Rainbow George Weiss

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Rainbow George Weiss (born 13 October 1940)^[1] is notable as a fringe political party candidate in the UK.

Life and career[]

The son of a diamond merchant, Weiss failed his 11 plus exam on the day King George VI died.^[1] He subsequently worked for his father in Hatton Garden for 15 years. He admits to enjoying gambling too much, since it became legal to bet on the high street on 1 May 1961.^[1][2] He is a long time Newcastle United FC supporter since the Wembley 1952 FA Cup Final. Later in life, he very nearly recruited their former striker, Jackie Milburn, to stand for his Captain Rainbow's Universal Party in 1985 in Tyne Bridge.^[3]

As a political candidate, he stood in 13 constituencies in the 2005 general election, polling 1,289 votes in total.^[3] He once proposed a "preferendum" where voters choose individual policies selected from those offered by each of the major parties.

He founded his own parties from the proceeds of the sale of a mews house in Hampstead, north London, which he moved into in 1969, but stopped paying rent in 1984, remaining there as a squatter for the required 12 years. He made a profit of £710,000 from the sale of the house in 2004 after HM Land Registry awarded him possessory ownership of the property, known as acquiring, "Title by Adverse Possession".^[4] Weiss moved for a brief period to Ireland before returning to London; he currently lives in a Highgate retirement home in London.

He was for many years the neighbour of comedian Peter Cook, and after Cook's death in 1995, released an album of some of his personal home recordings featuring Cook. Titled Over at Rainbows, the album was released in 2002. The recordings feature a few of the phone conversations between LBC radio's Clive Bull and Cook under the guise of a Norwegian fisherman called Sven, many of which were made from Weiss's Hampstead home.^[5]

In July 2006, Weiss disclosed on the Clive Bull radio show that he had about £50,000 remaining from the windfall; however, by February 2007 he was giving the more ambiguous description of "somewhere under £50,000". During February of that year, Weiss announced he was standing as a candidate in the Belfast by-elections and was subsequently banned from appearing on Bull's show until the by-election result was declared.

Politics[]

Weiss founded his own political party, the Vote For Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket, and first stood for the European Parliament in 1994 in the London Central constituency. He was also a candidate at the 2001 general election for the Belfast East constituency, where he won a total of 91 votes (0.2% of those cast). Weiss has spent considerable time and money organising an unofficial postal referendum to ask the people of Belfast whether they would like the city to be renamed "Best City", a name inspired by the late Northern Ireland football player George Best. With the celebrity endorsement of former professional snooker player Alex Higgins, the referendum took place in 2006 at an estimated cost (to Weiss) of £100,000. Only 2000 votes were returned, which means Weiss effectively paid £50 for each vote he got.^{[citation needed]}

Weiss was a candidate at the 2003 Brent East by-election, standing for the www.xat.org party, won by Liberal Democrat Sarah Teather, in which he came bottom of a list of 16 candidates with just eleven votes. While this vote was considerably low, lower votes had previously been registered: for example, in the 1988 by-election in Kensington a candidate had polled just five votes.^[6] The Vote for Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket election record was also "surpassed" at the 2005 general election when British model Catherine Taylor-Dawson stood for the party in Cardiff North and achieved a single vote, though not from Taylor-Dawson herself, who was not eligible to vote in that constituency. Weiss himself set a new election record by simultaneously standing in 13 constituencies, beating Tom Keen of the Campaign for a More Prosperous Britain's previous record of 10.

He stood in all four Belfast constituencies during the 2007 Northern Ireland Assembly election. Standing for his Make Politicians History Party, he came third last in South Belfast and last in the three other constituencies with a total of 221 first preference votes.^[7]

Radio phone-ins[]

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Formerly known as "George from Hampstead", or, in light of his Belfast referendum plans, "George Looney" but more recently "George from Highgate" Weiss has been a regular caller to the Clive Bull show on London radio station LBC, promoting his latest political ideas. He has also called BBC Radio 5 Live^[1] (in November 2020) and talkSPORT late at night. However, he is usually referred to as "Rainbow George" by presenters when calling any of these radio stations.

On 13 August 2007, Weiss phoned in and revealed his plans for London in the year 2020, which included turning the M25 into a "wonderwall" and London becoming "the party capital of the world", financed by "the bank of a zillion wonders" in which everyone would be an account holder and "the wonder" would be the base currency with a rate of one hundred "gasps" to the "wonder".

Weiss has also phoned BBC London 94.9 between 2012 and 2015. When calling the Nick Abbot show on LBC, he used the pseudonym "Sterling Silver".

The Russell Brand Show[]

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In October 2007, July 2008 and October 2008, Rainbow George appeared on The Russell Brand Show on Radio 2 in order to publicize his political agenda, inviting Brand to take leadership of the party (of which Brand was sceptical) and announcing an online petition requiring one million votes in order for the party to become recognized as a serious candidate in future elections.

During his appearance on the show on 14 June 2008, he told Brand that he had placed a bet on space ships appearing at the closing ceremony of the Olympic games in China, and invited him to take a one-third share in the bet, as well as to join him for some 'Boris Dancing' (named after then-mayor of London Boris Johnson) on Hampstead Heath.

References[]

External links[]

• Preferendum
• Xat.Org - an alternative no tax economic system George uses with permission