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Count Binface

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Re: Count Binface

#31

Post by drcongo »

thih9 wrote: post #15

Voting in the UK has its own flavor. Somewhat related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tobin_(astronomer) > In the 2019 United Kingdom general election he stood as an independent candidate against Boris Johnson in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency. As he had not resided in Britain for more than 15 years he was ineligible to vote but eligible to stand as a candidate. He focused his campaign on voting r…

And somewhat related to that, astronomer Patrick Moore used to be the chair of a far-right anti-immigration party. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Country_Party_(United_K...

Re: Count Binface

#32

Post by shawabawa3 »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #29
extasia wrote: post #10

> Binface announced a series of satirical policies for the 2019 general election, including: Bringing back Ceefax, the teletext service.[9] He had previously promised to bring back the service in 2017 as Lord Buckethead.[12] Returning 20,001 police officers to the street, a reference to the Conservative pledge of 20,000 more police officers.[13] Nationalising model railways.[14] Holding a referendum on holding a seco…

My real favorite part is that some of these are obviously nonsensical, but some of them are actually reasonable sounding ideas... I'm not sure I would personally vote for free broadband for everyone, but that is absolutely legitimate platform that I could see somebody actually running on.

Jeremy Corbyn famously ran on it in 2019 which is probably what it's in reference to

Re: Count Binface

#33

Post by dghf »

tialaramex wrote: post #26
arethuza wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly Count Binface not being in the House of Lords is some kind of administrative oversight?

The modern Lords is composed of a mix of Life Peers, who were sent there in their lifetime by the Monarch, generally in fact as a result of the government of the day (ie elected politicians) choosing them†, and a fixed number (from the pool) of Hereditary Peers, who have inherited this honour typically (but not always) from their father and so on, perhaps for centuries. Historically all the Peers could sit, today a f…

> Historically all the Peers could sit

Not quite. Scottish peers (to be precise, members of the Peerage of Scotland, which isn't quite the same thing) and Irish peers (again, more precisely, members of the Peerage of Ireland) elected representatives from their number to sit in the Lords, in much the same way as the hereditary peers do today.

Scottish peers got the universal right to sit in the Lords in 1963.

The right of Irish peers to sit in the Lords, if elected, survived Irish independence in 1922; however, the office tasked with overseeing their election, that of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, was abolished with independence, so their numbers gradually dwindled: the last Irish peer to sit in the Lords died in 1961.

Re: Count Binface

#34

Post by graemep »

ta1243 wrote: post #23
graemep wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best known in the UK was probably Screaming Lord Such: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screaming_Lord_Sutch Absolutely right about the power of jokes.

The most successful joke candidate was that funny guy from Have I Got News for You, who become London Mayor and then Prime Minister!

Yes, his replacements tried hard but their jokes mostly fell flat.

Re: Count Binface

#36

Post by masfuerte »

tialaramex wrote: post #26
arethuza wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly Count Binface not being in the House of Lords is some kind of administrative oversight?

The modern Lords is composed of a mix of Life Peers, who were sent there in their lifetime by the Monarch, generally in fact as a result of the government of the day (ie elected politicians) choosing them†, and a fixed number (from the pool) of Hereditary Peers, who have inherited this honour typically (but not always) from their father and so on, perhaps for centuries. Historically all the Peers could sit, today a f…

You can also apply!

https://lordsappointments.independent.gov.uk/how-to-apply-2

Re: Count Binface

#37

Post by masfuerte »

thih9 wrote: post #15

Voting in the UK has its own flavor. Somewhat related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tobin_(astronomer) > In the 2019 United Kingdom general election he stood as an independent candidate against Boris Johnson in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency. As he had not resided in Britain for more than 15 years he was ineligible to vote but eligible to stand as a candidate. He focused his campaign on voting r…

He got his wish. The tories removed the 15 year limit in 2022.

eta: I just noticed that he died on 7th July 2022. The law came into effect on 28th April 2022 but he never got a chance to use it.

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