Congress Voting Record #3

Day 2,485, 12:40 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by VoodooMike71

What's that you say? Where's the third instalment of the fascinating, erudite and essential series of articles documenting my first ever term in Congress? I thought no-one was reading so I figured I'd get away with a little nap instead. Clearly not.

So, report coming up. Incidentally, there have been loads of proposals this week, many of which were - frankly - tedious. Don't expect much detail; trust me, you don't want it.

So, strap in and hold tight - here we go!

A busy Congress never sleeps. What? ... oh.

MPP: Croatia
Proposer: HisAirness
We like Croatia. They're our friends.

PASSED:29 votes to 3


Work tax: increase to 2%
Proposer: me!
Five days ago this was proposed, discussed and rejected. However, ever eagle-eyed, I happened to notice that during the congress discussions virtually everyone supported the increase. This was then backed up by opinion and facts from our MoFs strongly supporting the increase. Essentially, at 1% tax eUK runs at a loss, at 2% we make a (small) excess.

So that was it, I re-proposed and from that point on this important and fiendishly clever piece of legislation became a parliamentary legend. Or something like that.

PASSED:21 votes to 11


VAT & Import Taxes: Weapons
Proposer: fraztodd
Increase import tax on weapons from 8% to 33%. I managed to stay awake long enough to decide that 8% was enough to discourage cheap imports at the cost of our home producers. 33% in the current price war would cut imports completely. No likey. Vote no.

REJECTED:20 votes to 9


Naturally enemy: Sweden
Proposer: Man Friday
Given that, at the CP's request, we declared war against Sweden a few days ago ... duuuuh. Yes, obviously.

APPROVED:28 votes to 2


Donate to BoE
Proposer: Zaphod the Kinky Psychopath
A cunning stunt! With gold prices crashing, buy a LOT of cheap gold with our country orgs (the price was about 160cc at the time), transfer it to BoE, then get Congress to pass a motion issuing money from the BoE (at the game's set rate of 200cc). Brilliant! Let's do it!

So we did.

Then our CP found out that you can't transfer gold from orgs to BoE.

PASSED:29 votes to 2


Issue Money
Proposer: Talon Karrde
Issue 175000GBP at a cost of 875 gold. Hurray! Talon saves the day! The eUK still makes a profit. Smiles and cups of tea all round.

PASSED:25 votes to 4


Right, time for a short break...


Congress - we're posher than you

And back to the tedium important legislation...


VAT & Import Taxes: Moving Tickets
Proposer: Aleksander V Popovic
I could lie, but I won't. I didn't pay much attention to this proposal (not many did), and then I missed the vote. I still don't really know why this was proposed.

REJECTED:18 votes to 10


Peace Proposal
Proposer: Thedillpickl
Canada have had enough, their thumbs are in their mouths and they want their mummies. They want peace, we're bored of giving them a good kicking, and anyway - we have bigger Scandinavian fish to fry. Also, apparently Canada paid us to agree to peace, so agree to it we did.

PASSED:26 votes to 1


INTERLUDE: new Country President!. Cheerio WayneKerr, hello WookieO



Alliance: Pakistan
Proposer: WookieO (CP)
Pakistan want an MPP with us, and are prepared to pay one quarter of the ten grand it costs. After a lot of debate (they're only doing it because they're air-striking Israel, they're not proper allies, they air-striked us a few months ago etc) I figured the MPP wasn't worth it, so I voted no. The discussion suggested that Congress as a whole would probably reject this, but they didn't.

Ho hum, at least it only cost 7.5k instead of 10k. Good job we raised the work tax, right? 🙂

PASSED:17 votes to 9 (low turnout klaxon!)


Natural Enemy: Norway
Proposer: HendyBoi
Bit of a strange one this: HendyBoi proposed this completely off his own back. He didn't join the Congress message threads, so nobody has spoken to him. Effectively, this came from nowhere.

However, our CP said that he was going to propose it soon anyway, so we may as well go for it. Looks like HendyBoi got lucky (although apparently his PP will be asked to "have words" with him; it's not clear whether "have words" is code for "concrete boots at the new bypass")

PASSED:29 votes to 3


So there you have it, a busy seven days for Congress. Currently there's one proposal under consideration (MPP with Chile - it will pass easily), but I suspect we're all keeping our heads down looking for a chance to grab a quick nap. LIKE THE ONE I WAS HAVING BEFORE YOU FORCED ME TO WRITE THIS CONGRESS REPORT.


Incidentally, many thousands of you are constantly messaging me offering to pay me hard cash in return for my great work in Congress. But NO! That would be wrong, immoral and undemocratic (and anyway I just made it up).

However, if you would like to show your appreciation, you're more than welcome to do so by commenting on this article.

I was planning on completely ignoring the stupid competition thing, but you know how it is - you keep seeing that little icon blinking at you, etc etc. So, yeah, 25 comments from different people would be very much appreciated. And when I say "appreciated", I mean rewarded with top notch bonus pics. Like this...
Gladys got in the shower too early, and got her clothes wet by mistake


PS in the interests of equality, here's an alternative bonus gif for the laydeeees...


I couldn't find a decent pic on Google, so I just took a selfie instead





What party are you in? What? Really? Well it's the wrong one. Click the image below to sort it out...