perfection is no defense of intolerence.

Our appararant weaknesses are our greatest strengths. We should never give up on our principles of justice, fairness, tolerance, democracy etc etc. Joining them because we think we cant beat them is a terrible mistake and they win.

Until it reaches the point of hate speach etc. We can and do pass laws to protect people from harm. Even then we let them have heating and bank accounts etc etc.

All meaningful sets of principles conflict at times. When it can't be avoided then we have to do our best even though it's not perfect.

Fascists are free to be fascists and anti fascists are free to call them on their fascism. That's how freedom works.

I'm not talking about incitement, or actual crimes I'm talking about freedom to express one's views, even if it's views that others and indeed the majority dislike. That's the essence of freedom.

I agree but hate speach is a crime in the UK (among other places) and should be a crime imo. Others think it's a step too far, including in my experience in these forums most of the usa left/liberals.

This is not an easy area and there are legitimate disagreements about what and where the lines should be.

I think it's a step too far. Incitement is a crime and rightly so. There's a difference between that and hate speech.

Many agree with you. It's an example of where principles conflict for me. I dont want to make speech a crime but I also think hate speech can be harmful to the point it shouldn't be allowed. It's a very tough area where social media has imo changed where the line needs to be.

I see how your conception of freedom works. The thing is, any discussion of freedom that doesn't take equality into account means that it's not actually freedom that's being discussed, it's privilege.

We also have to realise that we live in a connected world, where our behaviour has consequences. Your freedom to walk down the street shouting racial obscenities and harassing women should not trump the freedom of racial minorities to be able to go about their day not hearing racial obscenities and women not to be harassed.

It's not about personal likes and dislikes. I do not wish to impose my cultural tastes on the world. But any conception of freedom must account for the effect of our actions on others. In a perfectly free world, some would be free to exploit others, and so those others will not be free, so we cannot have a perfectly free world, and we should certainly not be focussing on the freedom of the few, of which Farage is a part.

Basically, everything Chez says.

Anyway, they have now admitted they were wrong.

Nigel Farage gets apology from banking boss in Coutts row

Is anyone calling anyone else a fascist even when they aren't ok then?

The revealing part of this story isn't about how businesses might find Farage an embarrassment they'd want to shed, but about how cosy the BBC and UKIP were/are:.

Sorry, I don't see how that shows how cosy the BBC and UKIP were/are. I might be being a bit slow. Do you mean the BBC and Coutts?

Your conception of freedom is apparently "anything I don't approve of should be banned/cancelled", regardless of your protestation otherwise. It's a criminal offence to harass women or indeed anyone. You're conflating freedom with criminality.

Sure. The non fascist being called a fascist is also free to call bs.

You're a fascist.

No, that's specifically not what I'm doing. Please don't dismiss this idea on the basis it doesn't fit in with what you know of the subject. I get it, we say the word 'freedom' a lot without it being that common that people study what the word actually means and its history, and we come to an easy-feeling idea of what it is, but I've actually studied this properly and written papers on it and stuff. There's plenty I don't approve of but wouldn't try to stop anyone from doing, let alone be illegal. Your assertion that that is in fact what I'm doing is a mischaracterization. There is plenty of interesting stuff to delve into, including concepts like positive liberty and negative liberty (the promoting of conditions that give us more freedom vs the absence of factors that constrain freedom), the fascinating history of western europe / the enlightenment's relationship to freedom (short version: we didn't really GAF about it or equality until we encountered them as cultural concepts from indigenous americans in the 17th and 18th century), the need to separate freedom from incarceration from freedom from consequences (i.e. in cancel culture, no-one's freedom is really getting impinged upon, when they say something stupid on social media and then their employers fire them).

In this particular case, though, unless we look at the way many don't even have access to wealth-dealing banks like Coutt's, then we're not talking about freedom, we're talking about privilege.