The Economist ~ Iain Keers for Party President

Day 1,912, 10:27 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Spite313


Dear friends,


I come to you as I came five times before, to offer myself as a candidate for the Party Presidency of TUP. I’m not going to write a long article about this, since party internal machinations are tedious at the best of times, but hopefully I can give you a brief outline of where I think TUP is now, and where I’ll be taking it should you choose to elect me.


A few weeks ago I looked at where TUP was now, and it wasn’t a good position. We’re languishing in second place, and our membership has been in a slow decline for months. Many of our members, including myself, are overseas exploiting bonuses (or being President of Poland, eh Marvin?). In addition our proportion of “young” players under three months old is relatively small, around a fifth of the parties active membership. Though we’ve performed well in elections, we are definitely the second place party in the UK right now, and that has to change.





The reason I’ve decided to run again this month is hopefully to kick start TUP in much the same way I did back in early 2009. We will be taking a long hard look at the UK as it is now, and moving ourselves to better represent the UK population. We are obviously not resonating with the voters as we once did, or at least not as well as UKPP. To fix that problem we have to suck up pride and admit that we have made mistakes, we have not come across strongly enough with our views and we’re not providing the vision of the future the UK has come to expect from us.


After that doom and gloom, let’s look at the positives. Unlike other parties in similar situations we’ve not seen a collapse of membership. In fact, far from it. Our core group of players remains more or less stable, at around 100-120 active, involved fighters and citizens who are over a year old. That group of players provides us with a stronger backbone than any other party. They give us the ability to pass on wisdom and knowledge to a younger generation- which is the primary function of any political party.


On top of this we have the structures in place and the experience to rebound. Our main failing at the minute as a party is point of contact. Anyone involved in recruiting knows that these days a new player is contacted within the first few hours of their life- by the same 2-3 recruiters from other parties. They usually get offered money or items in exchange for membership. For most players, who aren’t into the politics to begin with, this seems like a good option. After all, if you don’t care what party you’re in, you might as well be in the one who will pay you the most to join.





However this is a flawed strategy. It is good for making your number appear bigger on the party page, and might even increase your votes. However bribed players are not going to be loyal, they’re not going to get involved and they’re certainly not going to want to contribute anything back to the party. A customer relationship is all this creates, and buying members is not good for the player or the party. In TUP we’ve always focused on the quality of our training and the opportunities we offer. We don’t offer money (though new players can get help if they ask, regardless of their party), but we do offer the opportunity to prove yourself.


So for the future what I’d be focusing on recruitment-wise would be to present a better, more attractive TUP for people investigating the UK’s political parties. There’s no point trying to fight over citizens by offering bribes, but what I plan to do is make TUP attractive so that when players are grown up and looking for options, TUP jumps out as the party of choice. We can occupy that position, and we do provide an unparalleled access to experienced older players who can support new players with advice and support. That wealth of experience needs to be used to its maximum.


If elected I’d also be focusing on communication, but not in the way we use it now. Nobody wants a boring mass PM about nothing much (vote vote vote!) so I’ll be sticking to non-party business for all my messaging. We’ll be looking to inform and educate both our membership and the wider citizenship without actually talking party politics. Our mission statement is to educate, agitate & organise and that’s exactly what we’ll be doing. We’ve learned the lesson that ingame messaging does have a strong role in party-player interaction, so we’ll be bringing our knowledge ingame through messaging. In addition to this I have 9 major articles planned over the course of my term designed to be beneficial not just to TUP but to all citizens of the UK. I hope you enjoy them.





Much to the contrary of what most expect, I hope this term to be a term of compromise and working with other parties. Only a fool would claim that every position they’ve held is ever perfect, especially in the face of the public’s opinion. We need to come together as a party, unified under strong leadership, and mould ourselves to fit the modern UK, or risk falling behind into obscurity. TUP is a great party with great members. Even to this day it’s viewed by the other parties as the one to beat. We need to pull ourselves up, reform, and smash back onto the stage with renewed vigour and purpose. And for that I need your vote on the 15th, and your help for the rest of the month.


Yours in Unity


Iain