The director of Big Brother Watch claimed today that a cashless society will bring terrible consequences.
Writing in today’s Telegraph, Silkie Carlo claims:
“..not only can governments, banks and tech companies monitor what you have earned and spent in a cashless world, they can preemptively control it too.”
We have already seen financial services companies take an interventionist approach to people’s spending.
There are now numerous examples of cancel culture driving digital wallets to be frozen – an early notable example was PayPal freezing WikiLeaks’ account in 2010.
Just months ago, the Canadian government froze bank accounts of people associated with the truckers’ “Freedom Convoy”, in an effort to quell the campaign against mandatory vaccines.
With digital currency, the question fast becomes not only who watches how you spend your money, nor even who controls how you spend it, but who actually owns it?”
She’s right of course. 12 months ago, PayPal deleted The Richie Allen Show account. I wasn’t consulted. An email from the company stated that I was in violation of its rules and that was that. When PayPal wouldn’t respond to my queries I complained to the Financial Conduct Authority.
The FCA investigated my complaint but said they were powerless. Astonishingly, an anonymous third party had made a complaint to PayPal. The company promptly closed the account and kept £400 which belonged to the show.
It was never returned to me and my supporters were not reimbursed either. PayPal kept the money. That’s got to be theft, right?
There is nothing I can do about it. When I wrote about it last year, I was inundated with emails from folks telling me that it served me right and that it would teach me to be careful of what I said on the radio show. I know, right?
Yesterday, while running past Old Trafford’s East stand, I saw to my astonishment that Manchester United’s Megastore has gone cashless, permanently. I thought it was a measure left over from lockdown. A security guard told me that it was here to stay.
Cashless terrifies me. I’ve said time and again, when we go cashless, it is game over. They win.
It really is that simple.
