The state of the UK (Or how I learned to shut up and love the game)

Day 1,964, 15:42 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Butjam

Greetings, ladies and gents of our beloved isles, it’s been quite a bit of time since I spoke to everyone like this and so I thought it best to spew a bit of feel good stuff out here at us all. For those of you who don’t know me I’m Butjam(But you can just call me mediocre), former vCP and MoFA of our lovely little country and currently the Minister of Finance. I even ran for CP once and failed miserably! As well as all of this, I co host the eUK radio with Madacaion, with a voice that has been erringly described as ‘mincing’. You can also find me on the forums as part of ‘Frerk and the Freklets’, AKA the Admin team.

With all that aside, firstly may I give many thanks to the Argentinians for attacking us via airstrike, as it’s been one of the most unifying and exciting periods of modern times. Unfortunately amongst all this we still have our petty little fights and squabbles going on and there’s always a fear of the population suddenly dying off (nobody else notice the scary 100 vote drop in this months CP election?). As such I thought I’d take it upon myself to cheerlead us back to the path of righteousness and fun!

The UK is, despite the wonderful prominence of our friends from across the world, pretty solidly British, in that we’re a moody, miserable set of sarcastic gits who, quite surprisingly, find the antics of our top PTO group silliest bunch of players the funniest things going. Because of this, we’re more than guilty of sitting about and grumbling that the game is a little bit terrible. Even my password is a dig at how much money the admins have squeezed out of me so far and I know I’m definitely not innocent in all of this!

At any rate, even though we whinge and moan and never shut up about it, we’re still here, plugging away in our rubber mines and throwing rockets at the Irish when they get uppity and we really have to ask ourselves why we are if we hate it so much. It’s a pretty simple answer when you actually think about it though and one you can see from just stepping back for a minute.

For a long while now, people have been banging on about ‘the divide’ between us all, we’re all on one side or the other chucking stones from our glass houses and seeing if we can give Goku or Invalidation a black eye with one of our damming print screens. But if you have a gander, you start to notice that there’s actually very few differences in real policy and it all seems to come down to conflicts of interest between people. People don’t actually care about tax policies and citizenship procedure, they just want one up on the other table in the canteen. Some people have been onto this for a long time obviously (Hi Wayne!) whilst those of you who are about as thick as I am are only just starting to cotton on.

I can’t speak for every country and the like but I think the realisation we all need to come to here in the UK is that we’ve all been trotting along playing some sort of game, when actually we’ve been on some cleverly disguised social network where we’ve actually sat about and made friends. Of course, there are some people who do like to play individually, who do genuinely take an interest in stuff solely in game and may even have joined a party for their tax policy. These gents and ladies may even be a silent majority , they’re a pretty hard bunch to poll. Those people aside, us lot in politics and acting like this really matters and is more than something to just log into for 10 minutes each day need to realise that maybe we aren’t here to win, in fact that isn’t even possible, but just to have fun and enjoy the company of the people we meet.

It’s taken me awhile to realise this, far too long in fact, but I’m glad I have done. I’ve loved being in cabinet the past few months, getting along with everyone involved and giving myself a reason to stick around. I’m coming to grips now with the idea that I don’t need to be doing something to bum around here. Having conversations on the forums, IRC,shout feeds, Skype and recording our eUK Radio is what I’ve really been enjoying, heck, I’ve even sat down for a few pints with Madacaion and asked a lass from here on a date, that’s how much of a good time I’ve been having.

I had been saying before the election that this would be my last month in cabinet if I did get in, and that I was done with it but after all of this, the camaraderie between people in #euk, the silliness and fun that has perforated even the coldest of miserable gits hearts I think that may it may be a bit more difficult to get rid of me than that.

So what was the point of this article, asides from inflating my ego with a few votes? I guess it’s a thank you to the people who make this game enjoyable on a day by day basis and keep me and many others coming back. It would take me forever to list you all, but special thanks to my beloved Dentists, the wonderful people in the UKRP, the crazies who hang about in #euk and my fellow Freklets on the forum team. A big thank you to every player, from all over the world for playing with us, (especially those from TWO, CoT and our other friends who have shown solidarity and true friendship during this war) I hope that this can carry on for a while yet to come.

With much love and gratitude, Butjam
Ex-Messiah
Owner of a body nearly hairless enough for Diakun