Around the time of the world banking crash in 2008, Jeremy Clarkson told me he was buying a farm, a safe and a shotgun.
When I asked why, he explained that the only way to survive the coming apocalypse was to have somewhere to grow your own food, store your cash and arm yourself against the Walking Dead.
Turns out he was pretty perceptive, although back then he had no idea that Clarkson’s Farm would become the new Top Gear. Growing your own food sounds like a plan, given that prices in the supermarket are through the stratosphere as a result of corporate greed and Putin‘s war on Ukraine, the grain basket of Europe.
Withdrawing your savings and keeping them in the safe, or even under the mattress, made sense when the financial institutions were going belly up.
And although I’ve never been one for guns, despite running the provisional wing of the Tony Martin Is Innocent campaign, taking precautions to protect your property seems the only sensible way to behave, now that the police have long since given up the ghost.
After four decades with the same bank, Coutts, Nigel Farage (pictured) has been told his custom is no longer welcome
The farm has proven to be Jezza’s best investment, not because it makes any money agriculturally, but thanks to the stunning success of his inspired Amazon TV series.
How much longer that will last is anyone’s guess. Amazon executives in ultra-woke Cupertino, California, are said to be reviewing the show’s future in the wake of the controversy over Clarkson’s criticisms of the blessed Meghan Markle.
He’s just been reprimanded by Ipso, the Press complaints body, over a column in which he expressed his visceral loathing of the Duchess of Montecito, and hoped she could be forced to walk the streets naked while being pelted with excrement.
Tasteless, certainly. But I’d said much the same about Matt Hancock without censure. Most people actually agreed with me. In fact, on the day Clarkson’s column appeared, I sent him an email light-heartedly accusing him of plagiarism.
Who knew the world was about to come down on his head again?
After a torrent of complaints, notably from a couple of wimmin’s rites organisations, Ipso found him guilty of ‘sexism’. Clarkson had already realised he’d gone over the top and promised not to do it again.
Ipso, an independent body supported by the vast majority of Britain’s news organisations, was set up in the wake of the Leveson inquisition to adjudicate on complaints, while at the same time upholding free speech.
The Clarkson ruling is a worrying overreach, even though it carries little sanction. Freedom of the Press has never been in more peril, especially with the prospect of a censorious incoming Labour government wedded to state control of the media.
What is equally sinister, however, is that this decision could be co-opted by others hellbent on ‘cancelling’ Clarkson to burnish their own woke credentials.
Will it prove enough for his bankers, say, to close his accounts and declare him a ‘non-person’?
After all, that’s exactly what has just happened to Nigel Farage. After four decades with the same bank, Coutts, Farage has been told his custom is no longer welcome. It’s still not entirely clear why this has happened. Some say it’s part of an Establishment backlash against Brexit, which is certainly plausible. Another explanation is that he’s fallen foul of regulations aimed at prominent public figures suspected of being at risk of money laundering.
Hiding behind Parliamentary privilege, Remainiac Labour MP Chris Bryant wrongly accused Farage of taking more than £540,000 from the Russians — and still refuses to apologise or retract it. If Bryant had the courage to repeat the slur outside the House, Farage could see him in court.
This is the same kind of despicable tactic used by Nonce Finder General Tom Watson falsely to allege that senior Conservative politicians were part of a child sex abuse ring.
Instead of suffering the consequences and being cast out of polite society, Watson has now been elevated to the Lords by Keir Starmer and given a lucrative gig as head of UK Music. Farage is said to detect the dead hand of MI5 behind it all. I can’t see why the Funny People would be involved, but just because you’re paranoid and all that.
The ex-Ukip leader has every right to be spooked by this development. No other bank will touch him, either. It may force him to quit Britain altogether, which gives weight to his conspiracy theories.
We’ve since discovered that others critical of fashionable dogma have been cancelled by their banks.
A Scottish journalist who challenged the assertion that women can have penises was shown the door by First Direct. A vicar who asked the Yorkshire Building Society why their branches were festooned with Pride flags had his savings account closed because he was considered ‘discriminatory’.
Toby Young, of the Free Speech Union, had his organisation’s account shut by PayPal. Reclaim, the party set up by actor turned freedom campaigner Laurence Fox, has been denied a bank account. There are myriad other examples.
The adoption of woke philosophy by otherwise venal corporations has been on the rise for years. I’ve written about it extensively — especially professional football, which embraces every passing fad from Black Lives Matter to LGBTQWERTY+ rainbow laces.
Around the time of the world banking crash in 2008, Jeremy Clarkson told me he was buying a farm, a safe and a shotgun
They do it to divert attention from their own amorality and naked greed. Coincidentally, the Farage story landed at the same time as my last column, which was headlined ‘These days only one worldview is permissable: Ultra-woke, pro-migrant, anti-Brexit and anti-Boris’.
That was about the pathetic attempts in Parliament to punish prominent supporters of Boris Johnson who dared to criticise members of Hattie Harman’s lynch mob, set up to convict the former PM of lying to the House.
It’s a kangaroo court, sport, it’s a kangaroo court.
Now it appears that Skippy the Bush Kangaroo isn’t only running the Commons disciplinary process, he’s bouncing round the private sector, too.
How else to explain Farage’s outrageous treatment, which he has rightly compared to Communist China?
What gives banks the right to refuse to do business with those who hold opinions contrary to the prevailing woke wisdom? Access to banking facilities should be a basic yuman rite, only withdrawn from criminals convicted of serious financial fraud.
Farage’s sole alleged crime — like Boris — was to help persuade 17.4 million to vote democratically to leave the EU. The self-appointed ‘elites’ have never forgiven them.
If they can be crucified, nobody is safe. Maybe the forces of darkness will come for me next.
In the interests of full disclosure, Farage is a mate. Not close, but I’ve known him for more than 20 years. There’s very little we disagree upon.
As Springsteen sang on Bobby Jean, at least in political terms, we like the same music, we like the same bands — just not the same clothes. I’d look a right prat in red corduroy strides.
The only political party I’ve ever openly supported in this column is the Brexit Party.
Like the Scottish hack and the Yorkshire vicar, I don’t believe women have penises and abhor the cult of Pride Month — even though I’ve always supported equal rights for gay people. And have said so repeatedly in this column.
So will it be my turn next to have my bank accounts closed?
And what about Clarkson? He’s been a friend and colleague of mine for 30-odd years, even though we disagree on quite a bit politically — especially Brexit. He was a rampant Remainer, but I don’t hold it against him.
Will his pro-EU views be enough to save him from being cast into the banking wilderness? Who knows? Plenty of the Great and Good resent his thoroughly deserved success and are repelled by some of his opinions, even when expressed in jest.
That safe could be useful after all, although in these days of contactless payment, cash is no longer king and may soon become obsolete.
Still, the ability to grow your own food will come in handy. Having a shotgun, not just to see off ‘travellers’ trying to nick your tractor but also to shoot a few rabbits, will certainly help once your credit’s no good at the local butcher’s and the hole-in-the- wall swallows your debit card.
And on that bombshell…