Clacton by-election

Wyllow3

Mmm. A.few "new posters" have suddenly appeared who just happen to back Farage. In one liners. Not hard to check.

J52 has been around for ages.

fancythat

Wyllow3

Mmm. A.few "new posters" have suddenly appeared who just happen to back Farage. In one liners. Not hard to check.

J52 has been around for ages.

What makes you think I back Farage? He is most despicable in my opinion.
You have obviously mis read my posts!

58% of UK employers provide subsidies for lunch/food.

But it is the employer who covers the cost of the subsidy. It is not coming from the public purse.

The net cost of the House of Commons catering services was £7.4 million in the 2024–25 financial year. This cost serves roughly 14,500 people, including parliamentary staff, visitors, journalists, and peers, not just the 650 Members of Parliament. (Full Fact & Reuters).

MPs, peers, most staff and journalists will have incomes far in excess of the average UK wage and can well afford to pay more for their food and drink.

GrannyGravy13

Graphite

Point 17 in Count Binface’s Makerfield manifesto was for MPs to lose their subsidy for cheap food and drink in Parliament.

I suspect many would agree with that.

Just checked.

Price of a bowl of soup in the House of Commons £1.20.

Price in a suburban Caffe Nero £4.50, Marks & Spencer cafe £5.50.

58% of UK employers provide subsidies for lunch/food.

Curtesy of Google

How many subsidise their emplyees booze?

Ask Google 👍🏻

Sunshinegirls

11:13Cossy

How do you know all about what Farage does or doesn't do in Clacton? Do you track his everymove?

What do other MPs do I've never had any contact with mine only when it's a General Election and she sends me a letter. What does Angela Raynor do for her constituency seeing as she cashed out her money from her family home and did a chicken run to Brighton.

I've lived in many different places and never had any contact with any MP from any party.

Our current MP holds face to face surgeries in an office a couple of miles from my home. He sends out a regular email newsletter detailing what he's been actively doing in person in and for his Constituency. He's working hard in his first seat. I can ( and have) contacted him a couple of times by email and had a response. Most recently, about the assisted dying bill. We don't agree on that, he didn't vote the way I hoped.

I've had dealings with all my MP's for the last half century, in surgeries, at public meetings, by letter or email, about anything from local plans to the Iraq War to guncontrol after Dunblane, Women's Pensions problem (mine!) , Donald Trump's visit, DH's hospital care. We don't always agree but whenever I've sought their direct help on a personal issue with national service providers, my MP's did.
I also deal with my local councillors and Councils. To me, basic grassroots involvement matters. I taught that to my kids, my students and now my grandkids.

Graphite

^The bin man is … smug, elitist, boring and unfunny.^

Is he?

I’m not alone in thinking he’s making serious points with humour.

Reducing the price of a 99 Flake is commentary on the need to control the cost of living. Nor long ago there was a long thread here about the rising price of Freddos. It's a similar thing.

Saying he would make water executives swim in polluted rivers is commentary on privatisation, prioritising shareholders over customers and the need to renationalised the industry.

Saying he will build one affordable house is commentary on successive governments’ failure to build enough social housing.

You have made the point yourself that Reform said that would increase the tax personal allowance. In fact they quickly rowed back on that after the 2024 election saying it was unworkable.

He is just making the point that one sector of people do call for raising taxes on one part of population while wanting reduced taxes for themselves.

Reform has made it clear they want reduced taxes for people with higher incomes - their 2024 tax proposals would have disproportionate benefited the better off. They have made it very clear they would give generous tax cuts for crypto gamblers, in other words, their wealthy donors. How do you think that would be paid for?

If you subscribe to the notion that tax pays for public spending, then a generous tax cut for one sector would either result in tax increases elsewhere or cuts in public expenditure to pay for those cuts. Unfunded tax cuts tend to make the markets go into free fall as they did in 2022 after the disastrous Truss/Kwarteng budget, making life more expensive for ordinary people.

All Count Binface is doing is saying what I’ve just said but much more succinctly.

In any event why all the flak and unpleasantness? He didn’t ask to be put in this position. Nobody, least of all Farage, predicted that the other parties would all refuse to play his game.

Count Binface makes a point of standing in high profile elections. He has stood against Boris Johnson, Sadiq Khan, Rishi Sunak and Andy Burnham so he’s hardly partisan and, in fact, is highly critical of the current government.

Also his campaigns and merchandise raise money for charity. His T-shirt sales raise funds for Shelter. Sales of his model Count Binface kits have raised funds for Diabetes UK and the Brainstrust charity which supports people living with brain tumours.

Binman for PM 👍👍

(IMO )

J52

May I recommend Dead Ringers on Radio 4. Hilarious satire on all comers.

👍👍

I don’t think any us believe or think you support Farage 🤨🤨😜

Butterandjam 21:23

Well said and ditto.

My parents brought me up to have a enquiring mind, to be interested in current affairs and politics.

They said “Politics affect us all, in some way, in all of our daily lives, be interested, be critical, challenge”

I brought up my children to be the same and when my dear parents were still alive and our children adults, some very interesting conversations were to be had in their house.

I’ve voted in every single GE and local elections in my area. I take the time and trouble to research the candidates, though in local elections I know some of the candidates and serving councillors.

When asked if he had ever been to Clacton,, the Count replied that he hadn't, as he thought that was how you do it.
Clever 🤣

Maremia

When asked if he had ever been to Clacton,, the Count replied that he hadn't, as he thought that was how you do it.
Clever 🤣

That made me smile!

He’s a very clever well educated and amusing character!

Cossy

Maremia

When asked if he had ever been to Clacton,, the Count replied that he hadn't, as he thought that was how you do it.
Clever 🤣

That made me smile!

He’s a very clever well educated and amusing character!

That as maybe, but he is making a mockery of our political system and adding and abetting the publicity around the Farage circus

GrannyGravy13 22:56

I would be inclined to agree if he hadn’t stood at many other elections, making it clear he’s the comedic side of politics and raising cash for charity in the first place.

Do you not feel that it is not he, but is Farage who is making a mockery of our political system?

Which is why I posted Farage circus

Then again I think Andy Burnham’s deposing of the PM is a circus , but slightly better organised and longer in planning…

GrannyGravy13

Which is why I posted Farage circus

Then again I think Andy Burnham’s deposing of the PM is a circus , but slightly better organised and longer in planning…

There I have to agree!

What a mess our politics are these days 😕

Then again I think Andy Burnham’s deposing of the PM is a circus , but slightly better organised and longer in planning…

I trust you felt the same way about Boris Johnson’s depositions of Theresa May.

There is no established convention which says that PMs cannot be challenged and ‘deposed’ during their term of office. If a governing party feels that its leader is losing the confidence of the nation and is destroying the public trust needed for effective governance it is at perfect liberty to ‘depose’ them and choose a substitute who they feel would be more effective. Even the great Thatcher was ‘deposed’ mid term. Was that just a ‘circus’?

The outbreak of po facedness about Count Binface is absurd. He and other ‘joke’ candidates have been a longstanding feature of elections, to the point of being almost a British institution. They are also a demonstration of our established democratic rights which allow anyone to stand for election to parliament and allow voters to choose who shall represent them.

As for for adding to the publicity around the Farage circus I suspect that he will tend to diminish it, much to Farage’s annoyance. Count Binface is news. Farage’s antics aren’t. Farage is no longer the centre of the attention he expects as his right.

I agree - its politics, and not usual, when both Mp's and chunks of a party feels the leader is out of touch enough to potentially damage a government. I know people have different POV on Starmer going, but to compare it with the circus around Farage?

When Fridays IPSOS poll came out it shows

"Britain backs Count Binface to beat Nigel Farage in Clacton by-election, poll shows
Some 33 per cent of British adults would prefer Count Binface to win, while only 21 per cent back the Reform UK leader"

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/count-binface-nigel-farage-clacton-by-election-poll-b3012680.html

Farage will now be associated forever with this farce.

sorry - first sentence should read "not unusual"

MaizieD I am po faced regarding the current state of British politics in general.

As for Theresa May, I think she was like Keir Starmer a basically good person, without the support needed from those surrounding them.

Maybe the circus has always been in town but we just didn't have tickets.

J52

May I recommend Dead Ringers on Radio 4. Hilarious satire on all comers.

Have you seen this clip 😂

www.facebook.com/reel/974596498800278

greyfur

Maybe the circus has always been in town but we just didn't have tickets.

If by that you mean that politics has always been like this, but that most of us ordinary folk weren't really privy to the extent of the shenanigans that went on amongst the 'elite' political class prior to the social media age, then you have probably hit the head! 👍

Now we hear constantly about all the dodgy goings-on, plus quite a bit that is probably total fiction and designed purely to influence us into being for or against a particular faction.

Sorry if I have misunderstood.

The Labour Party's a circus but thankfully the top clown has been cast aside although he did have some good gags like ' releasing the sausages' and he gave the football supporters a new chant which caused much amusement with 'starmers a xxxxxx'. Next we have the Burnham farce he's carrying on the surrender of the Chagos Islands what a laugh and a kick in the backside for the Chagossians that will be but it will make Hermer smile. I hear he's bringing back Louise her with the red hair who does love her phones perhaps she could do a juggling act with them that will liven the place up a bit, but lets hope the stitch up comedian Rachel Reeves who loves telling a porky or two is thrown to the lions and the joker Lammy who did give us a laugh on Mastermind I still chuckle about it now aint life grand.

Oldnproud, that's the sort of thing I had in mind. To me the world seems an entirely different place pre social media. We only knew a version of things we were fed.

I wish I could go back sometimes.

petra

J52

May I recommend Dead Ringers on Radio 4. Hilarious satire on all comers.

Have you seen this clip 😂

www.facebook.com/reel/974596498800278

😂😂😂