Halifax’s pronouns badge PR disaster has sparked an exodus of customers and their savings today as its bosses were branded ‘old fashioned bullies’.
Britons are closing their accounts en masse after the bank’s social media team told them to leave if they don’t like their new badges to help avoid ‘accidental misgendering’ of staff.
One account holder told MailOnline that he and his family has already pulled out investments and savings worth £450,000 while many more said they are closing ISAs after they accused the bank of ‘alienating’ them with ‘pathetic virtue signalling’.
Another reader cancelled his Halifax credit cards online today and told customer services: ‘Pronouns matter when used properly, I will not be told by a bank what I can and can’t’. Other critic said: ‘I care because they paid someone to come up with this rubbish but they keep closing branches’.
Branding expert Martin Townsend said Halifax’s policy is a ‘Ratner moment’ and an ‘astonishing’ mistake that will be considered one of the biggest PR blunders in recent history.
This is fantastic news. The good old British public kicking back at these virtue-signalling scumbags. It looks as if people took ‘Andy M’ at his word. Despite his doubling down on behalf of his employer, this was a customer service fail of epic proportions. Their job is to provide banking services and nothing else. Also, as has been mentioned elsewhere, this banking group was bailed out by the British public – the very people they are insulting are responsible for these bastards having jobs in the first place. May many, many more people close their accounts, citing Andy M as their reason.
Natwest, Nationwide and HSBC all have optional pronoun policies for badges. HSBC entered the debate and shared the Halifax post, tweeting its 101,000 followers: ‘We stand with and support any bank or organisation that joins us in taking this positive step forward for equality and inclusion. It’s vital that everyone can be themselves in the workplace’.
I don’t have an HSBC account, but if I did, I’d be closing that. It is not their place to lecture us on politics. It is their place to look after our money and nothing, nothing else.
I suspect that a lot of people aren’t that bothered about this pronoun nonsense and just think that it’s stupid. But when a spokesperson says we’re doing this and if you don’t like it you can fuck off, people are going to say fine I’ll take my money somewhere else.
Stonyground – I quite agree; most of it goes over my head as I try to avoid the mainstream.
Having it shoved in my face really gets my blood pressure up though, especially when I see people adding this crap to their email signatures. I think this is one of the most depressing examples of how the loonies are winning; people are adding pronouns to their emails not because they support the cause, simply to fit in with a corporate policy or because it’s easier than thinking, or they are too frightened of being challenged. Just say no.
If my employer asked me to do this I would say no. If they pushed it I would leave. Our nation is mostly populated by a very different type of people to those who stood up for world freedom not so very long ago.
@Stonyground.
I suspect you are right. Firms and organisations do things and display all sorts of weird things that you can choose to be not offended by. But when a bank says it would rather lose your custom (its main purpose) than backtrack on those weird things then you know that it has lost the plot or jumped the shark. Time to abandon the organisation to its fate.
I find those signs ‘violence and abuse towards staff is unacceptable’ test my equanimity. It is obviously true yet is unlikely to modify customer behaviour. All it does is annoy customers to provide a fig leaf of care to the staff.
Was in my GP surgery this morning, taking my mum for a blood pressure check (by a nurse, god forbid an actual GP earn their money) and there’s a big sign on the wall saying ‘Please do not sit in reception area abusing the surgery to other patients. If this is overheard, you will be asked to leave.’
If I’d had a pen on me, I might have been tempted to add ‘Fat chance of them stopping their gossiping to each other long enough to overhear anything’…
But the arrogance of putting something like that up is breathtaking!
@Stonyground
When the nazis took over, one of the first impacts was thousands of businesses having to find “jobs” for useless nazis and wannabes.
This happens in every totalitarianism. If we aren’t living in one… well if it walks like a duck and all that.
What has happened here is that a piece of inane and totally ignorable corporate BS has been turned into a weapons grade fuck up by one of these wannabes they have been essentially forced to “employ”.
Satisfying as it is to watch it all unwind, the arrogant child, who likely kicked the whole thing off on a self indulgent whim, will very likely get away with it completely, not even acknowledging to themselves that they have done anything wrong. Indeed, if anything it will – if it’s possible – make them even more arrogant.
Justice would be served by this creature being sued by Halifax for loss of earnings.
I can dream I suppose.
Rember Halifax Howard?
Howard Brown on Halifax’s pronoun name badges ‘They’ve missed the boat on this one’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrVCnDq_-R0
PS
If your employer has asked you to include your gender pronouns on a lanyard or in your email signature and you don´t want to, please see the Free Speech Union´s FAQs on this issue for some guidance
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/06/29/halifax-bank-latest-victim-of-get-woke-go-broke/
@Stony
But when a spokesperson says we’re doing this and if you don’t like it you can fuck off, people are going to say fine I’ll take my money somewhere else
+1 Do nothing and nobody but a tiny amount might complain. Jump on a bandwagon and that really pisses of customers who rightly say “stop spending my money on your political obsessions”
Btw the Unilever vs Ben & Jerry war is escalating
And Finally…
CEO of Pfizer had to Cancel trip to Israel because…
https://twitter.com/Matrixunpluged/status/1541340210339921921
Could it be that these people who need to define their pronouns are just totally unremarkable people who want to feel special and interesting? Presumably telling them they need to grow up and get a life is hate speech. Instead we have to indulge them like spoiled children.
There’s something in this. A significant number of young people are now identifying as non binary. Being heterosexual is just so boring.
The time for polite tolerance has passed. Time now to push back. I’m starting to see this happening.
So, identify as whatever you want, but don’t expect me to play.
Spoiled children is EXACTLY what they are. Even the ones that have been on this Earth for 20-30 years.
I’d never bank with HSBC, it’s far too close to the Chinese Communist Party.
The ridiculous thing with this whole business is that it is almost entirely irrelevant. If someone has Gemma on her name tag, that is what you’d call her, so there is no likelihood that you would “misgender” her to her face. Surely it doesn’t matter if you “misgender” someone to another person.
Doc – under “hate speech” if you mi-gender the first person when speaking to a third person, said third person can report you for hate speech. And as we all known, ignorance is no defence under law.
I really don’t like the world we live in. I pity my children as they will see the next 50 years of this nonsense
I can’t remember when I laat had any interaction with a real person in my bank, the nearest branch of which is now 20 miles away. Probably when I opened my account? And even then, I don’t remember using a pronoun when addressing them. Come to think of it, the only time when I DO use a pronoun is when I write a letter. And I still stick to Sir/Madam then. For some reason, certain women don’t like being addressed as Madam – all the more reason for doing it, in my opinion.
Our firm was going the pronoun way and got some opinions about 6 months ago as many public sector customers are using them. I asked if it was going to be compulsory, i.e.g. was I going to get disciplined if I didn’t call someone by their pronoun. They said it wasn’t compulsory yet and completely voluntary, what was my pronoun? I said I wanted to be called Master or Lord.
Didn’t hear anything after that. Some of the people here have added it to their emails but nothing official has been mentioned.
Related:
. Watch before censored like Babylon Bee Ken Doll
Groomed – How Schools Sexualise Your Children – 22m
Laurence Fox Exposes the worrying degree to which politicised, divisive ideologies – including gender theory, critical race theory, queer theory and “transgender toolkits” – are being taught to our children through Personal, Social, Health and Economic education (PSHE)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA07ta2tJpQ
Makes one wonder whether all this woke nonsense is being deliberately pushed to distract the masses from something else.