There are things we suddenly become more aware of because of a slip or mistake by the other party. This then begins to explain other behaviour that was strange but not exceptional. We take the The Matrix’s red pill of uncomfortable enlightenment!
The recent ‘de-banking’ of Nigel Farage might have been such an unmasking for some. We discovered that the CEO of NatWest Alison Rose had been sharing personal (but incorrect) information with a journalist from the BBC. According to the Guardian she also lied about this. We discover that a whole dossier had been prepared against Farage and also that other banks were taking the same line. Alison Rose was the first female CEO of a UK bank and had been made a Dame, so approved by the establishment. When she admitted she had made a “serious error of judgement” she was supported by the NatWest board and allowed to stay in her job. She finally bowed to pressure (mostly from the Government) and resigned but received a huge payout (of public money!). Meanwhile ‘Shares in NatWest fell 3.7pc on Wednesday following the overnight announcement, wiping around £850m off the company’s market value.’ (Telegraph).
This is all well known so what is the point? The main thing to notice is that banks and other finance institutions (like PayPal, Yorkshire, Barclays) have been making similar ideologically prejudiced decisions about customers for quite a while, they have all ‘got the memo’. The Lloyds CEO said: “I’ve really respected Alison as a role model in financial services. Especially some of her leadership around topics like sustainability…” (Telegraph).
Sustainability
Alison Rose said “I remain immensely proud of the progress the bank has made in supporting people, families and business across the UK, and building the foundations for sustainable growth.”
Sustainability is a code word in global governance circles. It’s the UN’s Agenda 2030 17 Sustainability goals. These all sound virtuous, but the question is how are they achieved, what lies behind the PR, and how are other global organisations involved.
The elite World Economic Forum (WEF) is in partnership with the UN. They report of the UN ‘“We will need all partners to make this a success.” Multistakeholder partnerships, involving government, the private sector and civil society, have been described as the “glue” that will hold this process together, and will be the only way of ensuring these incredibly ambitious goals are met.”’
Faciscm is defined as the collusion of commerce with government to suppress citizens. Among other things, this was seen in the Canadian Truckers persecuton.
The ESGs
A key part of this partnership is the 2004 UN ESG rating system.
The WEF says
- We've entered the era of stakeholder capitalism where corporate 'purpose' is about maximizing long-term value to serve the interest of all stakeholders.
- The introduction of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) is part of that move towards a more meaningful business philosophy.
- We outline three shifts from Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to ESG that signal the way forward for progressive leaders.
This has been championed by the likes of investment firm Blackrock (who manages $10 trillion – equivalent to 40% of US GDP!) and Vanguard ($8.2 trillion).
Our own Institute of Chartered Accountants says ‘ESG reporting is the mechanism to hold institutions accountable for their operations ... that aligns to frameworks such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Businesses that perform strongly across the ESG factors become more resilient to emerging issues and more stable.’
The assessments include factors like ‘human rights’ which are already part of law but also ‘progressive’ priorities like EDI (equality, diversity, identity) and ‘climate crisis’. If you don't take these seriously you get a low score and that can lead to being refused access to finance, insurance, advertising, staff, hence if you don't follow them you will become less 'resilient', less 'stable'...
It’s also in law: the EU has a Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) which requires investors and asset managers to report ESG metric use in risk processes.
The UK has mandatory requirements relating to ‘Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures’ along with other regulations. (BTW The new Energy Bill criminalises Net Zero non-compliance!)
ESGs are the company equivalent of China’s personal ‘social credit’ score!
So the whole process is baked into corporate governance and explains the counter-intuitive actions of Wickes to say that gender-critical customers are not welcome, Disney to rewrite children's stories to promote woke ideologies, banks etc. A good score on Stonewall's Workplace Equality Index would surely boost ESG credit.
But the core unifying aspect is handling ‘man-made climate change’. The forced rush to Net Zero is a massive cost to Western nations. Non-Western nations are happy for us to go along with this as it benefits them.
Sadiq Khan’s C40 group have similar ambitions. Like the UN, the PR is glossy but the shine comes off as soon as you see what implementing it means. “Add to the mix the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, which has an “ambitious target in 2030” of no meat, no dairy, no private vehicles and only “three new clothing items per person per year”. That sounds like climate lockdowns.” @JamesMelville - see 1.5degree world or Absolute Zero. They mean this.
'Climate crisis': "One Ring to rule them all … and in the darkness bind them."
Ideology
The Sustainability aims are laudable but have an underlying progressive ideology. The current Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, was president of Socialist International which is proudly 'progressive'. Marxism seemed a positive idea to some until it was seen how it worked in practice, with coercion, unaccountability, inefficiency, economic failure, death. A 'liberal democratic' approach worked better.
The majority of UN member states are not democracies.
The WEF (Politicians, Billionaires, CEOs) is helping the UN (paid for by you) make fundamental changes that appear on no manifesto and are not debated in Parliament. These may indirectly benefit you but are more likely to benefit them as the WEF/UN members know about power and think they know best.
The ideological coordination of Government, Business and elites at the expense of the demos is also a core aspect of Fascism. This is almost a definition of the WEF. Its unholy alliance with the UN seeks to extend globalised control. A colloquial term is 'woke capitalism'.
The reason socialists are defending the banks is because they know ESG, EDI, etc. is a Trojan horse to set their worldview in concrete, instrumentalising business and corporations to do it for them with no accountability to voters whatsoever. They've been busted. @Robbbie_Sharp
Elon Musk’s Tesla was dropped from a key ESG index, even though making EVs, apparently because of historic racial allegations, lacking a ‘low carbon’ strategy and poor working conditions. Musk called out the higher rankings of Tobacco, Oil & Gas companies. He denounced ESGs: ‘a good “ESG score” amounts to a business’s compliance with “the leftist agenda.”’ (Time magazine).
It’s clear that Nigel Farage was de-banked for his ideological views. Meeting minutes obtained by Subject Access Request included: ‘it was said Mr. Farage's views were not in line with the bank's purpose specifically regarding "ESG/Diversity and inclusion."’ (EpochTimes)
The Free Speech Union’s PayPal account was closed. Unnumbered other accounts have been closed. Barclays de-banked Christian charity Core Issues Trust and paid over £20,000 compensation after widespread protest and legal action.
Where companies do not cooperate they are attacked by having advertising denied (Twitter under Musk, GB News) or other commercial warfare.
It's not a left/right issue but an autocratic/democratic one. While there are many true believers in the UN/WEF aims, the various causes are only really useful for how they advance control. See short discussion on UN aims.
Unravelling?
However ESGs have been under attack.
Unprofitable
The ESG promoters said that investing in high scoring companies will not only be 'green' but also profitable. Given the widespread criticism of scores this is now being discarded – even by Blackrock itself. CEO Larry Fink (also WEF Trustee) says they have been weaponised by far left and right (!).
Doesn't work
The FT reports that Tariq Fancy (former chief investment officer for sustainable investing at BlackRock) ‘thinks the ESG project is intellectually bankrupt and is damaging to the most important causes it purports to support.’
Some say that the scores assess how well investments cope with the effects of climate change, which is strange not least as this is but one metric. The main thrust though (also Harvard Business Review) is that they don't go far enough to solve the 'problems'– more enforcement and coercion is needed...
Illegal
The anti-trust (monopolistic) implications, where companies operate in concert to skew the market, have also attracted the attention of lawmakers. Listed companies are also legally required to provide profits for shareholders rather than pursue ideological goals.
Some US States have banned ESG considerations from being a factor in pensions investing – only financial performance can be used, not ESG virtue. “Too many consumers and investors have been hurt by the woke ESG movement’s obsession with radical social change and willingness to ignore the law,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (Epoch Times).
Other UN sponsored clubs like Net Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA) have been breaking up under threat of legal action by US State District Attorneys (Reuters). These groups are being told to stop insuring oil producers, or a car just because it's not electric. What right does the UN have to interfere with commerce in this way? However the Biden administration is seeking to add the same coercion.
Awareness
Ordinary people are waking up to what is going on and beginning to join the dots. As they become vocal, the UK Government recognises the electoral challenge of policies it was happy to give the virtuous nod to. But it has failed to address the grip this particular knot-weed has on Western institutions (or chooses not to). The whole 'climate industrial complex' has taken on a life of its own with huge financial, emotional and reputational investments at stake.
However the rationale has not changed – ESGs was just a tool and the same policies for control will find other outlets. This is often through eco-legislation, tax incentives or grants ('bribery'). Massive subsidies exist for those who will follow Biden’s or UK Gov’s 'green financing' funded finally from increased taxation. So this money from us is being channelled to businesses for little actual good and mostly harm. Some would say this impoverishment is part of the plan – to reduce our agency, not least as seen with the de-bankings and ‘climate lockdown’ attempts.
Climate
We’re not covering the argument over climate change in detail here but it is core to the whole issue. Scepticism is vilified as is the immense pressure on grant-dependent scientists not to tell the whole truth. However recently 1600 scientists released the World Climate Declaration: ‘There is no climate emergency’. These include 2 Nobel laureates one of whom, Dr John Clauser, won the 2022 Physics prize. He points out key errors in current models, the poor quality and politicisation of reasoning used to justify conclusions and in a conversation with Joe Biden was told ‘sounds like right-wing science’! This is the level of justification to tax and waste $billions, radically deny freedoms and harm human well-being.
CO2 is increasingly being seen as key to the greening of the planet and was much higher in the past.
Climate scientists from MIT and Princeton agree, one: “There is this huge fraction of the population that has been brainwashed into thinking this is an existential threat to the planet, I don’t blame the people; they don’t have the background to know they are being deceived, but they are being deceived.”
As The Wall Street Journal headlines: ‘The Climate-Change ‘Emergency’ Is Coming for You We’ve not fully arrived at crazytown. But the urge to curtail individual freedom is visible in countless blueprints for a controlled future.’ Also another informed study.
Why do we find this seeming-minority scepticism hard to believe? We’ve heard the opposite too often ‘A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth’ Joseph Goebbels
You really wanted that red pill?
A different perspective
There are massive challenges in our world and we are called to be stewards of it. In that sense Christians are the keenest to effectually achieve Sustainability goals and have historically been at the forefront of helping peoples to flourish, throughout the world.
Genuine scientists and organisers like Bjørn Lomborg have already laid out practical plans that would achieve a vast amount of this at a fraction of the cost and without the political authoritarianism - so what are the UN up to?
There are also moral and spiritual issues at play. How was it OK for Alison Rose to deliberately disclose personal information, itself manufactured to cover the true reason (so known to be egregious), lie about it, and still have the support of her Board? Does the virtue of being a Sustainability goddess trump all? Is this a more-or-less unconscious worship of Nature, the created rather than the creator, something that satisfies a religious instinct but does not challenge personal autonomy?
But there is a deeper spiritual ‘sustainability’. Jesus could have healed everyone at a stroke, that was part of the temptations – rather “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.”
Whatever we understand from Revelation, we can certainly see UN/WEF motivation in Babel. So we need to resist and warn others of the many moves in that direction. God will bring these principalities down and we should watch and pray for that “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”
This good news, God's loving reign, has spread and brought human well-being with it as lives and motives are transformed. In contrast to la Terreur of French Revolution radicalism, Edmund Burke and others showed that the Christian worldview is core to the flourishing of the West. We need to recover it - your Kingdom come ... on Earth as it is in Heaven.
