Daily Sceptic readers are warmly invited to the upcoming ‘Together Talks’ event “What, No Cash?! Digital ID, Central Bank Digital Currency and Freedom” on Wednesday December 7th at 7:30pm at Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL. Toby will be speaking and you’ll find him in the bar afterwards if you want to come and say hello.
Speakers:
- Toby Young: Founder and Director of the Free Speech Union, Associate Editor of the Spectator.
- Eva Pascoe: Internet entrepreneur and consultant, online retail expert, author, co-founder of Britain’s first internet cafe, Cyberia.
- Nico Macdonald: Co-author of Big Potatoes: The London Manifesto for Innovation, journalist, educator on innovation and creativity.
- Cameron Parry: Founder and CEO of Tally Money, a new monetary system using physical gold as digital currency (not a crypto) and world’s first to offer bank accounts in a currency not issued by a Government.
- Andrew Lowenthal: Co-founder and former Executive Director of EngageMedia, a non-profit organisation that support digital rights, open technology and video for change in the Asia-Pacific region.
- James Melville: Scottish communications and sponsorship consultant, as well as a freelance writer and political pundit.
- Chaired by Alan Miller, Co-founder of #together.
Alan Miller writes:
We launched #together when the threat of Vaccine Passports became a reality after Boris Johnson announced on ‘Freedom Day’ that they would be necessary to gain access to certain venues.
While we resolutely saw them off and prevented the U.K. becoming a ‘show me your papers’ society, Digital ID is increasingly being used across the U.K.
The Government insists Digital ID will be voluntary but there are significant concerns around privacy, surveillance and autonomy.
Increasingly, retailers are no longer accepting cash and ATM machines are in steep decline. President Biden recently announced that a ‘digital dollar’ is forthcoming and Rishi Sunak excitedly promotes a future of Central Bank Digital Currency here in the U.K.
Recently, PayPal shut down several accounts including the Free Speech Union and froze access to funds. Other platforms and financial institutions have done similar, including JP Morgan Chase and YouTube, raising significant concerns about freedom of speech and the ability to financially transact. Local Authorities have also favoured fines for a whole array of areas in recent years. Would Digital ID encourage even more of this?
With high inflation and a cost of living/lockdown crisis, is Digital ID a ‘convenience’ tool or does it risk opening the floodgates to programmable money where every single transaction you make is recorded on the ledger, as the head of the Bank of International Settlements has stated?
Germany has moved to evaluate any bank transaction over 100 euros in the name of ‘challenging terrorism’. Meanwhile, Oxford Council is planning a ‘15 minute city’ where breaching boundaries would result in a fine. These ever-growing encroachments on our personal freedoms are concerning to most who are paying attention.
Can we insist on retaining cash? How much can we influence such issues? Just recently the Online Safety Bill appears to have been amended to remove the ‘legal but harmful’ clause due to significant pushback, which is an encouraging sign.
Can we design a future that implements the best aspects of technology without facilitating the technocratic impulse to control us?
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Meanwhile:
https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-11-29-russia-to-establish-a-national-cryptocurrency-exchange.html
Just about to pay my builder in £20 notes for a couple of days work. Suits us both.
Excellent.
I now believe it is our moral duty to avoid tax whenever and wherever possible.
Taxes are clearly not used for the better running of the country but simply to empty our pockets and direct the money upwards and to those who have no rights to any of it.
Agreed. I plan to become “economically inactive” as soon as humanly possible.
If I was allowed to buy some land and build a small shack on it and not pay “council” tax and chop trees and drink from the stream you wouldn’t see me for… well, the small woodland I owned.
As it is once I’ve got my 35 NI in I’m off the grid.
Yes, but some creature comforts are nice – like sitting by a woodburner burning the wood you’ve recently chopped, knowing it’s actually too wet and that the emissions police would be right on you if they knew.
Also having a few chickens you can let out in spite of any flu ban.
And drinking more than 14 units a week, preferably. mostly in one go.
That’s what I’m doing. I semi-retired, relocated and downsized a few years ago. I have a casual job – so I work when needed and IF I want to. I pay a little IT based on a buy-to-let, no NI and my mission in life is to minimise any other tax I pay. VAT can be (legally) avoided/minimised by using barter/swap, freestuff, and second-hand sites/shops.
I find it highly satisfying depriving the leeches in Government of as much of my money as I possibly can.
I salute you.
Any work I do has to be paid In cash and any jobs I pay for I pay cash. I pay cash when out socialising or shopping. Anywhere I believe I or the vendor might create an opportunity to avoid tax I use it.
Maybe Toby will be a bit less relaxed (than he was on the recent London Calling’) about the dangers of CBDCs after this event…?
With reference the video clip above, for me the ‘off-ramp’ must be alternative currencies (or even barter) that do not use blockchain, so not Bitcoin etc.
Evening All , in a Dixon of Dock Green sort of way ! Been really busy moving my immediates & us out to the country , i can’t get the Chinese covid story to stay up to get to comments
but wondering why the C-inks are pursuing zero covid & undoing the upper financial hand they gained over the rest of the world ???
As with smart, successful people such as Bill Gates they end up being surrounded by ‘yes men’, get isolated from reality, believe they have special insights because they are rich, etc, etc eventually becoming functionally stupid. Communism is that effect on steroids.
Hadn’t thought of dilution of money by fees of electronic payments as this attached example from Canada.
Many thanks for this. I have sprayed it around.
I’d love to come, but I live out in the sticks in Dorset so it’s not possible. Good luck to #Together.