The Economist ~ Where we go from here.

Day 1,068, 08:24 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Spite313


Dear friends,

I am about to embark on a journey through time and space, and I thought I’d talk a little bit about the UK before I leave.

In my time in the game, I’ve found that every six months or so I need to take a break from UK politics to do something different, lest I go mad. Well, I’m not quite due a break chronologically, but the current situation would probably be helped if I went on a long holiday. So I’ve decided that after my congress term is up, I’ll be moving to Serbia for a long break. How long I stay basically depends on how long it takes for me to recover, and how long it takes me to help out a few friends I have there in their personal endeavours. I will be back though, so you haven’t got rid of me yet 😃

As this will be my last article in the UK for a while (sucky new module) I’d like to talk a bit about where the UK is now. I think the current status of the country can be described in three ways- political, economic and military. All are linked- perhaps more now than ever. Dealing with the current situation will be difficult, but like all difficult tasks the time-scale is dependent on the people involved.

Politically, we are seeing the near death of over a year of bitter infighting. Basically, nobody is left. Even the new guns from earlier this year are old now, and nobody has swept in to take up the baton. TUP as a party (I am going to be a little bit biased here) aren’t as strong as they were numbers-wise, but due to having a strong vision and a lot of good players are still dominant. UKRP have been stumbling from crisis to crisis for a long time now, and seem to have little or no new talent. RFA, on the brink of collapse, has been brought back from the edge of the abyss by strong leadership. However, how a notoriously independent bunch of people as the RFA deal with strong leadership is yet to be seen. The PCP are as strong, or weak, as ever. Their core membership still exists, still holds the same beliefs, still fights the same fight. But they are becoming increasingly disengaged from the UK political scene. When I started the game they occupied a similar position to TUP, now they are barely associated with the state or other parties.



Economically, we are at the mercy of the admins. With active population slowly rising, as well as both personal and national income, I could happily predict a slow but steady recovery from V2. Doing so now would perhaps be premature however. The weapons market is still struggling- especially lower Q weapons which are imbalanced. Without confidence in the game developers, people are reluctant to invest money into the in-game economy, with most gold sales going straight back out of the game. This may create somewhat of a false impression of growth to both admins and MM traders. Strong currency and strong gold sales/use does not necessarily mean strong growth overall. I think that if the admins are going to complete the range of reforms they have so far implemented, they need to merge weapons skills and the weapons market. As it is, the difference between weapons is largely cosmetic, and with some weapons types averaging at double the price of others this is silly. From a UK perspective then, I think that the economic trends we can expect to see are falling food prices and potentially a recovery in weapons prices post-merge.

Militarily- well. Right now, as is public knowledge by now, the UK is bereft of nearly all our companies. This is the fault of one person, a traitor who sold us out to the USA, or at least American citizens. In my opinion, the military initially reacted very well to the incident, locking down organisations where they could, and forming reports on the lost companies for the admins. However, since then there has been an open battle on the forums between the military and civilian branches of government. For me, the military are refusing to accept that changes have to be made, and congress are refusing to accept any of the compromise bills proposed by the military. The issue here is that compromise only works if the key features both parties are fighting for can be put into one bill. With the military wanting more “universal access” staff members and congress wanting more “single access” staff members there is always going to be a certain amount of clashing going on. Disappointingly, there has been little perceived effort to change to the system congress has proposed.


somewhere in America

Where do we go from here? With a historically weak political scene, a struggling economic recovery and a threadbare military the UK hasn’t been in such a sad state since beta. I’m sure many of you have seen the EDEN propaganda in the ad module, threatening a UK invasion. To be honest, I think an invasion could at least give the UK some common purpose, since we are basically stagnating.

But it isn’t all tunnel and no light. I think that there are measures which can be taken to improve the situation. We need to make a concerted effort at getting a baby boom. Nobody in the UK is willing to spend RL money paying for ads, like some countries do. But there are other options. We have seen a lot of great ideas appear in the last month or so. Sadly a lot of them are criticised so heavily they get dropped without consideration. We should be going 100% into every possible baby boom effort, not putting them down.

Politically we need 5 strong parties. It is the duty of parties to ensure that they recruit their members to the forums and promote new talent up through their internal structures. We are permanently on the verge of losing our 5th party, and now with three parties at around 100 members or less we are in a dire situation indeed. All the top 5 parties need to work hard at promoting themselves, and often an antagonistic atmosphere is more fun and more likely to bring in members than the placid atmosphere so lauded by anti-politics people. A good fight between parties is fun for all involved, and is largely harmless.

The situation with the military is a difficult one. Civilian authorities have already made history by forcing restrictions onto the military. To go further and involve congress in the structuring processes and leadership of the military is in my opinion a step too far. There is a difference between legislating access to resources, and handing control of the army to such a disparate and disagreeable bunch as congress. However the topic does bring up the question of whether we should have a “professional” head of the army at all. Since it has been created the position has been more of a bureaucratic than a leadership role. With the army almost without resources and our regular attendance figures at such a low level, now is the time to make major changes.

Overall, we are in a bit of a sticky patch. Though I am moving countries in-game, (for a change of scenery) I will still participate in social life in the UK as best I can and try to contribute to the solution. I think ultimately what we need is a strong visible hand from the parties, military leadership and of course the President.

See you on the other side o7

Ivan Kersovic