Comment by delichon
13 days ago
Some of his planks:
* Cut your taxes, and raise everyone else’s.
* Nationalize Adele.
* Build at least one affordable house.
* Hold a referendum on whether Pluto should regain its planet status.
I see the attraction.
Please don't forget one of his longest standing and most important planks:
* move the hand dryer in the Crown & Treaty pub in Uxbridge to a more sensible location.
This YouTube video shows just how dire the situation is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbartLXCYZo
I’m not even from the UK and I know it need to be fixed before the situation gets worse.
We spoke earlier to local chancer Elliot Plunge who told us "this is the one thing we did not want to happen"
Like it gets moved to in the urinal itself? Indeed, that could kick off a world war.
Oh he's left handed? Ma man!
Some of the winner's planks:
Yeah, Binface jokes are more attractive to me too.
Do we have any English lawyers here who can comment on whether it may actually be legal to nationalise Adele (the person) under English law? ChatGPT says it may be possible through an act of parliament, but I’m unsure whether I can trust ChatGPT in this case.
Yes, Parliament has absolute and unlimited power (except binding future Parliaments, and maybe arguably some matters relating to Scotland): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_sovereignty_in_t...
(not a lawyer)
Indeed which is why "taking back sovereignty" as an argument by the pro-Brexit folks was a bit disingenuous (if I'm been kind).
It would also require us leaving a whole bunch of international treaties though since "Nationalising a pop singer" kinda breaches a few of them.
Not a Brit, not a lawyer...
The promise could be re-interpreted in some funny ways. For example, Count Binface didn't specify when nationalizing Adele would occur.
They could create another[0] special case in UK copyright law with a minor twist: Instead of eventually entering the public domain, the copyright of Adele's works would transfer to the UK government which would donate any proceeds to a charity that builds affordable homes.
Silly, but it'd mean two promises kept.
[0] https://neverlandofficial.com/discover/peter-pan-copyright/
Or which Adele he'd nationalize.
A simple bill of attainder would do it, but she'd have recourse to the ECHR to appeal it, which would in practice bind the UK. If we thought she wasn't going to be chill with it, we'd first need to withdraw from the ECHR. As it happens, withdrawing from the the ECHR is a prime Farage objective.
Human rights only apply to those what are willing to defend them.
What’s Europe going to do, send in a deal team to extract Adele?
Parliament theoretically has unlimited power, practically I think this stops short of reintroducing actual slavery. Lawyers would be busy arguing in international courts; but hopefully 50℅ of the electorate might actually bother to vote.
(Obviously the MP for Clacton has the power to talk sturnly to someone with actual power in the councel over the bin collection schedule; the is no plausable way to deliver any of their pledges)
International courts? Who cares about those?
North Korea? China? Russia? Israel? Gaza? Iran? The USA?
What’s are international courts going to do about it? Gaol Britain? Apply sanctions?
1 reply →
What is 50c/o? That “℅” is not a percent sign.
1 reply →
Lawyer here.[0] Definitely possible.[1]
[0] not a lawyer [1] what does “nationalise” even mean?
Typically, the government takes over a company.
The shareholders or owners may or may not receive compensation.
Presumably a normal(?) interpretation would be that the British government uses whatever eminent domain law it has and it takes over Adels copyright on all her songs and gives her whatever the fair market value of the catalog is.
But because this is a joke candidate, could be anything.
1 reply →
A joke on the goverment nationalising the railways and the debate around whether we should nationalise water companies.
5 replies →
Take into public ownership.
11 replies →
Long list here: https://meettheuk.substack.com/p/a-complete-list-of-count-bi...
I could get behind most of them, actually ... were I to live in the UK.
i like that he ironically hedges this one
> A promise not to accept £5 million gifts from crypto billionaires (on Earth).
I liked this one:
- European countries to be invited to join the United Kingdom, creating a new ‘union of Europe’, if you will. (2024)
Surely his post popular policy has to be :
* capping the price of a 99 flake ice cream at 99p
He was challenged on this by Alastair Campbell who asked him how much this will cost the exchequer
His immediate response.
“Well, if the exchequer wants a 99 flake, it’ll cost them 99p.”
Yes. Unless you're a male resident of Uxbridge of drinking age.
Every election should have a funny absurdist person like this absorbing all the blank and null votes to give the other candidates more incentives to convince the electorate.
Back when I was in college, student union elections had a candidate called RON on each vote. RON was Re—Open Nominations. Basically “none of the above”, which would cause a restart of the election for than role if it got the most votes.
It's mostly negative polarization driving things these days, so I don't think that idea makes as much sense as it once did.
In one general election back in the 90s, there was a candidate called "Nun of the Above".
They put them at the bottom of the candidate list on the voting slip. Good to see the election officials had a sense of humor.
Lists aren't randomized in your corner of the woods? That's a big thing in our ballots, different people get differently sorted lists.
In this particular case, the main stream parties did not take part (i.e. field candidates) because the current MP (Farage) resigned just to retake his own seat - basically trying to distract from his dodgy dealings with crypto bros and convicted fraudsters.
I would have voted Count Binface too (as the least absurd candidate).
Farage basically managed to dodge the investigation into his non-declaration of £5m for about five weeks (due to him not being an MP). Now that he's an MP again, the investigation has re-opened. What's likely to happen is that he'll get suspended for breaking the rules and there'll be yet another Clacton by-election.
Clacton has to bear all the costs of these by-elections, but then it's their own fault for being stupid enough to follow Farage.
I very much cannot understand why the parties did not take part. So happily letting him take back a seat he abandoned earlier for whatever reasons? Or what is even the point of not competing? He can be investigated whether in office or not, so that's not a point.
> basically trying to distract from his dodgy dealings with crypto bros and convicted fraudsters.
No, so he can say that the voters have spoken and that they don't care.
It seems to be that it's common belief in right wing parties that winning an election means all cases against you are dropped. They aren't, unless you get elected president of the US. But I think that's where they're all getting it from.
[flagged]
Here in Brazil we once had an actual clown on a representative election, with a slogan that translates to "I literally can't make it worse!" (but was a pun in Portuguese.)
He was the most voted candidate, and is now a professional politician. He failed to make good on his slogan...
Don't forget about the California recall that put Arnold in charge. There were pornstars and all sorts absurdist candidates due to the nature of how the recall works. More recently, you had some ex-reality TV personality running for mayor of LA.
1 reply →
[flagged]
8 replies →
> Nationalize Adele
I'm old and out of touch, my brain confused Adele with Alizée and thought that was a little aggressive for a foreign policy.
>nationalise Adele
Well it would certainly make her less productive
Your brain is spot on. This would make much more sense.
I've been trying to think of a UK musical act that works as well for "Nationalize Adele" and I've got nothing.
Back in the day, maybe "Nationalize Freddie Mercury".
"Nationalize Queen" might have been more confusing...
It still works; he's one of the most lucrative dead artist!
Some discussion about the manifesto pledges in this interview, which is utter binface gold.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRBh7uGwxmU
some extras
The history of ceefax is worth reading when you have a spare moment. If you want to go further down the rabbit hole, there's Prestel with its 1980s "electronic mailbox".
I kind of miss teletext. It was by far the fastest way to get a quick weather forecast.
Apply MP wages to nurses is actually a solid idea I recon.
aye, i've always thought tying an MP wages to the national average was a good call. but nurses makes sense too.
Cap the price of Wigan kebabs at £2
You missed the biggest one:
Binface's most important non-platform items are:
Ich bin ein binliner
honestly he should have won on his main if unstated plank, "not be nigel farage"