TIME TO STOP COMPANIES CANCELLING OTHERS BECAUSE OF THEIR VIEWS

The fight with financial institutions has just begun

By Jasmine Birtles

AT The Free Speech Union’s (FSU) launch of Andrew Doyle’s book ‘The New Puritans’ The New Puritans on Tuesday, Toby Young, founder of the FSU, announced that Paypal had reversed its decision to cancel the organisation’s account together with the Daily Sceptic’s account and his personal account.

He said that he would not accept their reversal until they did the same to all the other organisations they had cancelled for similar reasons.

It is also time for other financial organisations to be reprimanded for cancelling people whose views they do not like.

As you can see here: Banks will cancel you over your views, banks such Santander, HSBC and Wise have cancelled people and groups whose politics they did not approve of. None of these people are criminals, but they express views that some members of the bank purport to be offended by.

In today’s Daily Sceptic, one article suggests that the Government should amend the Financial Services and Markets Bill https://dailysceptic.org/2022/09/27/whats-the-best-way-to-rein-in-companies-like-paypal/, which could work. 

Elsewhere on the site it is argued that the Online Safety Bill could have something included in it to prevent financial companies cancelling businesses or individuals on a political whim.

At News Uncut we beg to differ, as the basis of the Online Safety Bill is control and exclusion of free speech online. Dressed up as a Bill to protect the vulnerable, it is actually fundamentally harmful to all strata of society, apart from large corporations including those that run media or social media.

The Online Safety Bill, according to Baroness Claire Fox, is unnecessary as the extra protections needed for vulnerable children, those who are in danger of self-harm and those in danger of fraud, for example, could be effected by updating existing legislation. If current suggestions in the Online Safety Bill go through it will mean that free speech online will be curtailed at the whim of governments and international corporations. This must not happen.

Join us in writing to your MP to demand that the Online Safety Bill be scrapped as it is against freedom of speech and, instead, that existing legislation be updated to genuinely protect the vulnerable. Find your local MP here: Find your local MP