Join the new world

After a bit of a delay, I’m going to properly launch the apprenticeship scheme I promised in my manifesto. I can only apologise for the enormous delay in getting this article out, and the tardiness of bringing forwards the things that were in my manifesto. I had a bit of a pileup with essays over the past fortnight, and just haven’t had the enthusiasm to come home after hours in the library and sit and write an article such as this one, when all of my efforts on eRep have been essentially to stress about the Egyptians.

But moving on.



The idea behind the apprenticeships scheme is to try and get new blood in the government ministry. The people running the ministries will be the first to tell you that the eUK could do with new capable and active ministers, to supplement the good people we have and ensure we don’t get stagnant. Like everyone, I am well aware that eRepublik is not about to suddenly get an influx of active new players, so they will not be the focus of this program (though it will still be open to them). What we will ideally be hoping to achieve is to find existing eUKers who for whatever reason have never considered working in ministries, and trying to get them involved.

So, how will it work?



One government minister- for the remainder of this term me, and I hope that the next CP will be kind enough to let me continue- will co-ordinate the scheme, taking applications and liaising with all of the govt departments to make sure the right apprentices are in the right ministries and that the ministers know they are there.

Apprentices will be divided into three categories which serves as an indicator of how much they need to learn and how much they might be ready to take on more ministerial work.

Bronze Apprentices are the most junior, this might be players brand new to the game; or players that have very little in the way of understanding what the ministry does. Each Bronze Apprentice will have a ‘mentor’ minister in their ministry, who will make it their business to talk to the apprentice and try and teach them what it is the ministry does and so on.

Silver Apprentices are one step up from this, so perhaps somebody who had a bit of an idea of the ministry they are going into, or a bronze apprentice who has worked his way up.

Gold Apprentices are just one step below full deputy ministers, and would start to ‘do’ things, rather than just learning and trying to get to grips with it all.

The Senior minister at the department can move apprentices up and down this spectrum depending on how well they are doing, and then once they feel an apprentice is ready, ‘certify’ them as able to be deputy minister, and eventually a full minister. I would like to see an active system of assessment of all deputy ministers and apprentices and perhaps even full ministers, primarily to both help CPs and Ministers choose their ministers and deputies by a greater ability to know who is competent and who is not.

Edit: eUK Players can now apply to be apprentices in the 'Ministry of Legislative Affairs', which is run by the Speaker and Apprentices here will learn about being a good congress member, how our legislation works and help with the admin of it.



It’s very simple, with the form below. It is open to all eUK citizens.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1vZZj0MEgMQXHQdn6ZlatUvaP0mhyvp6GQL84400w4hY/viewform



Finance

Despite some concern last week that the tax returns from the increased 6% were disappointing, they seem to have picked up this week, the 23k figure that we brought in yesterday is around where I would expect our average to be, and hopefully it continues to sit there.

My Tax Rebate system that was passed by congress earlier in the month is set to be paid out at the end of the CP term, I will be asking Huey for his estimate of how much it will cost in a couple of days time so if you are an MU and haven’t contacted the MoF yet, I urge you to do so.

Home Affairs

The Supply drop system that the player support money has manifested itself in has been in my opinion been a failure of mine. It has rather smacked of randomly throwing food and weapons at citizens, and I think it has come from a struggle to take a good concept and translate it into something tangible. The positive side to this is that we have only spent 3500cc on the drops over the month, so we can learn from it and try something else.

Namely, I think starting a tank fund that eUK fighters can buy weapons from is a good idea. With the remaining 16,500cc of the Player Support budget we could purchase just shy of 1000 q7s, and then sell them to active, hard hitting eUK fighters for 3-5cc under the current market price. The approx 13,700cc that was brought it from these sales could then be reinvested into more tanks, and so on. These small sums are but a drop in the ocean, but this could serve as a trial to be scaled up massively in future months; for example if you put 150,000cc of capital into buying thousands of q7s, and aimed for a net spend of say 50-100k over the month- with the 6% rate this will be possible.

I am keen to hear what people think.

Defence/FA

Yes, I know there haven’t been any COs in the campaigns against Egypt so far when it was promised that the increased tax would be used for this. It’s simply a case of judging whether they would be effective, I’m not going into detail while this war is ongoing, but it’s just very much a feeling of not wanting to piss all our CO pot away and leave us flat broke again.

As you will have seen yesterday, Pluto has finally become a proper Alliance over three weeks after the eUK Congress voted to join it, and I’m very happy to see to eUKers in its inaugural HQ. The friends we have made there are absolutely crucial to our future position in the eWorld.

That is everything for now, I will have a final article out on Saturday to sum up the term as a whole, a mixed bag as it has been.