The right to a bank account should be enshrined in law

Everyone including Nigel Farage should have the right to a bank account (Image: Getty) The banks in question should clarify why they rejected the applications. Furthermore, he may have been offered a personal account by NatWest but what about his business account? Business accounts are not too popular with Monzo Bank, which not only closed one for Gina Miller’s new political party (no, I haven’t heard of it either) but whose spokesman said they don’t do accounts for political parties, trusts or clubs. No bank that picks and chooses its clients on any basis other than honesty and financial reliability should be licensed to operate in the UK. Where on earth are political parties, trusts and clubs supposed to go? Coutts should reinstate Farage’s accounts, the Yorkshire Building Society should re-instate the Reverend Fothergill’s with a full apology for ever closing it and all banks should, as a condition of their licence, be obliged to sign a public undertaking to offer facilities to all regardless of race, sex, creed or politics. Yet again I find myself advocating on this page that the law itself should guarantee what once we took for granted, a clear illustration of how far this country has left its principles behind. Meanwhile, back to NatWest and its chairman, Howard Davies who is not only refusing to step down himself but is still unbelievably defending Alison Rose, below. The smug idiot simply cannot see the enormousness of her discussing a client’s affairs with a BBC reporter. Yet betraying client confidentiality is the equivalent of the sin against the Holy Ghost in the banking Bible. There are no exceptions other than when the law compels access to such information. The ex-NatWest boss Alison Rose (Image: Getty) What next? Doctors chatting about their patients’ intestines over a charity brunch? Priests making merry with information gained from the confessional? HMRC leaking private information? And all that is to be forgiven as long as the individual is a ‘good leader’? Spare us. For that lack of insight if for nothing else Howard Davies should resign. There were no British concentration camps on the Channel Islands German troops march in Guernsey in 1940 (Image: Express/Archive Photos/Getty) Here we go again! Not content with portraying Britain as a den of imperial slavery in past centuries, while resolutely ignoring our country’s leadership in abolishing the abominable practice, the latest woke self-flagellation is directed at ‘British concentration camps’ in the Channel Islands during the last World War. Who calls Auschwitz and Treblinka ‘Polish concentration camps’ and how loud would the uproar be if anyone did? These were Nazi concentration camps, inflicted on the populations of territories Nazis occupied, whether in Poland or the Channel Islands or anywhere else. To describe them as British is not only insulting but a distortion of history. When it became clear the islands were vulnerable, Alderney was evacuated completely and that is where the concentration camps were based so there were no Britons left to do anything about them. Meanwhile, Jersey and Guernsey were invaded, occupied and subjected to deportations, forced labour, heavy censorship, anti-Semitic ideology and persecution, severe rationing and everything else that other occupied countries faced. There were a few raids on the islands by British forces but no major attempt to take them back so the islands were occupied from 1940 to the end of the war. What were authorities supposed to do? They had not the means of armed resistance so their choice was total non-cooperation or trying to ameliorate the effects of oppression by unwilling diplomacy and representation of the islanders’ interests. The excellent TV series Enemy At The Door , which I recommend to anybody inclined to think that the population just gave up, portrays the ensuing tensions with outstanding dramatic effect. None of this is to say there were not islanders among the authorities and in the general population who did not collaborate on a more active scale, just as there were also many who undertook resistance from daubing graffiti to sheltering escapers. It is a bad, sad tale and it is right that we should know it in all its fullness but there were no British concentration camps and it is not a phrase we should allow to take hold. A criminal lack of compassion shown to teenage inmate left to give birth alone The story of Rianna Cleary, the 18-year-old who gave birth to a baby in prison is horrendous. Her calls for help went unheeded and she endured a 12-hour labour alone in her cell. She says she had to bite through the umbilical cord to release the child who died either during or shortly after birth. It is 2023, is it not? The case raises a whole series of questions. She was a month short of her due date so staff should have been prepared to take her to hospital at any time. Why was no check made on her? At one point an officer is alleged to have swept a torch over her cell and then ignored her being in labour, down on the floor on her hands and knees. Why did nobody hear her cries? What is the system for alerting guards in Bronzefield? Did the prisoners in adjoining cells hear nothing? And so the list of questions goes on while a baby is dead and her mother left in a severely distressed state. The prison service comes out of this tale very badly but in case anybody reading this is tempted to utter the old canard that I myself believed in chaining women up in labour or childbirth, then let me say I most emphatically did not as the Hansard record shows and as two newspapers, which recently repeated the libel, have found out to their cost. The King shows he has a sense of humour The King and Queen roared with laughter when shown a pie baked to resemble the former, complete with large ears. If any cook had been so irreverent a few hundred years ago, he or she would have tasted the Tower. These days you can take the mick unless your target is a woman, gay, trans, black, immigrant, Muslim, etc. But it is okay if the target is Christian, right-wing, pro-life or a Brexiteer. One could argue progress has been limited. Tony, give it a rest, mate, we have finished with the EU Sir Tony actually wants to rejoin the EU (Image: Getty) Sir Tony Blair (remember him?) says we will rejoin the European Union in the future. Perhaps he would like to tell us how many British citizens would be keen to join the eurozone, which we would have to do. Next, would he like to remind us all that we would no longer qualify for the rebate on our huge contribution? Then perhaps he could explain what will happen to all the trade deals we have recently negotiated. He doesn’t tell us that of course, but merely asserts that Britain regrets leaving and that Brexit is a bad thing. Well, given that we have a Government determined only to minimise Brexit and keep in step with the EU, I am unsurprised that people are not feeling particularly enthused by the result of the referendum. Replace Jeremy Hunt with a genuine Brexiteer and then see what can be done.