Corporate Wokeness Is Becoming a Deeply Sinister Threat to Our Freedom
Under the guise of Environmental, Social and Governance criteria, U.K. enterprises are subtly shifting their decision-making, blending fiscal concerns with societal and environmental agendas. In the Telegraph, Emma Webb and Thomas Harris caution that the economic ‘unpersoning’ of critical voices could soon quash dissent. Here’s an excerpt:
‘Environmental, Social and Governance’ (ESG) is fast becoming the most pernicious phrase you’ve never heard of. The underlying idea is that investors shouldn’t just care about the bottom line, but about corporate governance, social impact and environmental damage. It sounds harmless, but has become the latest vector for the woke subversion of our institutions.
ESG has now become embedded in kitemarking systems that rank companies according to their policies on issues like Net Zero and ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion’ (EDI). ESG scores can affect how much investment they receive, and so carry financial clout. Organisations from Coutts to the Church of England’s investment bodies have signed up to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment, which incorporate ESG considerations into investment practices.
It would be dangerously mistaken to imagine these are distant corporate ‘#BeKind’ policies that don’t affect us. The threat these practices pose to the market and individual freedoms have been compared to cartels and the Chinese Communist Party’s social credit system, in which those with a score too low cannot get a mortgage or travel on high-speed trains.
The Free Speech Union (FSU) reports that one in 20 of its cases are directly related to EDI training. For many, these cases have involved the loss of their livelihoods, and for others disruption to their financial lives. When you see de-banking banks talking about ‘purpose’ and ‘values’, or HR departments dragging an employee through the wringer for ‘wrongspeak’, if you follow the trail far enough, you will likely reach ESG.
This situation may soon get worse. It was reported last week that the organisation B Lab U.K. is lobbying for a change in the law to further embed these practices in British companies. The so-called ‘Better Business Act’ would amend section 172 of the Companies Act 2006 to give directors a duty to consider “people and the planet”, not just profit. As we’ve seen with ESG policies, what this means in practice is the importation of woke ideology.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Watch Thomas Harris, co-author of the above piece, discussing the Free Speech Union’s report on B Corps with Nigel Farage on GB News.
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We’re going to need a lot of mobile gallows come the glorious day.
These corporations only understand profit.
That’s why it’s more vital than ever we unite against them under a banner, some form of organisation that exposes their wokism then directs focused boycotts on their business.
The Americans did this to Target, Budweiser.
Let’s do it here.
The time for bleating is over.
Action.
If they only pursued profit and they were denied the abiloity to restrict competition all would be well.
The problem as I see it is the management have taken up woke policies as their own and they impose them on the businesses they are meant to run on behalf of shareholders. The management enjoys the benefit of large salaries and the woke policies they impose are applauded by some of their staff and customers while the rest are cowed into silence by the MSM and litigation assault on common sense. Their friends coo when they hear how this celeb or that has had his/her account closed and they dribble with excitement when they see rainbows over the buildings all the better to support the manager’s ego.
Surely, surely it is clear you go broke if you go woke, consider Bud-Lite for just one example. And…
“Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience”
Adam Smith
The original, German, form of stakeholder capitalism, which Will Hutton, Klaus&co so revere and which ESG claims to be about, was just about some nominal worker representation on large companies boards and, above all, about sponsoring the local football club.
Go figure.
I see McDonald’s have removed the ESG from its livery. Silent tills scare these box ticking woke corporations. Bud Light anyone?😁
The WEF Puppets “leading” the Not-a-Conservative-Party and Not-a-Labour-Party won’t do anything to stop this.
It’s what Klaus and the Davos Deviants want …. and what they want, the Puppets deliver.
Consumers will have to boycott the companies who push the ESG Agenda, but not enough are aware/engaged to really make an impact.
I’m now boycotting Costa Coffee, but when I walk past the one in my local High St, it still has plenty of customers …. and that’s in a small tourist-friendly town which has about 10 coffee shops to choose from.
Remeber thta Costa is owned by Coca-Cola
Never touch the stuff.
We fought the Nazis, we won the cold war, now complacency about those hard won freedoms is leading us to forget what freedom actually is. We are now turning into the regimes we defeated. We defeat ourselves not with bombs and guns but by inverted morality and pompous virtue signalling.
What is B Corp anyway, What authority does it have? Is it a company, a charity, or purely a lobbying organisation? If the latter, how and why are large commercial enterprises so deferential, why don’t they ask them to clear off?
Corporate Wokeness, ESG, etc are efforts to get back to the old days, when production was based on what the elites decreed, not on the preferences of hoi polloi.