[SoH] Question Time + Congress Report

Day 5,911, 12:24 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Speaker of the House

Good Evening eUK,
the article that follows will be quite long but I’m pretty sure that you’ll understand why and that you’ll even appreciate the reason.
In the next paragraphs many important informations will be bring to your attention: first of all, thanks to the help of our Government, you will find the “Question Time” about what is happening in the nation. We will appreciate your feedback about it, in order to understand if the experience can be proposed again in future.
In the second part of the article instead, as Speaker of the House, I’ve decided to include a small report about the second half of our Congressional Legislature. It has not been so fierce as the first one but we can surely affirm that the activity has fully proceeded.
Enjoy the reading and don’t forget to leave your impressions!


ABOUT THE QUESTION TIME

Which method will use the Government to answer these questions? Is it possible to know who will answers to the single issues?

We have tried to keep things as simple as possible: Citoyen Vigneron has helped collecting the questions (both by private message than on the national feed), has made a first selection and then has passed the issues to the Government. Then Huey George, Militarista and Mister Immanuel Kant have used a shared Gdoc in order to work all together on the answers. The result is what you see published in this article.

ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT

Did the President assign a goal for each ministry to have achieved by the end of term? If yes, what are the different Ministers working on right now?

Not specifically, I set a broad outline of what I wanted to achieve as a Government:

-Continue to foster an active and engaged community to support player retention:
-Support citizens in continuing to optimize their Military Rank and Aircraft Rank whilst working in a coordinated and harmonious manner:
-Linked to the above the continuation of all our player support initiatives;
-Maintain our neutral and considerate position in the world;
-Manage and where possible grow (if viable) our training war stack;
-Provide our pilots and fighters UK Epic training war exercises when possible;
-Collect our tax revenue and return tax revenue to TW partners;
-Monetary market activity should continue to generate additional revenue beyond our taxable income;
-Our important regions for producers to remain free;
-Our "spare" resources will be part of concession agreements at this moment with Spain;
-Host a nation offering a 200% weapons in Scotland;
-Engage productively with all in our community and Congress.

Ministers and I work to achieve this broad outline of goals, it probably won’t come as a surprise I’m very hands on as Country President, I don’t like to sit back and just tell others what to do or not provide cover for a minister who may be a touch busy in RL So to coin an old phrase “team work makes the dream work”.

Ministers have brought items to me which help us achieve elements of the above, such as a “war games” proposal, Strength Guide for Players, Economic Advice to UK business owners which have/will add to the great work of my government team however again no individual pressure on any one person to deliver these \o/

What are the plans by the government to avoid the country's decline in activity and try to attract people from abroad?

I do always try to endeavor to understand broad non-specific concerns about the “country’s decline in activity” However it can be difficult without clarity on what metrics or evidence is being used to determine activity and this will always vary from player to player. I feel there is a lot to inspire activity in the broad outline of what I want to achieve as a Government (provided in the response to each ministry question) in the full range of Erep modules and it’s not just government alone which is active so collectively I feel like we are doing well in keeping the UK active \o/

I have been reflecting on this idea during the term. I don't think we need a “government” to attract players from abroad. I think our community sends its own postcards abroad. I quite like how players naturally stumble on what a special place the UK is with our diversity of viewpoints and playstyles and choose to join our community rather than trying to lure or incentivise players from abroad. I could not begin to list all the great players which have arrived and greatly contributed to our community this way. \o/

What is the opinion of the Government about the job made by Congress in this legislature?

We’ve worked very well this term.

Do you think it is acceptable for the President to allow members of government to retain their positions despite their lack of activity on feeds, telegram, articles and Congress' messages for weeks at a time?
Specifically about the Mofa (now ex), why has it taken weeks for this to come to light? And is the government seeking a replacement?

Yes, I think it’s acceptable, my Governments will always be a team and the benefit of time and understanding will always be offered where possible. Critical roles always have cover which can be relied on, this enables a robust government not reliant on one or two players and allows time I feel members of any government should be awarded.

Although I would always appreciate notification from members of the government if they don’t have time for the role they are in of course. Does lead to less worry for me and raises less concerns in the public.

ABOUT THE ECONOMY

Given the UK has millions of currency in reserve, and it's not all needed/used for MM trading, why can't these funds be used to clear debts with TW partners which now run into the millions?

Discussed and refused by our TW partner, North Korea and there are no debts with our other TW partners to clear. My preference is our training wars are for them not to be purely transactional, they are a real partnership and at times a lovely friendship. With this mentality we can find solutions which work for both the UK and our TW partners to issues we encounter, which we have done in the case of the tax revenue returns to North Korea.

Following the TW and income analysis in the news is the government considering any of the recommendations regarding the NK training war?

No, whilst the “Evaluating Training War approaches and impact on Treasury income” analysis was good and interesting. The recommendations grouped as the “Smart Stack Initiative” are somewhat limited, based on some flawed logic or misconceptions and have failed to factor in a number of critical factors to make it realistic or pragmatic to implement so the Government is unlikely to be used to reconsider our training war arrangement with North Korea without some refinement.

However, potentially if the level of tax revenue to return is deemed too significant to let it grow larger by either ourselves or North Korea, the Government would take the simple steps to bring the TW to a close and agree on a suitable revenue return rate.


On which help programs can a new player rely on?


A test of the memory…so hopefully I’ve covered a lot of them:

Government
⇛Super Soldier Training Ground Booster
⇛Q1 House Grant
⇛Ground Rank Growth Booster
⇛Aircraft Rank Growth Booster
⇛Hard Worker Medal WRM Company Booster
⇛Christmas Air Programme
⇛Air Cadet Programme
⇛British Armed Forces Q7 Weapon Rewards Scheme
⇛National Giveaway Days

Private
⇛NHS (Select28 or Darkmantle)
⇛BUPA (Mr Immanuel Kant)
⇛UK Weapons Giveaway (harveytailbanger)
⇛GIFTS PAPER (Georgelakeland)

Various new players have contacted mentors to say the offering for new players is poor, or at worst confusing, particularly messages from the new player support office. What is the rational against simple, blanket support packages and directing people away from years of resources compiled by the MoEd?

Feedback received directly to the Government about our player support has overwhelmingly been positive. So I’d encourage the “various new players and mentors” to communicate any issues they are finding with player support! The government can only improve things if feedback is provided.

The rationale is that all UK ministries have elements of player support included in their remit. The UK is also blessed with a patchwork of player support schemes offered by private individuals, political parties and groups of private individuals.

For new players and older players where to find information on player support and who to ask questions needed to be centralized. The Ministry of Player Support has done this and has made player support scheme administration easier and more efficient. The years of resources completed by various Ministers of Education remain just a click away via the Ministry of Education newspaper. So it’s a win win!

Government will of course act on any feedback on our player support.


ABOUT FOREIGN POLITICS AND MILITARY

Thanks for staggering the start times of some of the wars! Looking forward to the war games, can the government give some details about it and when it will start?

You are welcome, for the staggered start times to some of our TWs. It terms of the war Games our Ministry of Defence is still drawing together details of this exciting programme and more details will be released when it’s ready \o/

Is there a way to keep records of how many medals of our tw are gained by british citizens and how many from foreigners?

The data for all our active TWs is recorded here. It includes very detailed records on all aspects of our training wars.

Any citizen can review how many medals of our TWs are gained by UK citizens or not.

Government holds records of all our “inactive” TWs dating back 4 years or so which can be accessed here.

This type of review can be considered a laborious task involving lots of navigation between battle statistic pages however it’s there and available.

ABOUT THE CONGRESS

In the second part of the term the Congress has continued to work together with the Government in order to keep our nation efficient.
Here what happene😛
-the Congress decided to keep House import tax at 99%, in order to give priority on this market to british citizens;
-resource's concessions have been renewed;
- the Congress shared the Government opinion in increasing our training wars while keeping our strategy of equality in choosing the partners: some new programmed wars have seen the light, as the one with Ukraine, while some others have been necessaries due to the closure of some borders, as the one that will soon start with Portugal;
-the donations laws’ flow has been kept running and thanks to what happened in the first part of the Legislature the number of NO related to this laws has decreased;
-a citizenship has been accepted, even if not following the usual procedure. The acceptance of it was not in real doubt (it was from an ex british citizen returning home) but what happened didn’t help with keeping the “roleplay component” of this game.
As far as I can see, and please allow me here a personal opinion, each time that someone breaks the meta rules that we gave to ourselves it’s like killing a bit more this game.
Roleplay and the meta part of the game allows us to have fun, keep more people involved, create relations and make our institutions worth living.
By my side, I thank both the Congress than the Government for the relation we had during the term and for the trust you put in me by giving me the role of Speaker.
My inbox i always at your disposition and I’ll try to keep managing my functions in the best possible way.
Thank you,

Citoyen Vigneron
Speaker of the House