With the stock prices of both Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank under pressure, many in the financial field are becoming concerned the world could be facing a renewed financial crisis. But this time around events could play out very differently. It might not even be banks that pose the greatest financial risk to consumers. It could be payment providers like PayPal.
The really big difference between 2007 and 2022 is that bank runs no longer look like the image above, they look like this:
That’s what I was faced with when I tried to transfer £500 from my PayPal account to a regular bank account. On Sunday morning the same message was still occurring. A quick scan of social media proved I was not alone.
“Boycott PayPal” was also trending on Twitter.
So what might the error message indicate about the business?
Here’s what we know so far.
In the last 48 hours a sneaky amendment to PayPal’s acceptable use policy widely captured the public’s attention. Free speech advocates had spotted that customers agreeing to the update would be allowing a sum of $2,500 to be lifted from their accounts if PayPal ever found them guilty of “sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials” that “promote misinformation” or “present a risk to user safety or wellbeing”.
When word got out, those already concerned about the company’s draconian turn started shutting their accounts and urging others to do the same on social media.
For some, the action proved the final straw.
On Saturday evening U.K. time, PayPal’s former president David Marcus distanced himself very clearly from the action. Elon Musk, whose pathway to billionairehood started in 2000 when his company X.com was merged with Peter Thiel’s Confinity to create the PayPal of today, later tweeted that he agreed.
Readers of the Daily Sceptic and members of the Free Speech Union (such as myself) will already know that over the past few months PayPal has been on a whirlwind tour of shutting down the accounts of platforms and media sites it has deemed guilty of spreading misinformation. In many instances, those affected, such as the Daily Sceptic, were not even consulted ahead of the fact and had little idea of what specific text, post or media had violated PayPal terms.
So why exactly would PayPal descend to this level of reputational self-harm?
It’s hard to know for sure, but chances are the decision rests on pressures PayPal itself is facing with respect to its legal duty to enforce Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) rules. If I was to take an educated bet, it’s the counterterrorism section of the rulebook that is most relevant.
These days it’s hard to imagine that banks weren’t always responsible for screening transactions and making judgements about their legitimacy. But until the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) was formed in 1989 with a view to combatting money laundering, banks only really cared about screening credit risk. It wasn’t until 2001 and the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers (and the introduction of the Patriot Act) that the scope of banks’ responsibilities in this field was expanded to include combatting the financing of terrorism too.
Tackling terrorist financing and criminality was easy enough when everyone was on the same page about what constituted terrorism or financial crime. But one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. And in an increasingly polarised world, it’s become harder for ordinary bank employees to differentiate free-speech critical of authority from radicalising terrorist content, such as that distributed by Isis on social media to recruit new members.
It wasn’t the job they were hired to do.
Three factors have muddied the waters further.
The first is the scale of penalties directed at banks found in breach of AML/KYC regulation. The fear of being slammed with fines has made banks and payment providers like PayPal hugely risk-averse and inclined to err on the side of caution when facing any ambiguity. If something even whiffs of misinformation, from their point of view it’s better to shut it down than to run the risk of getting a fine.
Second, is a lack of resources. Human arbitration is costly, and screening activities would be unaffordable if they were to be done by living, breathing individuals. This is why banks and payment providers like PayPal have invested huge sums of money in cost-saving screening technology to detect illegal transactions both actively and preemptively. The problem here is that most of these tools, known as suptech or regtech, are algorithmically applied with limited human oversight. That means it’s mostly artificial rather than human intelligence deciding who gets to stay on a platform and who gets frozen out. As yet, robots are not well known for their sense of nuance, empathy or capacity to process ambiguity. How they decide what they decide is a black-box interpretation of the inputs they’ve been programmed with.
The third issue is the structure of the KYC/AML policing system itself. Since the scale of the task is so enormous, it goes beyond the scope and capacity of any existing government agency. Knowing this, governments, very similar to how they managed the enforcement of lockdown policy, realised it would be more cost-efficient to outsource the policing of their own rules to the banks and payment companies directly. But this is a strategically coercive dynamic. If payment companies don’t fall in line, they risk having their licences removed and their businesses shut down. Non-compliance is therefore not an option. PayPal isn’t perfect, but the pressure it is facing is very similar to the pressure pubs, restaurants and supermarkets faced under Covid. The structural problem here, as with the retail sector during Covid, is those payment companies are not legislative specialists. They take for granted that the governments know what they are doing and that the rules they are setting are human rights compatible and in line with the laws of the land. Nor do the payment companies have the capacity to investigate the rights and wrongs of every case. This is a job for the legal system, which is already excessively costly to access for most ordinary individuals.
This in itself is a huge blind spot for the financial system. There’s a very strong case to be made that the way democratic governments have gone about enforcing AML legislation is not compatible with human rights at all. The enshrined right of habeas corpus might even be under threat. The FATF has itself belatedly realised this. Back in October 2021, it noted in a “stock-take on the unintended consequences of the FATF standards” that (my emphasis):
Situations have arisen in the course of FATF evaluations concerning the interaction between the FATF Recommendations on combating TF (particularly R.5 and R.6) and due process and procedural rights (e.g. to legal representation, fair trial, and to challenge designations, etc.), which have been considered on a case-by-case approach as they arise in specific country contexts. In addition, the FATF has also been made aware of instances of the misapplication of the FATF Standards, which are allegedly introduced by jurisdictions to address AML/CFT deficiencies identified through the FATF’s mutual evaluation or ICRG process, potentially as an excuse measures with another motivation. This information often comes as a result of stakeholder input or when the attention of the FATF or its members is drawn to a particular issue, such as when another international body is reviewing legislation or actions are taken by national authorities. Analysis in the stocktake has therefore focused on the due process and procedural rights issues most often arising in evaluations or feedback.
The stock-take identified the following factors as key examples of where misapplication of FATF standards had affected due process and procedural rights:
- excessively broad or vague offences in legal counterterrorism financing frameworks, which can lead to wrongful application of preventative and disruptive measures including sanctions that are not proportionate;
- issues relevant to investigation and prosecution of TF and ML offences, such as the presumption of innocence and a person’s right to effective protection by the courts;
- and, incorrect implementation of UNSCRs and FATF Standards on due process and procedural issues for asset freezing, including rights to review, to challenge designations, and to basic expenses.
Readers can hopefully see the issue.
The entire regulatory system since 2008 has focused on ensuring that the 24-hour payment banking infrastructure we have become used to will never face the risk of going down again.
Put bluntly, the style of service disruption currently being experienced at PayPal is something major banking and payment institutions are not supposed to be able to get away with. At least not for long. So yes, it does feel like a big deal.
For the most part, the practice of shuttering access through website maintenance, downtime or error messages is more commonly seen at cryptocurrency platforms during extreme bitcoin selloffs. Closing access to people’s accounts or pretending to do website maintenance often gives operators the time to raise the liquidity they need by slowing redemptions. But it’s far from a transparent or honourable policy.
For PayPal to have triggered a run on itself because it was merely following government orders is not just unfortunate, it is careless. But it also speaks of a deeper problem at the heart of the anti-money laundering regulatory structure. The entire system we have created may no longer be fit for purpose. Consider, for example, that despite many billions of dollars spent on FATF compliance, a company like Wirecard, whose business model in retrospect looks to have been based on fraud as a service (FAAS), could so easily rise to the top of the German stock market. Nor has any of the regulation been successful at combatting the type of electronic financial fraud (mostly based on phishing attacks or social engineering) that impacts users every day.
We need to seriously ask if the benefits outweigh the collateral damage also being incurred.
But while PayPal might not be entirely responsible for its own actions on the KYC/AML front, its business model may be more vulnerable to this sort of fallout than most people appreciate. The culpability for that lies with PayPal exclusively.
A key revenue generator for the group has always been the interest revenue it absorbs from all the customer balances it holds. (You may not have realised it, but if you have any significant sums in a PayPal account, you won’t be collecting interest on them.) A large outflow of deposits could easily inhibit the company’s ability to raise this income and harm its overall revenue-generating capability. (You don’t have to hold balances at PayPal to use it.)
More critical for PayPal at this juncture will be its inability as a payments company to access the central bank lender-of-last-resort backstop. That means if the group is genuinely facing challenges meeting transfer and redemption requests, it will only be able to turn to wholesale liquidity markets to make up the difference. The degree to which customer balances are locked up in harder-to-liquidate securities or bonds will largely determine its success here. Frustratingly for PayPal, in the current illiquid bond market, there’s a good chance that selling these quickly and without a loss could be challenging. The alternative path for PayPal will be to use these securities as collateral for temporary loans. But the expense here is potentially open-ended if there are no obliging counterparts. That may (or may not) be why the company is currently restricting transfers.
Before rushing to conclusions, it’s important to stress the company still has recourse to liquidity from fully-funded (in fact over-collateralised) entities. We may not know the makeup of that liquidity, but solvency is unlikely to be an issue over the longer term. The biggest problem facing users today will be uncertainty over how quickly they can transfer funds out of the PayPal ecosystem.
What I can say is that in the modern digital age, bank runs will be different. We may even long for the days when tellers transparently shut up shop when the vaults ran dry. At least it was clear what was going on. These days, on the other hand, it will become ever harder to differentiate a bank run from a maintenance issue on a website. Such matters will be shrouded in plausible deniability and uncertainty. Suffice it to say, corporate communication departments will always err towards disinformation of their own sort, that any such outage is nothing out of the ordinary.
Even more concerning is that in the event of a run, customers will no longer be able to tell if those with better connections aren’t unfairly cutting ahead of them in the redemption queue. Virtual queues may seem technologically efficient, but there’s no transparency to them at all.
That’s why if you’re caught out by any of these policies you already don’t stand a chance of getting your account back unless you have existing connections to the management or a platform of your own. None of this is progressive or encouraging.
Izabella Kaminska is the Editor of the Blind Spot, a financial news media service focused on the news everyone else is missing.
PayPal was not contacted for this piece, which is based on the opinions of the author.
Stop Press: PayPal has now done a reverse ferret, claiming the new Acceptable Use Policy, containing the threat of the $2,500 fine, was issued in “error”. MailOnline has the story. As Kyle Becker pointed out on Twitter, PayPal is claiming its new policy to fine users $2,500 per infraction for “misinformation” is, in fact… misinformation.
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Two of the country’s main problems are caused by things that politicians either can’t control or don’t want to.
I’d suggest most of the the intractable issues mentioned can be resolved if the will and determination are there. If he only achieves half of the changes that he sets out to do, Donald Trump could be the man to show the U.K’s unimaginative and spineless politicians the way to do it. I hope he succeeds and in doing so, reveals to more of the British people, the devestation that has been done to our country by the poor, reckless -and often vindictive – decisions of successive post-war governments.
Well, even pandemics and cancelling winter fuel allowance don’t seem to kill us all off. One radical, and historically-proven, solution might be to forget aiming at fewer elderly, and bend the nation’s efforts to increasing the birthrate so there are more young people. Is it really beyond the reach of the nudge units and politicans to make family life attractive again?
People are sick on porn, Jon. Actual intimacy is just too much hard work and involves compromise. Instant gratification in all forms (not just that delivered by smartphones) and an education system which long ago stopped teaching how to achieve long term, well-founded health, wealth and happiness have led to an altogether rather pathetic and frustrated younger population who are settling for a very poor second in everything. At least they convince themselves that they’re doing it to themselves to “save the planet for future generations”..
A start would be to stop NHS funding of contraception pills. When people want to screw around aimlessly for their own entertainment, they can damn well pay for that themselves. As (somewhat determined) single, I don’t see a particular reason why I should fund it (indirectly via taxes) instead. Of what use are other people’s childless ‘sex lifes’ to me (or, for that matter, anyone)?
Oh we’ve got loads of younger people alright, especially men. The trouble is they come over in boats for the freebies, don’t speak English so they say and hate everything this country stands for, so would hardly be working to make it a success.
Governments will always end up being unpopular because people have unrealistic expectations of what they can achieve, which the politicians play up to. It’s a vicious circle.
I generally disagree with the article. Most of our serious problems are of our own making. With the human capital and infrastructure we have, there is absolutely no reason why this country cannot be much more prosperous and peaceful than it is.
Also the article fails to mention outside influence that have thwarted democracy, outsourced Parliament through captured institutions. Last night on GB News Ben Habib mentioned why are organisations like the WEF hated these days. MPs being responsible for their own constituents are being eroded.
Charlotte Gill, who has been mentioned here, on the DS, has found overwhelming evidence of malevolent networks working to destroy what so many past generations have worked hard to give to us, the current generation.
It’s not only the obvious destruction that is harmful, it’s the misdirection of the efforts of many well-meaning educated and enthusiastic people, wasting the diminishing resources that we have.
Just think how all those skilled engineers will feel when they realise the windmills they have helped to build are so wealth destroying, or the money wasted on Carbon Capture and Storage, or the Hydrogen Economy, or Fuels Pumps is noticed. Yes, build prototypes, but implementing full production, without prototyping, is shear madness.
Discussion needs to be Informed Discussion in order to keep waste to a minimum. It’s what Science requires. Maybe a few knowledgeable, patriotic Scientists wouldn’t go amiss!
Choosing the best investments, (for oneself and the community), whether in money, time, education, skills, knowledge or manufacturing, appears to be an undervalued skill. And if they don’t align, which they don’t, we are totally screwed. And it will be the weak and poor that suffer most.
When the enemy lies within the best efforts of the people to work towards a prosperous and peaceful future are thwarted. Not until the treachery of the British establishment is exposed and dealt with can we progress. We may only have one shot at resolving the treachery of the British establishment via the ballot box by getting four square behind Reform UK. Failing that a dark future lays ahead I fear.
I think that’s a reasonable assessment at least in the near to medium term
When referring to “the pension system”, you probably mean the state pension system, not all the other ones. Schemes that manage long term investments are quite different from National Insurance and the way the Treasury deals with it. Lots of places you can visit, like https://willdaywm.co.uk/private-pensions-vs-state-pensions/ ,
It would have helped if Brown and Balls had not destroyed our superb private pension system by applying the same sort of stupidity that we see with Rachel from Accounts. Then you can add the failure of 14 years of socialismlite that did not undue the tax raid.
You don’t mention mass immigration, and England’s disastrous finances could be improved by cutting the civil service.
So 5/10 Noah, could do better, happy Christmas!
He does mention it, only to say that there’s no point elaborating because there’s absolutely zero hope in the short to medium to term that anything will change in that regard.
I seem to recall every time I come back to England I have go through a barrier that won’t open unless I hold a particular document, furthermore I am not allowed onto the plane unless I have uploaded same document.
How the f#£@k then is it impossible to stop immigration overnight?
They can stop me coming, and I was born here from families that have been in England for 500 generations.
Being Christmas some merriment may not be out of place. “I was born here from families that have been in England for 500 generations”. It’s a good guess that by 2030, you can be cordoned off, next to Cutty Sark in Greenwich, charging tourists and the new inhabitants to see “a true Englishman” (last time I saw it was in Grand Canyon with Red Indians). Merry Winter Holiday.
You are being far too generous – 1/10 seems too much.
in relation to the energy crisis, and the fact Natural Gas is priced internationally, it should be noted that the highest traded price was on 23rd August 2022. Since then it has fallen by 72.5% in Sterling Terms as of today. So, no, the crisis is not caused by the international market, but by the stupid politicians and their drive to net zero – meaning increases in bills to pay for the unnecessary infrastructure and not using our own resources.
Yep. Graph here:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1302994/monthly-natural-gas-price-index-worldwide/
It’s not “Putin’s fault”. It’s deliberate UK government policy – which is supported by both Labour and Conservative wings of the Uniparty.
Noah has not seemed to notice the RUK and George Galloway use of the term Uniparty. Neither has he noticed that Elon Musk has started to use this as well.
Both Labour & Tory are contributing to their own decline by blaming each other for exactly the same policies they both enacted and follow.
It is a clever strategy to reset the narrative that only a vote for a different party will rid you of the Uniparties.
Our satisfaction with the government seems to be broadly related to how much government we have. More government means more people trying to manipulate the natural way of the market economy as if, like climate, there is one knob, and turning it one way or another will bring all the benefits we wish for. In fact every policy that I can remember has suffered from ‘unintended consequences’. The more regulation there is, the worse it is too, as we find links and relationships that weren’t obvious (maybe they were..). Can anyone name a government spending programme that has actually delivered the benefit that it intended. I cant bring one to mind and I go back to the days of Wilson. My advice to politicians would be ‘make yourselves redundant.’ Run the smallest civil service you can to deliver energy and food independence. Defend our borders, uphold our laws keep the streets swept and get out of our lives. Its really none of your business.
Sadly idiot voters keep expecting and believing that “problems” will be “solved” by the state.
They have been brought up to.
Go back to the 1800s in the modern world. Heck, I’d settle for the 1990s any day, free speech, edgy comedy. Don’t remember people getting attacked at Speakers Corner back then but there were fatwas of course. Salman Rushdie was in hideout around this area in Mid Wales, didn’t stop him taking risks and going into town from time to time, and that is to be expected, Ferguson & testing your eyes at a Castle or Wine & Cheese are other examples.
That is absolutely the point.
The real problem is that whoever is in “power” really isn’t.
The UK would be much better off if it was allowed to –
Bin net zero, buy cheap Russian gas. Open our coal fields and offshore gas/oil l fields.
Stop the lunacy of supporting Ukraine.
Actually make stuff again/ including growing more of our own food thus encouraging people to work.
Reduce immigration.
Get out of NATO, the WHO.
Encourage people to be responsible for their own health – and ban all “vaccines”
Teach kids how, not what, to think.
Consider abandoning Fiat Currency.
Enable the MSM to do their job as opposed to being used for brainwashing.
Can’t do any of the above though because The Banks, Soros, and Uncle Bill won’t allow any of it.
Consider that Putin does does most of the above…..
Hear, hear. Nail. Head.
Not difficult is it?
Very Very true.
There is the Bardbury pound option also.
Germany did similar in the 1930’s and quickly rose to an economic/industrial powerhouse.
Worked brilliantly at first -but the downside was that it upset The Banks after Hitler gave them the middle finger.
Didn’t go too well after that, neither would it now.
Unless every country did the same – just imagine, all the world’s debts effectively written off. Why not? – they’ve grown unimaginably rich at our expense.
The Banks do a necessary job, very effectively, but are ALSO a front for the Puppet Masters.
Similarly, there are many dedicated health practitioners within the NHS but, again, they don’t set or advise on policy.
It’s true in many disciplines: Academia, Schooling, Farming, Mining, the Oil/Gas Industries, Manufacturing, etc.
The overall problem is that the Financial World is driven by naivety of our current Law Makers in Parliament, acting out their fantasies of being selfish, vindictive Community Organisers.
“because there is no way to quickly reduce the number of elderly people”
Really?
What about a scamdemic and a (deliberately?) series of very harmful jabs? I live in a small Close with 23 residents, mostly fairly elderly. 4 had strokes shortly after “their” jab; one has “Long Jab” damage one moved into a Care Home and has since died.
What about an Assisted Dying Bill? And in due course, coercion to “do the right thing.” That should see off quite a few.
They could ensure that quite a few die of the cold or succumb to cold-related illnesses by withdrawing their heating allowance.
And in the meantime their quality of life can be so reduced that they die of misery.
Another Nail. Head.
Increased reproduction among Brits would also help. That won’t happen so long as the little people see lower income year after year, greater attention and enthusiasm for “others” and the general insecurity we all feel.
And of course only the most expensive actually succumb, so job done.
They already legalised euthanasia in 2020 through the PATHWAYS NG163 protocols. It was part of the death spike you see in April 2020.
The unpopularity of the elites have come about through a combination of over promising, unwanted and unadvertised agendas combined with widespread incompetence.
Their self centredness and corruption just add icing to an already sour cake.
The two problems mentioned, ageing population and energy are being exacerbated by measures which this government is taking.
Energy bills could be reduced massively simply by cancelling all the Nut Zero measures.
Old people could be better looked after by cancelling the foreign ‘aid’ budget – in reality nothing but a money laundering operation – and taxes could be reduced by the very obvious of putting a stop to ALL immigration.
Not difficult is it?
I would expound further but short of time just now.
Clearly, unqualified and unlimited immigration must be stopped. Every country has (supposedly) controlled borders for good reasons. Additionally, the totally unscientific Net Zero agenda must be cancelled and the funding of foreign wars and institutions terminated.
The NHS needs to be abolished and replaced by private healthcare, with insurance provided free of charge to those in financial straits (unemployed, etc.). This is how an excellent health service is provided in Germany, for example. The NHS is simply another hugely over-populated bureaucratic monster.
And why should an ageing population be a problem? One result is a lower requirement for housing expansion which may be detrimental to the building industry but is certainly beneficial to the quality of life. To counter the fall in income tax, older people could be encouraged to work part-time (and would in many cases enjoy the opportunity) and younger people should be encouraged to have children, primarily through tax-relief and other benefits. Russia, for example, even has a programme providing cheaper housing for large-sized families.
It could all be so simple: maybe that is the problem.
And how about a return of Nurse training schools so we don’t need to import so many. I hear it was Thatcher that abolished them. She was a real Marmite character.
27% is the tribal vote. Elections are won at the margins.
“… the Tories and Reform will need to reach some kind of modus vivend ibefore the next election or else the Right-wing vote will once again be split in many constituencies,”
NB. The Tories are not Right-wing, they follow the technocratic model of Mussolini’s State directed economy and society.
Assumption is doing some heavy lifting too. Reform doesn’t have to win all constituencies, particularly not strong Tory supported ones, it ”just” needs to win enough Labour constituencies. Boris did this, as did Margaret Thatcher. Last election it came close second place in over 90 of them.
Farage got badly bitten last time he reached a “modus vivendi” with the Tories “to get Brexit” done. Brexit wasn’t “done” except nominally and Farage got no thanks just a heap of ordure dumped on him.
He doesn’t seem the type to let a repeat happen and he has vowed to destroy the Tories – I think he will, not least because they are doing a magnificent job of destroying themselves, as indeed are Labour.
Next election will not be fought over the NHS and education, education, education, as is usual, but will be fought over gas boilers, motor cars, mobility, the economy (stupid) and the fact the British want their Country back. Things in American politics are called kitchen table issues – the things that matter to the common man, not elites and ideologues.
Labour, Conservatives, Lib Dem’s and others are all lock-step determined to ban cars, gas boilers, extort the populace to pay for their Net Zero lunacy and continue the immigration deluge.
Excellent points.
Still unwilling to call a spade a spade?
“Fertility” was higher in the past because young women weren’t hormon-bombed on expense of the NHS from the earliest onset of puberty to stop them from getting children at pretty much any cost. This is an absolutely homegrown problem and for the moment, it looks as if the solution will eventually be People who don’t inflict this on their daughters (but expect them to marry and get children) taking over because they’re … well … getting children. All the whining of pensioners (or people who’ll shortly reach pension age) how culturally backward this is will not stop it.
It’s the conservatively minded pensioners that have seen the ‘Blair Disaster’ approaching, though some thought they could avoid it, as they had more resources, while voting for the Blue Uni-party.
So I don’t think they will be whining. The 1% of the 1% may be discouraged, but I expect they will be able to fly elsewhere in their private planes, if they still exist.
Grandchildren keep the World going around.
Pensioner is really too broad as term. The people behind the so-called sexual revolution are pensioners now, or about to become pensioners, and I was referring to them.
Rupert Lowe discusses the state of Parliament and what he’s observed in the ‘Uniparty’, in this excellent discussion on The New Culture Forum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD77Zmulcvw
He’s such a ‘Down To Earth Sort of Guy’: we could do with a few more like him.
Outflanking Farage too.
Disagree completely. A sovereign nation that operates on behalf of its population can solve all these problems relatively easily.
the problem is the uniparty don’t have the will to do so and the unpopular blocking you talk about comes from other politicians, not the public at large.
as for older people; I’m sick of hearing this. If the nhs wasn’t clogged up with gimmigrants and part time workers, it would be able to care for the elderly, many of whom would still like to work if they could get that hip replacement etc done, or proper treatment for a long term condition.
i believe older age is badged at fifty now in insurance terms. Not everyone over this age is frail and a drain n society.
Noah:
Your second reason for high energy prices is rubbish. It has nothing to do with the gas price, as documented by David Turver in his excellent Substack and everything to do with the consequences of decarbonisation and Net Zero: requirement to build and maintain a 100% back-up electricity generating system, massive subsidies paid to renewables and the cost of re-wiring our National Grid and a completely dysfunctional electricity market (designed by idiots).
Depressing how so many attack the “problems” projected by the so-called narrative.
If you want to know why governments at the moment, including this one, are deep in the doo-doo, it is simply that they have been consistently lying to their masters – those who elect them, – and acting against their interests. It has taken the over-reach of the virus outrage to make that clearer and clearer as the days pass. The deaths from the jabs, already 20m plus world-wide, are just beginning, Such deaths have been forseeable from the very early days of 2021 to the meanest intelligence.
So when we consider any politician working today we are considering either an individual who should already have faced criminal charges or an individual who is supporting such people.
The failure of the rest of us to own the problem should come a long way ahead of our other manifold faults.
Let the rule of law be restored and corruption in public life become an offence with the gravest consequences for the criminal. Governments must rteurn to their servant status.